Rationalizing a weird intersection

Park Court at 1st Avenue SE

Six years ago, while observing how people accessed Redmond Park in southeast Cedar Rapids, I was struck by how many people from the surrounding neighborhood walked through the park and then up Park Court two blocks to the 1st Avenue Hy-Vee Food and Drug Store. This probably is no news to anyone who lives in the Wellington Heights neighborhood, but it was news to me.

Many people, having walked up Park Court to 1st Avenue, then walk an additional half-block to 16th Street, in order to cross at a traffic light. Many others do not, taking their chances with 1st Avenue traffic. These daredevils ignore the sign telling them to walk over to the crosswalk, persisting as they do in their belief that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And it's not like those who cross at the light do so without a care in the world, as there is always turning traffic with which to negotiate the space.

Looking at the aerial map from which the above picture was taken leads me to this modest proposal: Reroute 16th Street NE so it squares up with Park Court SE. This will not only ease the pedestrian crossing of 1st Avenue, it will allow what should have been done when the Hy-Vee was rebuilt in 2000-2001 i.e. put the store entrance by the sidewalk so pedestrians don't have to battle across the parking lot, which they currently must do no matter where they're coming from. (The back of Hy-Vee is built up to A Avenue NE, but there is no entrance to that end of the store.)

This will involve yawmping off a fair slice of Hy-Vee's parking lot, which they should allow for a reasonable price because [a] the store was rebuilt with a $1 million grant from the city, and [b] the parking lot would still be very large. You could have more parking across the new street, but I would argue there's room for additional commercial development. The new lot (outlined in blue above) would be roughly comparable to the one across 16th Street that currently holds Boost Mobile.

The new alignment would probably route more traffic onto Park Court as an alternative to 16th Street SE. While I'm on my soapbox, I'll argue for a three-way stop at Park Court and 3rd Avenue SE, because there aren't enough stops on 3rd (currently none between 10th and 19th Streets).

This proposal solves a pedestrian crossing problem, and eases walking and biking access to a popular local grocery, with little to no inconvenience to motor vehicle traffic.

Options for the future

After the derecho, can we choose how to recover?

What kind of communities will we rebuild, when we rebuild them? As summer turns into fall, Americans continue to live in "interesting times," with the coronavirus running unabated, the economy staggering, and the President and his allies adding to the chaos. In my region, we're digging slowly out of the wreckage brought by an incredible derecho storm on Monday, August 10. At some point, however, the storms will have passed, and we will turn to the tasks of reconstructing our social order. We could try to put everything back the way it was before March 2020, but even if it were a good idea replication is probably impossible. So what should our goal(s) be?

"Market Day" by Nancy Maybin Ferguson depicts 1910s Provincetown RI

New York Times columnist Jane Brody (2020) recommends what we might call the social city, inspired by her re-reading of Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don't Seem to Matter--But Really Do by Melinda Blau and Karen L. Fingerman [W.W. Norton, 2010]. Fingerman told Brody that the "basic human need" of belonging is based on multiple casual encounters every day, what the authors call "weak ties." Brody agrees:

In my country house, especially during the dark, cold days of early spring, I would have been far more isolated. Yes, I could walk my dog and ride my bike without having to wear a mask because I would have met almost no one else on route. But I would also have been deprived of conversations with the many 'consequential strangers' I encountered daily during my outdoor excursions in Brooklyn, including the 7 p.m. 'shout-out' in support of our essential workers.

City design and policies for development have consequences for social encounters. "In their book," further notes Brody, "Ms. Blau and Dr. Fingerman emphasize the importance of creating and being in environments that foster relationships with consequential strangers." This will resonate with advocates of walkable cities and third places, which foster those encounters in ways that car-dependent suburbia and enclaves do not. 

Metro area bike trails are an attractive amenity

Bloggers for the Brookings Institution report on the Global Cities Initiative, which advises cities on finding their places in the global economy (Clark et al. 2020). The economic city, like any business, needs to identify and communicate its identity--not the same as a brand, being the reality on which a successful brand is based--to current and potential residents, employers, customers, and investors. "Cities that convey distinctive and differentiating character based on a coherent, genuine identity," they write, "are more competitive and gain new opportunities--once the world knows their story." The GCI lists seven sequential tasks in this process, with the key step being #5, where "a metro area must undertake an iterative process to translate values and assets into a narrative that resonates with internal and external audiences." This can inform the recovery process: What are the aspects of our area's identity the enhancement of which we should prioritize?

In an August 9 interview with Cedar Rapids Municipal Band director (and Coe College professor) Steve Shanley, Brad Hart, mayor of Cedar Rapids, stressed the town's combination of urban amenities (esp. performing arts, trails system), low cost of living, and easy commuting, all of which also inform our longtime slogan, the City of Five Seasons. Is that our global identity? How can our recovery improve these qualities? And who benefits from highlighting these particular qualities?

Czech Village Levee two-fer! Bike/walk trail on flood wall.

 

 

In April the National Public Radio show On Point hosted a discussion of the qualities of a healing city; in the words of host Meghna Chakrabarti, "reimagining cities as places for better human health." Ken Greenberg, a Toronto-based urban planner and guest on the show, began by noting how the suburban model of development since World War II gave more space to automobiles at the expense of places to walk (or cycle)--along with more mechanical buildings sealed for climate control. He believes that the pandemic-inspired shift in the use of urban space back to non-vehicular activity will be to some degree permanent, with benefits for human health. Allowing for natural airflow is "not only a mitigation strategy, but will reconnect us to the climate around us," but that requires different kinds of design that are suited to specific local climates. Architect Michael Murphy pointed out that buildings were all built that way before technology made air conditioned boxes possible. The guests also talked about climate change and socio-economic inequities. In an online blog "diary," Greenberg suggests that various design changes can be integrated in ways that promote the health and well being of all:

Putting together all these pieces — laneways, street redesign, ravines, hydro corridors, rail lines, stormwater management systems, flood-proofing plans, and transportation initiatives, a vastly expanded public realm can emerge, one that addresses many of the city’s current deficiencies. This new realm will be different, both in scale and kind. Rather than discrete public spaces carved out of a grid of street blocks — parks and squares — this new kind of public space has the potential to become the fully continuous, connective tissue of the urban fabric itself.

 The entire city can become more park-like, green, and connected for people on foot and on bicycle. Fostering residents’ ability to move around relatively freely and experience more of the city this way will help to break down the perceived barriers between neighbourhoods and districts as flows become more continuous. The elements of the public realm that serve as links between areas will play a vital role in helping to make the city feel like a seamless whole (Greenberg 2020).

What if we made improvement of human well being, particularly that of the most vulnerable citizens, a goal of future city development and design?

Washington High School Step Team: Does creative activity lead to better thinking?

 

Another value worth pursuing is creativity, commended to cities by Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class--and How It Is Transforming Leisure, Community and Everyday Life [Basic, 2002]) and Charles Landry (The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators [Earthscan, 2nd ed, 2008]). A creative city is one where "fresh thinking" is brought to bear on community problems (p. 49). This involves thinking about the community as an integrated organism, not a series of unconnected processes where getting the right outputs is merely a matter of expertly identifying the right inputs.

The technical skills of an engineer or physical planner will remain essential, but to solve most urban problems they will need to be integrated with other skills, especially in the human and social sciences. Knowledge of history, anthropology, cultures, psychology has been lost in urban affairs. A traffic or zoning issue is never only about cars or land use. If transport planners had had a better understanding of psychology or culture or of the ideas of mental geography, they would have been more careful about building urban motorways with routes that scorch their ways through communities. The crime and social problems that ensue are then picked up by others who try to re-create some coherence for inhabitants (pp. 54-55).

This is about more than art, music, theater and dance. Yet "[b]ringing an artist into urban regeneration" can unleash "a new kind of creativity," as in Batley, England, where arts festivals helped changed "local self-respect, social cohesion and liveliness" in a way that facilitated improved living conditions (p. 147). So cities can learn from each other, while avoiding the same old stuff like corporate subsidies, subdivisions in cornfields, and "game-changer" tourist attractions.

This requires first breaking down decades of practice seeing problems narrowly: my street, my parking place, my experience of traffic congestion or ambient noise. Only then can planners and citizens "research and map with a greater chance of uniqueness and specialness of a place (emphasis mine) rather than merely seeing a partial picture of problems and opportunities.... It provides a constructive working environment with people more involved and responsible connecting with a wider network of organizations and residents. It thus makes a city more competitive" (p. 71). 

Landry draw on a wide range of literature on cities and the creative process, provides a host of examples (in gray boxes), and has advice for cities in a variety of situations. Most of his book is designed to be consulted rather than read. His list of preconditions for creative urban policy (ch. 5) is long but useful. It includes: a mix of outsiders bringing fresh eyes and insiders with institutional memory; a cultural willingness to "break rules" and even to fail; a sense of local identity; and public space that facilitates exchange. "The idea of the public realm is bound up with ideas of discovery, or expanding one's horizons, of the unknown, of surprise, of experiment and of adventure" (p. 119). Practicing the creative arts can help everyone re-see the places where they live.

What shall be our animating value in rebuilding/recovery? I don't want to pick just one, as we at the Holy Mountain blog are not about reductionism, and certainly not into reductionism-ism. But note that the features of the social city are cited as prerequisites for both the healing city (Greenberg 2020) and the cultural city (Landry 2008: 119). If we subject every plan to the question "How does this help people mix?" instead of "Where are the cars going to park?" we'll be taking a giant step towards communities that are healthier, more equitable, more creative, and more resilient. And as someone said--please help me remember who!--if you build a place where people want to live, you'll have built a place where people want to visit, invest, run businesses, and such.

SEE ALSO: Richard Florida and Michael Seman, "Lost Art: Measuring COVID-19's Devastating Impact on America's Creative Economy," Brookings, 11 August 2020

Making sense of the city budget

The good people at Asheville-based Urban 3 have produced an amusing, accessible video showing Josh McCarty and Maxine Eng walking through their city's budget. They make a number of points, including (Strong Towns 2020):

1. Pick your city and do an Internet search for the most recent version of your municipal budget. Cedar Rapids is working from the fiscal year 2021 budget, which comes in two parts. The most recent year for which actual numbers have been compiled is 2019. Alas, unlike Asheville, the first thing that comes up on an Internet search for "Cedar Rapids budget" is, indeed, Budget Rent-a-Car.
2. Open an Excel spreadsheet and get ready to scroll through the document until you see some charts. The spreadsheet is for note-taking, really, enabling you to find numbers from all over the document and place them together. For example, the budget for the police department is at volume I, page 102; that for street improvements is at volume II, page 202; and that for debt service is at I, 55.
3. Start noting the many different pots of money feeding your government. Cedar Rapids has a general fund, which draws on property taxes (22%), charges for services (30%), intergovernmental revenue (13%), and a variety of smaller sources like the local option sales tax (2%) and the hotel motel tax (<1%) (I, 60, 62). There is also an enterprise fund (dedicated revenue from water bills, golf fees, the Doubletree Hotel, e.g.), a capital fund (large one-time projects, see #10 below), and slightly smaller funds called special revenue and internal service. So, the general fund amounted to $147,598,125 in fiscal year 2019 (I, 97), but the total amount the city spent was $522,091,049 (I, 60).
4. Start tracking the relationship between income and expenses. 
5. Watch out for things like "interfund transfers" and debt. Over $180 million of city revenue was attributed to "transfers in" (I, 60). "The special revenue, internal service, and capital project budgets are balanced with current revenues or use existing cash on hand from past fiscal years to fund expenditures due to planned expenditures or the timing of expenditures," explains an explanatory note. "The use of fund balance or transfers in is decided by Departments and/or the Finance Department based on needs and availability. The Finance Department confirms if funds can be transferred or used given the circumstance of the expense and original source of the funds" (I, 71-72).
6. Pay attention to the planned vs. actual budget. I don't see that much difference between actual 2019 and planned 2021, but it's nice to know that the numbers you're looking at are based on experience not aspiration.
7. As you look through, note different types of revenue that might be vulnerable to economic shocks, like the pandemic. Actually very little of Cedar Rapids's budget relies on sales tax or its equivalents--see #3 above--although in a tight budget every cut hurts.
8. Because there are multiple local governments in any place, comparing expenditures on, say, police vs. mental health vs. schools requires looking at school district and county budgets as well as the city's. The school district's budget amounts to $282,329,202 (p. 10), almost half of the city's and, presuming all that goes for K-12 education, vastly larger than any specific city budget item. Looking strictly at the City of Cedar Rapids, police spending is $38,475,488, 31 percent of the general fund, but only 7.4 percent of total spending (I, 102). Spending on street repair beats police at $42,413,827--we have a lot of streets in Cedar Rapids--but it comes out of the capital fund, not the general fund, so it shows up on a different pie chart (II, 202). We spent more on streets and less on parks than Asheville does.
9. Debt service and debt limits: Iowa allows cities to borrow up to 5 percent of the total assessed property valuation... North Carolina allows up to 9 percent! Cedar Rapids paid $61,968,015 on its debt in 2019 (I,55), 11.9 percent of total spending, more than on police and fire combined.
10. Capital improvement plans: Cedar Rapids has one, too, detailed on pages 210-271 of Volume I of the budget. The five-year spending plan is for $865.8 million; the largest two categories are flood control ($249.6 million) and street improvements ($173.4 million) (I, 211). Funding sources include bonds and "other debt" (44%), grants (20%), and the local option sales tax (11%); the remaining categories are vague (I, 212). Specific projects are listed beginning on p. 214 with widening Collins Road, extending Tower Terrace Road, and punching through 6th Street from B Avenue to Ellis Boulevard NW. 

I learned a lot, but I found it difficult going, even with a high personal feeling of competence in this area. So be warned, and there is no way I would assign students to do this, which is too bad, because budgets are where the reality lives.

The Urban3 video: