I took the city manager's one bag challenge!

 

VIDEO: City Manager Jeff Pomeranz introduces the 1-Bag Challenge (0:31)

I don't know how long this bag has been under my kitchen sink. It's been at least five years, during which time it has been taunting me: You care about your community? You call yourself an urbanist? Then why do I live under the sink--huh?!?!?!?! Yes, I am judged by the things under my sink.

The 1-Bag Challenge was made by Cedar Rapids City Manager Jeff Pomeranz several years ago. The idea was to encourage people to pick up litter around town. The full bags can be put out with the weekly trash, without counting against the one-cart limit. Individuals can go it alone, or as part of a group. My neighbor Brook picks up trash in nearby Bever Park as part of his regular walks. Last August he reported on Facebook:

Lila and I picked up 3 big ol bags of garbage from Blake Blvd, Bever Park, 34th street and Cottage Grove. We cleaned that area 2 weeks ago and already it's trashed. Seems like folks buy a plastic bottle filled with colored juice, take a sip and throw it out the window. Rinse and repeat. I don't get it. There's a lot I don't get. So I'm pledging to pick up a bag of trash with every CD I sell. I've got some catching up to do. It's a good workout bending over and hauling that bag up and down hills and trails. Hoping others will dig in and do a little bit of clean up too. Let's teach the kids a better way. Thanks for the support!

Faced with challenges from both the city manager and an award-winning rock musician, I could no longer ignore the call of duty. Responding was another matter. My uncle, Dwight Nesmith, described his entry into service during World War II:

He worked his way through one and a half years of business school before his country called him to duty. They called, and they called. And finally, 10 months after Pearl Harbor, he went. (from That Wasn't Very Much of an Introduction, released on RPC in 1963)

Today, as I responded to the call to a much briefer and less risky duty, was breezy and pleasant, a window of loveliness before it turns hot again. So, no time like the present! I spent considerable time overthinking where to work. Where would I find the right amount of trash? I didn't want to walk for hours and find maybe two ounces. Bever Park is Brook's turf, so surely clean as the proverbial whistle. I was hesitant to work in a residential neighborhood where I might be patronizing. The trails through town have some encampments, and I didn't want in my ignorance and privilege to pick up someone's belongings. I finally decided to walk along 16th Avenue, which runs behind the Geonetric building where I have my "summer office," across the river into Czech Village. 

I unfurled the bag, which turned out to contain a pair of gloves. Handy! and it saved me using the gardening gloves I'd brought. The bag seemed huge, though. 

In the yard outside the building I found my first item--a take out soft drink lid:

I spent quite some time on that lawn. There were scraps of paper, cigarette butts, a few bits of plastic. I started to get light-headed from all the bending over and standing up, yet I didn't have very much to show for it. I began to wish someone would throw me an alternator or something.

I moved through the vacant lots between here and the river. Marlboro seemed to be the cigarette brand of choice; Casey's the source of snack packages. There were a few but not many beverage cans. (Is Iowa's superannuated deposit law still effective?) There were a lot of those colored flag things that people use to mark gas lines and such, but all lying on the ground, obviously discarded. I picked them up; by the time I was finished, the sticks had started poking through the bottom of the bag.

At the edge of the bridge, in the shadow of the new flood wall and branding arch, I found a bucket of... what? Tossing it in would add to my haul in a hurry. But it looked somehow official, like someone was going to use it to do some work right there. Moral dilemma!

I left it. Once in Czech Village, I found what appeared to be the hand of a clock by the Kosek bandshell:

I didn't see a clock nearby from which it would have fallen, so I bagged it.

I stuck to litter, but I could have gone for weeds instead. There were a lot of these guys: 

I never saw them before the derecho, and now they're everywhere. If you're from South Dakota, perhaps you know what they are?

As I moved along, and got more tired, my standards for what to pick up kept going up. 16th Avenue, the principal street of Czech Village, is, as it turns out, chock full of cigarette butts. How many cigarette butts would it take to fill this huge bag? Someone needs to bring a big vacuum. I stopped grabbing butts, and the size of paper for which I would deign to stoop kept getting larger. I started going faster, and eventually reached my turn-around point, where 16th and 12th Avenues meet. (Cedar Rapids geography is weird.)

This picture was supposed to include the bag, but apparently
that's a bag too far for this photographer

A guy walking his dog thanked me for what I was doing. He told me he lives on the other side of I-380 and picks up litter under the bridge. There's so much that he fills the city manager's bag and another of his own. He's ready for the 2-Bag Challenge!

I walked back along the other side of 16th Avenue. I found someone's Medical Assistance Eligibility Card. (Is this something important? I messaged them on Facebook anyhow. They didn't need it, so I shredded it.) Near Czech Town Station, I worked around a guy talking on the phone in an African language. 

Then when I crossed A Street, just before the bridge, I found the mother lode. Good! because I now had a respectable load in my bag. Bad! because why was there so much trash? Was it workers, or trail users, or both? All that litter sent the unmistakable message that this is not a place worth caring about. But it is! Isn't it?

On the south side of the bridge, I found two fish hooks. Yikes! By the time I got back to the parking lot, I was tired, and ready for lunch. 

I don't know what I learned from taking the challenge, other than what I already knew: we live in a disposable society. Litter gets to the ground a lot of ways, probably equal parts inadvertence and malice, with most of it there through carelessness. Whatever I did for the community today, I feel less a sense of accomplishment than I did a couple weeks ago when I did a few hours' semi-competent work on a house for Habitat for Humanity. The house will last, I hope, for many years. The clean up will last only until the next person loses a wrapper out their car window, or empties their ashtray on 16th Avenue.

That's kind of a discouraging note to end on, but I've been feeling kind of discouraged lately about the whole notion of common life on which this blog is based. We have a collective destiny, I'm more convinced than ever, but the fewer people believe it, the more that destiny is going to be painful.

My bag.
I put it under the car while I went back to work...
just in case!

Interior of my bag,
for any of you youngsters who are into garbology

CLEAN UP CR SITE: https://www.cedar-rapids.org/residents/utilities/clean_up_cr.php

SEE ALSO: "Oh Hell," Before Holy Mountain (written April 25, 2012) [towards a theology of littering?]

Bridge of Lions reopened: What's on the other side?

July 22, 2022: cutting the ribbon on the Czech Village side

City officials, business owners, and neighbors gathered last week to celebrate the reopening of the Bridge of Lions over the Cedar River, which connects the New Bohemia and Czech Village neighborhoods via 16th Avenue South. It was closed for nearly a year while flood protections were added on both sides of the river. Just this month, the cherry was added to the sundae in the form of gateway arches on each end of the bridge.

Entrance to Czech Village, July 11, 2022

The arches tell you the name of the neighborhood as you enter. The reverse side of the Czech Village arch says "Gateway to New Bohemia," and the reverse side of the New Bohemia arch says "Gateway to Czech Village." That should settle that, in a way that only a quality branding operation can do.

The speeches ahead of last week's ribbon cutting focused on the flood protection rather than the arches. Gates on each end of the bridge are on rollers which can roll across the road to connect to the flood wall on the other side. They are 14 feet high, providing protection to the volume of the catastrophic 2008 Cedar River flood. For the record, the gates are 67 feet long, four and a half feet thick, and weight 61,200 pounds. 

Roller gate on the New Bohemia side, as seen from the street

The total cost was $12 million, paid by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps in 2018 reversed their earlier decision not to fund flood protection on the west side of the river, possibly because a Republican administration was concerned about a vulnerable Republican member of the U.S. House, but that need not detain us here.

April 2020: Bridge closed

May 2020: Construction begins

July 2020: Construction continues

Speakers included Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell... 

Mayor O'Donnell addresses the gathering

as well as City Manager Jeff Pomeranz from the City of Cedar Rapids, Lt. Col. John M. Fernas from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Monica Vernon, Director of the Czech Village/New Bohemia Main Street District.

There even was royalty:

Czech Village queen, prince and princesses.
One of the princesses had to be rushed to the hospital with heat prostration

Ribbons were cut on both ends of the bridge, for symmetry's sake....

New Bohemia side

...and seldom was heard a discouraging word.

Achieving flood protection for Czech Village and New Bohemia was a prodigious achievement--technically, politically, and financially. These investments of time and energy have clearly created a turning point for this area. Our question here is: turning point to what?

1. Investment. There has already been a lot of momentum on both sides of the river. One of the speakers at the ribbon cutting noted that the number of businesses in the District has more than tripled to 250 in recent years. There remains plenty of space, and unused capacity in existing buildings. Flood protection will encourage construction, and I imagine will make property insurance a lot simpler.

Assuming the increased flow of dollars to be inevitable, the future depends upon what kind of investment comes. Will the current dominance of locally-owned businesses continue, or will chains move in? That matters to how much money stays in the community. Will bars, restaurants, and shops continue to cater to occasional shoppers from outside the neighborhood ("drive-to urbanism"), or will there be places for residents to satisfy everyday needs? Housing construction is underway in New Bohemia, and is planned for Czech Village and the New Bo Extension, so we can hope for a critical mass of local residents, but as Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood Association president Dorothy De Souza Guerdes points out, nothing has resulted from construction so far.

Loftus Lumber site in New Bohemia:
City is trying to juice some mixed-use construction

2. Connection. Growth in the District is likely to affect adjacent neighborhoods, Oakhill Jackson on the New Bohemia side and Hayes Park on the west side. These connections are not certain to happen--at present the District and its neighbors are leading rather parallel lives--but as activity and especially population increase there's bound to be some spillover.

Increased investment in historically underserved neighborhoods is known by the snarl word gentrification. But neighborhood investment surely is desirable, because areas of concentrated poverty are bad for everyone but particularly the residents. Yet it comes, infamously, with risk of widespread displacement of current residents. Growth that includes and provides opportunities for current residents is good. Growth that pushes current residents aside so well-off newcomers can take advantage of the primo location is not good, and where done with public funding is outright scandalous. This could go either way in coming years.

Oakhill Jackson has a lot of older housing as well as
post-flood construction

3. Broader social impacts. I'm in no position to measure the return-on-investment for the federal funds. Some level of benefit is highly likely, but in these inflationary days, we are surely aware that the government can't fund every good thing. What are the opportunity costs of putting their money into Cedar Rapids? Don't know. Can't say.

From the town's perspective, dense development near the center of town saves on infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, and makes efficient public transportation service possible. Should the school district follow the movement of people into the core, they could save on bus expenses because students around Czech Village and New Bohemia would be within walking distance of their school(s).

The environmental impact of development in the District depends on how many short car trips can be replaced by walking or cycling. Not only has the city just passed a climate action plan, but the world has had enough signs of climate change this summer to alarm all but the hardest-core denialists. A residential population walking to nearby stores would have a substantial positive impact on the environment, not to mention their own physical fitness. Conversely, if the District continues to rely on "drive-to" urbanism, while residents drive out of the neighborhood to get groceries and go to school and work, we'll continue to contribute to environmental degradation, including the possibility of future flooding. 

Memorial to "the mayor of 2nd Street" in New Bohemia

Change is inevitable; as Addison Del Maestro writes: We owe it to ourselves and to the future to keep building where we live, to keep iterating, to see people as a resource, and to see growth not like cancer but like childbirth: something painful and beautiful at the same time, something that takes away some things while opening up many more. The development that's about to happen can and should do honor to those like Edward Kuba whose visions built the neighborhoods. 

What has been happening in Czech Village and particularly in New Bohemia doesn't look like "iterating," or course. To be sure our hands were forced by the flood and the need to forestall future floods. But it's good to remember that good change happens incrementally rather than relying on big wins and "game-changers." And that good change is inclusive, not a scrum where only the strong survive. The city can't dictate how change will roll out, but neither can it sit back and assume good change will happen automatically.

Let's continue to celebrate the efforts that have brought the District back. A lot of people worked really really hard to get us here. What happens next will make all the difference.

NOTE: The Czech Village/New Bohemia Action Plan contains a vast array of concepts, which roughly divide between placemaking (wayfinding, parks, streets and other amenities) and housing. Of particular interest to this discussion:

• The Greenway Park (p. 53), a large multi-purpose park southeast of Czech Village and potentially easy to access by surrounding neighborhoods across C Street SW
• The Community Arts Trail (p. 66), a pedestrian/bike walkway on the south side of 10th Avenue from the river past the Cherry Building to 6th Street, highlighted by public art installations.
• Infill housing (pp. 69ff.) in both Czech Village and New Bohemia as well as the New Bo Extension, anticipated once the various amenities are in place, and which "would bring a wide range of prospective residents and visitors into the districts."

SEE ALSO:

"More New, Less Bo?" 4 July 2022

"The Future of Downtown Cedar Rapids," 24 June 2022

"Where Are the Metro's Destinations Heading?" 28 July 2021

"Bridging the Bridge," 26 June 2019

Thomas Merton, prophet of urbanism

 

Thomas Merton (Creative Commons)

A few weeks ago, I was chatting at a concert with two women who I know from very different places, but who turn out to know each other from a Thomas Merton study group. This immediately brought to mind one of my favorite urbanist quotes, which I first encountered at a talk by Parker Palmer. Merton wrote in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander [Image Press, (1966) 2009: 153]: 

In Louisville, at the Corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.

This encounter made me more curious about the context for this bit of prose poetry.

4th and Muhammad Ali (formerly Walnut) in 2019
(Google Street View screen capture)

Merton (1915-1968) was an American monk, who lived at a monastery in Kentucky called Gethsemani ("the strictest monastery he could find," according to Thomas Moore, who wrote the introduction to the 2009 edition). Conjectures was preceded by thirty other published works, including a best-selling autobiography The Seven Story Mountain (1948). More work was published after his death, so there is plenty to nourish study groups for quite awhile. His oeuvre includes poetry, devotions, studies of Eastern religion, and social-ethical commentary. 

Abbey of Gethsemani (Wikimedia commons)

Conjectures is an assembly of short reflections (the "conjectures" of the title) from a decade's worth of his journals. The nonlinear presentation tempts me to pick from the reflections to build my own argument, like creating something from a pile of Legos. This temptation must be resisted, for the sake of the text's integrity, yet there the pile is anyway. What follows is one humble blogger's reading. 

The "In Louisville" quotation above occurs early in part 3, "The Night Spirit and the Dawn Air," the longest of the book's five sections. Many of the reflections in part 3 deal with unity or totality, such as not opposing the hour of dawn and the middle of the night but as seeing them as part of the same day. He is a monk, and most of us are not, but that difference is "illusory" (154). We are not birds, or Shakers, or Marxists, but they each have their wisdom to share, and we lose when we turn our backs on it:

St. Anselm and his group were open to a more tolerant and reasonable dialogue with the Jew as well as the Muslim. But the Crusades did much to destroy this spirit of openness and toleration. (131)

I will be a better Catholic, not if I can refute every shade of Protestantism, but if I can affirm the truth in it and still go further. (140) 

Cities are places of death because humans separate themselves from nature as well as from each other:

Stone Age man was not a man of war. He was concerned with hunting, agriculture, domesticating animals, the home. The city is the place where the mythology of power and war develop, the center from which the magic of power reaches out to destroy the enemy and to perpetuate one's own life and riches--interminably if only it were possible. But it is never possible.... Urban culture is then committed to war "as to the elixir of sovereign power and the most effective purgation of sovereign discontent with that power" (Mumford). (134-135)

That sounds more anti-urban than urbanist, but his key insight--that humans are at their best when they are conscious of and connected to the world around them--is one he shares with, say, Charles Montgomery and Jeff Speck.

Then, a little later, comes this koan:

Flycatchers, shaking their wings after the rain. (137)

He concludes by hoping that everyone gets to a similar insight about human common life:

Because there is love in the world, and because Christ has taken our nature to Himself, there remains always the hope that man will finally, after many mistakes and even disasters, learn to disarm and to make peace, recognizing that he must live at peace with his brother..... Everything else is trivial compared with this supreme and urgent need of man. (213)

Other themes of the book consider his "bystander" perspective, viewing the day-to-day socioeconomic struggles of the 20th century from the safe distance of a monastery, technology, and evil. Part 1, "Barth's Dream," points to the difficulty in focusing on what matters, whether in human society or the worship of God. Part 2, "Truth and Violence: An Interesting Era," discusses the difficulty of careful moral reasoning or Christian social action amidst political crisis and rapid technological progress. He writes a lot about differences. To define ourselves by what we are not--Catholic not Protestant, Christian not Jewish, capitalist not communist, male not female, one who doesn't have sex or play cards or eat meat or whatever--is missing the point of human life. This theme provides additional context for the quotation with which I started, because the epiphany is that what unites us is more powerful than what divides us. He is them and we are all together, in spite of our labels and lifestyles. 

Then, in part four, he has another reflection on Louisville, sounding for all the world like Jane Jacobs:

Cities, even Louisville (which, being the city nearest to home is to some sense my city), leave me with a sense of placelessness and exile. There is an immense movement spread all over everything: the ceaseless motion of hot traffic, tired and angry people, in a complex swirl of frustration. While one could easily have all that one needs within easy reach, the purpose of a city seems to be to guarantee one has to travel about eighteen to fifty miles a day just in the performance of the routine duties of everyday life. One must move through noise, stink, and general anger, through blocks of dilapidation, in order to get somewhere where anger and bewilderment are concentrated in a neon-lit air-conditioned enclave, glittering with "products," humming with piped-inn music, and reeking of the nondescript, sterile, and sweet smell of the technologically functioning world. Then back again into the heat, through the devastated areas, blocks and blocks razed by the bulldozer, empty fields of ragweed, with an occasional gutted building standing in the void: a wreck in which the the winos come to howl, or where the bums sleep, or sinners sin, vast areas for the grasshoppers of the apocalypse. (There are of course more polite and more intricate sins in the bright new buildings.)

Even where war has not yet touched, cities are in devastation and nonentity: and yet, once again, under the surface of glitter and trash, in the midst of all the mess of traffic, there are the people, sick and distraught, drunk, mad, melancholy, anguished or simply bored to extinction. It is the people I love, not the roles in the city and not the glitter of business and of progress.

Can't we do something more than give them air-conditioning? (259-260) 

As they say on The War on Cars Twitter page, "Fr. Thomas Merton, welcome to the war on cars."

In his introduction, Thomas Moore cautions, "I have been told by those who knew him that we was not the person of his public persona, and that anything I think about him is probably wrong" (2009: xii). I have written of  my own frustration at the gap between my blogging about our common life and my  frequently less-lofty attitudes. Probably Merton, too, struggled to act on his own insights. At least he had them! and knowing that even Thomas Merton struggled to be as wise as his books should give us all courage to persist at the rewarding struggle of common life.

The Neighboring Movement comes to Cedar Rapids

 

Catherine Johnson (from neighboringmovement.org)

 

 

While it's easy to see problems, it's the ability to see, connect and mobilize people's gifts that enables a neighborhood to thrive, said Catherine Johnson, co-founder of The Neighboring Movement, at the outset of a two-day workshop at Groundswell in Cedar Rapids. She appeared with Elizabeth Ramirez, program director of the organization's Community Animator Network. The event was co-sponsored by Matthew 25 and Nourished.

Johnson described moving to the South Central neighborhood of Wichita, Kansas, a section of town disdained by realtors, bankers, and city leaders. Once she and husband Matthew met their neighbors,  they mobilized them into a social network with an impressive variety of accomplishments. The Johnsons built on their experiences in "SoCe" to create a nonprofit that helps people across the country take "simple, doable, and universal actions that make a lasting difference in neighborhoods." In a world where "the percentage of American adults who say they're lonely has doubled from 20 percent to 40 percent" since the 1980s, and "the feeling of loneliness increases risk of death by 26%" (from information cards at the workshop), they respond by [i]nspiring connection, and building trust. We believe that everyone has gifts, and when people use their gifts they experience wholeness and the community gets stronger. By living authentically we can grow and thrive together (from their webpage).

Elizabeth Ramirez (from neighboringmovement.org)

The Neighboring Movement uses the principles of asset-based community development (ABCD), a term coined in Chicago by John P. Kretzmann and John P. McKnight over thirty years ago. [I knew "Jody" Kretzmann in the 1990s when we were both connected to a Chicago-based urban studies program. That has no relevance to what we're discussing here, but a man's got to insert what a man's got to insert.]  ABCD, then, is about the same vintage as new urbanism. They do seem to speak to the same problems, and share similar visions.

ABCD is a way of building communities, not by bringing in services from outside, but by identifying the skills and assets already there. Johnson and Ramirez referred to valuing "the glass half-full," "relationships for mutual support," and "citizen-led action... for equity and justice." As such it seems mainly oriented to central city neighborhoods--the ABCD Institute at DePaul University refers on their website to "communities in trouble"--but people everywhere can feel the need for connection. Maybe ABCD can help individuals deal with stress and isolation exacerbated by the suburban development pattern.

300 block of 8th St SE, 2013:
Even in the MedQuarter, porches and sidewalks provide space to encounter neighbors

The workshop was entitled 8 Front Doors, from the number of adjacent houses in a typical grid pattern: three in front, three behind, and one on either side. A handout for compiling information from your own neighborhood is here. We were challenged to include names and as much information as we could about each household, and characterize our connection as "stranger," "acquaintance," or "relationship." ("What about adversarial relationships?" asked one participant. Let us not go there.) For the record, I  could name seven of the eight, had three relationships, four acquaintances, and one stranger. I'm sure this is more impressive than it would have been two years ago, because a lot of us were brought together when dealing with the August 2020 derecho. I defined "relationship" as people I could ask for help on something, whose talents were familiar, and with whom I could discuss things I wouldn't with an average person. Would I invite them to join me/us for a ballgame or a beer? Maybe not. But now I have some ideas about how to broaden and deepen the neighborhood circle.

For individuals, Johnson and Ramirez said the key was to "make yourself available." They used the phrase "third things," which seemed analogous to Ray Oldenburg's concept of third places. Examples included walking your dog, having coffee or grilling in your front yard, borrowing something, asking for help, and hosting a neighborhood gathering. Their handouts added sharing food, going for a walk and striking up a conversation, and texting a greeting. Even more "neighboring tips" are on their website. Some of those activities are more intensive than others, but all can help the process of "discovering health, wealth and power in our neighborhoods." Like Oldenburg writing about third places, or Jane Jacobs writing about sidewalks, the key is to build community starting with incidental contacts.

Lightworks Cafe, summer 2021:
Commercial space with outdoor seating

Connections are good in themselves, but also the basis for community-based efforts. An "asset map" compiles information on the strengths of the people in the neighborhood--what they know, what they can do, what they feel passionately about--as well as physical attributes like access to public transportation or parks. Strengths can be found in surprising places, as we discovered playing a game called We Can; everything in the game was either something one of us could do or something which someone we knew could do. The asset map can be used to organize events (who's good at cooking, who's good at filing permits), to connect people with similar interests, and to help people move up the "ladder of participation" so they can have more control over their living environments. Johnson and Ramirez caution beginners not to "turn people into data" but to keep the focus on building relationships, and that building trust takes time.

Ladder of participation (from neighboringmovement.org)

I like the idealism of The Neighboring Movement; it's a bit motivational, but not too much. I'm not sure how it might play in my upper-middle-class streetcar suburban neighborhood, but I at least know I can be more intentional about getting to know who my neighbors are. I listed three different organizational affiliations at the workshop, and it's possible one or more of those might get something going. Attention must be paid, though. Between climate events and economic emergencies and political extremism and gun violence, there's a lot going on in the world to shake us out of any illusion we can remain in self-contained enclaves. We're going to need neighbors to get us through all the gathering storms, and they're going to need us, and The Neighboring Movement can show us the way. 

SEE ALSO: "Who is My Neighbor?" 10 July 2013

More New, Less Bo?

 

View of NewBo Lofts site from Geonetric building

Big plans for what's dubbed the NewBo Expansion remain the most intriguing feature of the Czech Village/New Bo Area Action Plan adopted by the City of Cedar Rapids in December 2019. The city website explains the plan follows similar planning initiatives already completed... These plans take the concepts identified from the City's comprehensive plan, EnvisionCR, and develop action steps and goals tailored to a specific geographic region. Most of the development was anticipated within three years (pp. 81-87), but of course the coronavirus pandemic intervened and then came the derecho.

The NewBo Expansion covers the area between 16th Avenue SE and the Cedar River down to the Cargill plant (about 10th Street SE). Prior to the June 2008 flood the area contained a lot of derelict industrial properties as well as some small houses; nearly all of that has been demolished. The area action plan contains a variety of initiatives, spread across numerous pages, which I have compiled on this crudely-drawn map:

The disclaimer that comes with this plan, of course, is that dreams appear in plans that don't ever get built (see Westdale, the Highway 100 extension, or any schematic ever). But as I look out at the Extension through my summer office window it seems worth a tour of what's there now and what might be there some day.

Most of the anticipated development is described as "mixed-use" (p. 72): 

The NewBo Expansion area will develop around a core of mixed-use development sites. Retail and restaurant uses could occupy the ground levels of an office building and multi-family housing enclosing the Sinclair Plaza [on 3rd Street, where the pavement currently ends].... Stretching out from this high-activity public plaza, building uses would transition to strictly residential...

the future Sinclair Plaza (see p. 55)

Sinclair Plaza, looking up 3rd St towards 16th Ave

3rd Street will be extended to an intersection with 9th Street. (Despite their names, these  streets aren't parallel now, and will be less so in the future.) Alongside 3rd Street will be a "promenade" (p. 64) from Sinclair Plaza past 9th Street to a new branch of the Cedar River Trail. "Tuck-under" townhomes would line the north side of 3rd Street, providing the “eyes and ears” for the desired promenade and bicycle amenities" (p. 72).

3rd Street looking towards the river

4th Street, which will also be extended to 9th Street, will mostly have parking areas along it, though "Two small-scale “missing middle” housing buildings could sit on the west side of the 4th Street and 16th Avenue intersection" (p. 72).

non-Geonetric side of 16th: 300 block

Geonetric side of 16th: 300 block

NewBo Lofts development, which I guess is on the "east" side of 4th St

On the opposite side of 4th Street would be the 4th Street Trail Extension (p. 64), which completes a loop on the Cedar River Trail, connecting at 7th Avenue and across the river over the new Smokestack Bridge. It crosses 12th Avenue at 5th Street next to Geonetric, crosses 16th Avenue next to the roundabout, then angles over to where 4th and 9th Streets will meet.

future intersection of 4th and 9th Streets

From there it swings south to cross the river and meet the current trail.

the bridge that was, and will be again, from the NewBo side 

...and from across the river, on the existing trail

River access and overlook (p. 57) will augment a paved trail spur that already runs along the river from the end of 10th Street...

...to 2nd Street and 16th Avenue.

That intersection currently hosts Kickstand but has three undeveloped corner, including the former location of Hach Bottling House:

Mixed-use infill development is planned for all three corners.

The east end of the NewBo Extension will is projected for small single-family housing in the area of 9th Street and 16th Avenue (p. 77).

A old stone building on 9th Street is planned for retrofit: Some possible uses include an incubator complex, makerspace, arts cooperative, and destination restaurant or brewery.... Lying along the proposed 4th Street Trail, the renovated building program could extend out into a series of exterior spaces that would provide amenities for trail users specifically and also the public at-large (p. 74).

There are definite advantages to infill development, as opposed to further extending the edge of the city. One question is how much should the city pay to make this all happen? Working with the system we have, as opposed to the system we wish we had, I'm OK with the incentives for developing the Banjo Block downtown and First-and-First across the river in Kingston, because those are path breaking developments that can bend the curve in the core of the city. But where do you stop paying for development, and leave market forces to work their magic? For example, I'm less convinced on something like the Loftus Lumber block in New Bohemia, which is looking at $100 million in city incentives to get going (Payne 2022). New Bohemia is already going, and either demand exists for going an additional block (in which case developers should be jumping in on their own), or there isn't (in which case the city should stay out of it). Is there a public interest in developing the NewBo Extension that would justify significant public outlays?

Question #2: How many facets of this plan need to come true? Life teaches us that there's a big difference between the original concept and what eventually gets built. What if it's just buildings, without the trails and promenades and squares? What if the buildings serve a limited array of people? What if they don't get filled at all? There need to be some kind of market signals so we don't build too much of the wrong thing, but also social signals so we're not just responding to the first dollars coming from the young and well-off. My hunch is that infill housing once populated will generate its own economy, but a trendy economy (bars and hair salons) is not going to be as resilient as one rooted in daily life (grocery and hardware stores and schools).

The best case scenario is that all the infill developments bring in a diverse variety of residents to support a 24-hour downtown, where offices, grocery and hardware stores, restaurants, and entertainment venues will all want to be. If the people come, a lot of the commercial development will take care of itself. The third question, then: are local governments prepared for this to succeed? Can they take responsibility for supporting the ensuing growth with city services like schools (looking at you, Cedar Rapids Community School District) and bus transportation (looking at you, city). The NewBo Expansion is presently in the attendance area for Grant Wood School, more than two non-walkable miles away across Mt. Vernon Road, and scheduled to be merged with even-further-away Erskine School after 2025. With as much density as we're talking in the Expansion plan, there's no reason for anyone to be dependent on owning one or more automobiles.

Finally, the Expansion will abut the Oakhill-Jackson neighborhood; in fact a lot of it was in the Oakhill-Jackson neighborhood before the flood forced buyouts and demolitions. Will opportunities be taken to connect with this older section of town, or will the Expansion become an enclave of the young and well-off that has nothing to say to people living in working-class housing? Inclusion and connection are not easy to make happen, but seem critical to the overall well-being of the city.

These plans for infill development in the NewBo Expansion are hopeful. And there doesn't seem to be too awfully much parking on my crudely drawn map above. To make a real difference in the future of our city, they should occur in an open, inclusive, and sustainable way.

SEE ALSO: Erin Jordan, "NewBo Lofts Coming in 2024 After Coralville Developer Takes Over Former Art Tech Village," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 23 December 2021

mural on the Ideal Theater building, facing Kickstand