10th anniversary post: Jeff Speck in Cedar Rapids

 

Jeff Speck talking about "The Safe Walk," 2015

Ten years ago this month, when urbanism was still relatively "new," our local Corridor Urbanism group was all of two months old, your humble blogger was still young and idealistic, and Jeb Bush and Scott Walker were the frontrunners for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, the prophet Jeff Speck appeared in Cedar Rapids. The Boston-based architect, city planner, and author of Walkable City [Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2011] was in town to promote some of the redesign recommendations he had made while consulting with the city. Our one-way-to-two-way street conversions, separated bike lanes, and four-way-stops where there used to be traffic lights all came out of his time in our city.

My report on Speck's presentation at the City Services Center is here. Corridor Urbanism co-founder Ben Kaplan scored an interview with Speck, which can be found here. Speck's presentation that night is still on YouTube:

(1:15:08)

2015 was an optimistic time in a lot of ways. Across America residents and businesses were returning to city centers, violent crime had been falling for 25 years, the economy had largely recovered from the 2007-09 recession, and our city was rebuilding after the 2008 flood. Urbanism's insights promised knowledge that would help us sustain all that in ways that were also environmentally and financially resilient.

I still believe in cities, and believe that urbanism has important things to say which can help us understand our present problems, or which we can ignore at our peril. The optimism of those days has been difficult to sustain, however. National politics is getting uglier by the week, thanks to President Trump and Elon Musk and their reign of hate and lies and casual destruction. In Cedar Rapids, the most visible policies were once those street designs and reconstruction in the core, promising many safe walks to come. Now the most visible policies in Cedar Rapids have changed the subject from safe walking to carefree parking, as we put suburban development (the MedQuarter, the casino, school consolidation) where it shouldn't be. We seem to be moving towards more car-dependence, not less, which I think we will come to regret.

More importantly, urbanism across America has entered a new phase of life. Not only are the easy lifts behind us, but new challenges have arisen.

Loftus Lofts construction, New Bohemia, September 2024

Redevelopment has not been as inclusive as it should have been. Pete Saunders recently re-posted a 2018 reflection in which he quoted Richard Florida on the new wave of problems. Florida, whose The Rise of the Creative Class (Basic, 2002) and Who's Your City? (Basic, 2008) promoted the ideas of cities building off clustering of knowledge workers, more recently published The New Urban Crisis (Basic, 2017, also discussed here) in which he laments not foreseeing the problems that would result from an insurge of higher incomes.

Just when it seemed that our cities were really turning a corner, when people and jobs were moving back to them, a host of new urban challenges--from rising inequality to increasingly unaffordable housing and more--started to come to the fore. Seemingly overnight, the much-hoped-for urban revival has turned into a new kind of urban crisis.... Gentrification and inequality are the direct outgrowths of the re-colonization of the city by the affluent and the advantaged.

The city boundaries were re-integrated, but people were not, so the new prosperity ran up against the limits of the middle class bubble. Some places gentrified and older residents got displaced; a lot more places remained isolated and "devalued" (Saunders 2025).

Arco Building, 2022, features recently remodeled offices

The pandemic rearranged decades-old commercial patterns. The daylong succession of human activities (residential, work, recreational, residential) imagined six decades ago by Jane Jacobs and decimated by Euclidean zoning might have been easy to rebuild in our city centers, if only work had held still. The COVID pandemic shifted a good deal of work to remote, and the succeeding years have seen only partial recovery. Kaid Benefield wrote in Place Makers of a recent trip to Union Square in San Francisco where he found Nordstrom's closed, with Walgreen's and Bloomingdale's weeks away from the same fate. And it's not just remote work.

I think a number of trends are contributing to declining urban retail, none bigger than a consumer shift to the convenience of online shopping and delivery. A second major factor is the rise of remote work practices and consequent decline in daily office workers who have traditionally supported businesses near their places of employment. A third factor is rising crime rates in some urban neighborhoods.

With regard to crime, urban areas are having a variety of experiences, but the miracle of 1990-2015 seems to be over (citing Farrell 2024).

Low income housing, SW side

Housing. Need I say more? Not too long ago, Pete Saunders noted that urbanism seems to have turned into all housing all the time. As demand for housing increasingly outstrips supply, costs in high-demand areas are making one of the basic necessities of life harder for people to obtain. (See this interactive graphic, complete with time slider.) I don't know where this is going--another crash, maybe?--but in the meantime we're dealing with big time market failure. 

At the bottom end, an ever-larger group of people have been forced into unstable housing arrangements or out onto the street. This is a nationwide problem that hits people locally. New data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development find the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness has increased 57 percent since the low point in--you guessed it--2015. (See the analysis at Torres 2025). The explosion of homelessness has made some urban areas highly unpleasant. They are our brothers and sisters, and they need a place to sleep and process waste just the rest of us do, but their increasing presence is making urban areas harder for the rest of us to use. 

Maybe if we can find ways to make office-to-residential conversion work on a large scale (Anderson 2023), we can stabilize the housing market, rejuvenate urban retail at least for necessaries, and thereby put enough eyes on the streets that they will look less ramshackle and feel less dangerous. There certainly a lot of people continuing to do the hard work of building great places, as the The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast and the Cities for Everyone webinar series seem never to run out of people to feature (although the international scope of Cities for Everyone often makes me wish I lived in France or Spain). The black urbanist movement described by Pete Saunders (2018 [2025]) continues to "focus on immediate concerns and push for pragmatic solutions."

Mostly, I still believe in walkable, compact development as the best for human quality of life as well as the most sustainable. Speck's four elements of walkability--safe, comfortable, interesting, and useful--will remain forever relevant.

10th anniversary post: What is a complete street?

Edgewood Road SW near the new library is not a complete street, 
but a 10-foot side "trail" and daytime bus service help

Ten years ago, I explored the concept of complete streets, with profiles of three eastside streets "currently suited only to those physically fit and bold of spirit" that I thought could use a bit of complete streets treatment. In the years since, Cedar Rapids has added numerous sidewalks around town, as well as bike lanes and trails, converted most one-way streets back to two-way, and made important zoning reforms. On the other hand, we're turning Mt. Vernon Road into a highway, reserving important land adjacent to downtown for unproductive uses, and everywhere doubling down on car-dependence.

Later in 2014, the city adopted both a Complete Streets Policy and a comprehensive plan, Envision CR, which included complete streets. Envision CR, revised in 2023, defines complete streets as "streets that serve a variety of functions and potentials" (p. 127), with features like separated bike lanes, sidewalks, crosswalks, street furniture, and better drainage, all supported by "special" lighting graphics and landscaping. It identified as ongoing tasks "sign and mark streets for bicyclists" and "retrofit high priority corridors with sidewalks and pedestrian amenities" consistent with the city's Complete Streets Policy (p. 128).

The three incomplete streets I pulled off the top of my head in 2014 have since seen varying impacts of complete streets ideas.

(1) A Avenue NE (small impact).

Turn right to enter I-380: 800 block of A Avenue NE
(Google Earth screenshot, 2021)

Back in the day this was a residential/commercial street. According to the 1953 Polk's Directory, more than 300 people then lived along A Avenue between Coe College and 1st Street downtown. There were also numerous commercial establishments, including a grocery store at 717, a barber shop (708), a bar (800), a restaurant (713), a vet (801), and two cleaners (719 & 835). Imagine the activity on that street at any time of the day seventy years ago, and ponder what has been lost to the interstate highway and medical district expansion.

Today A Avenue's principal purpose now is to provide auto access to St. Luke's Hospital, I-380 entrance at 8th Street, and Quaker Oats. Its four lanes carry 5000 cars a day below 7th Street. In 2021 there was no count above 7th Street, but in 2017 the count was 7600 at the entrance to the interstate, then back down to 5800 in front of St. Luke's Hospital.

Aerial view of the same area
(Google Earth screenshot, 2021)

I'd chosen A to examine, because it's the one of the few available connections between the Mound View neighborhood (including Coe College) and downtown; really the only alternative is high-traffic 1st Avenue. In 2014 I was torn between narrowing A and shifting through car traffic onto 1st, or doing the opposite. Nothing as radical as either of those has been attempted, but there have been two small improvements: the intersection at 10th has been changed from traffic signals to a three-way stop, and brick crosswalks have been added across 12th a.k.a. Coe Road. 

newish crosswalks, A Ave and Coe Road NE
(St. Luke's Hospital in background)

Back then, I said biking was "do-able, but scary, particularly near the interstate," and that walking was complicated at every intersection. That is still true.

I'm probably more in favor now than I was then of closing the interstate altogether. A Avenue shows the damage to urban form brought by an intracity highway and an auto-oriented medical district, and how difficult it is to repair that once done.

(2) 10th Street E (moderate impact).

300 block of 10th Street, heading towards Mercy Hospital
(Google Earth screenshot from 2021)
(Note the gentleman on the sidewalk, unimpressed by the bike lane)

This should be called the Medical Mile, as its nine blocks are bookended by St. Luke's and Mercy Hospitals. Numerous medical offices are located along the way, as well as a lovely historic Firestone Tire establishment...

Firestone Complete Auto Care, 205 10th St SE

..., two churches, and McKinley Middle School (slated for closure, I'm not sure how soon).

Ten years ago, 10th Street was four lanes wide; in 2020 it got a road diet, and is now three lanes with bike lanes on each side. Average daily traffic counts (2021) peak at 10,700 at 3rd Avenue, about 10 percent higher than in 2017.

400 block of 10th Street SE: bike lanes are nice,
but the trees could use a bit of trimming

I'd chosen 10th Street because along most of its length it forms the border between the MedQuarter and the Wellington Heights neighborhood. So, how easily it is crossed is at least as important as how easily it can be traveled by non-car modes. Narrowing the car portion of the street helps, as do the crossing treatments at 3rd Avenue, but the traffic lights at 4th and 5th Avenues still seem to take forever. 

Needs some place to walk to: 4th Avenue and 10th Street, 2019

It may be that what can be done to complete 10th Street has been done, and we now need to look at what's around it. Physicians Clinic of Iowa (202 10th) and Mercy Hospital (701 10th) are massive campuses that are hard to get around/through, and the same may well come to be true of whatever replaces McKinley Middle School (620 10th). The intersection at 8th Avenue, which borders the Oak Hill Jackson neighborhood, is being converted into a roundabout, with the jury out on the pedestrian-friendliness of its design. 

Constructing roundabout at 10th St and 8th Av
(McKinley Middle School in background)

Depending on how the roundabout turns out (ha ha!), a traditional intersection with four-way stops (and no slip lanes) might have been preferable for non-car travelers.

(3) 32nd Street NE (no impact).

There's a sidewalk, but crossing I-380 is rough:
grocery shopping from the Overlook 380 apts
(Google Earth screenshot)

32nd Street is a two-lane, roughly two-mile-long east-west street that runs through the Kenwood neighborhood. It connects 1st Avenue, which is running northeast-southwest at this point, to Center Point Road, which runs north-south. We're getting into suburban traffic patterns at this remove from the core: 29th Street does the same thing in pretty much the same way, but the next closest east-west connection is not until Collins Road. I'd included it on my 2014 list because it's such an artery, passing along the way several apartment buildings, Collins Aerospace, a large Hy-Vee grocery store, the Cedar River Trail, and an entrance to I-380, before it becomes Glass Road and continues on westward. Average daily traffic counts (2021) on 32nd range from 8100 near 1st Avenue to 9300 near the highway; in 2017 the peak was 13,900 near the highway.

In 2014 I complained of high traffic speeds, difficult cycling, and (relayed from Niles Ross) incomplete sidewalks that where they did exist were in poor condition. I imagined, in order to complete the street, "more and smoother sidewalks; calming car traffic with four-way stops at C Av, Eastern Av, and Prairie Dr; sharrow signs, since I don't think the street is wide enough for bike lanes; relaxed zoning in order to allow small commercial development along the street; and a bus line that runs back and forth along 32nd/Glass from 1st to Edgewood." That list has five things on it! which said a lot about the street's needs.

Ten years later, not much has changed on 32nd Street. The sidewalks on the 1st Avenue end are still chopped up, though there are multiple markings suggesting repairs are imminent. 

32nd Street sidewalk, with purposeful markings

Those sidewalks still terminate at F Avenue (north side of the street) and G Avenue (south side of the street. The car traffic still doesn't stop, there are still no bike markings (not even the dreaded sharrow), and bus service is still at the ends of the street rather than along it. I don't remember what commercial development I thought possible back then, but a widely-praised little restaurant, Loosies, has popped up between Oakland and Center Point Roads.

Loosies, 1611 32nd St NE

🌞

As the city presented Envision CR to the public ten years ago, veteran reporter Dale Keuter said he'd seen plenty of plans end up in the "dust heap" (Smith 2014). It's too early to say that's where the complete streets policy is headed. Progress is of necessity going to be gradual, and would-be destinations like the casino, the MedQuarter, and the greenway are always going to get more attention. But as an exceptionally car-dependent city in the 21st century, which has both seen its share of weather disasters and wants to attract young talent, we can't afford to put the day-to-day lives of residents on the back burner.

SEE ALSO: Jane E. Brody, “Keeping Older Pedestrians Safe,” New York Times, 5 January 2015

Spencer Gardner, "Strength Test #6: Can Children Safely Walk or Bike in Your Town?" Strong Towns, 5 April 2017

Sean Hayford Oleary, "If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity," Strong Towns, 28 July 2023

ORIGINAL POST: "What is a Complete Street?" 13 August 2014

Five Favorite Streets

 

1903 storefront at 73 16th Avenue SW

"What are your five favorite streets in your town?" asked someone on Mastodon the other day. Unfortunately, I can't remember who inspired this post, but it does allow me to promote my presence on the oddness that is Mastodon: You'll find me at @brucefnesmith@mastodon.coffee. There are lots of urbanists on Mastodon!

I mulled, cogitated, and in time came up with five streets in Cedar Rapids that I love. I'm going on pure visceral reaction here, though I will try to explain my love for each, which seems based in a stew of walkability and nostalgia. The streets are listed alphabetically; they are too different for me to attempt to rank them. I add the caveat that I've lived and worked my entire Cedar Rapids life on the east side, so I just don't know the west side as well. It gets some love, too, however!

Bever Avenue SE (2400-3000).

A lovely urban boulevard that lost quite a bit of its tree canopy in the 2020 derecho, but still retains its aesthetic charm. Pedestrians gravitate to it because many of the residential streets to its south lack sidewalks. On the north side is Bever Park, one of the town's largest and oldest parks which includes two playgrounds, a duck pond, swimming pool, picnic shelter and wooded trails. Average daily traffic count: 4980. Served by the #2 bus below Memorial Drive.

Yes, but: Despite the thoughtfully stenciled sharrow, auto traffic moves too fast for comfortable cycling, and the lack of stops requires cautious crossing from the residential area to the park. Besides the park, there are few attractions within an easy walking distance.

Bever Avenue, looking west from park entrance

4th Avenue SE (1900-2100).

Old-fashioned houses are charming if on the large side. This is one of my favorite streets to walk at Christmastime. The poet Paul Engle (1908-1991) had a childhood paper route here, and in his memoir described the tree-lined street, trees that spread up and outward, meeting high above the middle of the street, so that walking along them in summer was going through a green tunnel. Those houses at a distance looked calm, quiet, outside the turbulent world. But to a boy of twelve they were crammed with excitement, with living, tense, often wild faces. Windows were the way I looked into their eyes (A Lucky American Childhood [University of Iowa Press, 1996], p. 62). The #2 bus runs close by.

Yes, but: Like 8th Avenue in Marion, which is another street I love, the lovely houses are going to be too big for most of us. It's a strenuous though doable walk to downtown or any other attractions.

4th Avenue, looking east from 20th Street

Johnson Avenue NW (200-300).

Shady older street with a mix of houses, within walking distance of a supermarket, schools, churches and some small offices. At one end is Haskell Park, a pocket park named for the state legislator who championed the Lincoln Highway. Farther down Johnson is a Dairy Queen. Across 1st Avenue, alas a crossing not to be taken lightly, are Cleveland Park and the baseball and football stadia. Downtown is about a mile and a half away. Served by bus routes #8 and #10.

Yes, but: As a segment of the original Lincoln Highway, it connects two high-traffic stroads.

Johnson Ave NW (Google maps screen capture)

Longwood Drive NE.

Longwood and its sister streets, Dunreath and Gwendolyn, were shoehorned between 19th and 20th Streets some time in the 1920s or 30s. We lived on Longwood from 1997-2007, and I loved the closeness of the small lots. On the edge of the Mound View neighborhood, there is a pocket park (Tomahawk) at the end of the street, and beyond it the CeMar Trail and the athletic fields of Mount Mercy University. Franklin Middle School, the Tic Toc restaurant, and the Old Neighborhood Pub are within easy walks, and Coe College isn't terribly far, as I can personally attest. The street has neither curbs nor gutters, but slopes toward the middle, which during rainstorms creates a creek known as Big Al. The #3 bus runs close by.

Yes, but: There are no sidewalks. The closest elementary school closed years ago, and the second-closest is shortly going to be closed, too.

Longwood Drive, looking north from C Avenue
(Google Maps screen capture)

16th Avenue SW (000-120).

This was the main commercial street in pre-flood Czech Village, though bars and knick-knacks have replaced essential services to the neighborhood that is no longer. Thanks to visionary property owners like Mary Kay McGrath and Bob Schaeffer, Czech Village has managed to retain much of its historic charm through this transitionary period.The narrow street makes walking easy, and it contains probably my favorite bar (Lion Bridge, at 59) and coffee house (Cafe St. Pio, at 99). If I were a plant person, my favorite plant store would be Moss, at 74. The Cedar Valley Nature Trail crosses 16th Avenue at A Street. Average daily traffic count: 4720. The #7 bus stops at 16th and C.

Yes, but: There are few residences nearby now, though plans for development of the flooded area to the south are in the works.

16th Avenue looking southish from A Street.
Lion Bridge's courtyard is on the left. 

SEE ALSO:

"The Urbanest Places in Cedar Rapids?" 16 July 2020

"The Place Where I Live," 1 April 2013

Cedar Rapids bus routes: https://www.cedar-rapids.org/residents/city_buses/routes.php

Cedar Rapids average daily traffic counts:   https://iowadot.gov/maps/msp/traffic/2021/cities/CedarRapids.pdf

Linn County trail map: https://linncountytrails.org/trails/

Legally parked?

This car is parked in the 1200 block of 2nd Avenue SE, comfortably on the right side of the "no parking here to corner" sign. But...

...it is also parked across the bike lane, which for some reason shifts to the curb just above 13th Street. So are these other cars:

In the drivers' defense, if they're parking at night, the bike lane markings are not easily seen, and these are well inside the "no parking here to corner" sign.

This has never been a problem for me, either on a bike or in a car, because most auto traffic on 2nd Avenue turns either left or right onto 13th Street. So it's easy to maneuver around these cars. But--note the moving vehicle down the street, whose driver didn't turn--it could be an issue.

An easy solution would be to move the "no parking here to corner" sign beyond the driveway you see in the picture above. (After the driveway, the bike lane shifts back out into the street, away from where the cars are parked.) You could preserve the parking spaces if you restriped all the lanes to make them straight through the intersection of 2nd and 13th.

Woonerful woonerful

Woonerfs are complete streets taken to the next level. They are designed as space to be shared by all people, however they're getting around. The idea originated in the Netherlands in the 1960s, albeit like many urbanist innovations they are actually trying to re-create street usage of the pre-automotive age. You can see some Dutch examples here and here. Common in the Netherlands, they have spread to the United Kingdom, and have popped up here and there in other countries as well. The first in the United States appears to have been Commerce Street in Provincetown, Massachusetts (Hockenos 2013).

Woonerfs are featured throughout most of the Wharf, a development in southwest DC by PN Hoffman and Madison Marquette, that lies between Maine Avenue and the Washington Channel, and between 7^th and 10^th streets. The development caters mostly to tourists, with several hotels taking advantage of the proximity to the river. The shops are predominantly franchised boutique-y…

Shops on District Square

…with more of the same coming.

Wharf, Phase 2: Coming attractions

The latest Southwester notes that a rare locally-owned business, Jenny's Asian Fusion, has lost their lease at the Wharf (Vaughn et al. 2018). Along my way I did find a hardware store (attached to a bike shop and café)…

District Hardware and Bike, 730 Maine Av SW

…as well as a CVS pharmacy and an optometrist, so residents of the new condos won't have to go elsewhere for all of their daily needs. There is also the headquarters of the American Psychiatric Association. 

American Psychiatric Association, 800 Maine Av SW

 I bought coffee at a chain bakery…

Milk Bar, 49 District Square

Milk Bar is in the center of things

…which I took to some functionally smooth rocks in the street’s median.

District Square

District Square

 What makes these streets woonerfs is the absence of curbs.

Pearl Street SW

800 block of Water Street SW

It is usually pretty clear, though, where the cars, and the pedestrians, are supposed to go.

crossing 7th St SW

Sometimes, though, streets were blocked off, either temporarily...

District Square

…or permanently.

700 block of Water Street

Pedestrians walked comfortably on the streets when cars weren’t operating...

700 block of Wharf Street

…and sometimes when they were

Wharf Street approaching 7th Street

As I observed the street during the noon hour, usually people in the street gave precedence to cars; incidentally, most motor vehicles were taxis. Once I heard a taxi driver honk at a man crossing the street, but usually people gave way without confrontation. (These men gave way after being alerted to the presence of the taxi by a bystander.)

700 block of Wharf Street

We bystanders were treated to some jogging Marines, chanting taunts at the Air Force.

700 block of Wharf Street

Getting to the Wharf seems fairly easy (see Cranor 2018). The walk from the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station was short but complex due to the need to get across I-395. There is a free shuttle from the Metro station.

Wharf stop is on Maine Av at Sutton Square

The Wharf itself remains privately owned and managed. I saw two police officers, but I think they were off-duty. There was a constant presence of security guards.

Private management may explain the complete absence of street people, which in DC is immediately remarkable; the plenteous availability of public restrooms...

…and a labor protest

Even so there are a lot of areas open to the general public, including parks and piers.

Recreation Pier and splash pad with a view of construction across Maine Av

the Wharf as seen from the Wharf Torch at the end of Recreation Pier

The terrace in front of the Hyatt was available for public use as well. At least they didn’t chase me away. I had a good view of the channel, or if I shifted position, Wharf Street

Download the app. Because banners are so 2013.

Woonerfs are being considered for other places in Washington: a short block of Q Street in the NoMa area is in the works, and may be used on Delaware Avenue near Union Station as part of that area's thorough overhaul ("Union Station" 2016). At least a couple years ago, Seattle was considering the design for East John Street near Summit Slope Park (Packer 2015); Alexandria was talking woonerf for Union Street in Old Town in 2012 (Pope 2012, Beinert 2012), but must have decided against it.

Everyone I spoke to at The Wharf--OK, I'm lying about this part--asked the same question: How would this approach work in Cedar Rapids, say on 12th Avenue SE?

12th Ave SE gets the Better Block treatment in April
(Source: CVNB District Facebook page)

I could see some functionality in New Bohemia, as well as Czech Village, where multiple small shops and arts venues generate a lot of pedestrian traffic. Newly-constructed 16th Avenue could take the auto pressure off 12th Avenue in New Bohemia. Unfortunately, that's the very avenue that goes through the heart of Czech Village, where 12th serves as the bypass. I'm not sure I see auto drivers, who remain kings in Cedar Rapids, serptentining their ways through this stretch. There's also the complication of having to go through the political process to undo existing development, rather than a private developer creating their own space.

Sources:
Jon Banister, "What's a Woonerf? The Streetscape Design That's Sweeping DC," Bisnow, 18 July 2016
Payton Chung, "How Are the Wharf's Shared Spaces Working Out?" Greater Greater Washington, 28 November 2017
Shannon Vaughn, Christy Vaughn, Julia Cole, Katelynd Mahoney Andersdon, Jason Kopp and Jan Callender, "Op-Ed: Forty Years Should Mean Something," Southwester, May 2018, 1, 11

See Also:
Tara Lerman, "The D.C. Waterfront: At a Glance," Bisnow, 8 May 2018
B.A. Morelli, "Could a Ped Mall Work in Czech Village?" Cedar Rapids Gazette, 21 April 2018