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| Cincinnatus, on the Ohio River Trail |
Wednesday, May 15
Jane and I are in Cincinnati for the
32nd annual Congress for the New Urbanism. After an all-day drive, we got here about 8:00 in the evening, too late to register or join the Opening Night Party, but I'll be raring to go tomorrow. We're staying at the Homewood Suites by Hilton in downtown Cincinnati, a couple blocks from the conference site at the
Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza.
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Hilton Netherland Plaza
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We walked over there this evening, and checked out a couple potential coffee locales. Jane took some pictures at Fountain Square.
The first thing I noticed about downtown Cincinnati is that most intersections have a NO TURN ON RED sign. Urbanists tend to dislike right-turn-on-red, which was mandated nationwide when I was in high school in order to save on energy use and air pollution from idling cars. It's not that we like either of those, either, but that turning cars add dangers to walking (or riding bicycles).
Thursday, May 16
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| President Mallory Baches welcomes the convention |
What I love about CNU, both the conference and the organization, is the inherent optimism. We are full of hope. I am personally inclined to despair, and I'm sure everyone at this meeting has had considerable experience with their good ideas being rejected by the city council or the public or their boss. And yet, we remain hopeful that the problems of today's cities can be solved and we are the ones who know how to do it. It was this sort of humanism that fueled the Enlightenment, declared Independence, and wrote the Constitution.
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| (from L) Peter Calthorpe, Aftab Pureval, Ellen Dunham Jones |
The mainstage address was given by Peter Calthorpe, co-founder of CNU and co-author (with William Fulton) of
The Regional City (Island Press, 2001), one of the
first books I read on the subject of urbanism. He talked up Grand Boulevards as the solution to both the housing crisis and the decline of retail strips. Grand Boulevards involve building multifamily units along commercial corridors and near transit, which has worked (says he) in Minneapolis since 2017, as well as a 43 mile long development along the El Camino Highway in California's Silicon Valley. Once you've got a ribbon of development, he says, you can "backfill" transit along the way, by which he means Bus Rapid Transit, since "we can't afford" light rail (in a tone indicating possible irony).
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| Calthorpe presenting |
He was followed on the stage by Aftab Pureval, mayor of Cincinnati, who welcomed the conference and proclaimed today to be Restorative Urbanism Day. Pureval represents the paradigmatic American dream, as his parents immigrated to the United States from India, his mom having come to India as a refugee from Tibet. But, he says, that dream is "becoming further and further away" for many Americans, so he hopes through policy changes like BRT and zoning to "desegregate the city so there are no wealthy or disinvested neighborhoods, just Cincinnati neighborhoods."
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| Attendees at the opening event in the Hall of Mirrors |
At 10:30 I attended a talk jointly given by Victor Dover, who runs a planning firm in Coral Gables, and Ashleigh Walton, an architect with a firm in Pittsburgh, billed as a "new urbanism starter course" but focused on this year's theme of restorative urbanism. Ashleigh Walton discussed restorative urbanism in terns of reforming "detrimental regulations" that shape our cities and that inhibit walkability, housing affordability and supply, and adaptation to climate change, exemplified by so many "blown out downtowns" across the country.
We were invited to eat lunch in Fountain Square. I bought a Grabbo's sundae at a food truck called Wild Side Experience that advertised "caveman food." The Grabbo's sundae involves barbecue chips, pulled pork, lettuce, and sour cream, but not ice cream.
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| Caveman food: Grabbo's sundae from Wild Side Experience |
I didn't converse with any urbanists during my lunch, but spent a happy time people watching. Fountain Square is amazing on a nice day. It reminded me of the
Trg Republike in Belgrade.
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Fountain Square, downtown Cincinnati
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For comparison: Trg Republike, Belgrade, May 2022
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In the afternoon, I went on a streetcar-and-walking tour of the Over the Rhine district just north of downtown Cincinnati, which used to be a German area, then a poverty-stricken area, and now is gentrifying.
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Typical Italianate style building on Elm Street:
1st floor retail, tall windows, little chunky tabs at top |
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Race Street: built to the sidewalk, with breezeways so
residents didn't enter through the 1st floor store |
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porch at rear of beer garden on Vine Street, used for public speeches
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| Hanging out in Washington Park on mosaic-encrusted bench |
This morning, as soon as I walked into the conference hotel, I ran into Jeff Wozencraft, a planner with the City of Cedar Rapids, and as far as either of us knows the only other person from Cedar Rapids who is here. Given the nature of conferences, I figured that would be our only encounter, but as it turned out, we were at the same happy hour event in the evening, sponsored by the Michigan and Midwest CNU chapters and held at a Unitarian Church-turned-event space called the Transept. Jeff and I were joined at the event by
a lively bunch from Sarnia, Ontario. Maybe Cedar Rapids and Sarnia could be sister cities!
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| The Transept, 1205 Elm Street |
As part of the happy hour event, I "debated" Eric Schertizing of Lansing, Michigan, on
the value of historic preservation. When he's not debating me, Eric is executive director of the
Michigan Association of Land Banks. We had an interesting conversation, though audible to very few in the super-live former sanctuary with a lot of side chatter happening. One of us "won," as determined by audience cheers, though I couldn't tell who.
Friday, May 17
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| Prepping for bike tour |
Happy Bike to Work Day! Today I and a couple dozen other bikers braved the rain to tour the riverfront trails in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky.
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Breakfast on the Bridge
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We began with
Breakfast on the Bridge, a 15-year-old Bike to Work Day tradition on the Purple People Bridge between Cincinnati and Newport, Kentucky. We got there as they were preparing to wrap up, but there were still a lot of people there. I had some complementary coffee and chatted up some folk from an architecture firm and from the transit agency. I also scored a couple clementine oranges, which a sympathetic fellow traveler stored for me in her bag.
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Entering Kentucky
(which starts at the river's edge per US Supreme Court in 1980)
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View of the Ohio River from the Purple People Bridge
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We were out a little over two hours, riding across the Ohio River twice, and sampling trails on both sides.
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| New and probably pricey riverfront apartments in Cincinnati |
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| Tree canopy over the Ohio River trail |
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Riverside Drive, Covington: End of the trail (for now)
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| Ohio River Trail, Cincinnati: bike channel on staircase |
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| 6th Street, near the bike shop: One more mural, baseball section |
This year, unlike in 2023, my e-bike worked, though I mostly found the electric boost inconvenient and had it off except for steep hills. My biggest problem this year was finding a helmet that fit; a couple people had brought their own, and maybe I should do that next year. One of our guides not only had his own helmet, but brought his own shade as well!
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| Worn by one of our tour guides: Da Brim. I need one. |
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| Iris Book Cafe |
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| Underground Railroad Museum entrance |
I returned to the conference for a late afternoon session on small developers, presented by Joe Klare of Covington-based
Catalytic Fund and developer Brian Boland. The Catalytic Fund provides loans that bridge the gap between what a bank is willing to lend and what a small developer needs to make a project work. I sat with a woman from Portland who works on parking issues. She asked how they were able to overcome public concerns about parking with their projects. The presenters were more sanguine than she was (or I am).
In the evening, Jane and I went to a brewpub across from the Cincinnati Reds' stadium, then heard live music (Indie night) in Fountain Square.
Saturday, May 18
The conference rang down today with a closing address by Carlos Moreno, the Paris-based academic credited with the concept of the 15-minute city. I bought his new book today [
The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our Planet (Wiley, 2024)] at
Roebling's onsite store, along with Megan Kimble's
City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways (Crown, 2024).
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| starting the day at the excellent Deeper Roots coffeeshop downtown |
I also took in a couple of panel sessions, a presentation by
Brooklyn-based planner (and political scientist!) Jerome Barth on what makes public spaces successful, and a group report on a neighborhood-led investment plan for the West End area of St. Louis. Both have
some things to say to Cedar Rapids, and I will probably return to them in future posts.
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| Jerome Barth |
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| West End/Visitation Park project panel |
Not only that, but I took a couple of quizzes created by Emerging New Urbanists, who obviously remember the good old days of Facebook quizzes. To the question of What kind of urbanist are you? I got the result history and cultural urbanist. To the question of Which transect zone are you? I got the result T6-Urban Core. Those may both be more aspirational than actual, but I maintain all such quizzes are inherently valid.
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| Carlos Moreno |
Moreno started with natural disasters and other stressors caused by climate change--one estimate had $38 trillion in damages annually from extreme weather--but shifted to the broader question: What kind of city do we want to live in? Car dependency has, he said, led to living and working under constant stress, long daily trips, lost access to opportunities and social interactions, misused buildings, and overall lower quality of life. His alternative is "human-oriented urbanism" or "social circularity"--no wonder it's come to be called "the 15-minute city" although he gets frustrated with the focus on the number "15"--which includes proximity to essential services, organic density, mixed uses, quality public spaces, efficient public transport, and three other things I didn't get. Cities can promote design that delivers these goods while discouraging design that doesn't. I'll have more to say about Moreno when I read his book this summer!
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| Next year in Providence!: Board chair-elect Frank Starkey closes the conference |
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| I never did see Michael Jackson... |
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