Category: urban administration

making big urban ideas happen through idea management

Posted by Chuck – May 25, 2011

Lately, there is no shortage of reporting about big urban ideas and visions of what will make places great.

For David Roberts, writing in Grist, the answers are conceptual, e.g. assurance of ecological sustainability and density, while Crosscut contributor Mark Hinshaw lauds great projects in the making through citation to the “verve, variety and vitality” of James Corner’s early rethinking of the Seattle waterfront—with a city-wide focal point in mind.

But where is the realism, and why does it matter?

In a recent Financial Times article, Edwin Heathcoate dissected the ever-popular lists of great cities and acknowledged that such rankings are often based on individual taste—in response to the qualities that the identified cities present.  However, Heathcoate’s goal was not to organize a ‘liveable city” list based on successful implementation of a big urban idea.

For me, as a practitioner, I am anchored on the “how” to make big urban ideas happen. Once a big idea is vetted—whether in an authoritarian or democratic way—what assures its success? Most particularly, what if, from Day One, the vision pushes comfort zones of the achievable; politically, legally or monetarily?

I suggest reality-checks from the beginning, which includes careful and contextual due diligence—reflecting back and showing some immediate grounding of what detractors might argue as the pie-in the-sky.  Call it “idea management” in the urban arena.

To return to the Seattle example, on the waterfront:  Grand, “make no little plans” visions are afoot, in a purposeful, unconstrained exercise led by james corner field operations that contemplates a merger of natural systems and urbanity. With a considered framework (summarized nicely by Cristina Bump here) a presentation in Seattle by Corner and his team last Thursday night brought the potential of a new city orientation towards the city’s nascent Elliott Bay, with the potential of reclaimed beaches, green piers, terraced topography-sensitive runoff and new, waterside gathering places.

Hinshaw frames the successful rebirth of the Seattle waterfront by artful hint—now is not the time for curmudgeons—rather, it is the time for courtship in an urban Spring.

Regeneration of the waterfront in Seattle and other cities worldwide (see plans for Perth, Australia, here) is but one example of potential implementation of the big urban idea. But big ideas can fail without the idea management of due diligence—a catalog of what will, can and could happen.

Without a simultaneous catalog of due diligence checklists (even if they are kept under cover), visions risk repudiation and rancor. In reaching this conclusion, nothing has impressed me more than first-hand learning from the Jerusalem light rail project —off budget, off schedule, full of geopolitical questions and implementation snafus.  Ironically, as I recounted in 2010, project implementers noted that:

BRT [bus rapid transit] is more viable in Jerusalem given far less need for excavation and utility relocation, and, echoing sentiments in other Israeli cities, probably should have been the mode of choice to begin with.

The project is almost done today, with opening scheduled for later this year—five years late.

So in conclusion, I suggest no moderation in the generation of big urban ideas, no doom-saying.  But I hope amid all of the vision, the checklists are forming.

Even beyond the seemingly universal challenge of funding for vision, the pitfalls of process and delay remain—concerned neighbors, overlapping agency jurisdictions, related regulations and other stakeholder review will often come to light.

Through idea management, let’s use existing tools and invent new ones so that big urban ideas do not die before their time.

All photographs composed by the author. Seattle waterfront graphic courtesy of City of Seattle/james corner field operations.


Obama and the Middle East, urban sustainability and detente

Posted by Chuck – May 19, 2011

Could sustainability principles pave the path to peace?

President Obama’s strategic statements about the Middle East last Thursday (and as clarified to AIPAC on Sunday) were not city-specific, but took me back one year to Jerusalem and in-person perspectives on the city’s prospects.

My 2010 reflections, reproduced below, capture individuals still in the news, and the issues of today’s urbanism, boundaries and ecosystems in Jerusalem—considerations well worth heeding in response to the President’s focus on borders, and his call to embrace the choice “between the shackles of the past and the promises of the future.”

In Jerusalem, a municipal administration rides a pendulum between sustainability and geopolitics.

Greenbelts, light rail, complete street-making, and the storied demolition orders for Palestinian homes in a floodway: all live on a world stage.

Last week, addressing Pacific Northwest professionals visiting with Seattle-based i-SUSTAIN, Deputy Mayor Naomi Tsur prescribed the ultimate sustainable urbanism, drawing from a Hebrew phrase. Jerusalem must “emerge from its [many] walls,” old and new, she argued, and enhance the city’s diverse, public areas largely already shared by all.

The Jerusalem of gathering spaces and neighborhoods is already present, she claimed, and should no longer grow out in rings of settlements, but should preserve compact neighborhoods based on affinity, interlinked by public transit and defining connectors such as the Jaffa Road and the Street of the Prophets.

The tools? Public process, for one, even in areas annexed after the 1967 Six-Day War, to help define a collective local voice.

Her systemic analysis of the city is familiar and compelling, as she simultaneously seeks to avoid a Nicosia outcome (a reference to the divided Cyprus to the northwest). Arguably, she is peacemaking on a platform of the sustainable city.

For instance, Tsur thinks at night about the infrastructure lacking in East Jerusalem, and how the city should rise above the intractable and remedy untreated eastern watershed drainage, which flows directly to the Dead Sea. It would be feasible, she says, to pump this sewage to the state-of-the-art treatment plant that already treats the western watershed sewage, and create drinking water through sustainable technology.

Meanwhile, in the East Jerusalem village of Silwan, along the Kidron Valley, just below the City of David and Hezekiah’s water tunnel, Fakhri Abu Diab thinks at night about other things — like what to tell his children about the potential fate of the family house which still “carries the smell of his mother.” As recently reported by The New York Times’ Ethan Bronner, the Abu Diab house was one of several that received a demolition order, because it was expanded without a permit and is the potential location of an archaeological park at the base of excavations already mired in the complexities of political archeology — a search not only to document biblical events, but seen by detractors as a Jewish land-claim process in disguise.

In Abu Diab’s view, the post-1967 municipality has ignored him before, and he lacks confidence in the proposed relocation offer, which is under negotiation for a move to higher ground.

Walls, sleepless nights, conflict, water, and a future for children. The human condition speaks loudly in this most urban of cities, as the debate over the future of Jerusalem brings a reality-television aura to local land-use administration.

The original article also appeared in Crosscut, here.


the timeless advice of universal urbanism

Posted by Chuck – May 8, 2011

People often ask why, as a lawyer, I have chosen to spend spare time writing about urbanism. “Osmosis and irony” is the best answer I can muster.

While many of my friends monitor, message—and often preach—changing approaches to urban development, I write because I am seeing many things in the popular press and blogosphere recalled from childhood as obscure, meal-time conversations in an urban planning professor’s family.

I am reminded of one of many of Mark Twain’s attempts at characterizing the human condition:

“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”

So, in a sense, the meal-time conversations of childhood continue. In the interim, words have changed, but the ideas are constant. Regulations have attempted to cement what was selective policy. And a sense of urgency—borne in “pollution control”—now centers on mitigation of climate change.

How distinct are the urban policies of yesterday, today and tomorrow?

By way of example, the Seattle City Council 2011 Priorities address an agenda with several sub-elements (click here), built around the following, which are understandable and appropriate topics for the 21st century city:

  • Foster safe, just, and healthy communities for all
  • Build a livable city for our future
  • Invest public resources fairly and effectively

Maybe such topics are generic, modern city-speak, regardless of exact era, technological advancement or regulatory system.

Over 40 years ago, my father (the professor) was asked for advice about contemporary urban issues of the day relevant to Seattle.

In response, he focused on issues of regionalism, infill development, equitable transportation systems, housing, education, natural systems, storefront vitality and community involvement.  He frankly approached the pitfalls of merging land use policy with politics and the need for a bold vision at the juncture of the public and private domains.

Ironically, change the date, update vocabulary, and the following abridged advice might provide a helpful, timeless and universal road map in whatever urban direction we choose to travel.

June 5, 1967

TO: Mr. Jack Robertson

Random Notes: Planning and City Development With Regard to the Seattle City Council

Urban and regional issues that could be expected to concern a Council.

1.  A metropolitan orientation: awareness of the city region, the interrelationship of the problems and willingness to view them in the context of a central city and its hinterland.

2.  Inner city rejuvenation: the changing core – urban and human renewal utilizing all aid to facilitate a vigorous business and industrial center – but not to ignore housing and other community facilities as only the very rich, very poor and disadvantaged are left.

3.  Transportation: varied means and choices inherent in systems that would be efficient and subsidizing public as well as private means, mass transit as well as individual.

4.  Services and facilities: provided beyond a “minimal” level–underground as well as over, for the aged as well as the young, for the aesthetic as well as the athletic, for the indigenee as well as the transient or the tourist, for the disadvantaged (racial, economic, etc.) school child as well as those of the affluent, etc.

5.  Amenities: the scenic, the historical, the cultural, the recreational etc. — the quality element, particularly in an area such as Seattle, where a concerted effort should be made to conserve and enhance existing elements and moreover to promote more in developments for the future.

6.  Attitudes and actions for a viable environment:

a.  To encourage and initiate demonstration projects and doings to show what can be done, to innovate in response to problems unique to the area, to freely engage in experimentation as needed in a dynamic, and growing area and to expect and admit some failures.

b.  In emphasizing community action, to really deliver services not only those of health but also of social welfare at the neighborhood and “store front” level.

c.  To provide a vital planning and development function where goals and priorities are publicly discussed, where priorities are asserted based on evaluations of the costs and gains (economic and social) and those are revealed as the basis of decisions, where policies are tested in forums involving community participation, and where public strategies consider the repercussions of private actions.

…


needed: more scale models as inspiration for urbanism

Posted by Chuck – April 30, 2011

Certainly, others have documented the value and recurring popularity of the scale model as an inspiration for comprehensive thinking about city form, both from the perspective of the seasoned observer or an orientation for the neophyte. From such a one-stop view, the relationships of history land use, transportation and the natural environment can be readily ascertained.

Around the world, such city models are regularly updated as urban landscapes change, a three-dimensional depiction of what American planning and zoning maps can only hope to inspire.

The scale model can clarify the unique footprint of the subject urban area, and visits to and photographs of the model’s venue can educate, advertise and identify challenges, opportunities and solutions.

Need we be limited to the desktop Sim City? Need such real life, physical models await artistic inspiration, world expositions or other landmark occasions?

Philanthropists and grant-makers: In a time of municipal fiscal restraint when such endeavors may not be otherwise achievable, why not fund cities that apply for the privilege of creating the scale model tool?

Muncipal Jerusalem's current scale model

Scale model of biblical Jerusalem


“citytank is alive”

Posted by Chuck – March 15, 2011

The city lives in many online fora. A new one, Citytank, assembled and launched today by Seattle’s Dan Bertolet, is well worth noting.

Bertolet has assembled a wide range of local and national contributors to write in a focused fashion on the potential of cities, as a conceivable predicate for a true “think tank” on applied urban ideas.

The inaugural series, “C200” features a range of 200 word contributions—required reading for both ethereal and pragmatic “urbies” online.

Much of today’s urbanist dialogue features dueling claims to universal messages, which no one should own.

Through his creation, Bertolet has implicitly acknowledged this communal power of ideas, and has pledged to assemble the best.

Check out Citytank, here.

Photo: Screenshot from Citytank, March 15, 2011.


communicating urbanism–make no little plans, updated

Posted by Chuck – March 6, 2011

Surely every self-styled urban visionary, and quotation-centric student of prose, knows the magic words attributed to monumental, “city beautiful” Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.“

A recent case-in-point came two years ago, when President Obama invoked Burnham in his inspirational speech, urging expansion of high-speed rail in America.

There is nothing wrong with such inspiration based on large visions and  diligence. But, Burnham’s words need updating in order to communicate enhancement of sustainable cities in the digital age.

Here is a start, with five alternative slogans, and why we should use them:

  • Make no long speeches, nor write articles of more than 800 words.

You know the score:  the digital age has amplified the art of efficient consumption.  To sell today’s message of the critical relationship of land use and transportation, jobs close to home and multi-modal forms of transit, punchlists are in, treatises out.

  • Make no statements or share no photos that cannot also be tweeted or communicated by Facebook status message.

Any successful urban adage, such as “@mayorsmith: we need form-based zoning in Anytown”, needs to be, well, what you just read.

  • Make no introduction of a new initiative without a youtube or vimeo video with catchy music and pedestrians.

Introducing a complete streets program or sidewalk dining?  Flip camera in hand, or you lose.

  • Make no statement about small business without allowing for street food and vegetables grown on adjacent parking strips.

It’s not about dining rooms or produce sections of supermarkets anymore.

  • Make no mention of children without poll results revealing no desire to grow up to a family car or a house, but to zipcars and downtown living.

No elaboration needed.

Tongue-in-cheek? Of course, but with a not-so-subtle message. In today’s America, we need even more New Age Burnhamisms in the quest to communicate urbanist messages with a populist voice.


density and multi-modal, by any other name

Posted by Chuck – January 6, 2011

Does the messaging which encourages sustainable forms of development need to alter its vocabulary to be successful?

Yesterday, Wednesday, January 5, I presented on removing barriers to transit-oriented development, sustainable communities and brownfields to a group of real estate lawyers from around the country assembled for a continuing legal education conference in Vail, Colorado.

The presentation is embedded below, and addresses in summary form the range of design, regulatory, fiscal and political issues in metropolitan areas today (with a Washington State focus). Yesterday, it was presented as the basis for a post-recession vocabulary for lawyers as well as clients and peer professionals.

Formal and casual discussion after the presentation was informative. We talked about the ongoing challenge of implementing compact and infill development adjacent to transportation infrastructure. Topics included infrastructure funding, urban streetcar initiatives, and how to address elements of walkable, transit-oriented development to constituencies not initially familiar with urbanist concepts or supportive of increased density.

Some in the audience suggested alternative language to mask hot-button words. Tax-increment financing to fund new infrastructure for transit-oriented development became a “parking fund”. Density was acknowledged as forever outside of some people’s comfort zone. And new neighborhoods aimed at live-work proximity were discussed as sometimes problematic in light of potential restrictions imposed by competing forms of environmental governance such as stormwater and air quality regulation.

I was reminded of twenty years ago, when drafting rural cluster development ordinances designed to protect natural resources. To some “cluster” meant “clutter’. We needed to call such regulations something else–such as “conservation density subdivisions”–to make them acceptable in many venues.

All in all, yesterday’s post-presentation discussions were illuminating in their own right, in response to provocative themes–and a reminder of the importance of holistic dialogue in the evolution from well-meaning dogma to achievable professional and political consensus.

Colorado January 2011