Urbanist Goodreads: What Else is Going Down Besides All This S**t?

 

Chuck Marohn isn't freaking out. Maybe I shouldn't either?
(Source: strongtowns.org)

NOTE: In the innocent days of the last decade, my Corridor Urbanism co-founder Ben Kaplan did a series of what he called Urbanist Goodreads, annotated bibliographies of writing on a particular topic. I dabbled in the format myself to analyze the impact of COVID on the future of cities; here's an example from June 2020. Now, with a runaway U.S. executive breaking the government for the purpose of retribution (Donald Trump) and/or amassing money and power (Elon Musk) and/or an ideological vision (the Project 2025 crew), and states like Iowa micromanaging localities whenever they feel like it, what is left for urbanism to think about? Quite a bit, it appears.

"Growth Ponzi Scheme Leaves Virginia Town with $34 Million Dilemma," Strong Towns, 6 February 2025

[Strong Towns grew out of planner-engineer Chuck Marohn's doubts about the rationality of some of the projects he was being hired to do. His doubts became a blog and podcast, which became an organization, which has become a movement with chapters ("local conversations") all over the world. Marohn spoke in Iowa City in July 2015.]

Strong Towns takes us this week to Purcellville, Virginia, a small town near the border with West Virginia, but not terribly far from Washington, D.C. The story reflects a theme that has been prominent throughout Strong Towns' decade-plus existence: a town can't afford to maintain infrastructure it had built when it was hopeful about growth. "I'm just saying the funds were there when the town was growing like crazy," says Liz Krens, the town's Director of Finance. Like a Greek tragedy, none of their current choices--borrow $34 million? defer maintenance?--is good. Maybe a federal grant would solve their problems, but counting on that is not responsible.

This week's Strong Towns posts also address the limitations of traffic cameras and a local group in Maine that resisted the state's plan to widen a highway through their town.

Robert Steuteville, "Hurricane-Ravaged City Bounces Back with New Main Street," Public Square: A CNU Journal, 4 February 2025

[Public Square is the online journal of the Congress for the New Urbanism, which has been promoting a return to compact, mixed-use development since they gathered in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1993. Their most recent conference was last May in Cincinnati. CNU's membership includes planners, architects, and local officials; I am none of these, but they let me in anyway.]

The lead story this week celebrates the recovery of Panama City, Florida, which won a Charter Award at the 2020 conference, following Hurricane Michael in 2018. The award-winning plan is now being enacted, centered on a restored Harrison Street, which has again become the heart of the city. With better design, street trees and slower vehicle traffic, along with a new central plaza, the core of the city has been restored to life. “There’s a growing collection of wedding photos on the circle on Harrison Avenue,” crowed lead designer Victor Dover. “No one was getting a wedding photo on the main street before.” Note that implementation was expedited by federal COVID relief funds. 

Other current Public Square stories include an urban boulevard replacing a freeway in Toledo, proposed mall redevelopment in Michigan, and a foundation specializing in wildfire recovery, as well as a post arguing for attention to housing supply and affordability in "15-minute city" projects.

Addison del Maestro, "I'm an Antisocial Urbanist Living in the Suburbs, Ask Me Anything," The Deleted Scenes, 4 February 2025

[Addison del Maestro writes about design and a whole bunch of other stuff from his base in suburban Virginia. He's Catholic by faith and conservative by politics, which makes for unique takes on urbanist issues.]

This reflective post starts with the irony that del Maestro identifies as an urbanist while living in a suburban community. "I’m not quite sure," he confesses, "how these abstract ideas I hold about housing and community and not putting up walls around places and not being exclusionary intersect with living in an actual place with actual characteristics with actual people who were “buying” those characteristics when they bought homes here." It's gotten to the point where he feels like arguing with visitors who admire his neighborhood! I can relate, doing my urbanist writing in a large-lot neighborhood with no commercial establishments for blocks. How much change can he (or I) advocate when most of our neighbors presumably prefer the current characteristics?

This week, del Maestro's wide-ranging blog also covers reuse of old buildings, eccentric product design, and materialism, as well as his own set of goodreads.

In 2018 I would take the Silver Line to McLean
for 1 Million Cups Fairfax

Ryan Jones, "Commuter Rail to Loudoun: The Next Chapter," Greater Greater Washington, 7 February 2025

[Greater Greater Washington is a website with an urbanist mission: "racial, economic, and environmental justice in land use, transportation, and housing." They focus on the D.C. area (which extends to Baltimore and sometimes Richmond). I've been personally very attached to Washington since my semester there seven years ago.]

Jones tells the story of founding a group to promote extension of metro Washington commuter rail service westward into the Virginia suburbs (maybe as far as Purcellville!). He discusses budgeting, positive effect on road traffic, and advantages over building out the Silver (Metro) Line. Their next steps is to speak to town councils in the region. "By building a consensus town by town, we hope to gain momentum to get an official feasibility study commissioned by Loudoun and Fairfax counties in partnership with state and regional agencies..."

Besides opinion posts, Greater Greater Washington also includes their "Breakfast Links" collection of local goodreads, urbanist news from other parts of the country (including a bicycling promotion program in Denver) and opportunities to get involved around the DC area.

Pete Saunders, "Why Call It 'The Rust Belt?'" The Corner Side Yard, 2 February 2025

[Pete Saunders is from Detroit, and now lives in Chicago. He is an important Midwestern voice in a movement that can overfocus on the fast-growing towns on the coasts. His attention to black and working class experiences of cities make his voice especially valuable.]

This piece is less about policy than about nomenclature. Sanders embraces rather than resents the term Rust Belt for what was once the industrial Midwest (think Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland and all those little cities in eastern Ohio, maybe Pittsburgh). It can symbolize what it could be, "a term roughly synonymous with the legend of the phoenix, the mythological bird that rises from the ashes of its deceased predecessor." Like London, which emptied out after the Romans left in the fifth century but in time became one of the leading cities of the world, the Rust Belt (or Lower Lakes, if you prefer) can rise from its knees and become something else entirely.

Stacy Mitchell's book

And there's more! 

• Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance was quoted extensively in a Washington Post article on the reslient role of small businesses in the American economy, despite apathy (at best) from national elected officials. (Did you know local restaurants now last slightly longer than the average small business start?) 
• The Active Towns podcast, hosted by John Simmerman, presents a video on a "bike bus" in Montclair Township, New Jersey. 
• Happy Cities reports on a survey in Seattle finding "a remarkable relationship between street edges, building facades and pro-social behavior," suggesting a role for city design in human sociability.  
• Kristen Jeffers's latest salutes Rev. Andrew Wilkes, a pastor in Brooklyn who shows the influence of faith on urban issues like gentrification.  
• Planetizen reports the California High-Speed Rail Authority anticipates running trains between coastal cities and the Central Valley in five to eight years.

So there ya have it--urbanists are thinking about urban stuff: infrastructure and how to pay for it, rebuilding downtown, small business, public transit, cycling, trains, and shaping values which I guess includes branding. None of them even referenced national political dysfunction.

Friends, it does my soul good to think about all these people thinking about how to improve their places. It takes considerable nimbleness to negotiate around personal differences, not to mention state and national interference. I hope that what doesn't kill us will in time make us strong. But I'm still concerned that conditions for building prosperous, resilient and inclusive communities are becoming harder each day. Keep the faith, I guess.

10th anniversary post: Blizzards get you thinking

 

That was a blizzard (2015)

Ten years ago the weather was different than it is this week. A big pile of snow--11 inches, says my post--got dumped on Iowa as January 2015 turned into February. This year, we're in a stretch of unseasonably warm weather including a couple record high temperatures and a couple more near-records. 2024-25 been a warm dry winter, which could be random luck, but we should know better than that by now.

I produced my own blizzard, of questions, ten years ago. This anniversary post seemed a good time to revisit them.

1. Why are we still building sprawl?
2. Can downtown develop/be developed by a resilient transportation system?
3. How should I be rooting on the federal transportation bill?
4. How should we consider climate change in planning?
5. Why is the clearing of public sidewalks the responsibility of the homeowner, even though the clearing of public streets is undertaken by the government?

These questions are pretty central to how we design our cities, allowing that #5 was dropped on me by a work colleague while I was working on that post, so it got looped in. City design may strike a person more urgently during a blizzard than it does when the big-box store is a simple 20-minute drive away. My 2015 frustration at the pace of positive change, too, probably reflected fatigue from the hard work of snow removal. 

Never not contemplating urbanism

Surely people were going to grasp that local government finances are driven by the demands we place on it, not by waste, fraud and abuse? That cities won't be able forever to rely on federal and state money to make up whatever funding gaps result? That public transit unlike private vehicles is scalable in a way that supports intensive economic development? That climate change makes new demands on our capacity to be resilient?

However, "There's drudgery in social change, and glory for the few," sang Billy Bragg. Today the urgency of approaching urban design differently is, if possible, less apparent at all levels of government. I've gone from being mildly frustrated to totally appalled. Urbanist design comes recommended for all sorts of reasons related to our common life: environmental sustainability in the face of climate change, place attachment, exercise, inclusion, community-building, and financial resilience. 

Strong Towns has been saying for years that local governments rely too heavily on federal and state financial assistance, which makes big development projects and sprawl seem cost-free. (See Charles L. Marohn, Jr., Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity [Wiley, 2020] for the complete argument.) Twelve erratic years of federal government shutdowns and near-shutdowns haven't apparently changed the towns' short-term thinking. Maybe a freeze on federal grants--one was declared January 27, temporarily blocked by a judge the following day, and then rescinded (see Parker 2025)--would jolt localities into more productive approaches to development?

Ten years ago, Washington infighting was imperiling appropriations for the Department of Transportation, which funds state and local transportation projects. Eventually the bill got passed, but to what end? Though the Joe Biden administration nudged these projects in the direction of transit, transportation funding goes predominantly for roadway construction and expansion, which reinforces our already car-centric development. That's what prompted question #3 on my list. I followed up: If the federal government is the founder of this ridiculous feast, maybe if they cut off the allowance states and localities will be forced to be rational?... It would be at least interesting, because at least local choices would be clearer. 

Nor has an increasing pile of climate disasters catalyzed urbanism. Climate science is a key element of the "woke bullshit" President Trump feels he has a mandate to quash (For the risks inherent in Trump's aggressive climate change denial, see Flavelle 2025). Within 24 hours of Trump's inauguration, acting Environmental Protection Administration head James Payne fired all members of the Science Advisory Board and the Clean Air Advisory Board, and the U.S. withdrew from the international climate talks known as the Paris Accord. Trump is attempting to pause federal grants for clean-energy projects, slash or purge the federal workforce, and has appointed a pro-extraction, climate change-denying permanent EPA administrator who has little environmental experience (Davenport 2025). It's not clear that professional environmental staff will be gagged as health staff have been, but it seems likely they will be strongly discouraged from speaking openly about anything important.

In Iowa, we're not going to talk about the climate, either. Land in Iowa is plentiful and cheap, and we apparently trust the oil lobby to make sure we still have access to gasoline for our (ever larger) vehicles. So new K-12 science standards excise the term "climate change" (in favor of "climate trends"), along with the word "evolution." Reference to human impacts on the climate will also be removed (Luu 2025). If we don't talk about it, maybe it will all go away?

Maybe the answers will come, not by restoring urbanism, but some wholly new design concept. Geographer Stephanie Wakefield raises that possibility in a piece for Next City that promotes her forthcoming book about the future of Miami:

Rather than an endless expanse of cities and urbanization processes with seemingly no terminus — the latter destined to be but fodder for ever greater resilience of the former — might the Anthropocene’s human and nonhuman dislocations produce other spaces, processes and imaginaries entirely? (quoted at Ionescu 2025)

I'm definitely curious about what these spaces and imaginaries might be, although I don't know how well I'll do with an entire book written in the manner of the sentence quoted above. Wakefield suggests localities will have additional design/form considerations beyond the urban-or-suburban dichotomy I'm used to. 

As it happens, later this month I'll be in St. Petersburg on the opposite side of the State of Florida. I'm looking forward to seeing what people are calling the large body of water between Florida and Texas, but also how they are dealing with likely climate threats. Here is a map of future sea level contingencies from Advantage Pinellas, the long-range transportation plan produced by Forward Pinellas, which is the St. Petersburg-area Metropolitan Planning Organization.

from Advantage Pinellas (2024, p. 41)

The first thing to notice is that's a fair chunk of land that's theoretically going to be under water. The second thing to notice is Metropolitan Planning Organizations, like Forward Pinellas and our own Corridor MPO, are funded by the U.S. government. That means our tax dollars are paying for this "woke bullshit!" How much longer will Advantage Pinellas remain online? I've downloaded it, just in case. For now, it's encouraging that people--at least those who staff MPOs--are thinking about resilient, inclusive, livable, prosperous futures. Bless them for it. Whether they will be allowed to keep doing so is at this point unanswerable. 

Strong Towns has always maintained a local focus, treating national politics as not-my-circus-not-my-monkeys. I'm not sure how valid this is anymore. At the state and national levels, powerful industry interests and Project 2025 ideologues are making the rules now, and if there's information that threatens them, they'll do their best to suppress it. Localities could try to figure things out on their own, but constitutionally they're limited by state action, and anyhow it's just easier to keep doing what we've been doing.

So, my answers to the questions I posed ten years ago: 

1. Why are we still building sprawl? Because it's the policy path of least resistance, residential and commercial developments can be large enough to be highly profitable, and localities get the property taxes without immediate needs for service.
2. Can downtown develop/be developed by a resilient transportation system? Probably not, because most cities don't have the political or financial independence for this to happen.
   
3. How should I be rooting on the federal transportation bill? Doesn't matter. Streets and highways will always get taken care of, however imperfectly they are maintained once their built.
4. How should we consider climate change in planning? Consider a range of possible outcomes for which we need to be prepared, and support rather than suppressing research.
5. Why is the clearing of public sidewalks the responsibility of the homeowner, even though the clearing of public streets is undertaken by the government? Street maintenance sucks up a lot of resources, so we get mandates on property owners instead.

I hope I'm still around in 2035 to admit how wrong I was back in 2025!

ORIGINAL POST: "Blizzards Get You Thinking," 1 February 2015

SEE ALSO: C40 Global Cities website: international intracity climate action networ. Hearing Helene Chartier from this organization speak on the Cities for Everyone webinar the morning after my post made me feel somewhat more hopeful.

Music for urbanists: Lift Every Voice and Sing

James Weldon Johnson (from www.jamesweldonjohnson.org)

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us...

--JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

The African American Museum of Iowa stepped up in a big way this Martin Luther King Day. For the second year in a row, observance in Cedar Rapids was at risk of being overshadowed by events: last year by the Iowa precinct caucuses, and this year by the presidential inauguration. The A.A.M.I. provided reduced admission and child-friendly programming all day long, including displays and video documentaries.

For many years, most recently in 2023, Cedar Rapids commemorated Martin Luther King Day with an evening service at St. Paul's United Methodist Church. The highlight for me was always when everyone in attendance stood to sing "Lift Every Voice and Sing," one of my all-time favorite hymns that deserves wider usage. Like "Joy to the World," it's tied by tradition to a particular season, but its message is timeless.

Anne Harris Carter presents Mike and Toni Loyal with the 2025
Who is My Neighbor Award, as Pastor Jonathan Heifner looks on
(Sunday 1/19 at St. Paul's United Methodist Church)

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" began as a poem composed by James Weldon Johnson on the occasion of Lincoln's birthday in 1900 (PBS 2013). It was Johnson's brother, John Rosamond Johnson, who later set the poem to music with its distinctive dual melodies. 

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was 29 when he wrote the poem that became such an enduring song. His was no "cockeyed optimist" (South Pacific reference) about racial conditions in America as he wrote his song, either; he spent much of the following two decades lobbying the federal government fort a national anti-lynching law, which was finally passed in 1919.

Johnson must have been a whirl of talent and energy, for at various times in his life he was an elementary school teacher, founder of a high school, a lawyer, a prolific composer (collaborating with his brother) for Broadway shows, author, college professor, diplomat to Venezuela and Nicaragua, and civil rights activist for the NAACP ("Civil Rights Leaders: James Weldon Johnson" n.d.).

Here is a 2009 choral version of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" by the Metropolitan Baptist Church choir (5:00):

And here is a hip-hop version from Austin, Texas, performed by Doughboy the Midwest Maestro and DJ Kool Rod. A casual Internet search reveals dozens of versions in a variety of genres. It is one versatile song.

Its repeated references to past tribulations seems particularly appropriate to oppressed groups i.e. not suburban white bloggers. But the lyrics, like King's often-articulated vision, are all-inclusive: "Lift every voice and sing, let earth and heaven ring" (italics mine). We all live in hope of seeing unity; we all stand in need of redemption. It is hope well-placed, too, because only unity produces the social peace and prosperity we need to live well.

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968) at the A.A.M.I.

Martin Luther King Jr. understood the hope of unity, combined with critical thinking and endurance and empathy. So did Jimmy Carter, whose mourning period is being interrupted for Inauguration Day. Pope Francis, who's made hope the theme of the 2025 Year of Jubilee (Powell 2025), understands it as well. I'm less sure about those who have used their political office to take out after diversity efforts in schools and workplaces. Understanding the perspectives of those whose life experiences differ from the majority's seems essential to attaining unity. But they're doing their best to make "diversity, equity, and inclusion" dirty words. Is understanding all this just "woke bullshit," to quote our newly reinaugurated President?

Suburbia was/is white because of inequality and discrimination;
Who will tell this story if government threatens schools?
(Display photographed at A.A.M.I.)

Donald J. Trump, triumphantly returned to office on MLK Day itself, has thrived exclusively on disunity. Even now, he is a sore winner, utterly ungracious about the (rather favorable) conditions he inherits from his predecessor. During the awful wildfires that still rage in California, he has promoted disinformation, blasted anyone taking actual responsibility as "incompetent," and called the California governor Gavin "New-scum," which insult Newsom probably last heard in 1st grade. I was tempted to see what "weird shit" (George W. Bush's 2017 characterization) Trump would produce in the inaugural address, but decided my time would be better spent at the African American Museum.

Resist hate with love, said King
(My picture taken at A.A.M.I.)

Building the cities of the future won't be done with name-calling; it will be done with ongoing learning and persistent hard work.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, May we forever stand.

True to our God, True to our native land.

SEE ALSO: 

"MLK and the Winter of Discontent," Holy Mountain, 16 January 2024 

James Weldon Johnson Foundation page

Kristin Du Mez, "From the Spiritual Underground: Love and Justice for Nov. 20 and Beyond," Du Mez Connections, 19 January 2025

Kathryn Mobley, "West Dayton Exhibit Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr's Dayton Speech," WYSO, 20 January 2025

Pete Saunders, "CSY Replay #16: More on Segregation," Corner Side Yard, 20 January 2025

Cedar Rapids' big bets

 

Approximate location of proposed new middle school

The Cedar Rapids Community School Board has approved the purchase of land in unincorporated Linn County, which they intend to be the site of a new middle school. As reported by Cindy Hadish in Homegrown Iowan, construction of the school is dependent upon the outcome of a bond referendum in November 2025, and is part of contracting the district's six middle schools down to four. The district argues contraction is necessary because of declining enrollments.

The school district operates under two mandates: to educate K-12 students, and to manage that in the most cost-effective way possible. As with the elementary school shuffle, they have argued that new construction offers the opportunity to keep up with technological developments in education, and that it is less costly to build than to repair. The choice of location is at first blush bizarre, but perhaps the district would argue that they need a lot of land that is relatively inexpensive. It seems relatively inaccessible, too, walkable from hardly anywhere other than the large-lot subdivision to its west. Even biking will be difficult for most students, despite the development of a trail alongside Highway 100. So we're in for a lot of private cars and school buses, with the latter costing district taxpayers maybe more than they're saving on the remote location. (For more on the complicated economics of school closings, see Roza and Dhammani 2024.)

While the district will retain middle schools in Wellington Heights (McKinley) and the near northwest side (Roosevelt), this also continues a trend of moving schools outward. The traditional neighborhoods near the center of town will become less attractive, which is for many reasons not in the city's long-term interest. That may not be one of the school district's mandates, but whose job is it?

Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell speaks at Bridge of Lions dedication,
July 2022

Maybe it's the job of the city government, although in a fragmented system they have no pull with the school district. However, the city is busy pursuing its own risky would-be game-changers: a casino across the river from downtown, and not one but two data centers south of town (one is Google, one is "bigger than Google"). About the casino, I've argued that, arguments about morality and cost distribution notwithstanding, my biggest objection is that it's a terribly unproductive use of primo land. With a less splashy, more incremental approach, we could build a neighborhood that could be an ongoing supply of human energy to core businesses.

The political hype around bagging the data centers makes me suspicious, without a whole lot of personal knowledge of how they operate. Strong Towns lists data centers along with corporate headquarters and big-box stores as the 21st century equivalent of smokestack chasing: a self-defeating contest among localities, "betting big on bad hands" in the words of Strong Towns' John Pattison, in which both the winner and the also-rans wind up sad. (See also Mattera, Tarczynska, and LeRoy 2014.) 

• Are we being overly optimistic about the economic impact of the firms' investments? 
• How much tax revenue is the city foregoing to lure them? 
• How much infrastructure investment and maintenance will be required to prepare the ground for their arrival? 
• How much of our economy is going to be dependent on corporate decisions made far away? 
• Realistically, how many and what type of jobs are these behemoths going to sustain? 
• What about data centers' reputation for sucking up power and water, competing with local residents and existing businesses? 

We shouldn't get carried away with happy talk.

(Free clip art from getdrawings.com)

All of us, including those who currently serve as city or school officials, have a stake in a city that is prosperous, equitable, and sustainable. I'd even include those who are in a position to profit from these investments.

A baseball slugger who constantly swings for the fences may be exciting to watch, particularly when he connects and belt one 500 feet. But the long string of strikeouts between blasts isn't fatal to him or his team. They'll live to play another day. If they decide Biff strikes out too much, they can find a new bopper. But a city that swings for the fences is playing a riskier game. Better to make consistent solid contact, and leave the excitement to the private sector. As such, I'd rather the new middle school be located on the proposed casino site, or some other in-town location; if we must have a casino, it go somewhere on the edge of town; and that we forego data centers altogether unless their impacts are paid for.

SEE ALSO: The latest Strong Towns video, produced by Ben Durham, is "Will a Factory Make This Small Town Rich? (11 January 2025, 23:06):

Walking audits

 

Students exit the city bus, catty-corner from Washington High School

A walking audit is a good way to assess walkability in a specific area. Walking enables anyone to see how easy or difficult it is to walk there, not only for yourself, but also for others who may not be as experienced or able-bodied. Daniel Herriges of Strong Towns argues: You see how your neighbors go about their needs, how they interact with each other, and where they face difficulties in negotiating the environment. And you can take it all in and reflect on it in a way that you can't possibly do from behind a windshield (Herriges 2019).

Edward Erfurt's recent Strong Towns article examines a recent project in his hometown of Charles Town, West Virginia (not to be confused with Charleston, West Virginia, which is not quite 300 miles away). Two new blocks of sidewalk connect downtown Charles Town with civic buildings like the police station. However, [a] the street was also widened, which encourages drivers to go faster; and [b] a key intersection is missing crosswalks. As a result the objective of safe walking remains elusive. Erfurt's piece concludes with some appropriate policy remedies.

Choosing places to do a walking audit can bias the results. It's easy to choose places where walking is nearly impossible (any of our town's stroads, streets near schools that have no sidewalks), or rather pleasant (between downtown buildings). And the biggest obstacle to walking in my town--perhaps yours, too--is the lack of destinations within a popularly accepted walking distance. However, you don't need an analytical microscope to see what's clearly unacceptable or successful infrastructure. 

So let's try three walks that aren't quite as obvious:

(1) Geonetric Building to Lion Bridge Brewing Co. (0.5 mi). Geonetric is a health care marketing firm that relocated to New Bohemia in 2014, a key moment in that neighborhood's post-flood reconstruction. Its building also houses several other companies, the nonprofit NewBoCo, and the Vault Coworking space where I have written many of these posts. Lion Bridge started that same year, locating just across the Cedar River in Czech Village.

Lion Bridge is on 16th Avenue, which runs behind Geonetric's parking lot. It's not a particularly busy street, but it's a sort of bypass around New Bohemia's commercial district, and cars can move pretty quickly. It's best to get across as surreptitiously as you can.

Once across 16th, it's duck soup getting to Lion Bridge. You do have to walk past Tornado's, which people close to me rate as the best burger in town.

Tornado's Grub & Pub, 1600 3rd St SE

There's not much cross-traffic on this side of 16th Avenue, although that may change as the area develops. Another block, and you're at the river.

The Bridge of Lions over the Cedar River

The slope of the bridge seems gentle enough for a wheelchair to manage, although I'd like to see one in action before I proclaim it so. The sidewalks are at an unusual height off the street, so don't fall! There are painted bike lanes on the street, though some cyclists prefer the sidewalk.

Riv vu

Cross the bridge, and now we're on the southwest side. A pillar marks the entrance to historic and charming Czech Village.

Entering Czech Village

Made it!

Lion Bridge Brewing, 59 16th Avenue SW

An uncomplicated walk, as long as there's not too much competition for space on the bridge. Today--another cold one--there was none.

(2) My house to Washington High School (1.1 mi). Our six years as Washington parents ended in 2015, but we and it remain in the same places. There are sidewalks the whole way, mostly new or recently-repaired.

Some ice issues where the sidewalks cross alleys

To get to the high school, you have to cross Forest Drive sooner or later, and it's best to do it sooner, because the sidewalk on the west side of the street ends before Linden Drive. Moreover, the intersection of Linden and Forest can get interesting, because eastbound and southbound traffic can't see each other.  (One collision was narrowly averted this morning, in fact.) So it's best to be safely on the east side before you get to Linden. 

Intersection of Forest and Linden is complicated for walkers
(Google Earth screenshot)

The intersection of Forest and Cottage Grove, where the high school is located, is uninteresting except at the times when school starts and when school lets out.

Cars on Forest backed up at Cottage Grove

Could a roundabout ease this brief daily traffic jam? It's come up a couple of times, getting beaten back by vigorous neighborhood opposition. And how would a roundabout affect pedestrians' ability to cross one or both streets at school time?

Interestingly, I saw no one walking to school this morning... no one walking at all, in fact, except for one fellow and his dog. It was chilly, but...

(3) Somebody's house on 8th Street NW to Cultivate Hope Corner Store (0.6 mi). The Cultivate Hope Corner Store is a neighborhood grocery started by the Matthew 25 organization in 2022. The building housed a small grocery store a long time ago, and according to the 1953 Polk's City Directory was at that time the home of Shaheen Sundries; Cultivate Hope Corner Store is the third business in the building since the flood.

Most of the Near Northwest area west of Ellis Boulevard has been restored or rebuilt since the 2008 flood. I'm listening to Donald Shoup describe the wrecked state of Los Angeles sidewalks to John Simmerman, but here there are smooth new sidewalks all the way to the store...

Quiet street: 1300 block of 8th Street NW

...including the latest crosswalk treatments...

Ellis Road NW intersection

...unless someone does this. Why?

snow obstruction on 8th Street NW

It was easy for me to step over this, but it would trouble anyone in a wheelchair or with a stroller. And if someone trips over it, who do they sue?

Properties east of Ellis was predominantly bought up and demolished after the flood; only now that flood walls are funded has redevelopment begun, including these row houses.

row houses near Neighborhood Corner Store on 8th St NW

The intersections on Ellis at F and E Avenues have new roundabouts.

Ellis Road approaching roundabout at F Avenue NW

This could be a challenge for pedestrians if traffic is heavy, or there's a lot of in-and-out at the Casey's, but on my mid-afternoon walk they were easy to navigate.

Former site of Shaheen Sundries:
Neighborhood Corner Store, 604 Ellis Road NW

Made it! Again, no one else was out walking that I could observe.

I tried during these audits to put myself in the (literal) shoes of pedestrians with characteristics other than mine. It would have been easier to do that had there been actual pedestrians to observe, but perhaps it was too cold. Really, though, chilly weather is no obstacle in a truly walkable city. The infrastructure is there, for the most part; now all we need are the walkable destinations.

See Also:

"10th Anniversary Posts: What is a Complete Street?" 2 August 2024

Lyz Lenz, "I Have a Right to Be Here: A Year of Running in 2024," Men Yell at Me, 8 January 2025 [comfortable running, and walking, is affected by more than just infrastructure]

Strong Towns Sources on Walking Audits

Edward Erfurt, "How a Walking Audit Can Help You Quickly Improve Street Design," Strong Towns, 19 December 2024

Daniel Herriges, "Seeing Your Community With New Eyes Through a "Walking Audit"," Strong Towns, 2 May 2019

Sarah Kobos, "Is Your City Pedestrian-Unfriendly?" Strong Towns, 10 March 2016