10th anniversary post: The tragedy of the commons (life)

Litter is a plague on our cities

(4/1/2026) Ten years ago this month, I wrote about a fellow who used the grassy median on our street as his dog's toilet. "Neither the man nor his dog cleans up afterwards," I noted. It served as a homely example of Garret Hardin's belief that people had incentives to over-use common property, such as a village green for grazing sheep, or a grassy median on Blake Boulevard. Hardin believed, though, that people could be educated to the existence of common and long-term interests, enough to change their behavior. Back in 2016, I was, to say the least, impatient at the pace of that enlightenment:

I can't speak for other cultures, but our culture has a strong individualistic strain with a vocabulary to match. Daily advertisers pitch convenience to us as if it were an absolute good, while an oil company offers us "a full tank of freedom." We have yet to develop an equivalent vocabulary to talk about community, or a way to discuss balancing individual and community interests. This needs to happen soon if we're going to live together in this world.

In March, Addison Del Maestro published an essay in The Deleted Scenes in which he responded to another essay by Chris Arnade. Arnade argues that Americans of good heart are forced into private spaces because public spaces in the U.S. are so disordered. He traces this to America's distinctively individualistic culture: 

The U.S. has a different model that emphasizes individuality over the communal, with our thick culture focused not on being a good citizen first, but finding our true self and exploring that, and hopefully making a lot of money along the way--Koreans are citizens, we are entrepreneurs. That is one of our greatest strengths, and has served us well economically and artistically.... Yet a result of the American model is a wider distribution of behavior, including fatter extremes, with a far larger amount of people prone to antisocial tendencies... If our elevated levels of addiction and mental illness are consequences of our culture of individuality, as I believe they are, then we have a moral responsibility to take them off the streets and care for them--for those broken by our celebration of freedom... and more importantly for the working people navigating around them. (Arnade 2026)

Addison Del Maestro,
blogger at The Deleted Scenes

Addison Del Maestro, while mostly agreeing with Arnade, is concerned that too much emphasis on public order makes public places "blandly conformist."

When we visited Japan, I liked how orderly and polite everything was, but it also felt a bit... oppressive. There really is a part of the American in me that would rather have a disorderly public sphere than have my right to behave disruptively constrained. Now, I don't behave disruptively, I just kind of find it emotionally claustrophobic to be somewhere I can't if I wanted to.... And I think I prefer the American you-do-you approach, where you feel like nobody's really watching or keeping tabs, over the conformist approach of a place like Japan. (You can't even take photographs in stores; everything feels very ritualized and rule-bound, and I chafe against the more than I appreciate the calm and order it brings.) (Del Maestro and NickS (WA) 2026)

Del Maestro concludes this piece by quoting an extended commentary on his position by a third Substacker, NickS (WA). Nick is glad he doesn't have to fear being beaten up for being "visibly weird," but wonders if our tolerance should extend as much as it does to, say, loud motorcycle engines. For my part, from earliest memory I have been obsessed with rule following--can't really say why without extensive psychotherapy, but maybe my spindly physique has something to do with it--but I want to be able to disobey rules when they don't make sense, like crossing streets in the middle of the block when there are no cars around. At the same time, I would like to see less ungoverned reckless driving, sexual harassment, bullying, loud noises, littering, &c.

Benjamin Constant (1767-1830)

By coincidence, my Political Philosophy class recently read an essay on liberty by the French politician Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) called "Ancient and Modern Liberty." In 1819, Constant described modern liberty as rooted in individual autonomy. In large societies with complex economies, he explained, the social influence of most people, even those with multiple forms of privilege, approaches zero, because your one voice amounts to a tiny fraction of the whole society. So the most you can hope for is maximizing autonomy over your own life, while the government is likely to be constrained by the high cost of controlling a large number of people.

In ancient times, by contrast, the small communities on the knife-edge of existence had a lot of incentive to stick together and work together. (Consider the micromanaging style of the ancient Israelite laws detailed in the first five books of the Bible.) Ancient liberty allowed individuals a lot of voice in community decisions, said Constant, but once the decision was made everyone had to abide by it. Solidarity and conformity were seen as vital to the existence of the group, constantly threatened by famine and disease and external attacks. Constant concluded that ancient liberty, with its stress on connections between everyone, has its attractive qualities, but attempts to reintroduce it in modern society would be bound to fail, for both logistical and cultural reasons.

Back to modern times and modern liberty: Richard Florida and colleagues have argued for years that an "open culture premium" was a significant part of the phenomenon of rising property values associated with higher proportions of GLBTQ+ and artistic types (cf. Florida and Mellander 2007). A community open enough to tolerate nonconforming expressions, it seems, is open enough to encourage the sorts of innovation that create wealth (pp. 9-10). Recent research by the Brookings Institution finds a similarly positive relationship between immigration levels and metro economic performance (Haskins and Parilla 2026). These make a strong case for the existence of a general community interest in the broadest possible reach of modern liberty. Maximum freedom generates maximum good ideas, which in turn generate community wealth. (Note the enormous proportion of American gross domestic product (GDP) that occurs in counties that support Democratic presidential candidates.) On the other end of the spectrum, the current campaign against a 30-year-old Islamic school in Homewood, Alabama, (Draper 2026) does not speak well for that community's future participation in the global economy.

Beyond a reasonable point, rules don't produce order. They produce anxiety, and stifle creativity. They are expensive and labor-intensive to enforce. They produce pretexts for cracking down on unpopular groups, like immigrants, especially under the current administration. "Libertarianism for me, authoritarianism for you" is a pretty common running through Project 2025, the blueprint for much of what the current administration has been doing, both its raft of deportations and its raft of pardons.

So we're not authoritarians here. At the same time, though, individual freedom only works if it is tempered by a sense of being part of something greater than yourself: a community, if you will, an ongoing project that you joined some time ago and, that will continue long after you're gone, and which has some power to obligate you to other-regarding behavior. We don't have to be Japan or Korea, but we have a lot to do to make our public spaces scenes of collective joy. That is probably another post.

ORIGINAL POST: "The Tragedy of the Commons (Life)," 21 April 2016

Book Review: Shade

 

Bloch, Sam. Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource. Penguin Random House, 2025, xviii + 309 pp.

(3/30/2026) Decades ago, when I was still in my insouciant youth, I went on a canoe trip somewhere in the Midwest. When we came to the end of the trip, I reached up to scratch my head, and it (my head) was hot to the touch from being in the sun so long. If my dermatologist is reading this, she now realizes why we are so often in each other's company! I have learned, over the years, to wear hats, and to seek shade.

Shade trees aren't always there when you need them, though. An incredibly violent derecho in August 2020 smashed through 75 percent of my county's tree cover. Humans have long done their own share of tree removal, whether to make room for buildings or roads, to remove shelter for unhoused people or cover for criminals, or simply to allow more natural light to reach interior spaces. (Los Angeles's Pershing Square, the story of which is told on pages 101-104, has suffered from every one of these initiatives.) As the climate changes, however, we may find shade to be a missing ingredient in surviving heat waves and affording our utility bills, not to mention keeping our tempers (p. 118).

Republic Square, Belgrade 2022:
"The horse" is where you find shade during the day

Cuburski Park, Belgrade 2022:
green play space for apartment dwellers of all ages

Environmental journalist Sam Bloch takes us all over the world to see places where people suffer for want of shade, and where people are improvising ways to restore lost shade. He starts us in the natural world, where lost shade means no shelter from the sun, which is essential to animals from chinook salmon to chimpanzees. Humans, too, can only tolerate so much time in the hot sun, as we see its effects on our system and our mood from a little accessible neuroscience. "Shade soothes the senses.... Coolness never feels better than when we are warm" (14). The earliest cities, like Ur in the Middle East, were oases of shade, thanks to closely packed houses and carefully aligned streets (ch 2). The quest for cool relied on trees, fabric overhangs, and beginning in 1902, air conditioners. But while air conditioning achieved miraculous short term effects on human health, in the long term it has encouraged inefficient architecture, dramatically increased energy use, spewed enough hot air to raise outdoor temperatures, and decreased our resilience to heat (ch 3). Escaping the heat involves increasing the heat--an ongoing dilemma for our species.

Part II surveys the damage from inadequate shade, nimbly switching from human stories to the physiology of heat to climate data. In chapter four we meet the most vulnerable: those (often migrants) who do outdoor work on farms or construction sites; those with heart conditions or mobility issues; people in the military; and the unhoused. We also learn why the effects of thermal alliesthesia (heatstroke) are worse in the sunshine: the sun acts as "a microwave, shooting heat energy straight into our flesh" (p. 77). Wealthy neighborhoods are generally better-supplied with shade than are poor neighborhoods, and so are better prepared for warming summer temperatures. In Los Angeles (ch. 5), Watts residents are six times as likely as Westsiders to be hospitalized during a heatwave (p. 109), because it can be around ten degrees warmer in the poorer area (p. 106). "You can see L.A.'s shady divide from outer space," says Bloch (p. 98). This goes even moreso for freakish weather like the "heat dome" that struck the Pacific Northwest in late June 2021 (or the Southwest this month). Portland, Oregon hit 116 degrees on June 28, 2021, but there was a 25 degree variation across neighborhoods (p. 132).

Part III examines ways of adapting to climate change. Passive architecture (ch. 7) has significant disadvantages that might outweigh its advantages; the same goes for geoengineering (ch. 9). (What happens when Elon Musk decides to do to the climate what he did to the federal government?) Innovative shade (ch. 8) can be structurally inadequate, like Los Angeles's bus signs, or politically unpopular, like Barcelona's massive street tree program; more happily, Singapore has reduced temperatures on city streets, and Australia has seen skin cancer rates decline with each generation.

Bloch has tried to take a complex problem and break it down into digestible parts, including both symptoms and solutions. The parts don't always cohere into a theme, but even as separate essays the chapters work. Shade from trees can help lower street temperatures that are already rising, as well as mitigate the additional harmful effects of direct sunlight. But he isn't sanguine that such a huge and complex problem requires anything other than huge and complex solutions, involving "collective planning, management, and action" (p. 229). 

We need at once to coordinate action through inclusive conversation, probably with a preferential option to poverty-stricken areas; provide hope for collective rationality rather than leaving people to their own devices that will likely make the community worse off; and find a sustained source of resources for all this--all while democracy is teetering throughout the West.

Greene Square, Cedar Rapids, 2012
(Google Maps screenshot)

Greene Square, Cedar Rapids, 2024
(Google Maps screenshot)

I think this post calls for a follow-up this summer with local shade audits. Watch this space!

SEE ALSO: Fenit Nirappil, "Inactivity in a Warming World Could Spur Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths," Washington Post, 16 March 2026 

Maple Syrup Time Again!

 

Follow the signs to the 2026 Maple Syrup Festival!

(3/30/2026) More than 3,000 people made their way just outside of town to the Indian Creek Nature Center last weekend for the annual Maple Syrup Festival. Saturday featured a chilly wind which might have put a few people off, but by Sunday we were back to an unusual run of warm days this late winter/early spring. Long winter or mild one, it's a sure sign of spring when the sap has been running and it's time to gather at the Nature Center to eat last year's syrup.

Entering the Nature Center

Keeping the lines moving, and extra pancakes available for those going back for seconds--or thirds, for who's counting or judging when the syrup is genuine?--must be a strenuous logistical feat. And then there are the ticket takers, those clearing tables and washing dishes, and those in the field finding places for all the cars. Obviously the staff rely on a large number of volunteers (200+ in 2026, according to the Nature Center's Facebook page). Those of us who have only been on the outside, even after all these years, can only imagine and admire.

Volunteers kept the pancake train rolling

My family went over Sunday morning. There was plenty of sunshine for those who chose to eat outdoors...

Some took their syrup al fresco

...and plenty of music for those who chose the auditorium.

Inside Mike Maas, John Korkie, and Carlis Faurot (not pictured)
provided music

First round

After all those pancakes, the day and the trails beckoned:

Many people walked off their excess calories in the woods

Fungus holds still, unlike birds

These are without doubt perilous times for our country and our world, and so also for our communities. There is time for prophecy and protest, as indeed we had done the day before, along with about eight million of our closest friends. But there's also time for celebration of the joys of nature, and company, and the true community treasure that is the Nature Center.

The ability of the staff and volunteers to make all this work
year after year is simply... stunning!

The Nature Center thanks the event's sponsors: Alliant Energy, Cedar Rapids Bank and Trust, Central Iowa Power Cooperative, The Gazette, LUCC Local Union Community Charities, McGrath Auto, and Solum Lang Architects LLC--and so do I!

SEE ALSO: "The Sweet Science of Maple Syrup," Indian Creek Nature Center, 26 March 2026

LAST YEAR'S POST: "Nature Therapy, With Homemade Syrup," 30 March 2025

PCI Pays Property Tax. A Lot of It, Actually.

 

Was dead-ending 2nd Avenue a mistake, 
given the property tax volcano that is PCI?

(Truth in blogging disclosure: Your author is a frequent visitor to the Physicians Clinic of Iowa medical mall, including Forefront Dermatology, PCI Labs, and PCI Urology. He is grateful for the care he receives. He pays $29,637 per acre in property taxes on his house.)

(3/16/2026) A few days ago, I was in a discussion of the city's (lamentable, I still say) decision to close two blocks of 2nd Avenue SE to traffic to accommodate construction of a new Physicians Clinic of Iowa facility. An outgrowth of that discussion led me to the city assessor's site where I found, much to my surprise, that PCI, far from being an untaxed nonprofit, actually pays an impressive amount of property tax, even on a per acre basis.

Here, for comparison's sake, are 2024 tax data for some properties I've researched in previous posts:

Property		size (acres)	2024 Valuation	2024 Tax Paid	2024 Pay/Acre
GREAT AMERICA BUILDING		1.05	$20,585,000	$755,780	$719,790
SKOGMAN REALTY		0.45	5,500,000	257,006	571,124
PULLMAN LOFTS		0.305	3,837,100	74,502	244,269
RAYGUN/CROSBY'S		0.386	3,070,300	82,218	213,000
TARGET (NE)		15.45	11,036,300	419,746	27,168
TARGET (SW)		15.91	11,797,200	402,998	25,330
WALMART (NE)		17.97	9,613,600	327,954	18,250
WALMART (SW)		23.89	12,350,000	421,996	17,664

Moving to the medical district, here are the major landholders:

Property		size (acres)	2024 Valuation	2024 Tax Paid	2024 Pay/Acre
COE COLLEGE		22.36	$51,770,500	0	0
MERCY HOSPITAL		15.6	194,083,700	$58,812	$3,942
ST LUKE'S HOSPITAL		15.524	100,807,700	97,580	6,286
PHYSICIANS CLINIC OF IOWA		9.403	78,771,500	2,894,632	307,940

Entrance to PCI Medical Pavilion I,
where 2nd Avenue SE used to be
(swiped from pciofiowa.com)

(NOTE: I am not going to swear by these exact numbers, because unlike the firms in the first table, these institutions all contain multiple properties, and I may have missed some or double-counted others. So don't sweat the specific numbers; the rough magnitudes are what matter.)

The one that is not like the others, which Sesame Street has taught us to seek, is PCI. Its property tax bill is comparable to some of the most valuable land in the city, at least among the parcels I've haphazardly picked. I have no explanation for this, and if you have one, I would be grateful to learn it.

PCI former location on 8th Street SE
(Google Maps screenshot from 2012)

One can't blame the City of Cedar Rapids for paying attention back in 2010 or so when PCI threatened to move to Hiawatha. On the other hand...

My ongoing rants at the MedQuarter center on its lack of walkability, and the broken connection between Downtown and the neighborhoods. Those are the fundamental problems, not the tax treatment of different payers. Closing 2nd Avenue messed with the city's street grid, and the style of development in the MedQuarter prevents more compatible development, as well as making even the core of the city car-dependent.

SEE ALSO: Sarah Davis, "The Question Every City Should Be Asking," Strong Towns, 4 August 2021

10th anniversary post: Cedar Rapids named Blue Zones community

Celebrating at the Nassif YMCA, March 2016

(3/02/2026) When Cedar Rapids was named a Blue Zones community ten years ago, it was only the 15th town to be so certified. Less than two years later, however, the city's contract with the Blue Zones Project ended, and we switched to being a Healthy Hometown Powered by Wellmark. Today, the Healthy Hometown program no longer seems to exist: the link on the city webpage is dead, but there remains a list of healthy policy initiatives. A Wellbeing Advisory Committee formed in 2016 was disbanded in April 2025; its principles are now "engrained" in the city, they say.

Blue Zones still exists, just not in Cedar Rapids. It is a nonprofit organization that grew out of research by Dan Buettner, who wrote an article for National Geographic in 2000 about long lives of good health enjoyed by the residents of Okinawa. That led him to research other areas with unusually good health outcomes, and in 2009 he published a book. The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest (National Geographic). That same year, the first of many Blue Zones projects was launched in Albert Lea, Minnesota. The first project in Iowa was at Spencer, which achieved measurable improvements in health, diet, and insurance claims.

Blue Zones recommendations that relate to eating well, exercising, and remaining socially engaged are inherently appealing, even I'd guess for people who aren't about to change their habits in real life. They certainly seem intuitively correct. But, lo and behold, in 2024 Freakonomics highlighted research by Oxford University research fellow Saul Newman, using birth records to argue that the claims for long lives in the Blue Zones were based on fraud, poor record-keeping, and maybe confirmation bias. Those superhealthy Okinawans, for example, eat lots of Spam (TM), are disproportionately obese, and have high rates of suicide. Very, very few if any of them have lived past age 110 (Dubner 2024).

This skepticism has not slowed Blue Zones down, however. Their website provides multiple pages of advice, programs, and success stories. Their media coverage continues positive: This month's issue of Prevention includes recipes for "Blue Zones style eating," including creamy white bean and tomato soup ("prioritize protein from plants"), guacamole and bean tacos ("load up on legumes"), and spanakopita pasta ("make goat and sheep milk go-tos"). The recipes come from the "places around the globe where people live the longest" ("The Blues Bites" 2026).

Longevity is becoming big business. Last month Byteseu reported from the Global Wellness Summit in Dubai, India, where there were a weird variety of gadgets and subscriptions available to the superaged-wannabe. The sponsor organization estimated the size of the worldwide wellness industry at $6.8 trillion annually (Sharma 2026). All Blue Zones wants you to do is walk instead of taking a car, eat more local unprocessed food, and play cards with your friends. That seems relatively harmless, even quite helpful, however exaggerated the original data might have been.

When Cedar Rapids disbanded its Wellness Advisory Committee last spring, it declared the battle won. That's wishful thinking: the battle for public health is ongoing, and needs to be put at the forefront of all policy making. (What does pinning our economic hopes on data centers and a casino say about Cedar Rapids' commitment to wellness?) Byteseu writer Sanjukta Sharma cites Mumbai professor De. Srinivas Goli who says for most people the goal is not buying the secret to partying past 110, but "managing the triple burden of earning money, battling a disease through robust accessible public health systems, and basic elderly care." As Iowa tries to protect Monsanto from liability for the effects of its pesticides, who in government is working to reduce the effects of externalities on our health?

ORIGINAL POST: "Cedar Rapids Named Blue Zones Community," 9 March 2016

PRINT SOURCE: "The Blues Bites," Prevention (March 2026): 82-89

Weather versus urbanism

 

Record one-day snowfall hits Providence
(Swiped from WPRI 12 website)

As the Northeastern U.S. staggers under record-breaking snowfall (above, CNU33 host city Providence), I come, laptop in hand, to report on my weekend. This is not the post I was going to write. 

Jane and I traveled to Dubuque and Galena to celebrate her birthday. These are two river towns northeast of Cedar Rapids that long ago were economic hubs; then, when the economy shifted underneath them, they lacked the money to update their built environment. Eventually, their historic walkability attracted tourism, and their fortunes were made.

We had snow the night before we left, though nothing unmanageable. In its aftermath came several days of cold, windy weather. As the temperature dropped through the day on Friday, wind speeds averaged 20+ mph, with regular gusts over 30 mph. It happened pretty much exactly as forecast.

I was aware of the weather forecast, and that we were there to celebrate Jane's birthday, but I am Never Not Blogging, and I thought I would write about how urbanist design makes foul weather bearable, because in a truly walkable neighborhood destinations are close enough that you're never out in the foul weather very long. By the time you realize you're uncomfortable, you've gotten wherever you were headed. That's essential to urbanists' antipathy to skywalks:

While sidewalk substitutes may sometimes be justified by fast-moving traffic, the more economical solution is to design and signalize streets for lower speeds. Poor climate alone is rarely justification for sidewalk substitutes, as some of the world's best walking cities, such as New Orleans and Quebec City, still attract pedestrians during many months of truly miserable weather. (Duany, Speck and Lydon 2010: 7.5)

Charlotte's Coffeehouse
(This is a Google Maps screenshot. It was too cold to
take my hands out of my gloves so I could take any pictures!)

We started our day in Dubuque with lunch at Charlotte's Coffeehouse, which calls itself "Dubuque's Third Place," with considerable justification, given the number of people eating together. And they're open til 5:00 p.m. seven days a week! (There were also quite a few people eating alone. Is that still third placey?) Their 11th and White location is northeast of Downtown, and not terribly far from Loras College.

Limerick Candles and Vintage Reads, 1108 Iowa Street
(Google Maps screenshot)

Limerick Candles and Vintage Reads, used bookstore, two blocks away:

River Lights Bookstore, 1098 Main Street
(Google Maps screenshot)

River Lights Bookstore, retail bookstore, one block away, where I purchased Shade by Sam Bloch, which I will report on soon:

Voices Dupaco Building, 1000 Jackson Street
(Swiped from dbqart.org)

Dubuque Museum of Art, four blocks away in the Voices Dupaco Building. They say they're open 10-4 Friday but the door was locked a little after 2.

Our walk thus totaled seven blocks, all within the Millwork Historic District, not counting wrong turns, which happen sometimes in an unfamiliar place. Sometimes those wrong turns can lead to unexpected delights, but on Friday, let me tell you, in the face of that wind, every step was purchased dearly. There didn't seem to be a lot of potential stops between the destinations, and there were zero people on the street besides us. So maybe this isn't the perfect urbanist neighborhood, though it did have enough destinations to keep us going. Anyway, today, the score was Weather 1, Urbanism 0.

SEE ALSO: Bill West, "The View from My Doorstep," WestWords, 24 February 2026

PRINT SOURCE: Andres Duany and Jeff Speck with Mike Lydon, The Smart Growth Manual (McGraw Hill, 2010) 

VIDEO SOURCE: John Simmerman's Active Towns feature on Oulu, Finland (1:29:46):

First Avenue Corridor Redevelopment Plan

Micro-area map

(2/12/2026) Can a historic neighborhood business district near downtown be reincarnated in the 21st century?

The City of Cedar Rapids is preparing a Corridor Redevelopment Plan for First Avenue East between 12th and 16th Streets, roughly the same area as covered in the First Avenue East Micro-Area Action Plan adopted in 2025 (Nieland 2025). That plan, while not bold, took notice of the problems that have accumulated over the years in this area:

• It is historically a neighborhood business district in an area where housing stock and population have been declining for decades
• So, businesses have neither the surrounding population to support a neighborhood business nor parking capacity for chain retail
• It is the main commercial street for the Mound View and Wellington Heights neighborhoods, but with 20,000 cars a day along five lanes it mainly serves as a highway between Interstate 380 and points farther out
• So, walking across or along 1st Avenue is highly unpleasant and dangerous

Modest development across 1st Avenue from Coe College

Ideas to mitigate these problems in the 2025 plan included more crosswalks, street trees, and business recruitment. The Corridor Redevelopment Plan is a sort of adjunct to the Micro-Area Action Plan, focused on design elements. Its stated goal is providing "a coordinated vision for new buildings, public spaces, and street improvements to support reinvestment."

Former Hy-Vee Grocery remains vacant nearly two years after closing
(picture taken from A Avenue facing 1st Avenue)

The city held an open house this week at Coe's Alumni House, at which they invited public comment on the Corridor Redevelopment Plan. Display boards located around the room looked very specific, but in fact they were imaginative concepts showing what a little nudge from the city might produce. What the city is committing to, if that's not too strong a phrase, is planting street trees and working with the State of Iowa to slow traffic, narrowing lanes and possibly inserting a tree lined median. (1st Avenue is also State Route 922 and Business U.S. 151.) 

Hypothetical locations of new development
(The mixed-use building with interior parking is at the former Hy-Vee site)

Also: Emily Stochl, who co-owns the Cafe Allez that has been fixing to move into the old Brewed Awakenings space at 1271 1st for quite awhile, told me 13th Street SE will become two-way, which would make access to that block from 1st much easier. Betsy Bostian from the city planning department told the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association Tuesday night that the city was also going to try to rectify the crossing at 16th Street. Coe College is also willing to make some of their unused space east of campus temporarily available.

Some of Coe College's vacant land in the Mound View neighborhood

From these improvements might come more business investment and maybe some housing as well--and if they don't, we'll still have improved safety and dignity for pedestrians, at relatively low cost. A plaza was shown at 14th Street and 2nd Avenue, across from the Commonwealth Apartments, though its provenance was unclear. 

There were a lot of critical comments posted at the Coe open house, mainly complaining about slowing traffic on 1st, as well as missing some amenities like a grocery store and pharmacy. I'm all for having those amenities, too, but the current business models for groceries and pharmacies seem to require large buildings and large parking lots, neither of which is available in this historically neighborhood retail area.

The Wellington Heights neighbors exposed a flaw in the rosy scenario portrayed on the display boards. Efforts to develop the target area could easily fall afoul of the zoning process. The neighbors seemed primarily concerned with unwelcome uses, like smoke and vape shops and parking garages. The city people encouraged them to use the zoning process to voice specific concerns, but zoning is famous for derailing even good development by escalating time and costs (cf. Gray 2022). I feel the city should adopt a form-based code for this area to forestall this.

I think if the loudest voices prevail, 1st Avenue is doomed to be an underperforming stroad for the rest of time. I think, however, that the city is facing some other imperatives. With the state cutting property taxes on an annual basis, and city population not growing, Cedar Rapids just cannot let some of the most valuable property in the city rot. They simply have to do something to restart it, and if they can do it without kickstarting an ambitious housing program (my preference), so much the better. I hope the City Council sees it that way!

City of Cedar Rapids 1st Avenue East Corridor Redevelopment Plan and Micro-Area Action Plan page

EARLIER POSTS:

"Could 1st Avenue East Be a Grand Boulevard?" 1 July 2024

"Crossing Cedar Rapids' Busiest Intersections: 1st Avenue," 8 August 2023