10th Anniversary Post: New Year's Resolutions

 

It's 2025!

Early in 2015, on the downhill side of this blog's second year, I seemed to be resolving to focus on a narrow field of "public policy, place, and social relations." Off the top of my head, I came up with five ways towns like mine could become more urbanist (defined by Dave Alden (2015) as more "fiscally responsible and environmentally sustainable"): 

1. develop a 24-hour downtown
2. include the poor
3. improve public transportation
4. neighborhood stores, preferably locally-owned
5. regional governance

Without solid metrics, I nevertheless used those as markers for analyzing the city's long-range plan, Envision CR, in a series of posts later in 2015. Ten years later, I don't think I have focused on staying in a clearly-defined lane, if that was ever my intent, though my writing certainly lingers on local places rather than national, international, political, or rhetorical topics. Definitely the scope is less wide-ranging than it was during the earliest months of blogging, but my choices of topic remain more intuitive than structured.

Long-empty commercial space, downtown Cedar Rapids

As I was making this New Year's resolution, Ben Kaplan and I started a local discussion group which came to be known as Corridor Urbanism, and which had some years of relevance in town. As we wound down operations nine years later, I reflected that Cedar Rapids has organizations devoted to bicycling and trails, birds, ecology, housing, other social services, specific neighborhoods, and probably more that don't immediately occur to me, but Corridor Urbanism was unique in thinking about how all those pieces of the city come together. Maybe there are more important things than focus. To torture the metaphor, what our group did, and I am still trying to do, is to pick a lane but also to notice all the things around it that are part of the same complex system.

Here are my still-largely-impressionistic takes on what has happened locally with respect to those five core topics. Of course, the world has not stood still in the last ten years, either. Climate change and economic inequality have increased, the pandemic created all manner of dislocation, and Cedar Rapids suffered a devastating derecho in August 2020.

1. Developing a 24-hour downtown means diversifying land use from heavy reliance on office-service and commuter parking. Cedar Rapids was ahead of the curve on city center residential construction, even before office vacancy rates soared everywhere. The coffee and bar scenes are popping. Even so, the residences are at this time heavy on condos that serve young singles. What has mostly replaced the old offices and factories is luxury commercial that relies on shoppers from away. And requires lots of parking, alas. Everyday commercial like grocery stores have not been drawn to the core, in spite of all the condos. The core is weirdly isolated from the rest of the city by the MedQuarter, the interstate highway, and the flood zone (though that could change soon).

Pullman Lofts and...

...Coventry Lofts are two early examples of 
downtown office conversions

2. The four poorest census tracts are around the center of town (19 38.1%, 22 26%, 27 25.2%, 13 23.5%); the next two, 10.05 (22.1%) and 10.04 (21.6%), are on the west side north of the former Westdale Mall. Including the poor is a vaguely defined but important goal for any city. The key to inclusion is the presence of pathways out of poverty. That is, of course, easier said than done. Location of the new west side library (in census tract 10.05!) is a good step, and the school district's College and Career Pathways plan could help inclusiveness as well, but we remain a car-dependent city, which raises the cost of participation in city life. I would like to see more emphasis on job creation via small business starts and growth, and less on magic bullets like data centers, the casino, and tourism in general. Housing remains a conundrum, here as everywhere.

3. Improving public transportation has occurred incrementally but effectively. Routes have been somewhat rationalized so they're attractive to a wider set of riders, particularly the #5 route along 1st Avenue East that runs every 15 minutes. Service has been extended into mid-evening (8:00 p.m. on most routes). Bus service to Iowa City from the Ground Transportation Center was begun, and runs every 20 minutes. A free downtown trolley service is being tried for a couple months on Friday and Saturday evenings. It's hard to imagine more being done without a massive infusion of resources.

After a tough year, 1st Avenue in Wellington Heights
may be getting an international grocery on this corner

4. The concept of neighborhood stores got important backing in 2022 when Matthew 25 opened the Cultivate Hope Corner Store on the near northwest side, in a building that had long served as a grocery store back in the day. Elsewhere, however, food deserts are expanding, not filling up. Hy-Vee moved out of its Mound View location in 2024, and no amount of gentrification in the core seems able to attract mid-size retailers. Thankfully, the city has tried hard to fill that gap, and word is they may have something to announce soon. It's possible this might even create an opening for smaller stores in the area. (For a more general look at the past and possible future of retail in residential neighborhoods, see Baker 2024.)

5. Regional governance is a bee that got into my bonnet via reading The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl by Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton (Island Press, 2001). I still think it's a good idea, but don't detect any movement in that direction. There have been occasions for cooperation between municipalities in the metro, particularly on trail development, and no recent cases of intra-metro business poaching.

ORIGINAL POST: "New Year's Resolutions," 18 January 2015