URBAN DESIGN WITH PEOPLE

Blog here.

FROM THE SAPORTAREPORT OF 9/29 - UPDATED: 11/8/11 NEW AND IMPROVED! (with better graphics still to come)

WITH AN ELABORATION ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CONNECTIVITY OF ALL TRAVEL MODES WITHIN CENTERS AS A TOOL FOR REDUCING REGIONAL CONGESTION AND IMPROVING AIR QUALILTY

THE TRANSPORTATION INVESTMENT ACT

SPENDING TOMORROW’S MONEY ON YESTERDAY’S PROBLEMS?

OR SHAPING THE PROGRAM TO MEET THE NEEDS?

IT’S NOT TOO LATE!

Mike Dobbins

9/22/11     11/22/11

Citizens in the metro area face a vote next year to tax themselves a penny to build transportation projects aimed at improving the ability for citizens to get where they need to go more effectively than is now the case. To make progress toward that goal, the state Transportation Investment Act calls for the vote to be tied to a list of projects developed by a “Roundtable” of regional leaders, led by an executive committee. The executive committee and the Roundtable completed their tasks of selecting projects for the Atlanta region on October 15.  The legislation that set this course in motion was the third try in three years to do something – anything - for transportation in the region and state. It took a heroic effort on the part of a lot of powerful and moneyed individuals and groups to get the legislation enacted. And for the Roundtable to have approved the list – unanimously – is truly an extraordinary event. 

Could it really signal, as earlier agreement on the need to beef up transit in the transportation mix seems to have done, the ability for elected leaders to identify positively with commonly shared problems?  Maybe, we hope so. While the outcome has satisfied political criteria,  from a technical standpoint more work is necessary to assure the electorate that the result will add up to a system that makes things better for them, wherever they are in the region.  The stakes are high: a yes vote will generate an estimated $6.1 billion over the next ten years to begin building the projects on the list. What has been much less widely reported, and especially relevant to the referendum’s outcome, is that another $1 billion is earmarked for local projects. If the two pots are considered together, and if they begin to reflect the technical guidance suggested below, the referendum has a better chance of passing and a better chance to serve more of the region’s people. 

Transportation is a system that should be designed to get the most people from where they are to where they mostly need to go (“origins” and “destinations”) as seamlessly as possible, now and in the future. The settlement patterns that were emerging before the economic crash and are expected to resume favor greater concentrations in existing centers, large and small (see map).  The transportation system necessary to accommodate this new housing and job growth is different than that serving the patterns that dominated settlement from the ‘50s through the ‘90s. The system we need for the future depends on robust connections both between the centers and good travel options within the centers to support the connectivity needs of their concentration of activities. It is possible, some would say likely, that such a system could actually reduce travel demand in the region by shortening the distances between home, work, and necessary goods and services.  A study completed by the Metro Chamber a few years back, for example, established that a reduction in miles traveled per person per day from the current 35 to 31would significantly reduce regional congestion and improve air quality.

Regional, municipal and business investment policies, reinforced by the ARC’s Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) program, are shifting to encourage this trend. The daytime population in centers, whether working or shopping, generally is composed of a fairly representative slice of the regional population, in income, age, gender, and racial make-up. If centers can begin to offer residential choices for this range of people in meeting their space, proximity, and cost needs, then shorter travel distances associated with these centrifying trends will reduce the demand for longer commutes. The growing markets that fuel the trend are seniors, empty nesters, and young people who grew up in suburbs who aren’t inclined to stay there. These are transit oriented people, “TOPs,” and they want travel choices within centers, like walkability, local transit, taxis, shuttles, and biking in addition to cars and parking lots.  As these choices become available we will see decreases in both local and regional congestion – and improve air quality. Imagine continued jobs and housing growth in existing centers, whether in the downtown/midtown core or in the town centers that dot the region, yet with less growth in the cars and parking lots currently necessary to serve them.

A systems approach to identifying and prioritizing projects that will give the most bang for the buck would demand consideration of the impact of these likely trends. The criteria established by the Roundtable and too many of the projects on the project list, though, are projects that have been around for years, not evaluated against systems criteria for the region that is coming. As work proceeds on the list and the referendum strategy, there is the opportunity to tweak, shift, and prioritize the projects to better serve that future. Among those opportunities, the ARC and county and town staffs should consider the likely travel impacts of future fuel costs and air quality controls, both of which are likely to further shift job and housing markets with the goal of  reducing travel miles. Of regional and state concern, the project list, without much holistic systems logic seems to be a step or two behind in quality and foresight what our competition cities are doing to build workable transportation systems for their futures.

Below is a summary analysis of the problems, suggestions for resolving them, steps necessary to give the referendum a better chance of passage, and a context map highlighting centers.

The Regional System

The region deserves an integrated transportation system that works both now and for the future, not just a bunch of projects.

Seven tasks the town, city, county and regional leaders and staffs should keep in mind as they refine and prioritize their final project list include:

• Focus on connecting the greatest concentrations of jobs and housing – where the most trips are generated and attracted, the epicenters of congestion build-up, felt near and far;
• Recognize the likely resumption of settlement patterns evident before the economic crash – tending to gravitate and concentrate around existing centers as offering an alternative to the spread-out patterns of the last four decades;
• Understand the problem as one of capacity, not roads versus transit – the system can’t efficiently move the people demanding to use it, causing several choke points;
• And the problem is one of choice – you have none: the only road that can get you from here to there often doesn’t, because of congestion at critical times of day;
• Acknowledge that the misrepresented option of widening existing major roads or building new ones in settled areas is mostly unacceptable – costs of right-of-way and construction are way beyond resources available and way too destructive of existing settled neighborhoods and communities;
• Accept the fact that in order to build capacity and offer choice, you have to put more people through the corridors we already have – methods could include HOV, carpool, toll lanes, buses, bus rapid transit, rail, whatever it takes to increase capacity and offer choices on how to make the trip;
• Finally, as the TIA is touted as a jobs generator,  commit now to a jobs policy that assures local training and hiring at good wages and a corresponding accountability plan – project by project, jurisdiction by jurisdiction; in these times, better to have more jobs and fewer projects than the other way around.

The Roundtable Criteria, now in the hands of all regional jurisdictions

The four criteria that guided the project list were flawed from a systems perspective:

·        Congestion relief – OK, but this approach looks backward and doesn’t take into account future settlement patterns and capacity demands, thus risking simply moving existing choke points from one place to another;

·        Deliverability – important, but the requirements of the Transportation Investment Act to set dollar limits in overall resources available rather than time limits where resources could increase, may restrict the flexibility needed as projects go through design, right-of-way, and prioritization processes, and thus be unworkable and even self-defeating;

·        Economic development – without focusing on where most jobs and most higher density housing is now and is likely to occur in the future, the all-important link between transportation as a means and economic activity as an end may be lost or diluted; and numbers of jobs generated, for whom, and at what wage scale was not factored into how to spend the $6 billion;

·        Regional equity – already tilted away from where most people are concentrated during the day time, the organizational structures that are making the decisions reflect the economic and race inequities of the region, where the needs, and thus the potential rewards, are greatest.

So, What to Do Now that the Roundtable Has Completed its Work?

However unintentionally, the legislation risks setting up the region for failure.

If the referendum passes, the region will be locked into building a bunch of projects, many of which won’t address the problems of the emerging settlement and travel cost patterns. Further, it restricts transit from reaching its potential as part of the solution.

If the referendum fails, prospects for any transportation funding are grim indeed. It’s not too late, though, to shape and prioritize the listed projects to consider where needs will be instead of just where they have been. So, to succeed, from now until the referendum, the detailing of the list needs to do its best to consider:

• Systems analysis of anticipated settlement patterns’ travel demand – to evaluate project priorities;

·        Travel costs and prospects – how will rising fuel costs affect future settlement patterns, thus travel demand patterns and the choice of alternative modes of travel;

·        Potential for generating  jobs

·        Air quality analysis – now and anticipated = of existing project list: we want to breathe;

·        Evaluate results from the perspective of our rival metros’ transportation strategies – to decide what kind of economic prospects we might have, and what kinds of places we want to live in. how to get there, both in access and strategy.

Finally, gain support for making crucial modifications to the Transportation Investment Act:

·        Change the referendum date – change to coincide with the 2012 general election;

• Leave the ten year time cap, but remove  the overall dollar cap so that economic progress can be rewarded with an expanded pot of funds;
• Eliminate tax exemptions – for a few high-powered industries in order to increase the available pot;
• Get MARTA or a successor agency the funding flexibility it needs right now so that the transit system can begin to restore and enhance bus and train service and infrastructure, like bus shelters, cellphone accessible bus arrival information, pull-offs, and sidewalks, well before the referendum date so that people might be inclined to vote for more and better – otherwise, why would transit riders even think of supporting the TIA?
• Create an integrated regional transit agency – so that transit policy, pricing, and operations are coordinated and more efficient, recognizing that the leadership that MARTA has provided to serve about 95 per cent of all transit riders and build the ninth largest transit system in the nation needs to be the central building block of such a system
• Acknowledge that everyone in the region has mobility and access needs, and move toward a more fairly representative structure to manage transportation’s future – a one person – one vote philosophy,

and with all of the above, and the focus on centers as elaborated below,

PASS THE REFERENDUM !

Elaborating on the Importance of Connectivity WITHIN Centers to Achieve Regional Congestion Relief

YOU WANT TO SOLVE REGIONAL CONGESTION ?

 THEN STRENGTHEN REGIONAL CENTERS !!

The plea above for a systems approach to managing the next steps on refining and strategizing for the TIA referendum emphasizes the importance of strengthening the region’s centers to achieve the goal of actually reducing congestion and improving access to home, work, shopping, or school. And the leadership in many centers, particularly those that are committed participants in the ARC’s Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) program, is taking steps to do just that. To fuel centers’ commitments to strengthen (or stretch, as Mayor Reed might put it) their vitality and investment potential, each jurisdiction should pay close attention to how they allocate their piece of the $1 billion that’s coming to them should the referendum pass, as well as actively shaping the adopted project to meet these goals.

The region’s centers, whether Duluth, Norcross, Decatur, Riverdale, Fairburn, Smyrna, Marietta, Roswell, or Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, Perimeter, or Cumberland/Galleria and lots of others have much in common with respect to the development patterns around them, like:

·        Higher concentrations of activity (density)

·        Better infrastructure in place for supporting growth

·        Better connected to other centers, some already with functional transit

·        More diverse in both their daytime and nighttime populations

·        Better able to attract emerging markets for more urban living, working, and shopping

·        Less resistant to more diverse, mixed use, and higher density kinds of growth

·        Transit Oriented People - TOPs

And the centers tend to share these needs:

• As older places, they need to overcome deferred maintenance issues
• To really make a dent in regional congestion, most of them need to encourage significant growth in mixed-use, mixed-density, mixed-income, and mixed-generational residential communities
• They need to upgrade the quality and functionality of their townscape civic environments
• And, perhaps most important, they need to prioritize greatly improving their internal connectivity by whatever means necessary and appropriate to the scale of need – access by walking, biking, shuttles, taxi service, buses, streetcars, light and heavy rail, cars, and convenient, out of sight parking (as much as necessary but as little as possible)

To the extent that centers can support each other, gain support from their counties, the region, and the state, they can look forward to thriving after the great recession runs its course. For example, since the focus on the assets and market potential of centers is region-wide and since the interests of centers are more housed in city halls than county courthouses, the Metropolitan Atlanta Mayors Association (MAMA) should take this up as a priority. Thus, they will be able to:

• Provide a living, working, and shopping choice for their surrounding communities and newcomers
• Thus taking advantage of major regional (and national) emerging markets and the demographic and life choice shifts that are driving those markets
• And, most directly affecting what SHOULD be the dialogue about the TIA, reduce the need and thus the number of regional trips, the only strategy that holds promise for easing congestion and improving air quality.

To develop an understanding and a strategy for both responding to and stimulating the growing market for more cosmopolitan places, both large and small, first identify what the center already has to support intensification, like:

• a walkable block structure with good sidewalks, landscaping, and lighting;
• bicycle access;
• any transit, existing or in the works;
• any mix of residential, office, and retail of varying densities  and varying price points.

And then, what does your center need to build on what it already has to meet the demands of a growing center, prerequisites for achieving a better quality of life for all. In this consideration, all should be very conscious of what portion of the local choice $1 billion they are in line to receive, and how they can allocate these funds to prioritize making their centers work.  As with the critique of the region’s process, develop – now – a systems approach for providing the best future connectivity for the most people within centers and corridors for all modes of travel, as opposed to just a random projects list.

First, old styles of leadership and the craving for them have to go; leadership that is not broad-based, that depends solely on the Commerce Club for its legitimacy, that only deals with the interests of the powerful will no longer succeed in leading the region and in fact hasn’t for many years – witness transportation, water, public education. Then, on regional leadership, the real question is: how and why did Krautler, Weyandt, and Landers come to leave the ARC? More or less all at once? These are three gents whose distinguished leadership, among many other achievements, crafted the LCI program (Weyandt), arguably the most effective voluntary regional growth shaping program in the country; the Transit Planning Board and “Concept 3,” the first really meaningful sign of progress in developing a region-wide transit consensus (Krautler and Weyandt), and Landers who exposed key leaders to the rest of the nation’s metro best practices – expensive but effective. Letting proven, effective leadership go has to have a story behind it: an investigative reporter, if there are any left, should ferret it out. 

About Atlanta’s parking dustup………….

Mike Dobbins

NOTE: since writing this in spring 2010, the Atlanta City Council did place a moratorium on implementation of the new privatized parking contract, which is better but still misses some of the key points in this post........

Parking is about a lot more than storing cars and generating revenue. Parking, and in the current situation on-street parking, is about access and walkability, retail, restaurant and residential viability, and altogether the character – the attractiveness and functionality - of the more intense parts of town. Various studies have confirmed the common sense that cars parked at on-street parking spaces provide a positive frame for a good quality pedestrian environment. continue in blog archive under parkingpage2...   

EXHORTATIONS FOR MAYOR REID   -  Michael Dobbins, Commissioner of Planning, Development, and Neighborhood Conservation, 1996 - 2002

(delivered at past planning commissioners event for Georgia Tech's Student Planning Association, Atlanta, March 3, 2010) 

Planning matters. We’ve had eight years where mostly projects mattered, largely favoring insider developers and oblivious to contexts and opportunities for benefitting the larger community and the city as a whole. 

Every development initiative involves the government, the private sector and the citizenry. It’s a struggle sometimes, but worth it, to assure community leaders a fair representation at the table where the plans get approved. Citizens in the end are the judge of whether we’re making our places better or not. We live in a time when citizens’ knowledge and access to knowledge about the shape and condition of their communities is rapidly revving up – and the truisms of experts are unraveling. 

These are hard times, likely to get harder and last longer than anyone expected. Thus the emphasis must be on sustainability, starting with sustaining our citizens, prioritizing services and maintenance over new projects, and putting in place environmental and economic sustainability policies to shape future development  

But there’s no time like down times to recast plans and strategies; planning is crucial to take advantage of the opportunities; and planning is affordable. My mandate has always been getting stuff done and done right, and all of the one-liners to follow are doable. 

That said, here are EXHORTATIONS FOR MAYOR REID: 

Policy/Strategy 

• Serve the whole big city, the many, not just the big moguls, the few 
• Reduce poverty and not by displacement 
• Measure progress by reduction in the gap between rich and poor  
• Reduce racism and classism by strengthening and listening to the voices of the under represented 
• Run government as a transparent SERVICE, measured by satisfaction of all, not as an opaque business, measured by PROFIT for a few – publicize, don’t privatize 
• With community guidance, identify COMMUNITY BENEFITS associated with all major private and public development projects and facilitate AGREEMENTS to make them so 
• Reform city policy and set criteria to shape what development the city can afford to support so that it meets community needs and aspirations, not just let developers’ ventures land wherever 
• Test ideas against identification and analysis of the problem - don’t leap to the “solution” because there are no magic bullets 
• Study the numbers - don’t be conned by developers promises or threats 

Jobs/Economic Development 

• Fix the broken rungs at the bottom of the jobs ladder so that people find a job at a low rung and then have the chance to progress on up 
• Rework the workforce development agency so that it fits at least some jobs to work the jobless can do, including those wanting to overcome skills deficits, criminal records, or addictions, not just fitting people to jobs that businesses identify as lucrative for them 
• Prioritize identifying and developing industrial lands as good job sources, paying prevailing wages and offering advancement 
• Spread the work ‘til everyone’s earning a living wage 

Housing/Community Development 

• Fix the broken rungs at the bottom of the housing ladder so that people can find affordable, decent housing and then progress on up through a range of housing type and cost to enable sustainable, intergenerational, diverse communities 
• Act aggressively to enact and enforce codes to curb foreclosure speculators, as well as to develop a continuum of property code enforcement that runs from neighborhood deputies (maybe working out of rec centers), to code enforcement and compliance officers to police  - community policing 
• Take advantage of depressed housing markets to acquire and introduce affordable housing into major job centers, thus providing choice to live near work, save transportation costs, and invigorate empty condos – build on the Midtown Alliance/ANDP model that got interrupted 
• Explore the use of US DOT congestion management/air quality dollars for land cost writedowns to support housing affordability in and near job centers – might be cheaper and realize greater congestion and air quality benefits than building new lane miles 

Land Use/Zoning 

• The core of Atlanta, from West End to Pershing Point, from Northside to Piedmont , where the greatest job concentrations and highest densities of housing exist, is the logical focus of attention – pump the heart of the city 
• Where there is infrastructure and community support, focus public improvement attention to leverage private development to infill existing centers and strip corridors in order to encourage compact, mixed use, mixed income developments  
• Put density where it’s wanted – fill in parking lot laden job centers and arterial strips – don’t intrude into stable single family neighborhoods 
• Prioritize rezoning incrementally, picking up from the quality of life and SPI district improvements that have created market-responsive choices in density,  design quality, and diversity of use, and income 

Parks, Greenspace, and a Sustainable Environment 

• Collaborate with and support environmental sustainability initiatives to seize the downtime to put in place best practice design and development plans to shape development to come 
• Specifically, provide leadership in establishing and administering a green building code 
• Prioritize rivers, creekways, community gardens, and urban forests as the development framework for the future Atlanta 
• Review and audit the purpose and performance of watershed management with a view toward achieving more holistic community development goals, like creeks, greenways, and reservoir parks and possibly reworking the consent decree  
• Open the rec centers and keep up the parks we’ve got as a priority over sinking resources into future parks until operations funding is restored 

Transportation  

• Understand transportation as a comprehensive system to get people where they need to go: a network of all travel modes that shapes investment and settlement patterns, not a series of separate competing projects 
• Thus prioritize transportation planning and finance according to needs and opportunities from a systems and sustainable settlement pattern perspective  
• Build transit to connect within and between the highest concentrations of housing with the highest concentrations of jobs; this is the only way transit is feasible 
• Provide for first rate walking and biking choices: without these, transit-served, compact, mixed use, mixed density, mixed income places don’t work  
• Accordingly, plan and design the “transit triangle” to serve the core – along Peachtree from West End to 17^th Street to Northside and back down to West End, thus connecting Atlanta’s dominant destinations and highest densities of housing and providing the infill transit and streetscape environment necessary to support MARTA rail – keep Peachtree with Auburn-Luckie cross link as the highest priority system improvement 
• Face reality - put the BeltLine in its proper system and timeline perspective: build a greenway trail, protect the right-of-way for eventual transit not presently warranted, and save lots of money and resources needed for more pressing priorities

Georgia Tech's Student Planning Association is hosting an event on March 3, 2010 where three former City of Atlanta Planning Commissioners will be sharing their thoughts on the planning, urban design, and development priorities for the city. Check in here in a few days to get a fuller preview. All are welcome, and all may share their thoughts and ask the hard questions.

The charrette model can help people along in the effort to improve their civic environment - places. My experience has been that preparation, networking, and forming a broad-based yet sort of informal organization before the charrette is vital to sustaining whatever comes out of it. Building such a network can support a series of mini-charrettes to deal with issues of importance to subsets of interests. Relying on the one big charrette model risks being more about magic bullet solutions than addressing problems - good for consultants, definitely a contribution, but maybe not actionable for city councils or county commissions that ultimately implement whatever. 

The International Urban Planning and Environment Association is holding its 9th annual symposium in Shanghai, August 3-6, 2010, bringing together scholars and practitioners from around the world to explore these sustainable planning challenges:  

     - rapid urbanization

     - global recession

     - climate change 

I have submitted the following abstract in the effort to be sure that citizens' roles in the dialogue are included and considered:  

 “The Trajectory of Citizen Involvement in Planning and Development Processes” Session Proposal – Michael Dobbins

 Abstract  

The rhetoric of democracy spreads. The knowledge of planning and development best practices widens. Access to information extends to all who are interested. The ability to manipulate information broadens. The ravages – and threats - of inequity become more and more transparent. The failures of single-disciplinary “expertise” become manifest. Collaborative efforts in which citizens play a substantive guiding role are realizing successes. Citizen empowerment may be maturing from being closed out, to saying “hell, no,” to “no,” to “maybe, if” in dealings with government and private development. New relationships may be emerging that synthesize technical knowledge with place knowledge and culture. Trends underway around the world, in different languages, cultures, and however unevenly, put the question on the table:  can an active citizenry become the third leg of the stool, joining  government and development interests to lift planning and development policies and practices to a level that redounds to the benefit of all?

 Contact: Michael Dobbins, FAIA, AICP

               Professor of Practice

               College of Architecture

               Georgia Tech

               Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0155

               404 723 8698

               michael.dobbins@coa.gatech.edu

               author of Urban Design and People

书名/著者或编者    出版信息 （出版地、出版者、出版年）    索取号 英文

Well, I found the listing for the Chinese Translation of Urban Design AND People

A serendipitous compliment that they translated Mike's major professor at the same time, with intro by  one of his more famous classmates, who took the other path.  Bob probably didn't note, and maybe didn't notice, some of the values Rudolph advocated that Mike went on to embody; though Rudolph himself of course, had pursued the route Stern followed.  There wasn't much alternative then.  When I met Rudolph at the party Diane and Dick Ravitch gave when we married, he told me how proud he was of his chapel for Tuskegee, which was certainly more appreciated than the Yale Art and Architecture Building protesters burned. He knew I was from Alabama; he may have known I was a civil rights activist and even that I supported the protest.  There is no doubt it was a turning point.


They're listed right together but you do have to scroll

http://www.nlc.gov.cn/zxfw/ww/wenjian/NBlists0908_xw/T.html

Urban design and people / Michael Dobbins.    Hoboken, N.J. : Wiley, c2009.    2-2009
TU984
D632
Writings on architecture / Paul Rudolph ; foreword by Robert A.M. Stern.    New Haven : Yale School of Architecture : Distributed by Yale University Press, 2008.    2-2009
TU-854
R917

Peggy

The purpose of urban design is to serve people's needs in the civic environment. Different that building design, whose purpose is to meet the needs of individual owners and the architects for whom they are patrons.

Mike is taking over Urbandesign BLOG with people.  Hopefully it will improve
Peggy aka IrvingDZeiner

Blog here.

Blog here

posting, by the hardest, reply to artnews: Karen, David, Mandie, Jon.

fussing with this trying to put your exchanges onto this blog, I reread the ambitious E.Atl/Kirkwood events!!!   I'm very curious to know how Oakland Foundation members responded to 'which side are you on?"  or was that the genius of the Kirkwood organizers:  art of transmogrification?    If so, my hats off to K burgers, god bless them everyone.    But I'm still inclined to wonder if we'd maybe have been spared that epoch worse than slavery if Lee and Davis had been convicted, not hung, but irreparably dishonored.  I'm big on honoring McPherson; now there's where Atlanta could get its lake!!   Since I'm using the urbandesignBLOGwithpeople, I should emphasize invitation to make corrections and additions to Urban Design AND People
pd

Peggy Dobbins reply to artnews.pd

Frankly, my dears,"  I'm thrilled to see the Liberation of Atlanta celebrated. Go E. Atl and Kirkwood!  I had been wanting to participate in a Liberation Procession over there where the monument of the, dare I say "surrender" occurred, at Marietta and NSide, between Nexus and Sandler-Hudson (I am forgetting the names of places) some Sept 2.
But it looks as if the spirit has properly moved a sufficient mass for significant motion.
Yay!!
As for vacant lots and suspended kindaminimums, driving in to town (pop 2000) Mike was just talking about trying to get the code change to dis-require paving of parking lots.  Permeable surfaces -- even gravel -- being better.  He said there are some hard working enviros working on getting that along with other green building code amendments passed by C of Atl. 

Mandie, I was glad to see your comment about new buildings with store fronts that will remain empty.  Perfect eg of overdoing new formulaic mandates to correct the last ones.
I'm forwarding this to Mr.-Pedestrians-gotta-have-

Blog here.  I'm sitting in the lobby of the Congress for New Urbanism congress in Denver.

I just interrupted Michael Dobbins talking to two of his former students about where the jobs for urban designers are in the new economy.    Aaron [ with Tunnell, Ward, and someone] said the big project guys are hurting, but "you know me, I learned my lessons.  I'm starting a job I'm really excited about in North Little Rock.  Bill Clinton is coming to do our kick off.  We have a very enlightened long term investor with 40 acres with whom we're going to do agricultural projects in the interim.  He's already started holding the farmers' market there."  Dobbins' wife lept up and kissed him:  "Just exactly what we were talking to the community around Ft. McPherson about."

Rebecca, [also with Tunnel ... they will have to blog on to promo proper corp id]  took pics this am of a community garden 4 blocks n of where we are. (court & 18th).  Brilliant.  They just put raised beds with wood bottoms on top of the paving on a parking lot. 

Frances posted a good question on the message board comments page about how citizen guided urban design interacts, (I would say "should" interact) vis a vis investment in real estate  -- land and development.    I think what she had in mind at the time were

• if as Dobbins maintains in Urban Design and People, citizen guided design yields the best result meaning a) it happens, it gets built, which means those putting up the capital are satisfied with the projected return and b) it delivers  community benefits as defined by citizens who participate in the design process 

• and citizen guided design improves as a function of citizen information, transparency, "sunshine."

• yet good public projects often fail because the land prices rise as a function of investments made on the basis of information about where projects are scheduled,