Skip to Navigation
Home ›
Feed aggregator
HUD Announces Finalists in Affordable Housing Innovation Competition
Next City - Thu, 2016-02-25 07:59
HUD Secretary Julián Castro (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
The four finalists in a HUD competition meant to encourage innovation in affordable housing
design propose integrating senior services, community gardens and accommodations for verylow-income residents into a public housing project in Santa Barbara, California.
Related Stories




Atlanta Project Envisions Parking Garages as the Future of Tiny Housing
Economist Explores How Some Dallas Renters Search for Home
Risks vs. Rewards: Inside HUD’s Favorite New Program
These 3 Cities Are Looking for Their “Goldilocks” Affordable Housing Solutions
The third annual Innovation in Affordable Housing Student Design and Planning Competition
challenged graduate students to rethink a specific public housing site by working in
interdisciplinary teams. Each applicant group had to have representatives from at least three
major fields, including at least one architecture or design student.
This year, HUD and Santa Barbara’s Housing Authority challenged the teams to consider options
for rehabbing the current Monteria Village housing project or demolishing it and building anew.
Contestants are required to consider not only planning and design, but also financing, community
development and zoning restrictions.
“Boosting and improving affordable housing is critical to the mission of HUD and to ensuring
that every American has access to safe and stable housing,” said HUD Secretary Julián Castro in
a statement. “By tapping the talents of top young people across the nation, we are finding new
ways to tackle old challenges in federal government.”
Here, the four finalist teams.
A team from the University of Texas at Austin proposed adding 39 units to the project for a total
of 67 renovated homes, which would increase density and add units for very low-income
families. Their design also creates a central “family opportunity center” and an education center,
and adds green stormwater capture infrastructure.
A University of Kansas group proposed adding a health and wellness “living lab” to the
development to provide healthcare services to residents of all ages. Their facility also prioritizes
accommodating seniors who wish to remain with their families and communities as their medical
needs increase.
A team from the University of Maryland at College Park opted for new construction, with a
mixture of housing options: 19 3-story townhouses, 14 2-story townhouses, and a 4-story
multifamily development for a total of 48 affordable units. Their design also includes a food coop, community center and a nearby community garden.
A Harvard University team created a 34-unit new construction development with a design
intended to accommodate all types and sizes of family. Their design includes a community
garden and an “opportunity center” that provides activities for residents and flexible communal
space.
All four finalist groups will visit the Santa Barbara site in early March. The winning team, with
the best overall concept for the Monteria Village redevelopment, will be announced in April.
Chosen by a jury of academics, planners and architects, the first place team will receive $20,000
and the runner-up $10,000.
Categories: CNU blogs, New Urbanism
Breakfast links: Silver clouds and linings
Greater Greater Washington - Thu, 2016-02-25 07:30
by Joe Stenhouse
Photo by Matthew Perkins on Flickr.Silver hurt Metro?: The Silver Line has seriously hurt
Metro's reliability, says a report. The new 7000-series railcars will help, but won't overcome poor
maintenance practices. (WAMU)
Silver helped Fairfax: The introduction of the Silver Line has stirred growth in Fairfax County.
86% of office space under construction is located within a quarter mile of the new Metro
stations. (InsideNova)
Can you hear me now?: Metro will add cell phone and radio service underground, but it will
take time to install 100 miles of heavy cables. (City Paper)
A second chance for Ramsey: The Alexandria City Council will reconsider a proposal to
redevelop the run-down Ramsey Homes public housing into more affordable housing. It
originally shot down the project, saying it was too big. (Post)
Restaurant restrictions in Georgetown: In 1989, Georgetown put a moratorium on liquor
licenses to keep the peace. Business leaders want to end the moratorium to bring restaurants back
to the area, but not without a new set of restrictive rules. (Post)
Bi-County Parkway voted out: The long-debated Bi-County Parkway could disappear from
Prince William County's master plan if supervisors uphold a Planning Board recommendation.
Many believe it would spoil Manassas Battlefield without relieving congestion and an Outer
Beltway would be bad for the county. (InsideNova)
Unbalanced statues: DC has only five statues to actual, historic women. New York also has
only five. Why is that? A few reasons, but none good enough to warrant perpetuating the gender
gap. (Citylab)
Have a tip for the links? Submit it here.
34 comments
Did you enjoy this article? Greater Greater Washington is running a reader drive to raise funds
so we can keep editing and publishing great articles every day. Please help us be sustainable by
making a monthly, yearly, or one-time contribution today! Click here to support Greater Greater
Washington.
Categories: CNU blogs
Building Equity Into Durham’s Startup Scene
Next City - Thu, 2016-02-25 07:00
American Underground’s office and co-working space in downtown Durham, North Carolina
(Credit: American Underground)
Talib Graves-Manns grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. Growing up in Greensboro, North
Carolina, he watched his father build a successful women’s apparel business while his mother
managed a local real estate firm. It was no surprise that he went on to earn an MBA and launch a
business of his very own.
Related Stories




Can Philadelphia Teach Silicon Valley a Thing or Two About Diversity?
Obama Gets Nod of Thanks for Streetcar
N.Y. Sees Job Growth With Less Help From Wall Street
How Many Cities Does It Take to Make the Perfect City?
Last year, Graves-Manns was selected as one of three entrepreneurs from across the U.S. to
participate in a business incubator initiative run by CODE2040, a San Francisco-based nonprofit
that supports black and Latino tech professionals. The yearlong CODE2040 Residency, backed
by Google for Entrepreneurs, provided the three with $40,000 each, free co-working space,
mentorship from Silicon Valley veterans at Google’s headquarters and resources to create
community-building events throughout the year.
“I was spending a lot of time in the Valley, expanding my knowledge as a marketing analytics
consultant, and getting deep into the technology behind the work,” Graves-Manns says. “I started
developing relationships in the black tech scene and someone told me about the CODE2040
program. I knew it would be a perfect opportunity for me to fund and grow a business without
having to leave Durham.”
Founded in 2012, CODE2040 has a student initiative that pairs experts with top minority
engineering students and connects them with professional development opportunities and access
to internships at major tech companies. The organization launched its multicity entrepreneur
residency program as a pilot in March 2015 in Durham, Austin and Chicago.
With Code2040’s support, Graves-Manns set up shop at American Underground — a coworking hub in the basement of a transformed tobacco warehouse on the American Tobacco
Campus in downtown Durham. Since opening its doors in 2010, American Underground has
become home to more than 227 active startups — 22.4 percent of which are led by minority
founders. To date, the hub’s startup community has created 431 jobs.
“The biggest benefit in our partnership with CODE2040 has been in proving the success of what
can happen in a small market like Durham,” says Jesica Averhart, director of community
partnerships and new business development for the American Tobacco Historic District, which
manages American Underground. “We’re not Atlanta, or New York, or the Valley. But by
hosting an entrepreneur in residence, we were able to really spotlight and encourage great work
around diversity and inclusion that is important for our city.”
American Underground’s co-working space (Credit: American Underground)
During his tenure, Graves-Manns co-launched RainbowMe, an Internet TV concept for kids
that’s meant to be entertaining and educational, and features multicultural main characters. The
company has raised an additional $36,000, a success Graves-Manns directly attributes to the
connections he made during the CODE2040 program.
Another aspect of the residency includes the charge for entrepreneurs and their partner coworking hub to build bridges to technology for minorities in their respective communities.
Last October, Graves-Manns and American Underground launched the Black Wall Street
homecoming summit, which paid homage to the city’s thriving black business district in the late
1800s where 125 black-owned financial institutions and shopkeepers reigned in the heart of
Durham. The three-day summit included workshops and panel discussions for local black
business owners looking to fund and grow their businesses in the city. College students were also
invited to participate and meet local and national venture capitalists and investors. There’s an
encore in the works for 2016.
Programs like CODE2040 are critical to the growth of diverse entrepreneurship among
Durham’s growing black and Latino population. As a rising hub for technology startups,
bioscience and engineering, Durham is a prime location for building a business and sourcing
adept talent without the high living costs associated with a larger city. Historically, minority
populations in the city remain underserved by opportunities and access to funding and business
support.
A 2013 disparity report funded by the city of Durham revealed that fewer than 3 percent of all
city contracts for construction, goods and services were awarded to minorities and women. The
city council is currently working toward revamping initiatives to engage the minority business
community. Averhart’s team continues to share best practices with city leaders on ways to create
inclusive initiatives to increase funding and support for diverse founders.
“We’re going to see real movement in Durham in the next two to four years as the city identifies
the best path forward in the form of coding schools and funding initiatives,” Averhart says. “In
our relationship with the city, we’re pushing them to think much more intentionally about how
they’re spending their resources. They started to take notice of our work with CODE2040 and as
a diverse co-working space, and they are learning from our successes.”
Currently, the city does not track minority entrepreneurs or the types of businesses they start.
American Underground, in addition to hosting a CODE2040 entrepreneur for the 2015-2016 year
plans to expand its reach of bringing technology into the community to inspire innovation and
business development through coding programs for undocumented residents and classes for
historically black colleges and universities in the area.
“We need continued access to capital coupled with business accelerator education to help
support local entrepreneurs who are worried about paying their rent as they grow their dream,”
Graves-Manns says. “CODE2040 gave me the time, space and resources to grow a business and
serves as a model that works in Durham.”
Categories: CNU blogs, New Urbanism
"To the Suburb!" Lessons from Minorities and the New Immigrants
New Geography - Thu, 2016-02-25 00:48
This essay is part of a new report from the Center for Opportunity Urbanism called "America's
Housing Crisis." The report contains several essays about the future of housing from various
perspectives. Follow this link to download the full report (pdf).
When I was in college the suburbs were vilified. It was the mid-2000s, and here we were,
enlightened coeds having one last hurrah in the flat Midwestern expanse before finding our place
in the world, and there really was only one world to find: the city.
A lot was fueling this. Some of us were reacting to Walmart childhoods, the big box strip malls a
symbol for all that embarrassed us about America – corporate consumerism, excess materiality, a
primacy on efficiency over heart. Others found in urban contrasts a call to heal social divides.
But whether motivated by altruism or hipsterdom, the city seemed like the only place to live a
meaningful, “authentic” existence. We were taught that the suburbs were vanilla, bland, buffers
for Boomers to hibernate with their own kind. Cities, by contrast, offered risk, adventure,
diversity and grit.
Fast-forward a decade, and these differences have faded and even reversed. Sure, cities in the
mold of New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles still appeal to the young and
mobile. But, lately, as housing prices in the most appealing urban cores skyrocket across the
country, metropolitan centers find their middle class aspirants fleeing for greener and less
expensive pastures.
Today, many suburbs are remaking themselves as formidable incubators for social mobility and
globalism, their sprawl punctuated by street signs in other languages, strips of ethnic eateries,
self- confident civic innovation and a fresh aura of hope.
This suburban blossoming represents an underreported shift in settlement
patterns of our new immigrants and minorities. Where “To the city! To the city!” was the
unquestioned mantra of newcomers landing on Ellis Island in the first wave of mass migration
between 1880 and 1924, today’s Latin Americans, Asians, Africans and African Americans are
voting with their feet in a new direction. “To the suburb!” – if it didn’t sound like a minivan’s
whimper – would be the banner of the day.
SOME FACTS
It would take a hermit lifestyle not to notice the demographic sea change that’s swept the United
States over the last three decades. European immigration, once the mainstay of growth for the
U.S., fell 32 percent, even amidst the continent’s hard times, from 2010 to 2013. In 1980,
Mexicans accounted for the most populous group of foreign-born at 2.2 million, followed by
Germans at 849,000. By 2010, the Mexican population had more than quintupled while
European immigrants had fallen from being 36.6 percent of the total foreign- born population in
1980 to 12.1 percent in 2010. Mainland China now follows Mexico at 2.2 million, with Indians
and Filipinos close behind at 1.8 million each. Today, the sending regions with the largest
numerical increases in the number of immigrants living in the United States since 2010 are East
Asia (up 642,000), South Asia (up 594,000), Sub-Saharan Africa (up 282,000), the Middle East
(up 277,000), the Caribbean (up 269,000), and Central America (up 268,000).
The swell of these “new immigrants” has revived perennial American questions around national
identity that ever undergird our migration policy debates. The issues touch almost every region,
with suburbs and smaller cities in the country’s interior feeling them most acutely. Where Los
Angeles, New York City and Chicago were once the obvious gateways to build an American life,
now the cities in the South and West are increasingly attracting the foreign-born. Since 2000, 76
percent of the growth in the immigrant population has occurred in these smaller metropolises,
with Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City and Columbus growing the fastest. A related trend
is that as of 2007, four in 10 immigrants now move directly from overseas to the suburbs,
eclipsing the urban experience that had always been the landing pad.
The Brookings Institution came out with an important report last year detailing these shifts. In
2000, more than half of the nation’s immigrants lived in the suburbs of our largest metros.
According to census data from 2000-2013, that number is now up to 61 percent.
More than a third of the 13.3 million new suburbanites between 2000 and 2010 were Hispanic,
with whites accounting for a mere fifth of suburban growth in that same period. Between 2000
and 2012, the Asian population in suburban areas of the nation’s 52 biggest metro areas grew
66.2 percent, while that in the core cities grew only by 34.9 percent. African Americans have
also been steadily moving from inner cities to the suburbs. The 2010 Census showed that each
one of the nation’s 20 largest metro areas saw a significant decrease in their proportion of black
residents, with African Americans as a group shrinking from 65 percent urban in 2000 to 49
percent in 2010.
The regional details are even more striking. Since 2000, the suburban immigrant population has
doubled in 20 metro areas. In 53 metro areas, the suburbs accounted for more than half of
immigrant growth, including nine metros in which all of the immigrant growth occurred on the
periphery: Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Los Angeles, Ogden, Rochester,
and Salt Lake City. Atlanta and Seattle, long skirted by immigrants and even now ranking
outside the top 10 largest immigrant destinations, each added more immigrants to their
populations than did Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, or Los Angeles. Crucially, since 2000, not
one metro area has seen its foreign-born population in the suburbs decrease.
What this means is that the suburbs as a whole are now equally, if not more diverse, than the
populations living in most urban cores. They also are generally less ethnically segregated. Go to
a Starbucks in Sugar Land, Texas, and you’re more likely to stand in a line resembling the
United Nations than anything you’d find in the center of Manhattan. Same goes for Fairfax,
Virginia, where the demographics far out-pixelate Washington, D.C. 29.5 percent of Fairfax
residents are foreign born, compared to 13 percent in D.C. 16.4 percent of Fairfax’s residents are
also of Hispanic origin and 19.2 percent are Asian, compared to only 10.4 percent Hispanic and
4 percent Asian in D.C.ix Irving City and Carrollton just outside Dallas see their foreign born
comprising 35 and 28 percent of their residents, respectively, while Dallas proper caps at only 23
percent. In Washington State, 34 percent of Bellevue is foreign born, while Seattle’s foreign born
stands at a mere 17.7 percent.
It’s important to note that this movement to the periphery does follow overall population
settlement patterns observed since 2000 – it is not simply an immigrant or minority phenomenon.
As elite urban hubs suffer from high housing prices, experiencing then a widening chasm
between the very rich and the very poor, the suburbs have become a harbor for the middle class
to find more reliable footing. And while my suburban-raised college classmates and I turned our
noses up at their presumed provinciality, an Aspen/Atlantic poll from three months ago showed
that most Americans still consider a family-oriented, suburban neighborhood closest to their
“ideal” in terms of where to live, with 53 percent of whites, 53 percent of African Americans, 53
percent of Hispanics and 63 percent of Asians aspiring to this future.
Recognizing that immigrant and minority migration patterns mirror shifts undergone by the
population at large, there remains a texture to the suburban shift specific to both the contexts and
the aspirations of today’s immigrant and minority groups, a texture laden with distinct promises
and challenges as many pioneer lives on a more sprawling landscape. Here is a closer look at
why the New America is suburbanizing, and what this may bode for the future.
THE CASE OF HOUSTON
Take a drive westward from almost any major airport today and you’ll see these worlds
unfurling. In Houston, now the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the country, its white
population is increasingly concentrated inside the inner loop (particularly millennial singletons)
with everyone else settling beyond. As of 2013, over half of the city’s immigrant population—56
percent—live in Houston’s suburban municipalities, with 80 percent of the growth of the area’s
foreign-born population since 2000 occurring in the suburbs.
This diversity shapes how I live. One recent Sunday, after waking up at 6:30 AM for a game of
tennis with some Vietnamese friends who’d trekked in to Houston’s inner loop from Sugar Land,
I found myself traveling the world in a zip code. The court transitioned to church at an all-black
Methodist congregation 32 minutes from Houston’s downtown, followed by a Peruvian brunch
at a rotisserie chicken eatery sitting just across the street from a large Indo-Pakistani shopping
plaza. I then wandered over to the neighboring Hispanic mall known as PlazAmericas before
taking a right on Bellaire Boulevard to peruse flavors of shaved ice at Chinatown’s Dun Huang
Plaza and sampling Korean pears at the pristine Super H, with Latino shelf-stockers backing the
Korean cashiers. Café Beignets, a Vietnamese interpretation of New Orleans charm, nourished
with fried dough in the middle of a “Saigon Houston Plaza” that seemed to take its aesthetic cues
from Pottery Barn, Asian-accented. All manner of sacred architecture beckoned from behind the
strip malls, with the Buddhist Teo Chew Temple peeking out from beneath the tree tops and a
dozen Spanish and African-speaking church signs within view around the corner.
This was all a suburban version of “verges” – the vortexes where civilizations clash and conceive
a fresh dynamism. Only in this case it wasn’t Istanbul; it was the Beltway crossing route 59.
Houston rightly carries a reputation as one of the most welcoming cities in the U.S. While
cultural traditions from elsewhere are invited to express themselves, the first question most
Houstonians ask is not, “Where are you from?” but “Where are you headed?” The environment
is future-oriented, open and adaptable. Buildings are torn down one month and rebuilt the next.
There’s something for everyone, and the more outsiders come for jobs and the hope to establish a
stable and happy life, the more Houston is texturizing to reflect the values and needs of the globe
within it.
“I think Houston offers people an opportunity to entrench themselves,” says John Tran, a secondgeneration Vietnamese lawyer in his mid-thirties, living in Sugar Land, also the town of his
childhood. “It’s one of those places that gives people time to assimilate at the same time that it
also gives them time to develop their own identity.”
The sprawl invites a tension to play out between tradition and innovation, stability and risk.
“The message is: Do it your own pace, do it your way, you have a home here,” Tran says.
This is a great opportunity as well for the realtors and homebuilders as they reinvent the
sprawling landscape to suit the aesthetic tastes of their diversifying clientele. Local architect Tim
Cisneros is currently working on a $10 million dollar Indian wedding facility in Sugar Land that
will be capped by a helipad and bridge built to withstand an elephant’s weight for the groom’s
entrance. Cisneros serves some of Houston’s most entrepreneurial immigrants, his portfolio
including a Chinese museum of history and culture (“Forbidden Gardens”), multiple Indian
restaurants and a Messianic Jewish worship center.
Each project involves an anthropological education. Cisneros recalls:
“When I was in the running to design a Daoist temple, I had to go to this ritual. They’d put the
various names of the architect candidates into a calligraphic gold pot with sparks and smoke. My
job depended on whether some karma favored my name.”
Cisneros now calls Houston his “favorite third world city,” hinting both at its development
potential and the ambience that appeals to today’s new immigrants. From the tropical climate, to
the zone-free real estate possibilities, to the hodge-podge aesthetic that disorients and welcomes
anyone looking to make a mark, there’s both a familiarity to those coming from the developing
world but also a chance to enjoy greater personal space than they were allowed in cities like
Seoul, Abuja or Delhi.
“The immigrants we work with,” says
Cisneros, “they think they’ve died and gone to heaven. They don’t get caught up in the fact that
their father’s generation wasn’t born here.” There’s opportunity, and perhaps more importantly, a
sense of limitless sky.
THE PERCEPTION OF MORE CHOICE AND OPPORTUNITY
For most of U.S. history, immigrants have been concentrated in iconic cities. Early waves of
European immigrants initially moved into neighborhoods close to the factories and shops that
employed them. Go to Manhattan’s lower east side and you’ll still catch a whiff of the German,
Irish and Jewish flavor that defined this neighborhood at the turn of the 20th century. As
increasing numbers of immigrants have flocked to the suburbs at the turn of this century,
however, it’s clear the new immigrants are reshaping the geography of opportunity.
To dig into this, I’ve spent the last few months interviewing national migration experts and
district school superintendents, exploring the growing array of suburban social services and
attending a wide variety of religious services and cultural celebrations in the most diverse county
in the nation—Fort Bend, just west of Houston. What’s come to the surface, amidst all the
variance in regional patterns of settlement, is the issue of agency. Choice, or lack thereof, is the
fault line in the nationwide trend toward suburban living. Some move because they can and
choose to – the suburbs have attractive features worth pursuing. Others are forced out as they’re
displaced by gentrification, changes in local labor demand, and, sometimes, black-white racial
tensions.
“You’ve got two streams of immigrants flowing out of the urban core,” says Stephen Klineberg,
founder of the Houston-based Kinder Institute. “One contains the engineers, doctors and
information technology professionals, many of whom are Asians and Africans that enter this
country with higher educational levels than many native- born Anglos, and the other contains the
poor and uneducated, most of whom are black and Hispanic. Where the upper middle class of
Asians and Africans tend to go where the property values are higher, where the schools are good
and the jobs plentiful, [poor] blacks and Hispanics are increasingly being clustered in low-cost
areas, getting pushed farther and farther out.”
These ethnic delineations may be too sweeping --- there are many upper income Mexicans and
Africans, for example --- but Randy Capps of the Migration Policy Institute at least agrees on the
pattern. “Your distressed communities are going to attract people who have no choice,” he says.
“The poorest people are going to be increasingly transient, namely, poor blacks and Hispanics.”
For those with the capacity to move of their own accord, choice itself explains the reasons for the
suburban move. Behind the practical appeal of lower housing prices, more jobs and better
schools, every immigrant I interviewed alluded to the air of untapped possibilities that they no
longer sensed in dense urban cores. The growing magnetism of a city like Houston, for instance,
along with other suburban cities in the South and West, is in part rooted in the sense that you
don’t have to be a part of the establishment to move up. Social mobility is possible for those with
the wherewithal to climb.
“The American Dream is alive and well here,” said one restaurant owner. “If you want to make
it, you can. I haven’t been able to find that possibility in other cities.” Other suburban dwellers
agreed. “Urban density doesn’t grant easy permission for the imagination,” said a Vietnamese
couple. “Suburban landscapes at least invite you to try to make your own mark.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF HOME OWNERSHIP
If more space and choice lie at the core of most minorities’ hopes, buying a home seems the first
logical step to securing them. For immigrants in particular, transitioning from renter to
homeowner is an important milestone in committing to the United States. The question is: Where
is this transition now possible? And are immigrants and minorities more willing to take the leap
into far-flung coordinates because owning a home is more critical to their civic credibility than it
is for today’s average native citizen?
There’s some data to suggest that in a society increasingly accepting of a “rentership” mentality,
immigrants remain more likely to strain for permanence. The national homeownership rate has
been declining for ten consecutive years.xii You see this pronounced especially amongst the
young. Those in the prime of their adulthood, between 35 to 44 years of age, are buying homes at
a low rate not seen since the 1960s. And for minorities, the numbers dip lower – the gap between
white and minority home ownership is 25.5 percentage points.
However, when you look at the maps detailing migrations of minorities and immigrants, and
where they tend to be growing, they are growing fastest in places where houses are being bought.
According to a report by the Research Institute for Housing America, immigrants accounted for
nearly 40 percent of the net growth in homeowners between 2000 and 2010; in the 1970s they
represented just over 5 percent of the growth. Meanwhile, the foreign born have been moving
towards ownership, with renting growth happening only in the states that have become tough for
prospective homeowners – e.g. California, the Washington D.C. area, New York, New Jersey,
Massachusetts, Connecticut and Illinois.xiv In the current decade, California and New York are
projected to be the only two states where foreign-born homeowner growth declines. Texas and
Florida, by contrast, are attracting foreign- born buyers in droves, with net increases of 492,000
and 342,000 projected.
As Hispanic and Asian homeownership in particular is climbing, they’re buying in the secondring suburbs and even exurbs where they are settling in large numbers. We can see this by
looking at maps of several major metropolitan areas such as San Francisco, New York, and
Chicago.
Obviously, when home ownership is the top priority, where it can be affordably attained
becomes all the more relevant. Aspiring homeowners tend to want to live around other
homeowners – there’s a like-attracts-like buzz of “I want to be around other people who are
making it.” Minorities also seem to be maintaining the more traditional American idea that
homeownership equals the final seal of adulthood.
“Buying a house was important,” says Tran, the 35-year old lawyer who lives with his wife in
Sugar Land, a town in Fort Bend County. “It was roots being planted, physically and
emotionally. If marriage was the emotional commitment, the house was the physical aspect of
that.”
The Trans’ neighbors, an African American couple named Geoff and Robin Boykin, agree.
“As a minority, owning a home gives you a level of credibility in the community that renting
won’t,” Boykin says. “When we first moved to this neighborhood, we rented, just to be sure, and
when people would come up and ask us about it, there was an underlying feeling of
embarrassment. Like we were second-class citizens. Perhaps especially because we’re the only
black couple in this neighborhood.”
Geoff grew up in Brooklyn, New York, “where you don’t even think about buying.” But when
he met a 24-year old who owned a house in Houston, he thought, “Wait a second. Where can you
buy a house at age 24?” He moved to Texas to follow suit. Southwestern sprawl offered an
opportunity to get established, cheaper.
Suburbs have always been family- friendly, at least by brand, and as Caucasian family size
continues to shrink, those Hispanic and African American still having children, even three to
four, kids want to be in safer, more affordable family-oriented neighborhoods.
“You are now more likely to have inter-generational communities in the suburbs,” says Randy
Capps of the Migration Policy Institute.
Tim Cisneros, the architect who serves some of Houston’s most entrepreneurial immigrants, says
that his clients typically want something “colonial or traditional, to show they’ve assimilated.
They also want big, to host multi-families.”
"It’s now the Indians and wealthy Mexicans building the McMansions in the exurbs,” says
Cisneros. “In Sugar Land. Pearland. The Woodlands [just north of Houston] is like going to
private
Mexico now. With armies, guards, the whole nine yards of the Mexican elite.”
If homeownership remains one of the more important seals of legitimacy for
today’s immigrants and minorities, it’s also a tool for consumer status – in this case one’s civic
and cultural status.
“With many immigrants,” Cisneros says, “the shinier it is, the more expensive they assume it to
be and thus more attractive. More ’making it’ in America.”
On the other side of the real estate spectrum, of course, are those who are getting priced out of
longstanding ethnic enclaves that lie closer to the city center. Ron Castro is a sociology and
psychology teacher at Spring Woods High School in Spring Branch, a gentrifying suburb
straddling Houston’s second freeway loop, and says that in 15 years of teaching, house prices
have climbed from $90,000 to $400-500,000.
“Folks I used to know can’t afford to live here anymore,” he says. “Everyone’s saying, ’we’ll be
on our way out pretty soon.’”
“In ten years, these mini-mansions pop up. The neighbor can’t afford that. I don’t see how lowincome people survive another 10 to 15 years here in Spring Branch.”
JOBS, SCHOOLS AND AN ECONOMY AGING BACKWARDS
Most of today’s middle class economy is now found outside of central downtowns. Suburbs and
exurbs accounted for 80 percent of job growth between 2010 and 2013.
Irvine and Santa Clara in California, Bellevue just outside Seattle, and Irving, a Dallas suburb,
have higher job to resident worker ratios than their closest core municipality. The booming
technology sector is adding most of its jobs to suburbanized areas like Raleigh-Durham, DallasFt. Worth and Orange County, attracting high-skilled Indian and East
Asian employees, in particular.
And, as “live, work, play” locations proliferate, it isn’t just a matter of where the jobs are
located, but also where the highest quality of integrated living – work + leisure + community –
may be found.
“Sugar Land’s Town Center has everything you need,” says Geoff Boykin, who works for Coca
Cola two miles from his home. “All the amenities – restaurants, Home Depot, a movie theater,
the gym – I love the convenience.”
At the same time, many suburbs are developing multi-purpose complexes of community and
leisure that complement their growing professional class, while telecommuting is on the rise,
especially amongst millennials. For younger minorities and adult children of immigrants,
commuting to work is no longer a must. So long as a suburb is relatively close to a freeway
entrance, other desires like strong recreational possibilities and a good night life can take the
front seat. The Internet has lessened the need for many to weigh the variable of long commutes.
Rental properties for small businesses – many of which are owned and run by immigrants – are
almost universally cheaper in the suburbs. And as more and more millennials are moving to the
suburbs, businesses are noticing the outflow of their consumption habits.
“My clientele here is getting older, less willing to spend,” says Yoichi “Yogi” Ueno, the owner
of a Japanese Sushi restaurant in Rice Village inside Houston’s inner loop. A few years ago he
decided to open another more casual location in Fort Bend County on Bellaire Boulevard, in part
to attract the freer flow of youthful wallets.
“The well-educated, higher income younger people are having kids and moving out to exploding
suburbs like Sugar Land and Katy,” Ueno says. “They now have more vibrancy. I may move this
restaurant out there one day. I think business may be better.”
For those with kids, of course, the historic sense that the suburbs have better schools and safer
streets remains true, and of acute appeal to those looking to give their offspring a secure and
promising future. There’s also more educational choice in the suburbs, and with lower costs of
living, the possibility to send one’s child to a private school becomes easier.
“For many Asian families in particular,” says a Vietnamese couple with one middle schooler and
two elementary-age sons, “living where the schools are ’good’ becomes the number one
priority.”
THE PRE-EXISTING CULTURAL CLIMATE
The movement of immigrants to the suburbs draws more to the same places. Just as immigrants
in the first wave of mass migration went where families had already set up house and shop,
today’s suburbanizing immigrants report a stronger sense of belonging and feeling welcomed in
the suburbs, compared with urban cores too entrenched in established legacies and racial
histories to leave room for more. There is also more of a chance for coherence and authenticity in
immigrant expression in the suburbs, manifested most obviously in ethnic restaurants and
supermarkets, distinctive religious congregations and social networks.
“In the suburbs, I can run a sushi restaurant more like they do in Japan,” says Yoichi Ueno.
“Here, closer to the city, with more of an affluent and white clientele, I had to invite in a chef to
introduce things like California rolls [to appease American tastes]. In Japan we don’t actually
sell those rolls!”
These commercial enclaves are attractive in both entrepreneurs and their customers.
“I like being in a Latina neighborhood,” says high school teacher Ron Castro, who’s chosen to
stay in what some consider a less desirable suburb outside the loop. “There’s a Fiesta out here. A
carniceria.”
There are also scads of religious communities in the suburbs, the spires of sacred structures
peeping just behind the strip malls. With secularism predominant in elite urban hubs, faiths from
all over the world are finding welcome and freedom of expression in the wide open spaces where
immigrants and minorities are settling. Religion remains a central artery for those beginning new
lives, providing a sense of ethnic identity and continuity, social services and social status.
SOME BROADER OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TODAY’S SUBURBAN ECOLOGY
As I’ve wandered through and sampled the flavors of various suburban communities in Houston
and elsewhere (including Charlotte, Dallas, northern Virginia and Chicagoland), it is clear there
is a more textured political climate developing there. Most minority suburban dwellers I spoke
with sounded progressive on immigration and the role of government in providing social
services, and conservative on business regulation. The flourishing of the family was clearly
important, even in its traditional expression, but those interviewed skirted any political
commentary on that front.
The suburbs also appear to be eclipsing the city as centers for civic renewal and volunteerism,
though more empirical study of this is needed. Every suburban resident I interviewed was
involved in at least one local initiative, such as Moms against Drunk Driving, seasonal clean-up
effort and local arts & craft festivals. This stands in stark contrast to the average single
professional renting a loft downtown, most of whom are involved in loose social diasporas but
otherwise see the city as a one-way consumption opportunity.
Some of this may have to do with life stage, and the higher proportion of families in suburbs—
the attendant reality being that kids naturally invite parental involvement in the milieu of their
upbringings. But the sense of voluntary generosity is also a testament to the growing presence
(and confidence) of immigrants in the suburbs, who show higher rates of volunteering both
inside their ethnic networks and, with growing levels of affluence, beyond them.
Finally, the influx of immigrants demonstrates how suburbs are where a strong sense of
community can be built and sustained. I repeatedly noticed how rare I was as a single car-user in
parking lots that otherwise saw piles of kids tickling each other in the back seat – particularly the
case for lower to middle class Hispanic and African American neighborhoods. In a Peruvian
restaurant in Fort Bend on a Sunday afternoon, I was the lone millennial eating lunch solo and
scrolling through my iPhone, the other tables raucous with the laughter of children and
grandfathers in church attire. It struck me that the suburbs, with all of their automobile
dependence, remains a relative bastion of strong community feeling and sense of obligation.
Contrary to the general academic and media portrayal of suburbs as hotbeds of alienation and
anomie, they are becoming bastions against the seduction of a consumerist, individual autonomy.
COMPLEXITIES AND CHALLENGES
As stated at the outset, it is in many ways impossible to speak about “the suburbs” in a generic
sense. There remain two streams of movement outward: one rooted in choice and the other in
forced displacement. But there also remain important caveats to these selling points, caveats that
illuminate the open questions around the future of suburban life and human flourishing within it.
The first is the challenge of isolation and integration, especially as the suburbs continue
pixelating in ethnic and cultural diversity.
Houston, for instance, is a city that welcomes the stranger, but its layout is sprawling, enticing
for those with gumption can prove intimidating for those torn from their native support structures
(or lacking them in the first place). Social services slim down the further you get from the
Beltway. Public transportation is sparse, and sustaining driver’s licenses can be tricky for the
undocumented. Information is under-institutionalized and rife for predatory activity –
immigration lawyers and mortgage brokers, both. For those with few resources, life can be a
constant struggle.
Public schools feel the brunt of these rapid demographic shifts, with diversifying student
populations outpacing the cultural training of teachers. H.D. Chambers is the superintendent of
the most diverse district in Texas – Alief – and he says the avalanche of students coming from
economically disadvantaged backgrounds (800 new Burmese refugees amongst them), combined
with those coming with little to no English knowledge, make providing a strong educational
experience profoundly difficult.
“I’m talking about diversity that’s deeper than color of skin,” Chambers says. “It’s about
diversity of life experiences, and what these kids face when they go home. Many of their parents
can’t help them. How do we teach them to interact with others? How
do you prepare these sorts of kids for a global economy and the world at large?”
Not all immigrants – particularly the children of the foreign born – appreciate the suburban
edition of the American Dream their parents foisted upon their upbringings.
Raj Mankad is the editor of an architecture magazine housed at Rice University, and as a child
emigrated from India to a cul de sac in Mobile, Alabama. Years later, as an adult, he asked his
parents why they opted for the spacious suburbs after the chaotic yet cozy density of living in
India. They answered in classic 1.0 form: As an immigrant, you want to go for the opposite of
what you left behind.
“We arrived with five dollars in our pockets,” they told him. “We could not buy expensive things
or houses in the best neighborhoods. And we grew up with very little, sharing bedrooms with all
our siblings, sleeping on the floor, walking to school without shoes. So when we arrived in the
United States, we wanted exactly the opposite.”
Raj has since rejected a lifestyle he finds plastic for a hipper, culturally creative and
environmentally conscious life with his Caucasian wife and two young kids in Houston’s
Montrose corridor. He rides a bike to work and aspires to start his own spiritual community
inside the loop.
“I want my kids to understand their Hindu heritage, but the temples are in the suburbs, and I
don’t want to schlep out an hour for a religious service. I want to start my own spiritual
community, but not in a conservative way.”
The price may be high compared to what his Indian American peers are choosing on the
periphery, but it’s his preferred assimilation – honest, expensive, and full of uncomfortable
tensions.
CONCLUSION
People have any number of reasons for move to suburban locales. But it’s not just the cash nexus
at operation here. There’s also the emergence of more mysterious and fascinating blends of
culture and community in ways that will shape our perceptions of what constitutes the best of
American life.
Suburbs used to be a device to “protect” people from the Other. No longer. Many now foster the
creation of hybrid identities, tight yet pluralistic communities, alternate information loops and
various commercial exper- iments. As immigration in particular plays out through the quotidian
experiences of today’s suburban blends, the institutions and leaders within these communities
could be critical to formulate policy reform, especially as it relates to questions around
integration. More broadly, the suburbs will be the battleground where debates around home
ownership, social mobility, and the promise and challenge of a pluralistic society will need to be
waged.
If you’re interested in the New America, keep an eye on your suburbs. They’re not as peripheral
as the horizon would suggest, and may even be at the nexus of what is next.
This essay is part of a new report from the Center for Opportunity Urbanism called "America's
Housing Crisis." The report contains several essays about the future of housing from various
perspectives. Follow this link to download the full report (pdf).
Anne Snyder is a fellow at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism and covers stories within the
vortex of immigration, social class and values. Prior to living in Houston she worked at The New
York Times, World Affairs and the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Categories: New Urbanism
Though the program’s future is uncertain, $500 million in TIGER grants are
now available
T4America - Wed, 2016-02-24 17:50
Though the future of the program could be in doubt, U.S. Transportation Secretary
Anthony Foxx announced yesterday that $500 million is now available for the best local
projects in the next round of the TIGER competitive grant program.
Sec. Foxx making the TIGER announcement at the NACO conference. Photo from the USDOT
Fast Lane blog.
Projects hoping to win TIGER funds compete against each other and are selected on their merits
to ensure that each dollar is spent in the most effective way possible. The program has funded an
incredible multimodal station in Normal, Illinois, an overhaul of the downtown street network in
Dubuque, IA that helped expand the tax base by $77 million and an improvement to the West
Memphis port to boost cargo capacity by 2,000 percent, among hundreds of others.
It’s one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal
dollars for their priority transportation project, spurring innovation, leveraging federal funding
by matching it with greater local dollars and targeting projects that provide a high return on
investment.
The program is open and available, with grant applications due on April 29th.
We’ve got a special members-only webinar coming up on March 3rd with our TIGER grant
expert Beth Osborne, T4A’s Senior Policy Advisor. T4America members can find a link to
register below.
Members-Only Content
If you have a membership, please log in to read it. There are numerous benefits to membership,
you can read more and inquire to join.
While this eighth round of TIGER is open for business now, will there be a ninth? Don’t
forget that congressional appropriators will soon be deciding TIGER’s future, along with that of
other important transportation programs. Do you represent a city, county, metro planning
organization, or other group? We’re looking for these sorts of groups to sign a letter to the Senate
Appropriations Committee in support of these programs.
Categories: New Urbanism
Legalizing 24/7 Commuting on The Bloomingdale Trail Would Make It Safer
Grid Chicago - Wed, 2016-02-24 16:25
Last summer, a Chicago Park District spokeswoman told me that, according to the park district
code, it’s legal to commute on the Bloomingdale Trail at all times of day. But in the wake of the
mugging of a cyclist on the greenway last Friday night, the agency seems to have flip-flopped on
the issue – a spokeswoman implied that the 2.7-mile facility is closed between 11 p.m. and 6
p.m. However, if it was open 24/7, that would improve safety because there would more “eyes
on the trail.”
Some 80,000 people live within a half mile of the Bloomingdale, aka The 606, and many of these
residents regularly bike commute home from work or entertainment after 11 p.m. It’s only
logical that these people should be allowed to use this car-free route to get home safely, rather
than take their chances with drunk drivers on busy North Avenue or Armitage Avenue.
Last June spokeswoman Michele Lemons told me that – as on the Lakefront Trail – nonstop
walking and biking are permitted on the elevated path due to an ingress and egress provision
in the park district code. “Persons and vehicles may pass through such parks without stopping on
the more direct walk or driveway leading from their point of entrance to the exit nearest to their
point of destination,” the code states. Lemons said this allows commuters to use paths through
parks, including The 606, for transportation.
However, in practice, police officers enforce the city’s usual 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. parks curfew by
clearing the Bloomingdale at 11 sharp. When they encounter people commuting on foot or by
bike on the path after hours, they order the trail users to leave. Last summer Officer Janel
Sedevic from Police News Affairs confirmed this is the department’s current protocol.
After I notified Sedevic and Lemons that the two policies were in conflict, they said they would
get in touch with each other and resolve the issue.
On Friday at around 11:30 p.m., a 25-year-old man was biking on the trail near Kedzie Avenue
when he was jumped and mugged by four males, DNAinfo reported. They pulled him off his
cycle, beat him, and took his wallet, phone, before leaving the scene, according to police.
“I was biking home from work in Lakeview and took the trail because there were a lot of cars
out, and I have ridden late at night before without incident,” the victim told DNA.
In the wake of the attack, park district spokeswoman Jessica Maxey-Faulkner indicated that it
was illegal for the cyclist, as well as the assailants, to be on the trail at the time, referring to the
fact that the parks are usually closed between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Therefore it appears that the
park district and the police department are now on the same page. Unfortunately it’s the wrong
page.
Unlike New York City’s popular High Line elevated trail, the Bloomingdale doesn’t have gates
and it’s not locked at night. The 606 does have security cameras at each of its 12 access points
plus cams at other locations where a bend in the trail obscures the view.
But an easy way to help prevent repeats of Friday’s assault and save work for the police would
be to allow cyclists and pedestrians to legally commute on the trail all night, in keeping with the
park district code. After all, as long as late-night trail use is outlawed, only outlaws will use the
trail after hours.
This recent incident may discourage some people from biking home on the trail after 11 p.m. —
the victim said he’ll avoid the trail at night from now on. But many people will continue to do so,
because the path provides an alternative to sharing busy streets with drunk drivers. Legalizing
this behavior would make it safer by providing more potential witnesses, which would
discourage criminal activity.
Rather than shooing people off the trail who simply want to get home in one piece, the police
could spend more time addressing serious crime issues. And more biking and walking trips on
the trail would mean fewer traffic crashes on surface streets.
The only people who’d lose out in a scenario where The 606 is legal to commute on 24/7 are the
would-be trail bandits.
Categories: New Urbanism
Chattanooga’s Custom-Built De-Icer for Protected Bike Lanes Is Adorable
Streetsblog Capitol Hill - Wed, 2016-02-24 15:50
Photo and video: City of Chattanooga.
Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S.
cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.
As we wrote the other day, clearing snow and ice from protected bike lanes isn’t hard. It just
requires some effort.
Fortunately for Chattanooga, Tennessee, that’s no problem. This winter, to keep their protected
bike lane on Broad Street rideable through the snow, road crews there set up a Kawasaki Mule to
trickle just the right amount of brine into the space between curb and planters:
As other cities have discovered, early de-icing treatments can be especially useful on protected
bike lanes, because unlike cars, bikes don’t tend to splash liquid de-icers away when they pass
through. And early de-icing is especially important, because bike tires don’t break thin layers of
ice as they form. If you don’t de-ice a protected bike lane early in a big snow event, the lane
could be out of commission for a day or more.
Tony Boyd, deputy director for Chattanooga’s operations team, said Wednesday that this was the
city’s first attempt to create a machine for de-icing bike lanes and it’s working well so far.
“That Kawasaki Mule is used downtown to do a lot of our herbicide applications,” he said. “We
just picked up a polypropalene tank from the co-op and had our shop mount it on a palette so we
can take it in and out of the unit when we want to. … We built a PVC pipe in the shape of an
upside-down T and then we just drilled the pipe in a way that it disperses the brine across the
lane. That’s the way we do it with all our larger trucks too.”
Boyd credited street maintenance manager Ricky Colston with the design.
“It works out pretty well,” he said.
You can follow The Green Lane Project on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook or sign up for its
weekly news digest about protected bike lanes.
Categories: New Urbanism
Vancouver Bike-Share Gears Up for Summer Launch
Next City - Wed, 2016-02-24 15:37
A bike rack in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia (Photo by Roland Tanglao on flickr)
Vancouver, British Columbia, is rolling out a bike-share system with 1,500 “smart bikes” by the
end of the summer, according to The Vancouver Sun. The $5 million agreement with CycleHop
Corp. Canada comes eight years after council members first began discussing launching a bikeshare.
Related Stories




So Should Bike-Shares Provide Helmets or Not?
8 Images That Will Make You Love Bike-Share More
Working on a New Conversation About Bike Equity
Notes from a Grassroots Bike-Share Operator
“Vancouver’s cycling numbers are skyrocketing and we’ve been hearing from many residents
wanting a bike-share network here,” Mayor Gregor Robertson said in a statement.
Technology in the bikes will allow riders to check out and return bikes even where there isn’t a
docking station. Each bike will have an internal cable lock that allows users to secure them to
permanent objects away from a station, and waterproof control boxes on the handlebars will
allow riders to rent them out with smart phones or membership cards. The solar-powered
docking stations will also include payment terminals.
The city hopes to have the first 1,000 bikes created by Smoove ready by June 15, and another
500 out by the end of the summer. If the system proves popular, it could eventually be expanded
to 2,500 bikes.
After a $5 sign-up fee, rides will cost $2.50 for 30 minutes. A monthly membership will cost
around $20 and include unlimited 30-minute rides. Free helmets will also be available with
rentals, but the city hasn’t worked out how to keep the helmets clean.
The docking stations will be in a small section of downtown to start. Jerry Dobrovolny, the city’s
general manager of engineering services, said in a meeting that the docking stations will be great
for business. “This is a call for any business owners downtown — this is an opportunity to get a
bike-share location at your front door. In many cities it’s very, very desirable, and will be in
Vancouver as well. It will bring lots of people to your front door,” Dobrovolny said.
Vancouver will pay a $5 million fee for the bikes, plus cover $1 million in additional costs,
according to the Sun. The city will also cover another $500,000 in annual costs. The suppliers
will pay the city up to $400,000 annually for use of city space, which Dobrovolny said would
help offset some lost parking meter revenue. Vancouver will also receive a share of revenue per
bike “over a pre-set threshold.”
Categories: CNU blogs, New Urbanism
$8 Billion Expansion of Atlanta Transit Clears First Hurdle
Streetsblog Capitol Hill - Wed, 2016-02-24 14:33
This dream map of Atlanta transit is looking more and more possible. Map: Jason Lathbury via
Curbed
Atlanta’s regional transit network, MARTA, isn’t known as a dynamic, growing system. While
cities as varied as D.C., Minneapolis, and Houston have rolled out new high-capacity transit
routes, MARTA has stagnated.
But has MARTA’s moment finally come? The prospects of major transit improvements for the
region are looking more hopeful today than they have for a generation.
Last week a Georgia Senate committee passed a bill that would allow Fulton, Dekalb, and
Clayton counties to levy a half-cent sales tax for transit over the next 40 years. The measure, if
approved by voters, would generate $8 billion in capital funding to expand MARTA.
The above map from Curbed Atlanta shows what might be on the table in an $8 billion MARTA
expansion. All of the specifics still need to be negotiated.
It could include extending the Red Line with commuter rail up Georgia 400 to Alpharetta,
or extending light rail to the northeast side of the city, serving Emory University and the
CDC. The measure could also fund a rail line along the city’s circular Beltline, Curbed reports,
or extend rail or bus rapid transit eastward, as far as Conyers.
Meanwhile, a series of public opinion polls shows that Atlanta area voters, even suburban ones,
are coming around to idea of expanding MARTA. In fact, many polls show they strongly favor
it.
According to a poll commissioned by the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Atlanta area voters of all
stripes support greater transit investment to reduce traffic.
“We’re seeing a really interesting demographic shift in popularity around transit,” Candler
Vinson of CNU’s Atlanta chapter told Streetsblog.
Vinson says one caveat is that suburban voters do not favor the proposal if it doesn’t include
commuter rail.
Before it can be put to voters, the sales tax measure has to make it through both houses of the
state legislature in Georgia’s “Gold Dome,” which has been notoriously hostile to transit. There
is currently no bill in the Georgia House.
The measure has the backing of the Metro Atlanta Chamber. And a new advocacy group
Advance Atlanta has been leading efforts to promote its passage in the statehouse.
One encouraging sign, says Vinson, is that Senate bill sponsor Brandon Beach is a Republican
from suburban Alpharetta. Vinson said he expects a vote on the issue from the full Senate in the
next week or two.
Copy corrected February 25 at 9:20 a.m. Originally referred to Beltline as Beltway “Gold
Dome” as “Golden Dome.”
Categories: New Urbanism
Chattanooga’s Custom-Built De-Icer for Protected Bike Lanes Is Adorable
Grid Chicago - Wed, 2016-02-24 14:24
Photo and video: City of Chattanooga.
Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S.
cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.
As we wrote the other day, clearing snow and ice from protected bike lanes isn’t hard. It just
requires some effort.
Fortunately for Chattanooga, Tennessee, that’s no problem. This winter, to keep their protected
bike lane on Broad Street rideable through the snow, road crews there set up a Kawasaki Mule to
trickle just the right amount of brine into the space between curb and planters:
As other cities have discovered, early de-icing treatments can be especially useful on protected
bike lanes, because unlike cars, bikes don’t tend to splash liquid de-icers away when they pass
through. And early de-icing is especially important, because bike tires don’t break thin layers of
ice as they form. If you don’t de-ice a protected bike lane early in a big snow event, the lane
could be out of commission for a day or more.
Tony Boyd, deputy director for Chattanooga’s operations team, said Wednesday that this was the
city’s first attempt to create a machine for de-icing bike lanes and it’s working well so far.
“That Kawasaki Mule is used downtown to do a lot of our herbicide applications,” he said. “We
just picked up a polypropalene tank from the co-op and had our shop mount it on a palette so we
can take it in and out of the unit when we want to. … We built a PVC pipe in the shape of an
upside-down T and then we just drilled the pipe in a way that it disperses the brine across the
lane. That’s the way we do it with all our larger trucks too.”
Boyd credited street maintenance manager Ricky Colston with the design.
“It works out pretty well,” he said.
You can follow The Green Lane Project on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook or sign up for its
weekly news digest about protected bike lanes.
Categories: New Urbanism
Watch last week’s creative placemaking online discussion
T4America - Wed, 2016-02-24 13:44
As part of the kickoff for T4America’s brand new online interactive guide to creative
placemaking in transportation, we hosted an online conversation on the topic last week. If
you missed the webinar, you can catch up here.
Creative placemaking harnesses the power of arts and culture to allow for more genuine public
engagement — particularly in low-income neighborhoods, communities of color and among
immigrant populations — in the development of transportation projects.
T4America’s new online interactive guide, The Scenic Route: Getting Started with Creative
Placemaking in Transportation, introduces the concept to transportation planners, public works
agencies and local elected officials who are on the front lines of advancing transportation
projects.
Watch last week’s archived webinar
Participants heard from James Corless, Director, Transportation for America; Erika Young,
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Transportation for America; Duncan Hwang, Development &
Communications Director, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO); Luann
Algoso, Community Engagement Manager, APANO; Laura Zabel, Executive Director,
Springboard for the Arts; and Jun-Li Wang, Artist Community Organizer, Springboard for the
Arts.
In the webinar, APANO shares some of the creative placemaking strategies employed to combat
the pressure of displacement anticipated by a forthcoming high-capacity transit project in the
Jade District of Portland, OR. Continuing the conversation, Springboard for the Arts discusses
its grassroots efforts to advance the community’s vision for the Twin Cities’ Green Line light
rail.
Watch the webinar, browse the guide, share it with others, and let us know what you think!
View the Guide
Categories: New Urbanism
Which GGWash logo ideas you liked and hated
Greater Greater Washington - Wed, 2016-02-24 13:30
by David Alpert
Hundreds of you filled our our survey about potential logos. Thank you! Here's what you said.
Here are your ratings from the survey. The bars show how many of each score a logo got. A 1
was the lowest score, 5 the highest. Let's discuss each option in turn.
The rebus
The "no-build" option was a variant of our current logo, two "greater than" signs and a George
Washington head. We call this the "rebus," since it's a graphical depiction of "greater, greater,
Washington."
This was the most controversial. It got the greatest number of 1s (the worst rating), but also more
5s than all but the two "nested G" options. This had the highest standard deviation in the
responses (a measure of how much the responses spread out versus cluster together) but also the
second-lowest average.
People who liked it:





The best part about this, compared to the rest, is that it clearly shows the connection to
Washington.
Punny, clever. Understandable without the map in the background.
Unique and you know what it is without knowing the logo prevously
Has character. why does it need to look corporate??
No build - I'm a pearl-clutching NIMBY who hates logo change
People who hated it:





George Washington represents DC's past - this blog is all about DC's future
I think the greater symbolism is lost and the george is tacky.
Like a puzzle for 3rd-graders
Too intricate and slightly violent
Never. Just don't. Stop. Put down the alcohol.
Overall conclusion: There's definitely something cute and fun here, but too many people either
don't get this or react negatively to having George.
Just chevrons
A lot of people call us "Greater Greater." What about just ditching the George?
People who liked it:



Very clever, looks good at the top
Adequate. Best choice here
Clean, simple. Keep the old one around since this one makes more sense if it's got the old
one to refer to. [This person also liked the rebus.]
People who hated it:




Command prompt? Sharrows? (Hate sharrows)
Lacks context without supporting words.
No connection to DC
I think that if you go with this concept, you would always have to include the the words I don't think it's an effective stand alone logo.
I actually think our format of voting on the Twitter icon version was most unkind to this logo.
All logos would have a number of variations: there's the "wordmark" that includes words, an
icon to use on Twitter, on the browser tabs (a "favicon"), etc., and others. On the actual site, we'll
use whatever image we pick in context with the name, and this one seems to shine the most when
it's part of the name, like this:
We only gave you the icons themselves to avoid confusing things with fonts, sizes, bold, etc.
which we weren't trying to ask about right now, but I wonder if that left this one twisting in the
wind.
Unequal chevrons
This variant uses unequal chevrons to connote motion. This placed the worst, period, with both
the lowest mean and lowest standard deviation (meaning people were most consistent about this
one).
People who liked it:


Simple yet interesting because of the two different sizes. Clever and poignant.
Clean and simple.
People who hated it:




Weird and unrecognizable
I don't know what this stands for. Looks like Wingdings
Unbalanced.
Shrinking into the future?
The one-tailed G
What about a G where the tail was a chevron or two? You rated three versions of this.
Unfortunately, we always had some trouble making that G not really look like a C.
One version had just a single chevron, to look most G-like. We could also potentially make the
"wordmark" use this G in the name, something like this:
People who liked it:



This may be the best one because it's visually simple. Would show up best on social
media
Like the forward motion implied G+>=arrow.
The transit line G with an arrow is a strong concept.
People who hated it:






Looks like a G, but only one arrow sort of drops the ball on 'greater, greater'
Looks too much like the letter "C", and the single arrow doesn't show the double
"greater"
Bold but bland. could be the logo of a nondescript trucking company
Looks like a C. only one chevron seems like not enough. looks kind of corporate too
Looks like a C, not a G - also looks very corporate
Looks like a "C" rather than a "G"
The two-tailed G
You felt that the one with one chevron looked a lot like a C, and felt that even more strongly
with the two options that had two chevrons (equal or unequal).
People who liked them:



This is my favorite concept .. and the double arrow can be used in isolation elsewhere
Looks like a G, and the two arrows make the 'greater, greater' concept come to life
Clean and fun
People who hated them (besides everyone who said they look like Cs)



The G anchors it to the brand, but the changing thicknesses are confusing
I thought u-turns were illegal?
This one gives a "hammer/sickle" feel.
The nested Gs and arrow
We also worried these looked like Cs, so this next concept nested two Gs and played with the tail
to keep a little chevron-ness but not so much. This also evokes transit, to some extent, and for
better or worse, looks like a logo a transportation agency might use.
People who liked it:



My favorite of them all. I like the double chevron idea ("Greater than greater than") but
combining it with the G. Plus it evokes the lines on the Metro Rail Map.
This is my favorite. It does not resemble Google or Colorado. It clearly has the >>. It
looks like a 'G' and not a 'C', and the double line remind me of transit lines.
Would like to see a bi color mock up. Multi color too.
People who hated it:



Too busy, disunified
The perceptual cues in this one are all weird.
Looks like a C, not a G - looks like a transit system logo - if that's what you're going for
then sure
Some people noticed that the arrowhead at the end did look a little like DC. By doing so, we
could incorporate some DC symbology without having a logo that is entirely inside a DC outline.
While a DC-shaped logo would be recognizable, we do not want to give the impression that the
whole world is inside the District border.
But what about making the tail even more DC-like?
The nested Gs and District
This one and the arrow variant got the highest scores, with this placing slightly ahead, but very
very close.
People who liked it:




This is my favorite. Not only do you generally capture features of the GGW name, the
overall logo is reminiscent of motifs that you often find in transit maps. So, in that way,
this logo best captures what GGW is "about" in addition to playing with the
letters/symbols.
G's then outline of DC is simple yet unique
I love the suggestion of the river through the bottom of the G.
The right part of the G almost looks like it's supposed to be DC, which is a cool idea.
Build on that! And add color!
Some other constructive feedback:


I would have liked this the best, except that it slightly resembles Google's logo.
I like the shape the most, but it's missing the arrows, which I think are important.
People who hated it:


WAY too disjointed. Looks like the bend between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom on a bad
fan-made Metro map.
Reminds me of Georgetown

Waaay too much going on.
What's next?
We're going to take this feedback into consideration and Peter Dovak, our designer, is going to
work on some more concepts. We heard that a lot of you liked the way the right-most ones
incorporated a little bit of DC and some transit motifs, and maybe we can play those up even
better.
I also like how a logo which includes the DC outline as part of the image, but which has part of
the design outside it as well (like the arcs in these two) conveys how we have a lot about DC but
also often go beyond. That way, we can evoke DC but also not be confined by it.
No matter what we do, a large contingent of people are going to say they just hate everything.
We welcome that and all feedback, but also have to contend with the idea that we need to
ultimately pick one (and mostly, you hate the current one). Feedback which talked about the pros
and cons of images and noted elements you like was especially valuable—thank you!
12 comments
Did you enjoy this article? Greater Greater Washington is running a reader drive to raise funds
so we can keep editing and publishing great articles every day. Please help us be sustainable by
making a monthly, yearly, or one-time contribution today! Click here to support Greater Greater
Washington.
Categories: CNU blogs
Metro has a twin in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Greater Greater Washington - Wed, 2016-02-24 12:20
by Edward Russell
San Juan, Puerto Rico has a subway system called Tren Urbano that offers quick, comfortable
rides from the city's outskirts to near its center. A lot of visitors don't even know it exists, let
alone that it was the last system like Washington DC's Metro built in the US.
A Tren Urbano train approaches the Sagrado Corazon station. All images by the author.
Tren Urbano's single line stretches 10.7 miles from Sagrado Corazon, just outside San Juan's
tourist center, to the western suburb of Bayamon.
The Tren Urbano map.
The line opened in 2004, largely funded by a Federal Transit Administration grant. It was the last
new heavy rail system—which is what the DC Metro is—to open in the country.
Tren Urbano is comfortable and easy to ride. Stations are large and airy with wide platforms,
with numerous faregates and ticket machines that are almost carbon copies of those used by the
New York subway.
The Sagrado Corazon station.
The platform at the Sagrado Corazon station.
Some popular places aren't accessible from the line
While Tren Urbano in some ways acts as a spine in San Juan's public transit system, with buses
and taxis congregating at stations, its overall reach is rather limited. The Sagrado Corazon
terminal is just inside the border of San Juan's densest district, Santruce, and about a mile from
the Minillas government center. The station is about a 10-minute taxi ride from the hotel and
convention area just outside San Juan's popular old city.
In addition, the line only stretches to San Juan's western suburbs and not to the south or east.
Ridership has held relatively steady. Data from the American Public Transportation Association
(APTA) shows Tren Urbano carried an average of 31,400 passengers on weekdays in the third
quarter of 2015, down from the average of 32,600 passengers on weekdays in the third quarter of
2007, the first time the organization reported third quarter ridership.
Tren Urbano does serve some important destinations, including the Hato Rey financial district
and the University of Puerto Rico's Río Piedras campus.
A train pulls into the Hato Rey station in San Juan's financial district.
There were also a couple of newish high-rise residential towers visible within walking distance
of the Hato Rey station, suggesting the line has attracted some transit-oriented development.
Unfortunately, Puerto Rico's well-documented financial troubles are likely to limit any
expansion in the near future.
San Juan appears to be making other alternative transportation investments, like protected bike
lanes leading into the old city, that will benefit residents and visitors alike.
A protected bike lane heading towards old San Juan.
For more on transit developments in other cities and around the world, check out Greater
Greater Washington's articles about Cape Town, Dallas, Hartford, Johannesburg, Oakland
airport and San Diego.
17 comments
Did you enjoy this article? Greater Greater Washington is running a reader drive to raise funds
so we can keep editing and publishing great articles every day. Please help us be sustainable by
making a monthly, yearly, or one-time contribution today! Click here to support Greater Greater
Washington.
Categories: CNU blogs
DIY Urbanism and Top-Down Planning
Planetizen blogs - Wed, 2016-02-24 12:00
Though projects tend to be hyper-local and temporary, Do It Yourself, Tactical, or Guerrilla
Urbanism is an endorsement of the top-down planning model, rather than a repudiation.
Categories: CNU blogs
Join us in Vancouver for Placemaking Week
Project for Public Spaces - Wed, 2016-02-24 11:55
Visit the website for more information on Placemaking Week
This September, Vancouver B.C. will host the world’s biggest placemaking event so far, and it’s
unlike anything we’ve done before. Bringing together movements, disciplines, and leaders from
around world, Placemaking Week (September 12th – 18th) will help launch a new model for
shaping cities. We just launched the official website for the week, so be sure to click over and
sign up for our email updates, and we’ll keep you posted as the agenda for Placemaking Week
continues to develop.
Why now? This October, the UN will convene Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador to formalize the
New Urban Agenda—a document outlining the guidelines and goals of urban development over
the next two decades. This builds upon the recent COP21 agreement, which identifies concrete
actions that city leaders need to take in order to meet new emissions targets. Taken together,
these agreements represent a shared commitment to dramatically transforming cities over the
coming decades. To follow up these major international agreements, cities will need to explore
actionable strategies for implementing these new ideas. How can a place-led approach help
direct the implementation and impact of these agenda?
We are at a key historical moment for placemaking and cities; we can either take the lead now to
build a better future, or we can continue down the unsustainable paths set out during the last
century. More than creating better public spaces or buildings, cities need to build the capacity to
self evolve and take on bigger challenges. That’s what Placemaking Week is about: coming
together to envision a place-led future for cities. We’ll talk about building and scaling up local
campaigns while addressing connections to global issues; we’ll also share knowledge and best
practices from the best minds in the placemaking movement.
This is all building on past successes. As a result of a global advocacy movement centered
around the “Future of Places” convenings led by UN-Habitat, the Ax:son Johnson Foundation,
and PPS, Habitat III already acknowledges that strong public spaces are the foundation of
healthy, prosperous cities. Now we need to build on this effort, growing and evolving the
placemaking movement to take on urgent global challenges.
Streets as Places in our host city, Vancouver, B.C. | From Flickr via Paul Krueger
We’re still working on the final schedule and event list, but so far we have three major events
planned as part of this week:
PRO WALK/PRO BIKE/PRO PLACE
Pro Walk/Pro Bike/Pro Place is the premier conference supporting walking, bicycling and
placemaking professionals. It was founded in 1980 with the belief that more and better walking
and bicycling builds stronger communities and healthier, happier people. The conference
endeavors to build a community of practice that connects its solutions—walking, biking, and
placemaking—to global challenges.
FUTURE OF PLACES SUMMIT
Building on the results of the first three Future of Places forums, this free summit will include
global leaders building the case for Placemaking as central to the New Urban Agenda and
Habitat 3. To date this series has featured top urban thinkers discussing how to transform cities
through Placemaking and public spaces, with over 1500 leaders from 100 countries and 700
organizations.
PLACEMAKING LEADERSHIP FORUM
At the Placemaking Leadership Forum, leaders and activists will share strategies to overcome
obstacles to place-led development, advance major transformative agendas, and share and
explore models for placemaking campaigns at all scales.
One of our favorite public spaces, Vancouver’s Granville Island | Photo by Fred Kent
Excited yet? We certainly are. PPS President Fred Kent believes it will have a huge impact
around the world, saying, “This is a big deal, an event that can grow the placemaking movement
in the same way Earth Day in 1970 built up the environmental movement.”
We’re going to announce specific ways that you can get involved over the next few months, but
for now the best way to stay updated is to subscribe to our email list.
See you in Vancouver!
The post Join us in Vancouver for Placemaking Week appeared first on Project for Public
Spaces.
Categories: New Urbanism
Will Congress Keep TIGER Going?
Grid Chicago - Wed, 2016-02-24 11:52
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced this week that U.S. DOT is
seeking applications for $500 million in TIGER grants — the eighth round of funding since the
program was launched in 2009.
TIGER funding will help fill gaps in Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River Trail. Photo: Schuylkill
Banks
TIGER is small compared to other federal programs, but it has quickly become an important
source of funding for projects like the Indianapolis Cultural Trail or Tampa’s Riverwalk that
would have a hard time getting support from highway-centric pots of money. Every cycle, U.S.
DOT is overwhelmed with applications.
However, the future of TIGER is far from certain, writes Stephen Lee Davis at Transportation
for America. T4A is urging TIGER supporters to contact senators about continuing the program:
The TIGER competitive grant program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost
any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects. Unlike the
overwhelming majority of all federal transportation dollars that are awarded via formulas to
ensure that everyone gets a share, regardless of how they plan to spend it, TIGER projects
compete against each other and are selected on their merits to ensure that each dollar is spent in
the most effective way possible.
This competition spurs innovation, leverages federal funding by matching it with greater local
dollars and awards funding to projects that provide a high return on investment. Choosing
projects based on their potential benefits is exactly the direction that transportation spending
needs to move in, and we need to ensure that this vital program continues.
Because TIGER was not even authorized in the five-year FAST Act and therefore wholly lacks
any certainty of funding, congressional appropriators play an incredibly important role in
deciding once again how much funding to provide for TIGER (and other key transportation
programs) in the coming year. We want to ensure that the Senate’s key committee begins the
process by providing at least the full $500 million they’ve provided in the past.
Members of Congress need to hear from you today. Do you represent a city, county, metro
planning organization, or other group? We’re looking for these sorts of groups to sign a letter to
the Senate Appropriations Committee in support of these programs. (We are not targeting
individual letters at this time.)
Elsewhere on the Network today: Greater Greater Washington recounts the long political saga
that preceded the upcoming launch of the D.C. Streetcar. Bike Pittsburgh says a local
community’s crackdown on pedestrians illustrates all-too-common problems with the way we
conceptualize the “right to the road.” And Systemic Failure writes that despite evidence
that helmet laws don’t work and discourage cycling, South Australia is doubling down.
Categories: New Urbanism
Will Congress Keep TIGER Going?
Streetsblog Capitol Hill - Wed, 2016-02-24 11:22
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced this week that U.S. DOT is
seeking applications for $500 million in TIGER grants — the eighth round of funding since the
program was launched in 2009.
TIGER funding will help fill gaps in Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River Trail. Photo: Schuylkill
Banks
TIGER is small compared to other federal programs, but it has quickly become an important
source of funding for projects like the Indianapolis Cultural Trail or Tampa’s Riverwalk that
would have a hard time getting support from highway-centric pots of money. Every cycle, U.S.
DOT is overwhelmed with applications.
However, the future of TIGER is far from certain, writes Stephen Lee Davis at Transportation
for America. T4A is urging TIGER supporters to contact senators about continuing the program:
The TIGER competitive grant program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost
any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects. Unlike the
overwhelming majority of all federal transportation dollars that are awarded via formulas to
ensure that everyone gets a share, regardless of how they plan to spend it, TIGER projects
compete against each other and are selected on their merits to ensure that each dollar is spent in
the most effective way possible.
This competition spurs innovation, leverages federal funding by matching it with greater local
dollars and awards funding to projects that provide a high return on investment. Choosing
projects based on their potential benefits is exactly the direction that transportation spending
needs to move in, and we need to ensure that this vital program continues.
Because TIGER was not even authorized in the five-year FAST Act and therefore wholly lacks
any certainty of funding, congressional appropriators play an incredibly important role in
deciding once again how much funding to provide for TIGER (and other key transportation
programs) in the coming year. We want to ensure that the Senate’s key committee begins the
process by providing at least the full $500 million they’ve provided in the past.
Members of Congress need to hear from you today. Do you represent a city, county, metro
planning organization, or other group? We’re looking for these sorts of groups to sign a letter to
the Senate Appropriations Committee in support of these programs. (We are not targeting
individual letters at this time.)
Elsewhere on the Network today: Greater Greater Washington recounts the long political saga
that preceded the upcoming launch of the D.C. Streetcar. Bike Pittsburgh says a local
community’s crackdown on pedestrians illustrates all-too-common problems with the way we
conceptualize the “right to the road.” And Systemic Failure writes that despite evidence
that helmet laws don’t work and discourage cycling, South Australia is doubling down.
Categories: New Urbanism
All the railroads we had in 1921, in one subway-style map
Greater Greater Washington - Wed, 2016-02-24 11:00
by David Edmondson
In 1921, you could take the train from downtown DC to Annapolis, from Baltimore to
Harrisburg, or Winchester to DC. I built a subway-style map of the rail service our region once
had.
Map by the author. Click for the full version.
In the Mid-Atlantic region, hundreds of trains and ferries used to serve passengers at over 1,370
stations. But they were run by dozens of individual companies, meaning there was no single
unified system map to let people know how to get from A to B. Passengers had to pour over
dozens of often-opaque timetables to know how to get around.
Doing that was no simple task, as I can now attest to after having trawled hundreds of these
tables in The Official Guide of the Railways to pull together this one map.
Subway-style maps were a genius invention of the early 20th Century. By combining old railway
maps with service schedules, they allow travelers to understand at a glance how the transit
system works without relying on byzantine schedules.
Map by the author. Click for the full version.
This map says a lot about how the region worked back then
My Mid-Atlantic map shows about 29,000 square miles, centered on DC and Baltimore. I tried to
map to the logical endpoints of the railroads, where they converge before diverging again.
Baltimore's prominence as a major transportation hub is clear, especially for waterborne travel.
Ferries hit remote villages and towns along rivers up and down the Chesapeake, delivering
people and goods between the villages or back to the dozens of railroads serving Baltimore.
Though it's tough to imagine the Rappahannock or Piankatank as transport corridors today,
steamer service was often a lifeline to the rest of the country.
And while the city itself is absent from this map, you can see Philadelphia's strong influence in
the northeastern corner. The Baltimore & Ohio's Main Line to Washington, the Pennsylvania
Railroad's Main Line along the top of the map, and Pennsy's Washington lines all point to that
formidable hub.
Clear, too, is the shape of our contemporary rail infrastructure in the old system. MARC and
VRE both make use of old passenger routes, while Metro and Baltimore's light rail both make
use of abandoned rights-of-way.
From this GGWash post, this map shows the MARC, VRE, Metro and Baltimore light rail.
There are also some particularly evocative and historical station names. One wonders about
Tuxedo, just outside DC, or Screamerville on the PF&P. Buck Run and Doe Run are adjacent
stops on Pennsy's Pomeroy Branch. Baltimore's Penn Station was once optimistically named
Union Station, though since city's eight stations made it hard to centralize everything, the name
never took off.
This is hardly a complete transit map, of course. Because it is almost impossible to find
contemporaneous timetables for every company, I had to limit myself to the companies and
stations appearing in The Official Guide. Hence, the jarring absence of Silver Spring from the
B&O and the lack of the streetcar line from DC to Glen Echo.
What kind of system could we have today?
Beyond just being fun for train buffs, I hope this kind of map will inspire transit advocates to
think big about what we might have again one day.
Some months ago, a caller to the Kojo Nnamdi Show was hopeful that Winchester might
someday get commuter rail service. It actually turns out the B&O ran through Winchester as well
as a number of small West Virginia towns before hitting the main line to Union Station. Maybe
that would be a good place to expand MARC's Brunswick Line.
Or perhaps, if Baltimore again becomes the kind of major metropolitan center it once was, it
would make sense to reactivate the Old Main Line between Baltimore and Frederick. Or, maybe
it wouldn't! The point is to think big, to see where nostalgia and practicality might align.
That in mind, what line do you wish would see a revival? Also, I'm still open to suggested
revisions for this map before releasing it as a poster that's for sale. Feel free to nitpick in the
comments below!
36 comments
Did you enjoy this article? Greater Greater Washington is running a reader drive to raise funds
so we can keep editing and publishing great articles every day. Please help us be sustainable by
making a monthly, yearly, or one-time contribution today! Click here to support Greater Greater
Washington.
Categories: CNU blogs
New Design Guide Offers Advice to Affordable Housing Developers
Next City - Wed, 2016-02-24 10:41
At least 20 percent of the planned 50 units at Brooklyn’s Albany Apartments will be designated
as affordable. The project includes 18,000 square feet of commercial space. (Photo by Oscar
Perry Abello)
Communities, affordable housing organizations, public space advocates, local businesses, and
the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) disagree about a lot —
from development decisions, to the definition of affordable.
Related Stories




U.S. Banks Are Getting a Clearer Path to Helping Communities
Get Our Latest Ebook: “Solving Segregation”
Detroit Plays Matchmaker for City’s Entrepreneurs
Which Cities Have (and Haven’t) Made Quick Work of Paid Leave
But there’s at least one thing on which they all agree: Poorly designed ground-floor space in
new, mixed-use affordable housing developments is a persistent challenge, limiting the vitality
and value of such developments to developers, owners, residents and neighbors.
“If you look in certain neighborhoods of New York, new buildings go up, and then the ground
floor sits vacant, in some cases unfortunately for years,” says Michael Lambert, executive
director of the Bed-Stuy Gateway Business Improvement District (BID), stretching 1.5 miles in
Central Brooklyn, with more than 370 businesses and more than 440 properties, nearly all of
them mixed-use. At least six new buildings are currently under construction on the corridor.
“In some of those cases, the retail component of those ground-floor spaces was more of an
afterthought,” Lambert says. “Businesses find that those spaces don’t really match with what
they want to do.”
“When you look at mixed-use projects where attention hasn’t been paid to ground-floor
commercial space, you see dead spaces, dead zones,” says Eva Alligood, deputy director of LISC
NYC, which provides financing and technical assistance for affordable housing all around the
city. “I think the city has recognized that is problematic, especially when the city is putting a ton
of money into mixed-use affordable housing developments.”
Several years ago, HPD initiated an effort to better understand challenges faced by affordable
housing developers when building mixed-use developments. They consulted developers, lenders,
commercial brokers, property managers and community organizations. HPD heard much the
same.
“[Poor ground-floor design] increases the chance for vacancies, and vacancies threaten the
viability of our projects, detract from the quality of neighborhood street life, and waste an
opportunity to increase local employment,” writes HPD commissioner Vicki Been, in the preface
of a newly released guidebook on ground-floor design in mixed-use affordable housing
developments, produced in partnership with the Design Trust for Public Space.
The 87-page guidebook, “Laying the Groundwork: Design Guidelines for Retail and Other
Ground-Floor Uses in Mixed-Use Affordable Housing Developments” (print versions available
for $20), features checklists, illustrations and real-life examples from NYC as well as from other
cities. Lambert and Alligood were among the 68 representatives of affordable housing
developers, designers, city agencies, CDCs, BIDs and other stakeholders that provided feedback
as part of drafting the guidebook.
By late 2014, 1.7 million square feet of commercial space already existed within city-financed,
multi-family affordable housing developments. An estimated 2 million square feet of groundfloor commercial or community space will come about as a result of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 10year plan to create or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing, which HPD is primarily
responsible for implementing.
Going forward, “Laying the Groundwork” guidelines will be incorporated into HPD’s requests
for proposals, into the evaluation of development proposals, and into the review of architectural
plans to ensure that retail space in new affordable housing developments will be a community
asset.
“HPD was really concerned about some of their smaller developers who were not as informed
about what good design could do,” Susan Chin, executive director of the Design Trust, says of
the guidebook concept.
Many of those developers work with LISC NYC. Since its inception three decades ago, LISC
NYC has invested roughly $1.7 billion in 75-plus CDCs and other affordable housing developers
in the city, supporting the creation of more than 32,000 affordable homes and apartments and
more than 2 million square feet of commercial space.
“A lot of our community partners have developed retail spaces and attracted businesses to those
spaces, but they’ve shared with us that commercial space design is a whole line of business in
and of itself, apart from the affordable housing they’re experts at building,” Alligood says.
Many of LISC NYC partners are nonprofit organizations that do more than just develop
affordable housing. Well-designed space could house some of the other work they do, and
commercial tenant rent can support some of the other programs and services they provide,
Alligood points out.
“You can’t fault affordable housing developers, because public subsidies are focused on housing
and that’s been their mission historically,” notes Chin. “It seems odd, but I think it’s quite new
for us to see this kind of investment in a whole neighborhood, a complete neighborhood,
including new job creation.”
Does better-designed ground-floor space, however, lead to high-end commercial tenants that
won’t necessarily serve or employ residents of affordable housing?
“It is something we think about, because we’re asked all the time why are we interested in
improving public space and aren’t we just gentrifying a neighborhood or just displacing
residents,” Chin says. “That’s just not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in providing quality
public space, including retail space, for everyone, for all New Yorkers.”
The biggest challenge, Chin says, will be winning over the developer community, especially
small or nonprofit developers. Cost is a big concern. That’s why Design Trust also released a
tool to demonstrate the costs of applying the guidebook’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing
recommendations.
The guidebook’s impact may hinge on the city’s 72 BIDs, 39 of which are in low- to moderateincome neighborhoods. BIDs generally find themselves as key go-betweens, facilitating
conversations between owners, developers and potential commercial tenants.
“I recently attended a breakfast with some of our stakeholders, talking about retail attraction
needs and other trends,” Lambert says. “The question came to me from one of the property
owners about whether or not there was any way people who are developing their properties could
actually have a better sense of how to design these spaces in a way that actually attracts
commercial tenants.”
It wasn’t the first time he fielded that question. It won’t be the last. Now, he finally has
something he can send along.
Categories: CNU blogs, New Urbanism
What I learned playing SimCity
City Observatory - Wed, 2016-02-24 10:00
Like most city lovers of a certain age, I spent many hours as a kid playing SimCity. For readers
who are tragically uninitiated, SimCity is one of the iconic computer games of the 1990s, though
new versions have been released as recently as 2013. Playing as mayor (or, really, dictator, but
more on that later), you shepherded the growth of a city from its very first streets to towering
skyscrapers—assuming you weren’t wiped out by tornados, fires, or aliens. By making
thousands and thousands of people plan commercial, industrial, and residential districts for their
virtual towns, the creators of SimCity have probably done more than anyone in the history of the
world to introduce basic principles of zoning to the public.
SimCity 2000. Credit: 01229, Flickr
Recently, I started playing a successor to SimCity, Cities: Skylines (or CS, as I’ll call it). CS is
very much like SimCity, with some added details (at least compared to the last version I played)
and much better graphics. But unlike when I was ten, I can also appreciate that CS, like SimCity,
has a whole host of assumptions about how cities work, and how urban governance works, built
into the gameplay—assumptions that are both frustrating as a player and fascinating as someone
who spends a lot of time thinking about real urban planning and governance. While all games
that simulate real life are of course drastically simplified, the way that they’re simplified often
speaks to the actual worldview of the people who design and play them. With that in mind, here
are some notes on what a video game can teach us about the biases and blind spots of real-life
urban planning in the US:

You must zone—and use single-use zoning. With the exception of some Sunbelt
cities, nearly every urban core in America took shape in an era before zoning. As
we’ve written, brownstone Brooklyn, Wicker Park in Chicago, Cooper-Young in
Memphis, and any number of pre-WWII neighborhoods across the country—not to
mention iconic cities in other parts of the world—could only have been built without
modern American zoning, with its density limits, parking requirements, and
separation of shops and homes. But in CS, no one can build anything on a plot of
land until you’ve given it a zone: Residential, Commercial, Industrial, or Office, and
specified high- or low-density. It’s striking that zoning is so baked into our
assumptions about how urban development works that leaving something unzoned
is just not possible—let alone creating mixed-use zoning, form-based zoning, or
other kinds of development regulations like those used in Europe.
Zoning in Cities: Skylines: low-density commercial (light blue), high-density commercial (dark
blue), and low-density residential (green).

You must give cars primacy on the street. One of the most important tools real-life
planners have is designing public space, including streets. The tradeoff between
pedestrian spaces, bike lanes, and lanes for motorized traffic—and within motorized
traffic, between private vehicles and public transportation—has a profound effect on
neighborhood character, development patterns, and how people choose to get around. But
in CS, that decision has been made for you—and as with zoning, the assumption is that
all streets will follow the mid-to-late-20th-century US norm, which is dedicating as much
space as possible for the use of private vehicles. Pedestrian-only and pedestriandominated streets, transitways, or simple bus lanes are all impossible, even though, again,
many real-life neighborhoods around the world would be very, very different without
them.

Parking doesn’t exist. This is an interesting one: whereas the last two issues bake in
assumptions based on 20th century US practices, when it comes to one of the defining
features of modern urban land use in America—parking—CS simply pretends it doesn’t
exist. Why would it do that, when the game takes so much care to have a sophisticated
transportation model, with individual workers who have to get to jobs, creating traffic
jams, or using specific bus or train stops? Here’s one theory: no one actually wants a city
full of parking lots and multi-story garages. Put simply, accommodating the actual
demand for parking that your little citizens generate would be a bummer, because half of
the buzzing streetscapes or idyllic suburbs you created would be erased for parking lots.
This is, in fact, what we have done in real life, and it is a bummer. But CS might have
forced players to look at parking as a part of the transportation system—and to recognize
that the attractive, non-parking-lot-based neighborhoods in which many people wish to
live their lives are incompatible with massive car use. Instead, it just pretends that all the
costs associated with car storage don’t exist—a form of denial that is still strong more
than ten years after the publication of The High Cost of Free Parking.

It’s all about the built environment. CS presents cities as a kind of dynamic puzzle, a
system with inputs and outputs that can be optimized towards whatever goal you might
have for them. But in real life, cities are mostly about people, and the relationships
between them. Interestingly, though in many ways the game locks in an incredibly
specific time and place—America in the second half of the 20th century, more or less—
many of the defining features of that era are entirely absent. There are no poor
neighborhoods in CS; race doesn’t exist, so there are no segregated black or white or
Asian or Latino neighborhoods, either. In fact, community does not exist in any form.
Every person cares only about their individual inputs and outputs: finding a job, having a
means of transportation to the job, and so on. But for many real people, community is
what cities are all about. Moreover, a central tension in urban governance is reconciling
the design of the built environment with the goals of the people and communities who
live in it. It’s disappointing that at least one version of the planners’ fantasy resolves that
tension by simply imagining people and community out of the equation.

There are no politics. It would take a special kind of weirdo (like me) to play a game
where you have to negotiate funding for major infrastructure projects with representatives
from your state’s DOT, and get a community organization’s approval for every new
apartment building. But those politics are, in fact, central to how cities get built today. In
CS, you don’t really answer to anybody, which, obviously, is part of the fun—but it also
represents a particular fantasy that has dogged urban planning since its beginning:
namely, the myth of planning as engineering, a quasi-scientific exercise in tweaking
traffic flows and directing people and jobs to the optimal locations to achieve a unified
vision. In real life, every decision that gets made has a coalition of interested parties
behind it. Understanding those interests, and the government institutions through which
they’re channeled, is as important to understanding urban planning as a traffic model or
supply and demand curve.
Please don’t let anyone build this in real life
Even though it’s just a computer game, Cities: Skylines has a lot to teach us about the unstated
premises of our urban planning conversations, and demonstrates how those premises profoundly
shape what our cities can look like. When we assume the necessity of a given way of regulating
cities, assume away the messiness of people and their relationships, assume away politics, and
ignore major costs, we miss an awful lot of what urban planning debates should be.
Categories: CNU blogs, New Urbanism















« first
‹ previous
…
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
…
next ›
last »






About us
Advertise
Books
E-updates
CNU
Cart
Search


My Account
Log In

Home
o
o



Best Practices Guide
SmartCode Manual
Submit News
Nonprofit
News Briefs
Follow us on




About Us
Contact
Privacy
Copyright 2010 New Urban News Publications
PO Box 6515, Ithaca, NY 14851-6515 | tel 607-275-3087
Site development by FreeThought Design.