CNU Diary

Monday, June 8

This summer's Congress for the New Urbanism was scheduled for Minneapolis-St. Paul, which is not only less than five hours' drive north of here, it is also the home of my son Eli. So after seven years' acquaintance, not to mention liberal use of their resources, I put my money where my heart is, joined the organization, and registered for the conference.

Then came the coronavirus. CNU was still three months off at the point when things started shutting down, but it soon became obvious to the organizers that it would need to be moved online. Attendees were given a choice of how to handle their registration; I opted to join the online conference at half-price, and to use the remaining money I'd paid as a down-payment on regisration for next year's conference in Oklahoma City. Jane is excited, because she's never been to Oklahoma, and you are excited, because you can look forward to another one of these posts a year from now!

Minneapolis, meanwhile, became a flashpoint of protest two weeks ago today, when George Floyd of that city was murdered by police officers who suspected him of passing counterfeit money. The killing by choking required an excruciating nine minutes, during which passers-by begged the officers to stop. At least one took a cellphone video, which contradicted the officers' own account, became viral, and touched off several days of protest. The City's initially obtuse response sent protests worldwide, accompanied in some places by looting (of various origin) and in some places by additional police violence. Most recently a nine-member majority of the Minneapolis City Council expressed support for dismantling and re-forming the police department (Navratil 2020). 

Floyd's shadow, even moreso now than that of COVID-19, hangs over the conference. One conference communication described "a backdrop of increasing urgency to deliver solutions that build complete communities that are inclusive, equitable, and accessible to all." Absolutely.

Billy Hattaway, transportation director for the City of Orlando
(Source: Governing. Used without permission.)

The conference begins for real Wednesday. Today and tomorrow are some "core sessions" introducing attendees to new urbanism and key concepts like walkability, strong towns, accessory dwelling units, and housing typology. This gave me a chance to test out the site, and to learn that while both Minneapolis and Cedar Rapids are in the Central time zone, the CNU schedule uses Eastern time. So I missed the very first session.

I looked in on a session on "context-sensitive transportation design" led by Billy Hattaway, a design engineer with experience in both government and private practice. Either Hattaway or I were having Internet problems, because the presentation was occasionally breaking up. That never happens in real life! Hattaway showed some striking images of how downtown streets had been transformed from bleak, dangerous speedways into economically and socially vibrant places. Key features included on-street parking, wide sidewalks where there had been none at all, and street trees. Moral of the story: You can't have all of everything, but you can have a lot if your priorities are right.

Tuesday, June 9

Off and on gentle showers in Iowa today, a byproduct of Hurricane Cristobal which hit the Gulf Coast last week. (We'd been threatened with a deluge, though.) This morning, I went to Cafe St. Pio, the coffeehouse in Czech Village, where I chatted with Eric Holthaus, the city's sustainability coordinator. How urbanist is that?

Housing protest, New Orleans, 2006
(Source: The Conversation. Used without permission.)

Still warming up for the conference, I attended a core session on housing led by Kirsten Compitello of Michael Baker International and Megan O'Hara of Urban Design Associates. Too often policy makers think of housing basically as a physical structure in which people live--assuming that people who can afford to can provide themselves with something above the basic level--when they should think about it as a basis for social inclusion and economic opportunity, as well as the building blocks for neighborhoods. Currently low-income housing is characterized by undersupply, exploitation, zoning constraints, and lack of access to transportation and jobs. We need more missing middle housing and better preservation of existing housing stock, in mixed-income neighborhoods.

It just kept raining all day. I'm glad it's not Bike to Work Week.

Wednesday, June 10

The conference began in earnest, with four concurrent sessions at 10:30 a.m. CT. An immediately-noticeable difference online: at an on-site conference, I might get to the room a few minutes early, and spend the time either chatting up acquaintances or trying to figure out how to place my coffee such that I won't kick it over the first time I move my leg. Today we sat in app limbo, wondering (at least in my case) if I'd clicked the right thing, until the host let us in a few minutes late.

Continuing the mixed-income/missing middle housing theme, I started with Finding the Right Way to Do the Right Thing, featuring Cheryl O'Neill, of the Washington architecture firm Torti Gallas, and Dan Solomon of the San Francisco firm Mithun. The panel was moderated by Professor Emily Talen of the University of Chicago. Solomon framed the issue as a clash between two urbanist values: sense of place and density-by-infill. The problem is that those who value sense of place resist infill housing because it's often badly-done, massive and cheap.

(screenshot from Dan Solomon's presentation)

The thought was that more attention to better design could overcome residents' objections. To that end, Solomon suggesting setting a maximum FAR (floor-to-area ratio) that would require more compatible, less massive design, and O'Neill offered her firm's "five strategies for carefully-crafted infill." One of Torti Gallas's current projects is Avec, about a mile from where I lived in Washington. 

Avec Building under construction, June 2019 (Google Maps screen capture)

The discussion quickly got into the weeds, as I've also experienced at political science conferences, aimed towards architects and away from policy. Moreover, O'Neill thought the problem was unique to superstar cities like San Francisco and Washington. "Other places that don't have very high values," like Baltimore, have the opposite problem of not enough demand for units. Still, as a resident of a small midwestern city, I can say densification is a problem everywhere, possibly informed by the poor appearance and construction of infill housing. What Andres Duany et al (2000: 26-27) say about corner stores applies to missing middle housing as well: the examples most people are familiar with are enough to put them off the whole concept. 

Yet what people complain about here are noise, parking, and property values. Even if the economic imperatives aren't so strong as to overcome architects' creativity and taste--another issue they glossed over--are the political objections going to be overcome by nicer buildings? Or must we become overbearing like California to get anything built?

Also today, I attended panels on New Tools for Urban Resilience on various ways of considering climate change, and Oh, Behave! The Science Behind Humans' Buggy Decision-Making, and How to Make Societal Change on behavioral analysis of individual and institutional decision-making; that one featured Professor Michele Traub of the Psychology Department at St. Cloud State University.

Steve Mouzon, who blogs at The Original Green, is live-Tweeting this conference! Follow every twist and turn by following him at @stevemouzon.

Matthew Lambert at the master controls for the chat rooms

The evening featured a virtual version of the traditional CNU pub crawl. I met some interesting people, but it wasn't the same as actually touring the third places of Minneapolis. As you would expect this week, much of the "pub" talk turned to police relations. David Moye, recently elected to the City Council of West Columbia, South Carolina, boasted that his mixed-race community had achieved an accommodation between police and residents more than thirty years ago. In another chat room, Jim Kumon, in his office 1.5 miles from where George Floyd was murdered, talked about the long period of unrest in that city, with considerably more nuance than often comes across in news reports. (I know Jim, though we've never met in person. When he was at Strong Towns, we worked together on this event.) Meanwhile, one of our members washed her dishes loudly in the background, which offered a bit of pub ambience. Don't forget that "mute" button, Zoom users!

Thursday, June 11

"You're not really an urbanist," someone said at one of the chat rooms last night. Apparently he defined urbanism as a way of practicing architecture, design, or planning. I teach college classes in political science, and write what I write, which is analytical advocacy of some sort of -ism. Isn't it urbanism? That's why I'm here. Bottom line: I sent the membership fee to CNU, and they took it, so I think that makes me an urbanist.

This morning began with a virtual version of Running with Urbanists, another CNU tradition in adapted form. I don't run, so wasn't sure how I would participate. This seems now to have been a failure of curiosity, so I promise I will be better connected tomorrow, even if I have to run or use minutes.

A relaxed-looking Peter Calthorpe, who long ago co-authored a book that introduced me to urbanism, was part of a plenary panel on housing access and affordability this afternoon. He talked about converting abandoned or failing retail space to housing in the San Francisco Bay area, which is nearly a million units short at this point. "It spreads the problem out... it focuses on the right area, but lets every community take its share without being deadly," and the arterials could be adapted for, say, bus rapid transit. (A number of people questioned whether counting on transit use of any sort, even ride-sharing, was realistic in the post-pandemic era. Calthorpe argued that transit would be back, and anyhow we have bigger crises at hand including affordable housing, climate change, and equity/opportunity.) 

Fellow panelist Robin Chase recounted the many ways in which car-dominated, car-required built environment excludes and/or harms people (immobility, air pollution, reinforces systemic racism); she says the only option to provide access and mobility is multimodal transportation. While we have a lot of sunk costs in the current development pattern, there's "no better time" than the current batch of crises "to shift modes and break old patterns." She casts a longing eye towards street space, which she would like to reallocate to pedestrians, bicycles, and maybe high-occupancy vehicles. 

The plenary session was energetically moderated by Eric Shaw, a designer-planner with the San Francisco mayor's office. Cedar Rapids faces a different problem set than San Francisco does, but we too struggle with inclusion, which requires thinking differently about development. 

Transit-oriented development under construction, Cleveland OH

Earlier today I attended panels on Best of Intentions: Stationing Equity in Transit-Oriented Development (preventing displacement of the poor following public investment) and, after a long personal break, Quantifying Incremental Change (metrics for development that show the possibly counter-intuitive advantages of urbanism). The latter panel included a Power Point slide with a picture of Casey Kasem.

DJ Casey Kasem, whose catchphrase was
"Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars"

Friday, June 12

Grant Wood lived here: 300 block of 14th Street NE

Greetings from Running with Urbanists! OK, I don't run, ever, with or without urbanists, but I took some pictures on my morning walk near Coe College and posted them to the event site. There are pictures from Chicago, Cleveland, St. Paul, and other cities I love!!

It is a beautiful morning, and on my walk I noticed the For Sale signs have been removed from our marvelous local coffeehouse, Brewed Awakenings (though it's still has not been open since March 20...)

This could be a good sign! (Or they could have sold the site to a fast food chain... but on this lovely morning, let's think positively!)

The business part of the day began with a plenary session, and that began with a video encouraging us to attend next year's conference in Oklahoma City. OK, I will.

The topic of the plenary session was "The City Under Strain," possibly conceived during the pandemic, but two weeks of protests across the country informed it as well. Participants Allison Arieff of the advocacy organization SPUR and Emily Badger of The New York Times recognized this in their opening comments. As Badger summarized:

• The racial disparities and inequality feeding COVID are also driving protests
• The ways COVID could leave lasting damage on cities could exacerbate racial inequality, too
• Ideas for how to improve cities after COVID will have to solve for racial inequality and racism, too

One takeaway from a rich, detailed discussion: Moderator Todd Zimmerman asked what has COVID revealed about cities. Arieff said how badly all of our systems work for most people, and how protected some of us are from most of that. Badger talked about how fragile our social safety net is, citing unemployment insurance, how children are fed (where if not schools?), and where homeless people sleep (where if not the streets?).

Zimmerman also asked what "the equitable city" would look like. I seem to have lost my notes on that one! but one of the panelists suggested it would be where every public issue would be discussed in terms of its effect on equity. Earlier someone had said that the best city would be one where a 7-year-old black girl could move around in safety, which might be as good an answer as any. 

Inequitable public policy: sign from Washington DC freeway protest
(taken at Anacostia Neighborhood Museum)

Also today, I attended Redressing Redlining: Lessons in Realities and Reconciliation, Part I (racial roots of today's housing patterns) and Receiver Cities: Adapting for Climate Migration (anticipated population effects of climate disasters).

This evening, Eli came down from Minneapolis to visit! So I've gotten to see both Eli and CNU, just not in Minnesota.

Saturday, June 13

You don't have to dress up for a virtual conference. Today I chose this very urbanist t-shirt from last fall's open streets event in Washington, D.C.

On this last day of the conference, I attended two more panels. The first panel, Urban Guild: Design Issues II, covered a variety of design-related topics. Several speakers touched on the role of art in place making, and Karen Dulio introduced a website, culturecrowdagency.com, that has not only ideas but also assessement tools. John Anderson displayed a set of baseball cards featuring different types of infill tactics, which are an easy way to show how what is possible in your community relative to what is theoretically possible. Now, of course, we all want a set!

Just add people: Feeling joyful on the patio at Lion Bridge Brewing

The second panel I attended was Art Room: How to Build Happiness and Community into Our Cities and Public Spaces. The panelists took turns answering questions such as: What is a place where you feel joy? What does a post-pandemic future look like that puts health, happiness, and communities first? What joyful patterns appear within the public realm that translates to individual buildings? How can our built environment enable us to be more compassionate? The answers varied, but were less important (I think) than the idea that what our public spaces look and feel like how not only how people use them but how people feel and whether they are able to create community--"setting the stage in the right way," in Steve Mouzon's phrase.

And I watched Active Towns' 4+ minute video on Facebook using all our pictures from Running with Urbanists. Cedar Rapids is represented at about the 35 second mark (not shareable, unfortunately).

The conference proper concluded with an awards ceremony, which didn't interest me much... until I looked in on it, where (of course) there were reports on successful urbanist projects. One winner was The Wharf in Washington D.C., which I visited in May 2018. Lesson learned: I'll be sure to attend the award presentations next year!