Week Without Driving diary

Cedar Rapids traffic is rarely congested, but there's a steady supply of it,
even during Week Without Driving

Week Without Driving is being observed for the first time this year in Cedar Rapids. Begun in 2021 in Vancouver, Washington, it has gotten bigger each year since. Founder Anna Zivarts of Disability Rights Washington has also published a book in 2024, When Driving Isn't an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency (Island, 2024).

Week Without Driving is primarily about raising awareness of issues surrounding accessibility. The webpage starts with 

If you can drive or afford a car, you may not understand what it's like to rely on walking, rolling, transit and asking for rides. But for nearly a third of people living in the United States--people with disabilities, young people, seniors and people who can't afford cars or gas--this is our every day.

The four simple rules for the observance are a little farther down the same page.

So this is not about environmental conservation, or personal fitness, and not really about personal ethical choices either. People who choose to walk or bike to work are considered, along with motor vehicle drivers, as "those who have the option to drive."

I am an older, white male, as yet able-bodied, who lives about two miles from the center of our city. I am married, with two grown children; collectively we own four cars and a cargo van. I am retired, but I still have an office at the college, which is barely a mile from our house. This situation creates options for me that a lot of people don't have. Part of my week will be spent looking for those people, who are often invisible or at least indistinguishable from everyone else, and perceiving how others may not have the ability to navigate the week the same way I do.

Monday, September 30 (sunny, 82F)

Walked to: St. Paul's United Methodist Church

I had things to do and people to meet at church this morning. It's less than a mile away, so not a difficult walk. Another member of our group lives near me, and rode his bicycle. Everyone else came from farther away. In this case walkability is partly a matter of choice of where to live and where to attend church; my last church was four miles away with some tough street crossings, and I never once walked there.

3rd Avenue SE: I can walk around this tree... can you?

But what's "not a difficult walk" for me isn't easy for everybody, nor do I expect it's going to stay easy for me as the years roll on. As I walked, I noticed fast-moving traffic on the thoroughfares (19th Street and 3rd Avenue) I had to cross; walnuts in various states of repair on the sidewalk; a car parked across the handicapped-accessible curb cut; and trees encroaching on the sidewalk. None was a barrier to me, but I wasn't using a cane or a wheelchair, pushing a stroller, walking with a small child, or being a small child. It was an unseasonably lovely day, not raining or icy. Even having a destination within a mile's walk can be an unwelcome adventure depending on the circumstances.

NOTE: Today, Greater Greater Washington and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association are co-sponsoring a walk audit in DC. I wonder if Cedar Rapids would ever be willing to try that? I'm sure there are disability advocates around here who could be hired to lead it.

Tuesday, October 1 (sunny, 68F)

Walked to: Hoover Guitar Studio

Biked to: Uptown Coffee, Marion

Grant Wood Trail approaching Marion

The Cedar Rapids metro is a few suspenseful connections from having a highly serviceable trails network. There have been some delays, so we're still about at the point I described here a year ago. We have a very strong trails advocacy group, the Linn County Trails Association, which deserves a lot of credit for what's happened. 

LCTA now lists 2025 completion dates for both the Grant Wood Trail which will connect Marion to the main north-south trail, and the (closer to my house) Cemar Trail which would arguably be the fastest route between the two downtowns.

To connect to the trails, or to get anywhere by bicycle until the network is ready for serious commuting, you're best advised to go by side streets, but like most metro areas in America our grid system is patchy. Today I tried going right up C Street NE (25800 cars per day); I made it, but I wouldn't recommend it for a child or an inexperienced rider. 

Uptown Coffee is in the historic (1901) Memorial Hall building

Uptown Coffee is not only delightful, they give double punches for bike riders! 

My card runneth over, because I cycled here

I brought my laptop to Uptown so I could check in with the excellent 880 Cities webinar series, this week featuring Bridget Marquis of Reimagining the Civic Commons--pertinent to this Week Without Driving, because public space is meaningless without accessibility, and accessibility is meaningless without places to access. I saw quite a few people walking on the Grant Wood Trail as I approached Uptown, generally my age or older.

In other news, the City of Waterloo (50 miles north of Cedar Rapids) is going to paint their bike lanes green, emulating Cedar Rapids (Winterer 2024). And The War on Cars podcast featured Sarah Bronin, author of Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World (W.W. Norton, 2024), which includes cases of urban zoning reform that have improved accessibility, which Cedar Rapids should emulate. 

Wednesday, October 2 (sunny, windy 78F)

Bus to: Vault Co-Working Space/Helen G. Nassif YMCA/Dairy Queen [replaced car trip]

Walked to: St. Paul's United Methodist Church [replaced car trip]

The sign said "OPEN" but it wasn't

This was the first day that I would have driven, were it not Week Without Driving. For people who own them, cars are more than just means of rapidly getting around that live at your house, and whose costs are already sunk. They're places to lock your laptop while you work out, and to stow your wet swim clothes afterwards. The co-working space where I work has a picnic deck in front that no one was using today, so I hung them there until I began to worry they would blow off onto someone's windshield and get driven to Clinton or some place. They got pretty dry while they were out in the wind anyhow.

Drying in the breeze

I also prefer to use the car when I'm getting ice-cream-for-later. We don't have an ice cream shop in our neighborhood. We don't have any shops in our neighborhood. The closest Dairy Queen is a mile away, across 1st Avenue; there is no direct transit between us and them, and I didn't trust the soft-serve not to degrade if I walked or biked. There's another one in the opposite direction, 1.4 miles away, with the same problems but moreso. There's a third Dairy Queen on 1st Avenue, 1.8 miles away, propitiously located along a bus route that, quite uncharacteristically for Cedar Rapids, runs every 15 minutes. We are well served by this franchise, but with all those choices, I guessed wrong.

Dairy Queen, 3304 1st Avenue NE:
Oldest (I think) DQ in CR

I studied the bus schedule, and estimated I had 12 minutes from getting off the outbound bus to getting on the inbound bus with my frozen treats. It was actually 13 minutes this afternoon. However, after all that planning, I found the store empty. In a car, I might have driven to another DQ, but today I just caught the inbound bus and headed home.

The third trip on my day's agenda that I would usually take by car was church, where we have choir rehearsal from 7:30 til 9 p.m. It's not a long walk, and I don't even have to cross 1st Avenue, but in the dark it's not particularly pleasant. I walked after all, and it was fine. I'd only gotten a couple blocks when I realized I was wearing a dark gray t-shirt and black pants... not exactly hi-viz! I had just never thought about it. I guess one of the unexplored luxuries of driving is you don't have to think about things like what yoiu're wearing. Or where to stow your wet swimsuit.

All this over-thinking shows how accustomed I am to having a car at my disposal, even if I usually get around town other ways. Not having a car would shape my choices, and maybe I'd make different ones, like eating my ice cream at Dairy Queen rather than taking it home. Or maybe never doing anything in the evening. But we should also recognize that the design of our sprawled city, with daytime-only bus service and residence-only neighborhoods, also constrains our choices.

In other news today, the State of Iowa rejected the vast proportion of Cedar Rapids's traffic cameras (Sostaric 2024). I have mixed feelings about traffic cameras, but I think this is an indication of our stodgy state government's solicitude for drivers that devalues walkers, wheelers, and cyclists.

Tbursday, October 3 (sunny, 80F)

Bus to: Lightworks Cafe, Ground Transportation Center/Cedar Rapids Public Library/Cedar Rapids Museum of Art

Stephanie and Emily of Community Development celebrate Week Without Driving;
I scored a package of Almost Famous Popcorn and a chip clip

I've previously written about our city bus system. Thinking in terms of accessibility, Cedar Rapids Transit is a good example of Jarrett Walker's ridership/coverage tradeoff (see Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking About Public Transit Can Improve Our Communities and Our Lives [Island, revised ed, 2024]). Cedar Rapids definitely has a coverage system, which means many people around the city who might need a bus will have one reasonably close by. The system offers free rides to seniors, the disabled, and students at Cedar Rapids public schools. During Week Without Driving, all rides are free!

Round, round, I get around

The disadvantages are 

• even a coverage system can't get to everyone in a town as sprawled as ours, so not everyone is near a route; 
• covering as much of the city as the system does means routes are quite circuitous; and 
• buses run only during the daytime. Except for the #5 bus, which runs along 1st Avenue East every 15 minutes, buses run twice an hour during school commute times, and only once an hour the rest of the day. The system has limited service on Saturdays, and none on Sundays or holidays. For anyone who doesn't need a bus, these are inevitable deal-breakers.

Getting to Lightworks in Oak Hill Jackson this morning for coffee with arts impresario F. John Herbert was easy; living within two miles of downtown means I don't have to deal with as much of the circuitousness as someone who lives or is travelling farther out. The #2 bus stops about a block from my house, and it's a fairly direct route to Lightworks, which is two blocks from the stop by the Post Office. Returning by the #2 is less practical, so I walked four blocks to the stop by Greene Square, took the #5 to 18th Street, and walked five more blocks home. 

Friday, October 4 (sunny, 74F)

Biked to: Coe College/Helen G. Nassif YMCA, Coe College [replaced car trip]

Bus to: The Map Room

 

Approaching Coe College, 2014

I spent most of today on campus at Coe College, my employer for 35 years and where I still have an office. My short commute from home can be done any number of ways (except bus, where I wind up walking half the distance anyway). Moreover, most of the commute can be done on side streets, so the only real trick is crossing 1st Avenue when I get to campus. On a bike, I prefer using crossing mid-block to avoid turning traffic. 

The lights at Coe Road and College Drive are timed such that there's always a long enough gap in the traffic. This is not true for pedestrians, however, even me with my relatively fast clip.

I went downtown to swim before lunch. There is some cycling infrastructure, but it's complicated by crossing 8th and 7th Streets, which are the entrance and exit to Interstate 380, which was foolishly plowed through the center of town back in the day. One chooses between:

• 2nd Avenue: NO, blocked by Physicians Clinic of Iowa
• 3rd Avenue: BEST INFRASTRUCTURE, but you can be overlooked in drivers' enthusiasm to get onto the highway
• 4th Avenue: LESS CROSS TRAFFIC, with four way stops at both 7th and 8th, but narrow and the light at 10th Street is very very long
• 5th Avenue: NO, same as 4th except 7th and 8th don't stop, pavement is really degraded

The infamous light, 4th Avenue and 10th Street

I opted for 4th Avenue, and ran the light when I heard a car coming up behind me.

No Week Without Driving for Slager: appliance delivery requires a truck

 Saturday, October 5 (sunny 89F [tied record high temp])

Biked to: Bruegger's Bagels

Car to: Holley's Shop for Men/Target, China Inn/Paramount Theatre

Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra, Paramount Theatre, 123 3rd Av SE

I knew from the start that eventually I would have to drive somewhere this week, because we had tickets to the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra tonight. Conductor Timothy Hankewich's baton was scheduled to start waving at 7:30 p.m., long after the bus stops running. On my own I might have walked the two miles, but it's not a great walk. So we, and the other concertgoers, and those attending "Carrie" at Theater Cedar Rapids, and other downtown food and entertainment seekers all coated the streets with our cars. I would have loved to have had an option like a bus, but that is not to be. Nothing takes the romance out of a symphony concert like driving in traffic and searching for a parking space. (No, the answer is not more parking spaces. Parking is the enemy of everything for which a city exists.)

The alternative to driving to the symphony is not going. 

Holley's Shop for Men, Lindale Mall

So it was not a big deal this afternoon when we drove to Lindale Mall to get me a suit for our niece's wedding on the 18th. Bus service to the mall is pretty good, but then we ran an errand to Target afterwards, which would have required a more complicated plan. We left Holley's at 2:30. To get to Target, we would take the #30 bus that stops west of the mall by Jo Ann Fabrics, with the next one due at 3:20. This northeast circulator would get us to Target about 3:45, with the next one coming an hour later. We'd take this one to Wal-Mart, arriving at 4:55 (2.5 hours after we left the mall) where we could transfer to the #6 headed downtown, except it would have stopped running by this time. Meanwhile, the real life Nesmiths were about to start dressing for the symphony.

Sunday, October 6 (sunny 72F)

Walked to: St. Paul's United Methodist Church

Biked to: Lightworks Cafe

I didn't drive on this last day of Week Without Driving, only because my wife does the grocery shopping. Hy-Vee Food and Drug Store, the leading grocery chain in Cedar Rapids, has moved its operations to large lot stores at the edges of town. There are buses that serve those stores, and others serve Fareway and New Pioneer Co-op, but of course those don't run on Sundays.

⛽

Week Without Driving wants to focus on accessibility, not on the environment, fitness, community or personal choice. Okay. My experiences this week have identified a number of obstacles to access: condition of walkways, bus schedules, location of destinations, and street design. I didn't mention loose dogs, larger and heavier trucks, or aggressive fellow travelers, though those are frequently barriers as well. Prioritizing remedies will depend on whether the obstacle to access is a physical limitation, age (young or old), or poverty. But whatever we do, it will also facilitate anyone's lighter tread on the environment, personal fitness, city financial sustainability, and building stronger communities. And whatever we do will inevitably be limited by the extent to which we have sprawled and continue to sprawl.

Regardless, we should do something. I hope for some specific policy initiatives from the city in response to this week's experiences.

Appendix

SIERRA CLUB SURVEY Take our Week Without Driving Survey! (sierraclub.org)

1. Are you able to participate in the Week Without Driving challenge by swapping one or more car trips with walking, biking, or taking public transportation?
1. If yes or unsure, what type of transportation would you plan to take instead?
2. If you're unable to participate at all, or to the degree that you would like, what are the barriers in your community that make it more difficult to reduce driving or avoid it altogether?
2. What's the one or more thing in your community that would make it easier to get around without a car?
3. How are you involved with the Sierra Club?

OTHER LINKS

Dan Allison, "A Trip to Fair Oaks," Getting Around Sacramento, 2 October 2024

Courtney Cole, "Week Without Driving Has Arrived--Here's Why It Matters," Smart Growth America, 30 September 2024

Nicole Dieker, "Living in Cedar Rapids Without a Car," The Billfold, 22 February 2018

"Week Without Driving is Rocking," America Walks, 3 October 2024

Anna Zivarts, "No One Left Behind: Nondrivers Are Facing Crisis Too," Strong Towns, 16 August 2024

Anna Zivarts, "When Prioritizing All Modes is a Lie," Planetizen, 16 September 2024

10th anniversary post: Is a baseball complex a (merit) good?

 

Source: Google Maps

In the summer of 2014, I wrote a reaction to news of state and local government contributions to a new baseball complex outside of Marion. At the time, the state had provided a $1.266 million grant, the City of Marion $750,000, and Linn County had donated the land. Ultimately, according to the operation's webpage, Prospect Meadows secured $5.5 million in public funding, about half the startup cost of the project ("Our Story" n.d.).

At the time I was less impressed by the audacious scope of the project than by the very ordinariness of the public-private transaction. There hadn't seemed to be a lot of controversy or even discussion about the governments donating to the creation of a private business. Yet, in a world (Earth) where government budgets at all levels are stressed, and in which market efficiency is praised as an alternative to governmental inefficiency, this was a lot of money to spend without examining the very basis of the expenditure. I quoted Adam Smith on public works, which are necessary but properly...

can be made only where that commerce requires them, and consequently where it is proper to make them (Wealth of Nations, V.i.iii, Art.1)

and Strong Towns on providing existing businesses with technical assistance rather than handouts to selected ventures, which would include baseball complexes and our current obsession, data centers:

[B]y the way, we'll still be bringing jobs and new businesses in from outside the community. The only difference will be that we won't be paying them to come--they will want to be here. If we are successful--and we will be--they will be paying us to come here. (Marohn 2012: pt.2)

Prospect Meadows began operation in 2019, right before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic--certainly not the most auspicious year for any business, though it did receive over $2.6 million in American Rescue Plan Act money (King 2024: 7A).

Now comes word that the firm is asking governments for additional money to pay off debts. Projections of future revenue remain optimistic, but they have not been hitting their targets, and the well-connected, well-funded management of Prospect Meadows have reached out again. In September, the Linn County Board of Supervisors approved a $250,000 grant contingent on additional funding being raised by the firm. The City of Cedar Rapids, whose city limits are about 10 miles from this complex on the other side of the City of Marion, will consider advancing $300,000 that would eventually go to Prospect Meadows from the city's hotel-motel tax fund (King 2024: 1A). 

Local governments are stuck in an unenviable position, because the risk in this venture has already been socialized. As Linn County Supervisor Louis Zumbach points out, "If it isn't a ball field, what does it become? Any other use is going to cost more money" (King 2024: 7A).

The Lingering Question: Is Government Support for Prospect Meadows Responding to a Market Failure?

In a mostly-market system such as America's, government's role is to act when the private market is not meeting some need. This contingency is known as market failure, which admittedly [a] has a certain pejorative sound to it, unintended, but there it is; and [b] is a vague and plastic concept. You will see market failure where I don't, and vice versa. Not wrong, just different. 

Market failures come in a variety of forms but fall into two broad types. Sometimes the conditions for a market don't exist for a good, like clean air (not excludable) or food safety (buyers have insufficient information) or some monopoly (insufficient competition). Other times all of those conditions exist, but the outcomes are politically unacceptable, like recessions (very unpleasant and scary) or access to parks (everyone deserves this regardless of ability to pay). Market transactions can have externalities, effects that fall on people other than the buyer or seller; these can be negative (pollution) or positive (better educated people in your community). There's much more to this, of course, but we are busy people; if you want to know more, take a course in economics.

Prospect Meadows has been making two market failure arguments for public support. One is based on services they can provide to people who would otherwise lack those opportunities. The Kiwanis Miracle League provides baseball games, equipment and uniforms to physically or mentally disabled young people. The Optimist League of Dreams serves 2nd-5th graders whose families were displaced by the 2008 flood.

The second argument is that players and their families traveling to baseball showcases bring an infusion of money into the local economy through hotel stays and restaurant meals. This is the rationale for financial contributions to Prospect Meadows from distant Cedar Rapids. Board chair Tim Strellner claims Prospect Meadows created over $11 million in local economic impact in 2022, resulting in $1 million in tax payments to local governments (King 2024: 7A). That's out of a gross domestic product for Linn County of nearly $20 billion (FRED).

Allowing for some exaggeration, would that economic activity not have occurred but for the showcases offered by Prospect Meadows? Would the several dozen children been inactive but for the opportunities of their programming? Probably no to both questions, but that's the justification for massive government support for this venture.

Conclusions

Government support for Prospect Meadows over the last decade, and continuing into the next one, likely owes more to personal connections, and the tendency of policy makers to be impressed by big splashy plans. I wish we could be more principled: no government money unless a market failure is conclusively demonstrated. I wish the public would be more allergic to situations where profits are private but risk is socialized. 

$300,000 is admittedly a small part of the city's FY25 budget of nearly $900 million. It's only worth mentioning as one probably common case of expenditure that socializes what should be private risk. Collectively these expenditures have opportunity costs, because money spent thusly can't go to street repair or housing assistance or park equipment. None of those will gin up business for our hotels, but that shouldn't be the business of government. They would enable the daily lives of residents, and that should be the business of government.

NEW SOURCE: Grace King, "Prospect Meadows Complex Seeks Public Aid," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 18 September 2024, 1A, 7A

The Suburbanization of New Bohemia

900 3rd St SE: Loftus Lofts (186 units) under construction

The New Bohemia neighborhood, located on the east side of the Cedar River south of downtown, was largely decimated by the 2008 flood. What had once been an industrial area with some working class housing and artists' studios suddenly became a tabula rasa. When I started spending serious time here in 2016, several historic buildings had been functionally rehabbed, joined by the New Bo City Market in a former factory-warehouse, and the newly constructed Geonetric building. There was also a great deal of open space. 

1014 2nd St SE, 2012: Where the Row Houses are now
(Google Earth screenshot)

That space, so close to the city center, was going to be filled with something, though for years what that something would be was up to the viewer's imagination. So it was possible for to look out over an area dominated by bars and hair salons and touristy shops, and imagine an emerging urban village, where a diversity of residents would find all the necessities of life as well as food and entertainment within convenient walking distance. There was a time when it seemed a highly likely outcome. It wasn't there yet, but that was okay, because New Bohemia was very much a work in progress.

Big plans for New Bohemia: 2019 Action Plan, p. 40

It's still a work in progress, and ten years from now it will still be a work in progress, so we are far from pronouncing a final verdict, even as some of that open space gets filled up. Quite a few residential units, mostly apartments and condominiums, have responded to the gap in housing, with more in process or proposed. 

Adaptive reuse:
Water Tower Place Condominiums, 900 2nd St SE

 

 

Compatible construction:
Row Houses on Second, 1008-1018 2nd St SE

The Cedar Rapids Gazette, in one of the last stories by ace reporter Marissa Payne (cited below), listed a number of ideas in circulation for some of the remaining lots in New Bohemia:

900 3rd St SE: Loftus Lumber site under construction by Conlon Construction, to be five-story mixed-used property including 186 market-rate apartments ranging from studio to (two) two-story lofts. [In the Action Plan, the 10th Avenue side is projected to be a "shared space street."]

Loftus Building, taken from the Cherry Building

1000 block of 2nd St SE: Conlon Construction proposed a 150-room hotel plus 10 townhomes between 2nd Street and the river, across the street from the Row Houses, on what is now part of a long parking lot. [In the Action Plan, this land is projected for apartments.]

Future hotel site? The federal courthouse is in the background

116 16th Av SE: Darryl High wants to build Vesnice, consisting of one six-story residential building (63 units) facing the river and one four-story mixed use building facing 2nd St with 22 residential units above 1443 sq ft of commercial space. [In the Action Plan, this land is projected for apartments.]

1600 and 1700 blocks of 2nd St SE: Chad Pelley has bought land (from Brett "Bo Mac" McCormick), and intends to purchase additional city-owned parcels on both sides of 2nd Street.

View from the riverside trail of the property under construction, 
New Bo Lofts in the distance

Pelley hopes to build a mixed-use development that's heavy on owner-occupied units. Before he acts, he told the Gazette, "I definitely want buy-in from this neighborhood. What are we missing?" [In the Action Plan, this land is projected for townhouses. 2nd Street will be extended beyond the current cul-de-sac to an unnamed cross street, which will run to 4th Street, past a planned Sinclair Plaza.]

Looking towards the river from the cul-de-sac at the end of 2nd St,
National Czech and Slovak Museum in the distance

Besides these, the Matyk Building, which until recently housed the delightful but financially unsustainable Bohemian (1029 3rd Street SE), is up for sale. Asking price is over $700,000, about double the assessed value. Maybe the hope is someone sees the future value of that land surging? And uses it to build... what? (The only reason I can think of that someone would pay double the assessed value for a property is because they believe it would bring more value with a more intensive use.) 

For sale: Matyk Building

While 1st Avenue East empties out, building and occupying are going gangbusters in New Bohemia. Demand is clearly here, not there. Marissa Payne in the Gazette attributes that to "[t]he NewBo District's arts and cultural scene, entertainment options and a mix of restaurants." Community Development Director Jennifer Pratt told the Gazette: "It is a continuation of what we've seen since the reinvestment after the 2008 flood.... We definitely saw in the market that people were interested in walkable neighborhoods. That has just continued to grow" (Payne 2024).

☁

Friends of New Bohemia are beginning to express anxiety about all the development. A lot of the newest construction has been of the cookie-cutter variety, and some of the proposals are relatively huge. Given that a lot of New Bo's allure relates to its historical character, it should be a no-brainer to insist on compatible form. In the words of the city's Assistant Community Development Director Adam Lindenlaub, "There's an aspect of character that is unique here that you don't see in other parts of the city" (Payne 2024). Beyond that, though, you don't own your view, and when all is working well, the core neighborhoods will be the densest and most valuable in the city.

Inevitably, a lot of the concerns about development in New Bohemia center on parking, particularly for major events. If parking is used by residents, where are the rest of supposed to park? they ask. Sigh. It should no longer be debatable that parking is the enemy of vibe, not to mention wasteful of city finances and land) and no place with plenty of parking is worth visiting (see, for example, Grabar 2023). In this car-dependent city, though, we always imagine ourselves one surface parking lot away from paradise.

Is this heaven? No, but it has a lot of parking!
(New Bohemia on Google Earth, 2019)

And yet, the parking-concerned are not wrong to sense an issue, because New Bohemia has developed in a way that is heavily dependent on traffic from outside, which in the vast majority of cases is going to arrive by personal car. (So has Downtown. Don't even start me on the casino, which the Gazette reports is now Miss America-approved.)

This, then is the real issue: New Bohemia, though still a work in progress, has become a suburb. It is "walkable," to recall Pratt's description, but only for entertainment, and even then walkers must contend with many moving vehicles in search of the same entertainment. Other than that it is a bedroom community. The Czech Village/New Bohemia Main Street District claimed 250 businesses in 2022, but few are significant employers. Schools, groceries, hardware, and pharmacies are far away, and bus service is spotty. There isn't a park (though the west side Greenway will be close by once it's built).

Stoney Point, August 2013: More houses, fewer apartments and bars

The only difference between New Bohemia and, say, the world of Leave It to Beaver, is most of New Bo's housing is multifamily and there are a lot of bars. Maybe too many? The closures of Chrome Horse and Bo Mac's are possibly signs that such an economic monoculture is not sustainable, particularly when bigger newer bars (like Big Grove in Kingston) inevitably come along.

With apologies to Andres Duany, the transect in Cedar Rapids starts with commercial playgrounds in the center, surrounded by a moat of emptiness (MedQuarter, I-380, parking lots for the impending casino); beyond these are residential areas, where getting almost anywhere requires a car. Beyond those are greenfields, waiting to be subdivisions, or part of a wider I-380. Maybe all this was inevitable, but it is indeed regrettable. At least the city should stop subsidizing more of this sort of development.

SOURCE: Marissa Payne, "New Development Coming to NewBo," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 7 September 2024, 1A, 10A

SEE ALSO: "More New, Less Bo?" 4 July 2022

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

"Bridging the Bridge," 26 June 2019

"Envisioning CR I: A 24-Hour Downtown," 1 March 2015

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post named the former owner of the Matyk Building. It has been updated, with passive voice being used.

The gentleman-urbanist confronts cyber-threats

(swiped from sadefenza.blogspot.com)

I am surprisingly old, faithful readers, old enough in fact to remember the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union possessed enough nuclear weaponry to destroy all human life multiple times (as if once wouldn't be bad enough?). My response to this ever-present danger was to ignore it, because there was seemingly nothing I could do to change it, except to sign a nuclear freeze petition, which seemed and seems rather ineffectual. According to former Assistant Secretary of Energy Thomas P. Grumbly (2021), there are still too many nukes, and I'm still ignoring them, all 13,400 of them.

(L to R) Paul Ness, Alexis Diediker, Aaron Voss, Colin Gage

I was thinking about my life under nuclear threat while attending a panel on cybersecurity that was part of the Cedar Rapids Gazette's Business Breakfast Series. The panel--Paul Ness of Foliance, Alexis Diediker of Pro Circular, Aaron Voss of True North, and Colin Gage of Farmers State Bank--discussed "Lessons Learned from a Global Tech Outage," specifically the CrowdStrike incident of July 19. Do you remember that? I'm ashamed to say I'd already forgotten it. Maybe if I'd been flying anywhere that day?

July 19 was caused by faulty software, not malefactors, though there are plenty of malefactors out there. All panel members are involved in some way or other in protecting firms and other institutions from the effects of hacking and other dangers of our cyberconnected world. (Diediker has the intriguing job of penetration tester i.e. she tests organizations' systems for both technical and human vulnerabilities.) As a non-technical gentleman-urbanist, I don't think I'm unusual in leaving cybersecurity up to our friends in information technology, except to complain about multifactor authentication and security awareness training they make us do. Math is hard, and I've got urbanism things to do. (Worth pondering: If Google, which owns Blogger, ever disappears, this blog is disappearing with it.)

One could say, correctly, that I am not paying enough attention to the threats to my own as well as my organization's security posed by cyberthreats. After all, one tech outage can ruin your whole day. The panel called for better communication between "the basement and the boardroom" (Voss's phrase) and for that matter, the rest of the organization as well. Gage referred to "a balancing act" between connectivity and security, and while the technically trained are best equipped to enact that balancing, everyone should understand the basics of how that balance is struck.

If we can under-attend to risks, we can also over-attend to them. One of the factors that has driven the suburban development pattern for the last eight decades has been the perception that urban centers are dangerous and it is wise to spare no expense to get away from them. That has increased social isolation, individual health problems, and traffic crashes (which kill many more people annually than do guns). We can build fences, buy guns and/or post signs saying we're not afraid to use them, take pictures of everyone who passes by, buy larger and larger vehicles, and never go outside--I've encountered all of these in Cedar Rapids--but at what cost to our common life and our own souls?

After the panel, a fellow at my table who'd found out I teach political science asked if there wasn't a danger that the Federal Reserve Board has a plan to use digital currency to enable the government to control our lives? Maybe there is. I can't prove there isn't. But as an entrepreneur, he is in far more danger of a financial catastrophe from a health problem or a cyberattack than he is of the government controlling his life. To deny the government a role in economic stabilization or health care access is to play a far riskier game.

There's a psychology to risk assessment that I only dimly understand. Allowing for phenomena like discounting future impacts, or greater concern for potential losses than potential gains--two common human traits that bedevil urbanist initiatives--it's not easy to predict why some people find some risks terrifying while ignoring or discounting others. I know I've become less self-protective over time, and more concerned about human connection, and I don't even understand why that is.

Maybe the first challenge is to understand the nature of risks. For one thing, as long as we're alive we can't avoid them. We can try to achieve an informed understanding of them, and to give them the attention they deserve, and not overlook the tradeoffs involved in over-focusing on certain risks at the expense of others. (Risk reduction always involves tradeoffs. My Uncle Dwight used to tell a joke about a fellow who quit smoking and replaced the habit with chewing toothpicks, until the guy died of Dutch elm disease.) We can understand the ethics of self-protectively pushing risks onto others. Mostly we can keep in mind the goal of living the best life, which as Aristotle reminds us, is life lived in common.

10th anniversary post: Homes, home churches, and hometowns

 

After Hours Denver is still going!
(Source: afterhoursdenver.org)

We have big holes in our social fabric.--RICHARD WEISSBOURD, Making Caring Common (Shaer 2024)

Ten years ago, a pastor's reference to an unconventional church in Denver, Colorado, that meets in bars and focuses on feeding hungry people, led me to reflect on the concept of "home" as applied to houses of worship, living spaces, and towns. But by the end of the piece, I had pivoted to talking about connection: Does the way we create homes of all types, in this era of suburban development, exclude others and isolate ourselves? Belonging is important, but so is connection, and maybe connection is essential to belonging.

Recently there has been a lot of attention to individual loneliness as a public problem, as opposed to a personal one. Loneliness has negative effects on physical health comparable to serious cigarette smoking including raising blood pressure, high cholesterol, and even risk of Alzheimer's disease (Magen 2018, Birak and Cuttler 2017); perhaps this is because connection to others encourages more healthy behavior, but also possibly because the presence of other people can mitigate stress which has its own negative health effects (Holt-Lunsted, Smith and Layton 2010). This goes for mental as well as physical health: loneliness is associated with greater risk of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts (Fu 2020). 

Besides preventing harms to individuals, interactions of various types--ranging from intimate to random--benefit the whole community. Jane Jacobs's landmark The Death and Life of Great American Cities is rooted in her observation that it's all those random human interactions that form the basis for community ties: 

The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. It grows out of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery and nodding hello to the two boys drinking pop on the stoop, eyeing the girls while waiting to be called for dinner, admonishing the children, hearing about a job from the hardware man and borrowing a dollar from the druggist, admiring the new babies and sympathizing over the way a coat faded. ([1961] 1993: 73; cf. also Calthorpe and Fulton 2001: 32-34)

For cities, the walkable design and third places that facilitate interactions also support economic activity and financial strength. "Walkable places are thriving places," said Jeff Speck at Cedar Rapids's City Services Center in March 2015. A 2015 study of three cities found:

[S]treets with a mix of old and new buildings have [both] greater population density and more businesses per commercial square foot than streets with large, new buildings... [T]hese areas also have significantly more jobs per commercial square foot... [N]eighborhoods with a smaller-scaled mix of old and new buildings host a significantly higher proportion of new businesses, as well as more women and minority-owned businesses than areas with predominantly larger, newer buildings.... [O]lder, smaller buildings house significantly greater concentrations of creative jobs per square foot of commercial space. ("Older, Smaller, Better" 2014: 4)

Jan and Ingrid Gehl noticed the same phenomena in their observations in Italy during the 1960s, which came to inform Jan Gehl's designs for Copenhagen (Montgomery 2013: 146-150). Kim Samuel (2015), McGill professor and founder of the Belonging Forum, argues that by contrast cities designed around cars inhibit social connection, especially (but not only) for people with disabilities and the elderly.

Building for belonging can mean designing cities for the varied dimensions of people’s lives, with mixed-use environments that integrate opportunities to shop, work, learn and relax; where neighbourhoods are walkable, people of different ages and incomes are mixed together, and natural prospects for connection exist, from pedestrian zones to public parks to farmers’ markets. (Samuel 2015)

Samuel also commends attention to the quality of housing, and respecting local knowledge. (See also Montgomery 2013: 56-58; he titles this section "The Lonely Everywhere.")

But people can also experience urban areas as hideous parodies of belonging and connection, where the bad effects of loneliness are even magnified. When Olivia Laing (2016) first moved to Brooklyn, she found no sense of belonging and only intrusive connections:

I wanted very much not to be where I was. In fact part of the trouble seemed to be that where I was wasn't anywhere at all. My life felt empty and unreal and I was embarrassed about its thinness, the way one might be embarrassed about a stained or threadbare piece of clothing....

Outside the window, people threw dinner parties. The man upstairs listened to jazz and show tunes at full blast, and filled the hallways with pot smoke, snaking fragrantly down the stairs. Sometimes I spoke to the waiter in my morning cafe, and once he gave me a poem, typed neatly on thick white paper. But mostly I didn't speak. Mostly I was walled up inside myself, and certainly a very long way from anyone else. I didn't cry often, but once I couldn't get the blinds closed and then I did. It seemed too awful, I suppose, the idea that anyone could peer over and get a glimpse of me, eating cereal standing up or combing over emails, my face illuminated by the laptop's glare. (14-15)

As Laing's experience suggests, cities aren't automatic solutions for loneliness, and can even aggravate those feelings. Loneliness exists in multiple forms and has numerous external as well as personal causes, and a recent New York Times Magazine article manages to survey the whole scene without once mentioning suburban sprawl (Shaer 2024); the "holes in the social fabric" referenced by Richard Weissbourd in this post's opening quotation may or may not be surface parking lots. 

Improved design is a necessary but not sufficient condition for connection. A survey of Americans finds connection improving after the coronavirus pandemic, but still down long-term, particularly among nonwhites, the working class, and those with less than college education; for example, college-educated respondents spend more time in public and community spaces like parks and coffee shops (Cox and Pressler 2024). At least one analysis found social isolation so strongly correlated with demographics that more walkable older neighborhoods actually had more social isolation because they had more elderly and poor residents; it's worth noting the study was done in Korea, where even the newest developments are nothing like American suburbs (Kim and Kim 2024). 

However, design done right can facilitate social connection. Andres Duany and colleagues focus on the public realm, the existence of which requires places to which people can walk, narrow streets to slow the cars, a sense of enclosure (from street trees and right-sized buildings), and visible signs of other people (2010: ch 4; for a fuller treatment see Speck 2012). Jane Jacobs highlights the need for stores, but not too big as to be impersonal, and accommodations like benches in public parks (among other trenchant observations about what works and what doesn't work for sidewalks, parks, and so forth. 

Besides complete streets designed to human scale, Jay Walljasper (2011) commends housing built around common space, whether semi-private neighborhood squares or residential pedestrian streets. Happy Cities (2024) has a multi-unit housing design toolkit with plans for designing common amenities, circulation spaces, and outdoor areas. A 2018 post in The Conversation looks to "third" places where people can gather informally and interact, like community gardens and space in a park for tai chi classes (Matthews and Dolley 2018). In Shanghai, retired people, particularly singles, have been gathering at People's Park and the Ikea cafeteria (Stevenson 2024). 

Montgomery, whose book fuses city design with findings from neuroscience research, notes that certain places draw people and encourage them to linger, long enough to connect. The Project for Public Spaces is credited with the discovery of triangulation, "in which external stimuli are arranged in ways that nudge people close enough together to begin talking. In its simplest form, triangulation might mean positioning a public telephone booth, a garbage can, and a bench beside one another, or simply giving a busker permission to perform near a set of stairs--anything to slow people down in proximity" (2013:165). Things that alienate people are sharp architectural angels (light up the brain's fear centers), long dead facades like blank or smoked glass walls, painful or no seating, dark areas, parking lots, and closeness to high-speed or high-traffic roads. "No amount of triangulation can account for the corrupting influence that high-velocity transport has on the psychology of public space" (2013: 168).

Tiffany Owens Reed of Strong Towns argues that proximity does not produce connection unless there are common projects, and suggests cities outsource tasks community members can do, like playground cleanup and sidewalk snow removal (Owens Reed 2022). After Hours Denver may be onto something with its assembly line of congregants constructing peanut butter sandwiches. Jacobs, however, cautions that people want most of their connections "without unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations, fears of giving offense, embarrassments respecting impositions or commitments, and all such paraphernalia of obligations which can accompany less limited relationships." Faced with the choice between too much "togetherness" and no contact at all, many people will choose solitude; "either has distressing results" ([1961] 1993: 81-82).

I remember when I first read The Great Good Place and, while I was enthusing over Ray Oldenburg's depiction of third places, I was also reflecting that without prior experience I wouldn't know how to act in such a place. Once at a train station in England, Laing was chatted up by an old man until she finally succeeded in freezing him out and he walked away (2016: 25). She felt guilty afterwards, but no one wants to be the unwelcome old man in that story! When everyone else seems to how to mix (or not) in public, it can cause people to turn in on themselves, adding feelings of incompetence and inadequacy to the already-toxic personal stew. I wondered after reading Oldenburg "whether after 70 years out of practice we still know how to behave in [third places]." Maybe there are sets of lessons we could take? Or is there an app for that? Apparently the late Dr. Ruth is on the case!

SOURCES

Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton, The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl (Island, 2001)

Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (North Point Press, 10th anniversary ed, 2010) 

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Random House, [1961] 1993)

Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (Picador, 2016)

Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2013)

Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (Paragon House, 1999)

Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2012)

Now we can all sing along... (5:15):