Cedar Rapids' big bets

 

Approximate location of proposed new middle school

The Cedar Rapids Community School Board has approved the purchase of land in unincorporated Linn County, which they intend to be the site of a new middle school. As reported by Cindy Hadish in Homegrown Iowan, construction of the school is dependent upon the outcome of a bond referendum in November 2025, and is part of contracting the district's six middle schools down to four. The district argues contraction is necessary because of declining enrollments.

The school district operates under two mandates: to educate K-12 students, and to manage that in the most cost-effective way possible. As with the elementary school shuffle, they have argued that new construction offers the opportunity to keep up with technological developments in education, and that it is less costly to build than to repair. The choice of location is at first blush bizarre, but perhaps the district would argue that they need a lot of land that is relatively inexpensive. It seems relatively inaccessible, too, walkable from hardly anywhere other than the large-lot subdivision to its west. Even biking will be difficult for most students, despite the development of a trail alongside Highway 100. So we're in for a lot of private cars and school buses, with the latter costing district taxpayers maybe more than they're saving on the remote location. (For more on the complicated economics of school closings, see Roza and Dhammani 2024.)

While the district will retain middle schools in Wellington Heights (McKinley) and the near northwest side (Roosevelt), this also continues a trend of moving schools outward. The traditional neighborhoods near the center of town will become less attractive, which is for many reasons not in the city's long-term interest. That may not be one of the school district's mandates, but whose job is it?

Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell speaks at Bridge of Lions dedication,
July 2022

Maybe it's the job of the city government, although in a fragmented system they have no pull with the school district. However, the city is busy pursuing its own risky would-be game-changers: a casino across the river from downtown, and not one but two data centers south of town (one is Google, one is "bigger than Google"). About the casino, I've argued that, arguments about morality and cost distribution notwithstanding, my biggest objection is that it's a terribly unproductive use of primo land. With a less splashy, more incremental approach, we could build a neighborhood that could be an ongoing supply of human energy to core businesses.

The political hype around bagging the data centers makes me suspicious, without a whole lot of personal knowledge of how they operate. Strong Towns lists data centers along with corporate headquarters and big-box stores as the 21st century equivalent of smokestack chasing: a self-defeating contest among localities, "betting big on bad hands" in the words of Strong Towns' John Pattison, in which both the winner and the also-rans wind up sad. (See also Mattera, Tarczynska, and LeRoy 2014.) 

• Are we being overly optimistic about the economic impact of the firms' investments? 
• How much tax revenue is the city foregoing to lure them? 
• How much infrastructure investment and maintenance will be required to prepare the ground for their arrival? 
• How much of our economy is going to be dependent on corporate decisions made far away? 
• Realistically, how many and what type of jobs are these behemoths going to sustain? 
• What about data centers' reputation for sucking up power and water, competing with local residents and existing businesses? 

We shouldn't get carried away with happy talk.

(Free clip art from getdrawings.com)

All of us, including those who currently serve as city or school officials, have a stake in a city that is prosperous, equitable, and sustainable. I'd even include those who are in a position to profit from these investments.

A baseball slugger who constantly swings for the fences may be exciting to watch, particularly when he connects and belt one 500 feet. But the long string of strikeouts between blasts isn't fatal to him or his team. They'll live to play another day. If they decide Biff strikes out too much, they can find a new bopper. But a city that swings for the fences is playing a riskier game. Better to make consistent solid contact, and leave the excitement to the private sector. As such, I'd rather the new middle school be located on the proposed casino site, or some other in-town location; if we must have a casino, it go somewhere on the edge of town; and that we forego data centers altogether unless their impacts are paid for.

SEE ALSO: The latest Strong Towns video, produced by Ben Durham, is "Will a Factory Make This Small Town Rich? (11 January 2025, 23:06):

Walking audits

 

Students exit the city bus, catty-corner from Washington High School

A walking audit is a good way to assess walkability in a specific area. Walking enables anyone to see how easy or difficult it is to walk there, not only for yourself, but also for others who may not be as experienced or able-bodied. Daniel Herriges of Strong Towns argues: You see how your neighbors go about their needs, how they interact with each other, and where they face difficulties in negotiating the environment. And you can take it all in and reflect on it in a way that you can't possibly do from behind a windshield (Herriges 2019).

Edward Erfurt's recent Strong Towns article examines a recent project in his hometown of Charles Town, West Virginia (not to be confused with Charleston, West Virginia, which is not quite 300 miles away). Two new blocks of sidewalk connect downtown Charles Town with civic buildings like the police station. However, [a] the street was also widened, which encourages drivers to go faster; and [b] a key intersection is missing crosswalks. As a result the objective of safe walking remains elusive. Erfurt's piece concludes with some appropriate policy remedies.

Choosing places to do a walking audit can bias the results. It's easy to choose places where walking is nearly impossible (any of our town's stroads, streets near schools that have no sidewalks), or rather pleasant (between downtown buildings). And the biggest obstacle to walking in my town--perhaps yours, too--is the lack of destinations within a popularly accepted walking distance. However, you don't need an analytical microscope to see what's clearly unacceptable or successful infrastructure. 

So let's try three walks that aren't quite as obvious:

(1) Geonetric Building to Lion Bridge Brewing Co. (0.5 mi). Geonetric is a health care marketing firm that relocated to New Bohemia in 2014, a key moment in that neighborhood's post-flood reconstruction. Its building also houses several other companies, the nonprofit NewBoCo, and the Vault Coworking space where I have written many of these posts. Lion Bridge started that same year, locating just across the Cedar River in Czech Village.

Lion Bridge is on 16th Avenue, which runs behind Geonetric's parking lot. It's not a particularly busy street, but it's a sort of bypass around New Bohemia's commercial district, and cars can move pretty quickly. It's best to get across as surreptitiously as you can.

Once across 16th, it's duck soup getting to Lion Bridge. You do have to walk past Tornado's, which people close to me rate as the best burger in town.

Tornado's Grub & Pub, 1600 3rd St SE

There's not much cross-traffic on this side of 16th Avenue, although that may change as the area develops. Another block, and you're at the river.

The Bridge of Lions over the Cedar River

The slope of the bridge seems gentle enough for a wheelchair to manage, although I'd like to see one in action before I proclaim it so. The sidewalks are at an unusual height off the street, so don't fall! There are painted bike lanes on the street, though some cyclists prefer the sidewalk.

Riv vu

Cross the bridge, and now we're on the southwest side. A pillar marks the entrance to historic and charming Czech Village.

Entering Czech Village

Made it!

Lion Bridge Brewing, 59 16th Avenue SW

An uncomplicated walk, as long as there's not too much competition for space on the bridge. Today--another cold one--there was none.

(2) My house to Washington High School (1.1 mi). Our six years as Washington parents ended in 2015, but we and it remain in the same places. There are sidewalks the whole way, mostly new or recently-repaired.

Some ice issues where the sidewalks cross alleys

To get to the high school, you have to cross Forest Drive sooner or later, and it's best to do it sooner, because the sidewalk on the west side of the street ends before Linden Drive. Moreover, the intersection of Linden and Forest can get interesting, because eastbound and southbound traffic can't see each other.  (One collision was narrowly averted this morning, in fact.) So it's best to be safely on the east side before you get to Linden. 

Intersection of Forest and Linden is complicated for walkers
(Google Earth screenshot)

The intersection of Forest and Cottage Grove, where the high school is located, is uninteresting except at the times when school starts and when school lets out.

Cars on Forest backed up at Cottage Grove

Could a roundabout ease this brief daily traffic jam? It's come up a couple of times, getting beaten back by vigorous neighborhood opposition. And how would a roundabout affect pedestrians' ability to cross one or both streets at school time?

Interestingly, I saw no one walking to school this morning... no one walking at all, in fact, except for one fellow and his dog. It was chilly, but...

(3) Somebody's house on 8th Street NW to Cultivate Hope Corner Store (0.6 mi). The Cultivate Hope Corner Store is a neighborhood grocery started by the Matthew 25 organization in 2022. The building housed a small grocery store a long time ago, and according to the 1953 Polk's City Directory was at that time the home of Shaheen Sundries; Cultivate Hope Corner Store is the third business in the building since the flood.

Most of the Near Northwest area west of Ellis Boulevard has been restored or rebuilt since the 2008 flood. I'm listening to Donald Shoup describe the wrecked state of Los Angeles sidewalks to John Simmerman, but here there are smooth new sidewalks all the way to the store...

Quiet street: 1300 block of 8th Street NW

...including the latest crosswalk treatments...

Ellis Road NW intersection

...unless someone does this. Why?

snow obstruction on 8th Street NW

It was easy for me to step over this, but it would trouble anyone in a wheelchair or with a stroller. And if someone trips over it, who do they sue?

Properties east of Ellis was predominantly bought up and demolished after the flood; only now that flood walls are funded has redevelopment begun, including these row houses.

row houses near Neighborhood Corner Store on 8th St NW

The intersections on Ellis at F and E Avenues have new roundabouts.

Ellis Road approaching roundabout at F Avenue NW

This could be a challenge for pedestrians if traffic is heavy, or there's a lot of in-and-out at the Casey's, but on my mid-afternoon walk they were easy to navigate.

Former site of Shaheen Sundries:
Neighborhood Corner Store, 604 Ellis Road NW

Made it! Again, no one else was out walking that I could observe.

I tried during these audits to put myself in the (literal) shoes of pedestrians with characteristics other than mine. It would have been easier to do that had there been actual pedestrians to observe, but perhaps it was too cold. Really, though, chilly weather is no obstacle in a truly walkable city. The infrastructure is there, for the most part; now all we need are the walkable destinations.

See Also:

"10th Anniversary Posts: What is a Complete Street?" 2 August 2024

Lyz Lenz, "I Have a Right to Be Here: A Year of Running in 2024," Men Yell at Me, 8 January 2025 [comfortable running, and walking, is affected by more than just infrastructure]

Strong Towns Sources on Walking Audits

Edward Erfurt, "How a Walking Audit Can Help You Quickly Improve Street Design," Strong Towns, 19 December 2024

Daniel Herriges, "Seeing Your Community With New Eyes Through a "Walking Audit"," Strong Towns, 2 May 2019

Sarah Kobos, "Is Your City Pedestrian-Unfriendly?" Strong Towns, 10 March 2016

10th Anniversary Post: New Year's Resolutions

 

It's 2025!

Early in 2015, on the downhill side of this blog's second year, I seemed to be resolving to focus on a narrow field of "public policy, place, and social relations." Off the top of my head, I came up with five ways towns like mine could become more urbanist (defined by Dave Alden (2015) as more "fiscally responsible and environmentally sustainable"): 

1. develop a 24-hour downtown
2. include the poor
3. improve public transportation
4. neighborhood stores, preferably locally-owned
5. regional governance

Without solid metrics, I nevertheless used those as markers for analyzing the city's long-range plan, Envision CR, in a series of posts later in 2015. Ten years later, I don't think I have focused on staying in a clearly-defined lane, if that was ever my intent, though my writing certainly lingers on local places rather than national, international, political, or rhetorical topics. Definitely the scope is less wide-ranging than it was during the earliest months of blogging, but my choices of topic remain more intuitive than structured.

Long-empty commercial space, downtown Cedar Rapids

As I was making this New Year's resolution, Ben Kaplan and I started a local discussion group which came to be known as Corridor Urbanism, and which had some years of relevance in town. As we wound down operations nine years later, I reflected that Cedar Rapids has organizations devoted to bicycling and trails, birds, ecology, housing, other social services, specific neighborhoods, and probably more that don't immediately occur to me, but Corridor Urbanism was unique in thinking about how all those pieces of the city come together. Maybe there are more important things than focus. To torture the metaphor, what our group did, and I am still trying to do, is to pick a lane but also to notice all the things around it that are part of the same complex system.

Here are my still-largely-impressionistic takes on what has happened locally with respect to those five core topics. Of course, the world has not stood still in the last ten years, either. Climate change and economic inequality have increased, the pandemic created all manner of dislocation, and Cedar Rapids suffered a devastating derecho in August 2020.

1. Developing a 24-hour downtown means diversifying land use from heavy reliance on office-service and commuter parking. Cedar Rapids was ahead of the curve on city center residential construction, even before office vacancy rates soared everywhere. The coffee and bar scenes are popping. Even so, the residences are at this time heavy on condos that serve young singles. What has mostly replaced the old offices and factories is luxury commercial that relies on shoppers from away. And requires lots of parking, alas. Everyday commercial like grocery stores have not been drawn to the core, in spite of all the condos. The core is weirdly isolated from the rest of the city by the MedQuarter, the interstate highway, and the flood zone (though that could change soon).

Pullman Lofts and...

...Coventry Lofts are two early examples of 
downtown office conversions

2. The four poorest census tracts are around the center of town (19 38.1%, 22 26%, 27 25.2%, 13 23.5%); the next two, 10.05 (22.1%) and 10.04 (21.6%), are on the west side north of the former Westdale Mall. Including the poor is a vaguely defined but important goal for any city. The key to inclusion is the presence of pathways out of poverty. That is, of course, easier said than done. Location of the new west side library (in census tract 10.05!) is a good step, and the school district's College and Career Pathways plan could help inclusiveness as well, but we remain a car-dependent city, which raises the cost of participation in city life. I would like to see more emphasis on job creation via small business starts and growth, and less on magic bullets like data centers, the casino, and tourism in general. Housing remains a conundrum, here as everywhere.

3. Improving public transportation has occurred incrementally but effectively. Routes have been somewhat rationalized so they're attractive to a wider set of riders, particularly the #5 route along 1st Avenue East that runs every 15 minutes. Service has been extended into mid-evening (8:00 p.m. on most routes). Bus service to Iowa City from the Ground Transportation Center was begun, and runs every 20 minutes. A free downtown trolley service is being tried for a couple months on Friday and Saturday evenings. It's hard to imagine more being done without a massive infusion of resources.

After a tough year, 1st Avenue in Wellington Heights
may be getting an international grocery on this corner

4. The concept of neighborhood stores got important backing in 2022 when Matthew 25 opened the Cultivate Hope Corner Store on the near northwest side, in a building that had long served as a grocery store back in the day. Elsewhere, however, food deserts are expanding, not filling up. Hy-Vee moved out of its Mound View location in 2024, and no amount of gentrification in the core seems able to attract mid-size retailers. Thankfully, the city has tried hard to fill that gap, and word is they may have something to announce soon. It's possible this might even create an opening for smaller stores in the area. (For a more general look at the past and possible future of retail in residential neighborhoods, see Baker 2024.)

5. Regional governance is a bee that got into my bonnet via reading The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl by Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton (Island Press, 2001). I still think it's a good idea, but don't detect any movement in that direction. There have been occasions for cooperation between municipalities in the metro, particularly on trail development, and no recent cases of intra-metro business poaching.

ORIGINAL POST: "New Year's Resolutions," 18 January 2015

Music for an urbanist Christmas: Dar Williams

The men's group I attend at St. Paul's United Methodist Church recently discussed a perhaps improbable article from The Christian Century on heavy metal music (Holloway 2024). Writer Jack Holloway discovered the music of Black Sabbath while studying apocalyptic literature at seminary. Black Sabbath, he wrote, "prophesied an end to war, an end to the reign of the politicians and generals who make war. Was it possible this evil band was reading the Bible more faithfully than the preachers I'd heard growing up?"

Geezer Butler, bass player and composer of "War Pigs"

That led us to a group project in which each of us would present a song we consider meaningful. There were various other instructions, too, which I ignored, and it would seem the others did, too. The eventual collection included songs by Carrie Newcomer, Susan Werner, the Beatles, the Eagles, and James Taylor (two), as well as Leonard Bernstein, John Williams, and Beethoven--understandable for a group of men born between 1945 and 1960 (except for one swing shift worker born in 1992, who brought us "Reach for the Sky" by Social Distortion). We played and discussed 11 songs in about an hour, which unfortunately didn't leave much time for discussion.

My contribution was "The Christians and the Pagans" by Dar Williams, from her 1996 sophomore album, Mortal City. (The title song from that album made this urbanist playlist I made in 2013.) In a light-hearted way, the song tells the story of two young women (in a romantic relationship, Williams added at a concert I attended a few years later) who celebrate the solstice in some natural locale, then pop over to one of their uncles' for Christmas. The resulting cultural clash is restrained due to politeness, but keeps popping out in amusing ways. Always, however, family and common humanity outweigh seemingly incomprehensible religious differences.

Jane and I were having solstice, now we need a place to stay...

Listening to the song yet again, but this time in the company of a dozen first-time hearers, I was struck by two things. First, there clearly is more to the story, which Williams leaves to the listeners' imaginations. Did the young women just happen to pick a spot near the uncle's house, or was it part of a plan? Why hadn't the uncle spoken to his brother in a year? How if at all was little Timmy changed by his encounter with his strange but cool cousin? Secondly, as I'm learning about phrasing from singing in the chancel choir, I was struck how Williams's breathing creates phrases of varied lengths (sometimes four measures, sometimes one or even part of one) to convey different emotional states.

Christmas is like solstice, and we miss you...

My other impressions of the song are 28 years old; thanks to local advocacy of Williams's early work by the Legion Arts organization as well as Iowa Public Radio, I was familiar with the songs on Mortal City almost as soon as it was released. 1996 was a good time for me to receive this message. For probably the first 25 years of my life, I had swum rather unreflectively in a mainline Protestant sea. It was just the world in which I lived. Only in my peripatetic 20s did I encounter devout members of other faiths, not to mention people who did Christianity very differently than I did. I occasionally found myself in faith communities whose Christianity tended to insist on itself (an allusion to I Corinthians 13:4).

Sending hope for peace on Earth to all their gods and goddesses...

By 1996, I had had enough conversations, read enough books, and found a church that helped to clarify my desire to worship and live inclusively rather than exclusively. I'm still a Christian, but I have come to see other religions as complementary rather than opposing ways of understanding God. I have come to understand a lot of non-theistic worlds as rooted in God, though not the too-narrow definition of God we are taught in the West. I think this is a good basis for community. Urbanism requires seeing commonality across differences, rather than rushing to draw lines of distinction.

Where does magic come from? I think magic's in the learning...

Dar Williams continues to record and perform around the country. In 2017 she published What I Found in a Thousand Towns (Basic Books, 2017), an urbanist's tour of places where she's performed that have succeeded in building community. It reads like one of her songs: not a word out of place, good stories about people trying their hardest, and inspiring without being saccharine. Her concept of "positive proximity" (introduced on p. xi!) derives from Jane Jacobs on the importance of causal encounters; she shows how places that enable those encounters allow for connections that lead to community building (or rebuilding). But then people in those places have to do the connecting.

Translation is the magic ingredient that makes successful towns and cities happen. Translation is how we spell ourselves out to each other and the world. A willingness to share our skills, our stories, and ourselves with each other marks the difference between towns that feel like actual places and those with people who jump in and out of cars all day... When people truly arrive at some sort of communication, putting themselves forward and welcoming others in, we have positive proximity circulating and growing. (2017: 177)

Building those places, taking advantage of the opportunities for community building they provide, begins with recognizing each other's common humanity, particularly as we look for the Divine at this darkest time of the year.

Future prospects for our cities

(Source: vecteezy)

In the quarter-century of years beginning with "2," one of the biggest phenomena in America (and other areas of the West) has been the resurgence of central cities. After more than half a century of losing ground to suburbs, cities are "back" with lower crime, new commercial and residential development, and cultural cachet. This is in the main good news: cities are gardens of social diversity as well as economic innovation, and use natural resources more efficiently.

Challenges remain. The resurgence was particularly noticeable back in the years 2005-2015, but even then was felt unevenly across American cities. In super-successful cities like San Francisco, attracting new residents sent real estate prices skyrocketing, resulting in displacement and homelessness; other cities like St. Louis have struggled to catch the wave at all. Particularly since 2020, changing work patterns have left downtown areas with swaths of unused office space at the same time they're struggling to house people.

🚄

A panel of experts convened by the Urban Land Institute (Nyren 2024) commends public-private partnerships, specifically ventures aimed at transforming downtown land use from commercial to residential. Andy DeMoss of the Chicago firm Bradford Allen began with:

They need to focus on the core issue, which is addressing the work-from-home movement. Anything else is most likely not going to be impactful enough to move the needle. Also, a number of city departments are not fully back in the office yet themselves. They need to push their workforce to be downtown, at least three to four days a week, to set an example for the private sector.

Since cities themselves can't force workers back to the office, they can try to create 24 hour areas. They can work on attracting recreational visitors (natural spaces, retail, and entertainment, along with better parking and public transit), as well as getting more housing built in mixed use projects near transit. Chicago, Cincinnati, Miami, New York, and Fayetteville, Georgia, were touted as successful examples. Sheila Ross of HKR in Atlanta summarized:

We need to find ways to activate these spaces year-round, ensuring they remain safe and enjoyable even without events. We have to plan for every day--not just game day. Additionally, the lack of affordable and market-rate housing is a significant challenge, compounded by parking minimums that restrict diverse housing development. Downtowns need equitable access. We must consider how to transform wide, car-centric roads into more human-friendly spaces that can accommodate light rail, bike paths, and spillover activities from local businesses.

🚄

Cities need to work with private entities to build financial and political support for any development, because cities aren't really in control of their own finances. Although when private firms are doing most of the driving, the projects are likely to reflect private profit more than public interest, the alternative is reliance on the national government as well as the states, some of whom are actively hostile to urban areas. In the face of Donald Trump's return to the White House, a Brookings Institution panel speculated on his administration's impact on a variety of urban issues. Trump has famously promised to punish cities that oppose his agenda, and indeed a lot of his support seems to be based on inflicting pain. Can anything move forward in these times?

The most optimistic submissions argue that local leaders can find ways to connect what they need with Trump's priorities. Adie Tomer's section on construction argues that momentum on projects begun during the Biden administration, as well as bipartisan interest in new housing, creates opportunities for federal-local cooperation: Understanding what Trump administration officials want--and persuasively making the case for local projects--could be worth millions of dollars for many communities. It's wise to make calls to newly appointed officials, listen to agency-hosted webinars, and consume any other information that can help make submissions as attractive as possible. 

He likes building, doesn't he? Possibly
President Trump can be sweet-talked into supporting infrastructure projects,
like this reconstructed intersection in Cedar Rapids

Other pieces of a similar bent talk about policies that can help working class and nonurban constituents, including Annelies Goger on work-based learning, Joseph W. Kane on infrastructure projects, Molly Kinder on workforce issues related to artificial intelligence, and Tracy Hadden Loh on strengthening opportunity zones and access to community capital. (I'm not seeing this sort of thing at all here in Iowa, though, where for years Republicans have appealed to working class and nonurban rage without addressing their economic issues.)

Other pieces from the Brookings survey argue either that Trump's ideology will need to bend to practical local imperatives--William H. Frey on immigration, Xavier de Souza Briggs on antidiscrimination and diversity, Manann Donoghoe on climate via industrial policy disaster relief and local innovation--or that momentum behind certain policy directions is sufficient to sustain those policies in spite of Trump's opposition. Hanna Love argues that while the U.S. Department of Justice is sure to lurch towards the punitive, States can enact their own legislative reforms and investigations into police accountability, and importantly, many of the preventative investments needed to improve public safety are under the purview of local governments. Similar hopes are expressed by Mark Muro on sustaining local technology development, and Joseph Parilla on CHIPS and Science Act funds.

Derecho, August 2020:
The climate won't wait for the next election

The most pessimistic pieces involve the administration's ability to act, or to choose not to act, unilaterally, in ways that impact localities. These include Farah Khan on protecting marginalized communities, Robert Maxim on connecting underrepresented workers to the digital economy, Andre Perry on sustaining the growth of the still small proportion of black-owned employer businesses, and Martha Ross on deportation and "downstream effects." Maxim, for example, argues Growing the number of underrepresented workers in the digital economy will require new [congressional] investments in digital skills development and digital infrastructure, increased access to capital, and more robust place-based investments into underrepresented communities. And Congress remains the most essential actor for investing in tribal communities because of its so-called "plenary power" over Native nations.

🚄

It surely will be difficult for cities to find allies in their dealings with the administration, whether their approach is cooperative or defiant. Pete Saunders (2024) argues cities always struggle in the face of American anti-urban bias. Individualism has been baked into America since the Founding, he says, beginning with how the Confederation Congress chose to organize the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River won in the War for Independence (accessible to speculators, centered around farms). As a result, America struggles with doing things that work toward the common good, and has a firm belief that improving the lives of individuals is the best way to improve the common good. Therefore:

American cities seem almost incapable of capitalizing on their assets, of routinely and easily making the case for greater investment from the federal and state levels of government. We struggle to make public transit investments. We struggle with implementing good placemaking practices. We struggle with undoing bad urban policies, and instituting good ones.

🚄

If we can't agree to fund public transit or build enough housing, we're definitely not going to get to the cities Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber imagine in their book Cities Made Differently (MIT Press, 2024). The executive version presented on the blogs Wiki Observatory and Naked Capitalism offers four visions, the most appealing of which is the City as a Family, "a city without any strangers, where everything is shared, and everyone looks after each other. There are no shops, no money, and no danger at all" (Dubrovsky and Graeber 2024). The result would be the common good, with the catches that historical communes frequently devolved into dictatorship, and while America suffers from an excess of individualism, having too little autonomy would be bad as well. Two other cities--the City of Greed, and the City of Runners, whose endless competition seems closest to our contemporary experience--are dystopian, and offer tendencies to be avoided. The fourth, Underground City, is a challenge to human physiology, as many noted in the comments.

Source: Adananette

Prediction is fraught with unknowns, but it's safe to say the city of 2029 will probably look, feel and act a lot like the city of 2025. If in the interim policies are enacted to make the rich even richer, and to reduce the problem-solving capacity of government at all levels, as seems most likely, they will be felt most immediately at the margins of society, and will only be widely impactful over time. Still, the path we are on does not seem resilient, and missed opportunities are likely to be rued later. 

10th anniversary post: Yonder comes the train?

 

Amtrak station, Mount Pleasant, Iowa

Since moving to Iowa in 1989, I've made regular trips to Chicago for family, pleasure, and professional reasons. I've made exactly two of those trips by train, which requires a 75 mile drive south to Mount Pleasant. The first was in July 2014, with my then-17-year-old son Eli; that train was 2 .5 hours late getting in; we passed the time agreeably at a coffee shop on Mount Pleasant's town square (See my posts "Yonder Comes the Train?" and "California 2014 (With Postscript, Chicago with Eli)." But we were fully four hours late arriving in Chicago, and had little food and no Wi-Fi en route. The return trip to Iowa also experienced considerable delays. At the time, I noted quite a fair number of passengers were willing to put up with even this level of service, and that with some effort "There could be" a future for interstate train travel in America.

The train arrives, 2014

It took more than ten years, but I tried the train again last month when I went to Chicago for one of the Center for Neighborhood Technology's Visionary Voices panels on housing. The experience was altogether better, and I'm encouraged not to let another ten years go by before I try it. The train from California was an hour or so late, and the return trip was on time. Parking is still free at the Mount Pleasant station, though due to construction in the area, it was difficult to find--impossible, in fact, in the absence of signage, but in time I was able to get directions from the station agent.

Remote parking, two blocks from the Mount Pleasant Amtrak station

The train seemed near capacity in both directions, with a surprising proportion of passengers being Amish. There was plenty of room for my backpack and small suitcase--there was no baggage check in Iowa anyhow--and plenty of legroom, unlike any airplane I've recently experienced. On the train, I cheerfully avoided the constant clot of traffic around Chicago, and spent less on tickets than I would have for two nights of parking at my hotel north of downtown. However, there still is no Wi-Fi on the California Zephyr, and the snack car closed almost as soon as we boarded. 

Some of my improved experience might be random coincidence, but the administration of President Joe Biden did supply some long-overdue upgrades through a $66 million appropriation won from Congress (Hughes 2024; see also Bragg 2024). That is being used to improve tracks, purchase new cars, and add at least one route. The Floridian goes from Chicago to Miami, following a route east through Cleveland and Washington, and then down the East Coast. This neglects the cities of Tennessee, but that state's government is working on service to Chattanooga and Nashville (Gang and Mazza 2024). Meanwhile, the states of New York and Pennsylvania are confident there soon will be service from New York City to Scranton (Ionescu 2024). Those states must be less rail-hostile than Iowa's government. Or Indiana's. 

All this progress is contingent on not being stopped by the incoming Trump administration appointees, many of whom (like efficiency doge Elon Musk) have ties to the auto industry. A lot depends on how much Republicans in Congress and state legislatures value the presence of Amtrak in their states, which is really difficult to predict. More ideological conservatives find trains to be an unwarranted use of government power, though of course they have no objections to the government building and maintaining highways (Russell 2024).

Eric Godwyn of the Transit Costs Project, interviewed last summer on the Strong Towns podcast, recently published, with three co-authors, a set of recommendations on how to improve rail transportation in the U.S. (Godwyn, Levy, Ensari, and Chitty 2024). Godwyn advocates a federal government commitment to intercity high-speed rail, developing minimum technical standards and testing to enable cross-country integration, stronger connections to universities and industry for labor force training, better internal project management and assessment, and better and more expedited planning (pp. 17-39). High-speed rail is defined as at least 155 miles per hour, which would get you from Mount Pleasant to Chicago in an hour and a half.

Whether this is even imaginable depends on broader agreement that the need to "decarbonize intercity travel" (p. 41) is enough of a public good to put public money behind it. If policy makers can agree on that, then they can focus on an efficient and enjoyable experience that will entice passengers. My experience last month suggests there's been some progress in that vein, but more could be done.

The California Zephyr crosses the Mississippi River,
12 November 2024

Black Friday Parking 2024: BR 151

They were there for the deals at the Marion Wal-Mart

Even frigid temperatures could not deter this devotee of #BlackFridayParking, Strong Towns' annual photographic survey of excess parking. Cultural devotion to ensuring drivers have an easy (and free or cheap) time storing the cars wherever they go has created a profligate use of land. Case in point: I went to a bar with some coworkers the day before Thanksgiving. It's a small building, 1800 square feet. Do you know how many parking spaces would fit in that building? Ten. That's all. So you can just imagine how many alternative uses we're foregoing with just one single megaparking lot.

Northwest section of the lot, 9 a.m.

This year's observance of #blackfridayparking took me to the Wal-Mart at the edge of Marion, or what used to be the edge of Marion, at the intersection of US151 and SR13. Built in 2005, it is the most newest of our metro's three Super Centers. There were a lot of people shopping there, and a lot of cars parked, and yet, as busy as it was, huge swaths of the lot went unoccupied. I'd guesstimate it might have been 55 percent full.

View from McDonald's

Northeast edge

Marion has grown quickly, more than doubling its population since 1990. More recently they have reconfigured traffic to enhance their Uptown area, and are engaged in writing a comprehensive plan for the next 25 years. For thirty years, though, their growth was an explosion of suburban development, much of it along Business Route 151, which runs from this intersection through the center of town into Cedar Rapids, where it becomes 1st Avenue East. So for about two miles, it seems like the edge of town, because the edge has moved ever-outward as the town has grown.

Hy-Vee Grocery Store, 3600 10th Avenue.
Maybe 75 percent full at 9:30 a.m.

Average daily traffic counts along this stretch are 16700 across 151/13, 13000 above 50th St, 11700 between 50th and 44th, and 14400 between 44th and 35th; after a roundabout routes traffic onto 6th Avenue, 7th Avenue still carries 5600 approaching 26th Street.

Auto-Zone, 1055 Linden Drive.
Last picture I took before my camera rebelled.

I walked along BR 151 to a coffee appointment in Uptown. It really gives you a sense of how human scale is lost in auto-centric development, in that I could walk five minutes and feel as though I was getting nowhere. It's difficult to convey in photographs, particularly since my phone rebelled against the cold at this point--it was about 15 degrees, and windy--and refused to come out of its shell until we were safely inside the coffee shop. 

Best I could do: Google Earth screenshot
looking east from 31st Street

As Marion undertakes its new comprehensive plan, they may or may not try to diversify this route. There certainly is a lot of parking along the way...

Screenshot from Marion 2045 page,
showing 26th to 44th Streets

Screenshot from Marion 2045 page,
showing area around Wal-Mart and 151/13 intersection

...which arguably is a bigger issue than whatever's going on at Wal-Mart.

Spending land that could be productive and interesting on parking lots seems irrational to me. But so does waiting ten cars deep at a drive through, and I saw that at both Starbucks and Dunkin today. So do all the people huddled under blankets in the long line outside Da Bin consignment store. There is clearly much I don't understand, which keeps your humble blogger extra-humble.

SEE ALSO

"Marion 2045," Marion comprehensive plan page

"Uptown Marion Parking Study" (May 2024)

"Black Friday Parking 2024: Mount Vernon Road," 24 November 2024 [last year's observance]

"Black Friday Parking 2019," 29 November 2019 [last time I surveyed Marion]