Seattle-based writer and futurist Alex Steffen (left) joins Gary Hustwit on stage

As a survey text in visual form, Gary Hustwit’s Urbanized is a frank introduction to the buzz about cities in our age of right-minded sustainability. Lurking amid the narration and vignettes is a scalable world view where the car is no longer king, and community priorities rather than government mandates often set the agenda for change.

Seattle had the chance to view Hustwit’s new release last night, and in my estimation, the audience saw local issues reflected back from the screen, as will city-dwellers everywhere who attend an Urbanized presentation. Hustwit clearly succeeds in highlighting a universal cast of diverse and sometimes conflicting stakeholders who must balance and integrate ideas, technology and economic forces characteristic of an urbanizing world.

Other articles about Urbanized have set the stage well, among them a Hustwit interview in TheCityFix, a review by Christopher Hawthorne in the Los Angeles Times (who notes Southern California is missing in Hustwit’s lexicon) and a concise entry by Nate Berg on the new Atlantic Cities site.

In short, Hustwit, while not an architect or urban planner, aptly synthesizes the hottest urban issues—from carbon neutrality to safety to human-scale transportation. He employs voices of the well known, the lesser known, and fast-moving urban imagery, which guides the film from Mumbai to Santiagp, to Brasila, Bogota and around the world.

I’ve written lately about the value of imagery in conveying the messages of cities. In this context, Urbanized gives rich meaning to street scenes, infrastructure, and the single building as part of an urban framework.

Through the film’s masterful editing, reality abounds.

Santiago slum dwellers participate in the design of new dwellings, and choose bathtubs over water heaters to escape the communal shower left behind. Brasilia is a planned joy from the air, yet a disconnected trek for the pedestrian. Beijing, with narration by architect Yung Ho Chang, becomes a city of wide avenues no longer a place where friends cross paths. Adjacent to Cape Town, in the township of Khayelitsha, a community project team builds safety through light and other urban design features.

Hustwit also honors his cast and blends them skillfully with their environments.

Former Bogota Mayor Enrique Peñalosa is one with the bus rapid transit and bicycle infrastructure which made his reputation. Landscape Architect James Corner hears the noises around him on New York’s High Line and acknowledges them as an undeniable piece of the urban experience. And the camera is loyal to the anthropological perspectives presented by Danish urban designer Jan Gehl as he suggests angles of view characteristic of evolved homo sapiens in their urban habitat.

While some have said that Urbanized is more primer than graduate seminar, it is still a must-see as a one-sitting wonder. Seldom do we get to see the Brookings Institution’s Bruce Katz espouse optimism for cities as opportune laboratories for reinvention and competition, within moments of dramatic scenes of tension between citizens and government. Hustwit has a knack of mixing and matching, and merging problem with opportunity.

A visual triumph, Urbanized could nonetheless feature more cities, reference more history and, sometimes better blend the film’s talking heads with the community they espouse.

Yet the film says more than meets the eye, and in my view, issues an undeniable challenge to all who embrace cities: capture ideas, and make better urban places going forward.

Initial image composed by the author at the Egyptian Theater, Seattle.

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.

Visits to other cities can easily create “grass is always greener responses” which are hardly complete analyses of a place and its problems.

Yet these human, spontaneous gestalts are worth noting, because they say something about the immediate look and feel of location, and can constitute authentic perceptions of the best of urbanism.

My role in Portland, Oregon last Friday was to present the results of my recent, co-authored study on transit-oriented and urban center development to a meeting of the American Bar Association’s State and Local Government Law Section—and then to co-lead a bus tour on specific, local examples—from the Lloyd District to the Pearl District and beyond.

In keeping with the spirit of gestalt, something very human happened along the way.

For the past few years, Portland has inspired urbanist writers because of an advanced transportation system (including light rail, streetcar and bicycle), a highly walkable downtown, and development practices which have captured the imagination of a new generation of city-oriented populists.

In particular, two of the best urbanist articles about Portland, William Fulton’s summary of why Portland works and Dan Bertolet’s comparison with Seattle, led me to my own gloss.

From a fundamental, “read the city” perspective, downtown Portland and its close-in neighborhoods capture the best of an urban experience. The scale, street surfaces and sidewalk furnishings occur amid integrated, yet appropriately separated transportation modes and supportive green spaces. Innovative business and community groups have leveraged proximity to transit and managed parking through successful development strategies.

All lead to irresistible memories of examples from elsewhere and a universal question:

How can we capture this experience in my city?

Perhaps such a fundamental human response is the best metric of all, and the key to achieving a livable place.

All images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail. Cross-posted in The Huffington Post and Sustainable Cities Collective.

Cities are the focal point of interaction between human and natural systems and are the laboratories of how best to live—call it “achieving the urban balance”. We all have pictures of what that balance should look like, both visually and in terms of environmental impact.

Of the many human systems that contribute to the urban balance, land use regulation plays an important part, as the consensus constitution for forms of urban development going forward. Traditional land use tools need to evolve in order to assure a sustainable urban balance and to better wed land use and transportation issues.

The question is how to achieve balance amid the implementation barriers common to presentation of new urban land use approaches.

Many examples of innovation exist, from form-based codes to sustainable development regulations, all designed to move away from increasingly disfavored separation of zoning uses, to approaches which facilitate less reliance on the automobile where possible, encourage forms of transportation which emphasize human health, as well as more clearly enable sustainable development tools.

As a hopeful indicator, there are positive signs in the Puget Sound region. For example, in the time since a report identified regulatory, political and fiscal barriers to transit oriented and urban center development in 2009, initiatives at the local and state levels have turned renewed attention towards issues of concern in the transit and infrastructure-funding arenas. Municipalities have experimented with types of zoning which focus more on look, feel and mixed use than hard and fast, traditional techniques. In addition, last Fall, on behalf of the region, the Puget Sound Regional Council was awarded $5 million in the form of a federal Sustainable Communities grant to enhance planning for urban centers along transit corridors.

However, fallout from recent midterm elections has illustrated the risks of backsliding—a reminder that “achieving the urban balance” and related inventories of best practices and regulatory enactments are more often than not inherently political—and often fall short of lofty goals.

Backsliding can be offset by “stay the course” non-governmental organizations, professionals and citizens who will survive political change, and who will continue to parlay an evolutionary urban agenda.

Let’s both grow the toolbox, and keep it open.

Cross-posted as part of the inaugural series, “C200“, on Citytank.

Form-Based Codes, with emphasis on built-environment form over land use elements, have been used successfully in a number of American cities, but have not been implemented on a widespread basis in the Seattle area.  Professional speculation has identified a range of factors for this lack of adoption, including challenging terrain, lack of a traditional, vernacular “look and feel,” and a reluctance to limit permitted uses or compromise property rights.[1] In addition, with some exceptions, limited local familiarity with drafting, adopting, and implementing Form-Based Codes may have led to maintenance of more familiar land use regulatory practices.[2]

Some local government officials may also fear that “over-regulation” or “new forms of regulation” could stifle redevelopment or revitalization.  But Form-Based Codes are built on familiar legal principles, and so long as local governments proceed with reflection and purpose in a willing marketplace, enactment of Form-Based Codes could reposition a city for compact, less automobile-dependent growth and redevelopment and revitalization of appropriate urban areas.

In addition to the implied, general police power that provides local governments the authority to regulate land use, the Growth Management Act (GMA) and the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) add their own, Washington-specific gloss.  In the regulation of aesthetics, land use case law has also provided a specific, due process example relevant to Form-Based Codes, in particular, Anderson v. Issaquah, decided in 1993.  These elements of Washington law are explored in more detail below.

I. The Growth Management Act

In Washington, the GMA[3] champions the role of the comprehensive plan.  Prior land use enabling legislation such as the Planning Enabling Act[4] and the Planning Commission Act[5] authorized, but did not require, cities to adopt comprehensive plans.  After the Legislature enacted GMA, the state’s largest and fastest growing local governments were required to create and implement comprehensive plans.

While GMA grants a significant amount of discretion to local governments to craft comprehensive plans, it includes specific requirements, which in essence mandate preservation of rural character in rural areas, protection of critical areas and agricultural lands, and encourage  smart growth within urban growth areas.  Taken together, GMA’s goals discourage sprawl, while explicitly mindful of property rights.  In the context of Form-Based Codes, the Growth Management Act grants a local government the discretion to innovate, so long as the associated regulation meets GMA requirements. [6]

To implement comprehensive plans, local governments create development regulations, which must (1) be consistent with the comprehensive plan, and (2) satisfy the requirements of GMA, or face invalidation by a Growth Management Hearings Board. Accordingly, like all development regulations, Form-Based Codes must (1) be consistent with the comprehensive plan, and (2) satisfy the requirements of the GMA.  In order to pass muster under Growth Management Hearings Board review, drafters should consider how a Form Based Code meets the GMA’s planning goals.

Generally, local governments must balance conflicting goals when drafting plans and regulations. Clear reference to local circumstances will help ensure a defensible record. Local governments may create a separate document that outlines the local circumstances and incorporate it by reference in the operative ordinance.

Like other development regulations, Form-Based Codes are also subject to SEPA review.[7] As part of the implementation process, the agency decision-maker must consider the information generated by the SEPA process, whether programmatic or project-related.  Where a local government is seeking to use an optional Form-Based Code as an overlay, a Planned Action under GMA and SEPA could serve as an incentive,  perhaps in concert with a Development Agreement. As with other planned actions, environmental review for a Form-Based Code district could be limited to (1) verifying the action meets the qualifications of a Planned Action, and (2) probable significant adverse environmental impacts were adequately addressed in the Planned Action EIS.[8]

II. Due process

Anderson v. Issaquah

Constitutional principles of due process stand behind permissible statutory and regulatory approaches to land use regulation.  In Washington, substantive due process requires that a regulation is premised on a legitimate government purpose, that the means to achieve that purpose should be reasonably necessary, and that the impacts of the regulation should not be unduly burdensome.   Procedural due process assures that those affected by a regulation should have adequate notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard.

Both forms of due process risk violation where regulations are unclear, or vague, or overbroad. In Washington, zoning regulations do not have to meet an impossible standard of specificity, but they must be clear enough for a person of “ordinary intelligence” (in other words, someone who is not necessarily a city planner, engineer, or attorney) to ascertain what is required[9].

Anderson v. Issaquah[10] is an important land use case in the area of regulation of aesthetic criteria and design review, and is often cited nationally, including with reference to the defensibility of Form-Based Codes. The Washington State Court of Appeals in that case said that regulatory codes must give “effective, meaningful guidance” to developers — and to decision-makers, and to the courts, who must review contested plans — in order to be enforceable.

Anderson involved a developer seeking Issaquah Development Commission approval to develop a commercial project in Issaquah.  The code enacted by the city[11] required, among other things, screening on incompatible buildings, encouraged harmony in texture, lines, and masses, and suggested that efforts be made to make projects interesting.   Unfortunately for Anderson, the site for his project was surrounded by mountains and natural areas, a historic Victorian-era home, gas stations, a bank built in the “Issaquah territorial style,” an Elks hall described as a “box building,” and a veterinary clinic with a cyclone-fenced dog run.  He experienced difficulty making his project “harmonious” with its surroundings.

He appeared before the Development Commission several times, and was repeatedly given vague guidance from commission members.  One member drove up and down Gilman Boulevard identifying the design elements he desired for Anderson’s project and recited them during a hearing.  Anderson’s permit application was denied because his project lacked “a certain feeling,” with the suggestion that he start from scratch.  Anderson appealed.  Ultimately, the appellate court held the Issaquah Municipal Code was unconstitutional and violated due process, because it was vague and gave decision-makers too much discretion to approve or deny permits based on gut feelings.

Anderson remains an influential case for determining whether the aesthetic components of a regulatory review process pass muster, and it should be considered carefully in the creation and implementation of Form-Based Codes.  The takeaway lesson is that any “statements,” impression or visions that a local government wants to make must be included in the code in a clear and precise way in order to be enforceable.

Public process

In Washington, GMA mandates public process,[12] and failure to meet applicable requirements could be viewed as a “substantial interference” with GMA’s public participation goals.

Form-Based Codes typically require significant up-front visioning and public participation.  It is likely that the intensive public input native to adoption of Form-Based Codes would be adequate to meet the requirements of GMA.  However, in any incentive-based scheme, such as streamlined permitting or accelerated review for developers who choose to avail themselves of a non-mandatory Form-Based Code, the process should be stated clearly.  Review of a proposal cannot be arbitrary per Anderson; regulations, through text or illustration, should provide decision makers with understandable standards for approval, including allowable variances and conditions.

Conclusion

There are existing examples of Form-Based Codes in the Puget Sound region.  King County has launched a pilot project to adopt Form-Based Codes in three areas, and Bothell and Mountlake Terrace have both implemented Form-Based Codes to revitalize their downtown cores.[13] Meanwhile, Seattle recently amended its low-rise multifamily code to bring some elements of Form-Based regulation into the city’s more traditional zoning code.[14] The cities that have implemented Form-Based Codes have attempted clarity and precision, have provided graphics and photographs to illustrate the requirements, and have specifically stated goals and visions.  They have generally provided for extensive, transparent public involvement, as well as associated review procedures.

Does Washington State need more legislation to better set the groundwork for Form Based Codes? To address its own skeptics, the State of California adopted legislation specifically authorizing Form-Based Codes.[15] Adopting similar legislation in Washington would provide certainty of legislative intent, but is probably unnecessary considering that the legal framework in place already appears to be sufficient. Further, by following the existing statutory framework and the guidance set out in case law, specifically Anderson v. Issaquah, Form-Based Code implementation could move forward if consistent with a locality’s vision and marketplace.

[2] Id.

[3] RCW 36.70A (1990)

[4] RCW 36.70 (1959)

[5] RCW 35.63 (1935)

[6] See RCW 36.70.090, encouraging innovation in “land use management”.

[7] RCW 43.21C; see also Kucera v. Dept. of Trans., 140 Wn. 2d 200 (2000).

[8] Id. See also the Washington State Department of Ecology SEPA Handbook .

[9] Burien Bark Supply v. King County, 106 Wn. 2d 868 (1986).

[10] Anderson v. Issaquah , 70 Wn. App. 64, 851 (1993).

[11] Issaquah Municipal Code 16.16.060(B) and (D)

[12] RCW 36.70.035

[13] See Bengford, supra; Mountlake Terrace Design Standards; Bothell Downtown Plan supporting documents; King County project detail.

[14] See Erica C. Barnett, “Rowhouses and No Parking Requirements: Coming to Seattle!” Publicola (Nov. 30, 2010).

[15] Assembly Bill 1268 was signed into law in July 2004; see Form-Based Codes: Implementing Smart Growth.

Please take a moment to review Kaid’s observations from October, 2008, below. Have we listened and learned?
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An open letter to the smart growth community

(Kaid Benfield, October 22, 2008)

There is no way we should be settling for, or applauding, this . . .

When we should be advocating this:

It is time to take smart growth advocacy beyond “smart growth” as we have been defining it.  In short, we should be doing more for the environment.  And we should be doing more for the social health of our neighborhoods, too.

I am proud to have been at the center of the national smart growth movement since its beginning.  But I believe it is time for advocates and practitioners to embrace a broader, more holistic vision of what smart, sustainable development should be in the 21st century.

This will mean retaining, but also being more ambitious than, the largely ”infill, compact development, and transit” agenda for smart growth that has served us very well so far.  It will also mean reforming the broader environmental community’s (yes, including my own group’s) advocacy for watersheds, green technology, and cities to place those issues in a context that more explicitly embraces growth and urbanism.  The environment demands this of us, and so does our aspiration to teach and to lead.

This may seem a bit remote to those of us who are focused intensely on an immediate legislative agenda (e.g., the upcoming federal transportation bill or the wonderful recent achievement of California’s SB375), a local community’s comprehensive plan, or the latest proposed highway (or even LEED-ND, a fine program over whose criteria I have shed more personal blood than I wish).  But I believe that we must think not just about the menu in front of us but where we want to – and where we can – take our communities over the next generation and beyond.

Sprawl as we have known it may not be dead but it is surely not well, and we are already seeing the beginning of its end.  The smart growth movement can take a lot of credit for developing and pressing the more compact and transit-oriented development that will replace it.  This is wonderful; but it is not enough.  We should now begin developing a vision and a program of advocacy that looks beyond fighting sprawl and focuses not just on where, how much, and by what mode of travel, but also on what, and how.

Smart, sustainable development for the 21st century should include not just infill, density, and better transportation choices but also the following:

• Green building (there is simply no excuse for not doing it at this point)
• Urban green infrastructure, including neighborhood parks (that can help heal ecosystems while also making the densities we need for transportation efficiency more hospitable)
• Inclusive urban revitalization, with equity, affordability and historic preservation (most US central cities and older suburbs have so much capacity for growth, if we do it right)
• Walkable neighborhoods that facilitate fitness and health
• Livable, human-scaled, place-based neighborhoods that create good ambassadors for our movement and that NIMBYs want rather than fight

Most of us, if asked, will say that we already support these things, and we do.  But we almost never advocate them as a whole.

We’re all guilty of being too narrow.  Frankly, I think it is a disgrace that green building advocates have almost gleefully turned a blind eye to the locational consequences of building.  I was personally involved in an innovative housing partnership that has been remarkable in its accomplishment for green building and affordability, but that largely failed to embrace meaningful smart growth standards.  My very good friends in new urbanism can be inspirational and are the very best at placemaking, but can sometimes turn soft when it gets to location and green building.  Some of my colleagues in the environmental community still act parochially, as if growth and development will somehow disappear or become more benign if we chase it away from a place that occupies our attention, when in fact it is likely to find a place or a form that elicits less resistance but the prospect of even more environmental damage.

But we in the smart growth movement, too, are at fault.  Much of what is being constructed, for example, in the name of transit-oriented development — frequently with our applause — does little for the environment other than transportation efficiency and is just plain ugly.  I don’t blame NIMBYs for being resistant.  Yet we seldom push for models or incentives that ask for more.

We are all, nearly every one of us, being too limited in our vision.

We know that compact development patterns can reduce carbon emissions from transportation by 20-40 percent or even more if ideally located.  But, if Greensburg, Kansas can set a more ambitious goal of reducing its total carbon footprint by half through walkability and green technology, no environmentalist should aspire to less.  If my favorite developer can build project after project after project that includes not only great density and location but also green infrastructure, green building, and affordability, we should not advocate less.  I am not suggesting that the smart growth movement abandon or replace our current sprawl- and transportation-based advocacy.  But I am increasingly convinced that we must make our agenda more robust.

What might this mean, you may legitimately ask?  To take the same examples of immediate advocacy I mentioned above, why shouldn’t there be a sustainable communities title in the new transportation bill?  The research makes clear that inner-city revitalization and transit-oriented suburban development dramatically reduce automobile use and the need for new roads.  It would make perfect sense to develop a dedicated program to invest a portion of federal transportation funds not on transportation facilities per se but on attracting more development to these areas, conditioned on making the neighborhoods affordable, green, and mixed-use.  We could focus the benefits especially where there are currently vacant or underutilized properties, and require or provide bonuses for parks, green infrastructure, and inclusive planning that will attract residents and businesses to these locations that have been proven to reduce driving.

For the kind of metropolitan land-use planning that will be undertaken to reduce carbon emissions under SB 375 in California, or pursuant to comprehensive plans in municipalities, why not address not just where growth will occur, but also green building and infrastructure, parks, and affordability, in the same process?  Let’s address a variety of issues at once, with the goal of reducing more emissions than would land planning alone while creating complete, cohesive, inclusive neighborhoods.  And, if you’re fighting a sprawl-inducing highway or subdivision, don’t just fight; propose the constructive alternative that meets the same needs without sprawl but in a greener, more appealing way.

These examples are just illustrative.  The key is to start advocating these elements together, in the same forums.  To close on a personal note, many of us who now work on smart growth were environmental advocates before we were smart growth advocates.  We must become that again.  And more.
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Please scroll over photos for credits. See original post for comments. This entry is also cross-posted in seattlepi.com, here.

First, long-time blogger and thought leader of the built environment-social media interface, Cindy Frewen Wuellner (@urbanverse), continues to innovate on her blog, urbanverse’s posterous, particularly with recent entries on sustainable design under the “True Green” moniker. Be sure and review.

Second, from Venezuela, architect Ana Maria Manzo’s (@anammanzo) “the place of dreams” will charm you with compelling imagery and straightforward introspection about career and on-the-ground outcomes. Great reading for we lawyer/designer-wannabe’s. Please follow the link just provided.

Finally, thanks also to two accomplished online portals for recent references.

Richard Layman, of the comprehensive well-researched placemaking standby Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space provided a valued link to myurbanist yesterday.

Acknowledgements as well to the ever-diligent Seattle Transit Blog, for its recent use of myurbanist material in ongoing coverage of light rail expansion issues in the Seattle area.

Last month, Sound Transit selected a segment adjacent to a close-in residential neighborhood for further evaluation in the project Environmental Impact Statement.

The situation remains a textbook application of the challenges which Paul Symington and I addressed in our recently republished report, “Urban Centers and Transit-Oriented Development in Washington“, (the “Barriers Report“), downloadable here. In keeping with our discussion of political, organizational and interagency implementation challenges, the Bellevue City Council and many residents oppose Sound Transit’s preferred alternative.

On the ground, opposition is clear from the landscape of signage, and from an imaginary train ride captured below–well over a decade before completion of Sound Transit’s East Link. Regardless of which alignment is chosen and constructed, consider rides with memories of where planning-era signage was located along the way!

For an integrated summary of urban insights, at home and abroad, please see the embedded link below.

For an additional reference, consider Stephen Killion’s June 24 Architizer post, which provides the nineteenth century history of the U.S. Camel Corps as a prologue to a discussion of transit issues in Los Angeles. He ironically warns that without care, new transit proposals of the Obama-era could go the way of the failed allocation of 28 camels to the city for cargo purposes as part of the Camel Corps’ downsizing in 1863.

Portland’s Jason King supports this point in his wonderful article,”[Fill in the Blank] Urbanism,” which I noted in March. King’s article profiled the range of paired terms which modify the basic urbanism premise–and asked readers to name a favorite.

Others have described the inadequacy of commonly used catchwords. Writing in the Washington Post, on May 8, architect Roger Lewis called for terms far more descriptive than “transit-oriented development” (TOD) to describe the qualities of walkable cities, calling for “multimodal TOD’s”.

Similarly, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation Green Lab Director, Liz Dunn, working with Walk Score’s Matt Lerner, have advocated for a Jane Jacobs-based comprehensive metric, the Jane Score, to more completely measure urban diversity and “granularity” and supplement the increasingly recognized Walk Score tool.

With such ever-expanding and thoughtful efforts to diversify the measures applicable to a renewed, compact, walkable, and multimodal urban fabric, it would help to have one word to describe the phenomenon.

I suggest that we are talking about recalibrating urbandwidth around the world.

Consider the recalibrated urbandwidth of City Square in Melbourne, Australia

(This article appears in slightly different form in seattlepi.com on July 21, here. Thanks also to Planetizen for incorporating the original form of this article under the headline “For Lack of a Better Term,” here.)

But the similarity ends there, because this is venerable Jerusalem, dateline 2010, where traditional issues of transportation implementation merge with religious and cultural subtleties amid daily news dynamics of war and peace.

Twain’s Dignity: Today’s Complexity for Modern “Innocents Abroad”

On first sight in 1867 of “the city that pictures make familiar to all men, from their school days till their death,” Mark Twain described in Innocents Abroad how “the thoughts Jerusalem suggests are full of poetry, sublimity, and more than all, dignity.”

Now, amend Twain to state “more than all, complexity” as, after frustration and delay, the inaugural light rail project sees the prospect of a five year-tardy 2011 opening.

For a visiting Seattle i-SUSTAIN contingent in May, a meeting with staff and outside counsel for the Jerusalem Mass Transit System Project showed the ultimate complexity of implementing a modern transportation corridor amid today’s geopolitics and a changing population.

Sustainability Meets the Divided Thirds

Similar to an earlier dialogue with Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Naomi Tsur reported here and in Crosscut, one take-away from planner/community relations manager Amnon Elian and counsel Amir Kadari was an admirable urban sustainability ethic—in this case addressing transit and bicycle infrastructure–and perhaps, as written last year in The Transport Politic, “a train to peace“.

However, Elian also described a project wrestling with the de facto linking of disputed lands, and associated questions of how distinct user constituencies–secular residents, ultra-orthodox Jews and Palestinans–will co-exist as light rail users (in this case along a 23-station route as it travels almost 15 kilometers from Mount Herzl in West Jerusalem, across the 1949 Armistice “Green Line”, through Shuafat, a Palestinian neighborhood, to Pisgat Zeev, a large Jewish settlement of over 40,000 built in the early 1980′s).

Elian emphasized the “red line” light rail corridor, located largely within existing rights of way, which, due to their narrow and historic nature required massive infrastructure and utility relocation and custom redesign by segment to integrate multiple transport modes. Each segment was handled by different architectural and engineering firms which redesigned roads and added bridges to prepare for rail installation.

The red line traverses disparate neighborhoods of West and East Jerusalem and affinity groups now reliant on essentially separate transit systems, at different boarding costs (the East Jerusalem system fares are roughly half as much as West Jerusalem system fares), often different vehicle types, largely mutually exclusive destinations and often different expectation of social conduct among passengers (i.e. large ultra-orthodox families with distinct seating expectations and travel preferences).

To Elian, the ultimate demographics of light rail system use remain unclear amid attempts to offset a doubling of automobiles by 2020 (after a ten-fold growth from 1967 to 2003). He termed the planning effort “tremendously challenging to put under all under one roof,” simultaneously accommodating a population almost evenly split in three: ultra-orthodox Jews, Arabs, and “others” (including a declining secular Jewish population).

Even the mechanics of processing bus-to-light rail transfer have been difficult to design. Under a worst case scenario, Elian suggested “we could still have a divided transportation system.”

Others have echoed the tension of ideology and traditional transportation planning, amid archaeological discovery in Shuafat. As noted by Isabel Kershner in the New York Times, some call the red line an ideological enigma, serving a lost vision of a united capital for all faiths rather than the realpolitik “glass walls” of today. Others find the red line yet another symbol of occupation and expansion to leverage an undivided city.

“A Project for All”

In contrast to Elian, lawyer Kadari echoed “mundane reasons of service and profitability” cited by Kershner: he said light rail planning always focused on a project for all constituencies, and “the project was almost ‘blind’” to religious and cultural factors other than from a service analysis perspective which assumes service benefits to ultra-orthodox and Palestinian populations.

But, as he focused on issues of contracting and permitting, Kadari acknowledged such sweeping optimism must wrestle with today’s political and practical realities. For example, the private concession, BOT (“build-operate-transfer”) approach has been complicated by contract difficulties and delays as construction drags on.

He explained how in arbitration proceedings with the concessionaire, a consortium of three entities, Israeli (construction) and French (cars/rails and operators), the arbitrator often starts sessions reminding project officials of their naïvete in assuming success of service through Shuafat, which, as detailed by Kershner, has been the site of controversial archaeological finds and is more geographically aligned with Ramallah than Jerusalem.

The Vision Meets Reality—The Universal One Stop Need

Kadari focused on a shortcoming familiar to American permit system critics: the need for a real one-stop shop for project permitting and licensing.

According to Kadari, despite a lack of clarity of central authority, in the planning stages, a partnership of national ministries and city government proceeded reasonably well, but as the realities of permits and impacts on City residents set in, times changed. “A new generation replaced the old in the municipality and the Ministries of Transportation and Treasury, and it became three parties in an unclear situation, ” he said. “Planning is dreaming, but when digging, and you need permits and need to interfere with a major artery [e.g. Jerusalem's main thoroughfares such as Jaffa Road]—and there are political pressures, and no central organization to impose, there is breakdown, fragmentation and complexity”.

“There have been too many authorities, and you need clear authority, one authority, but to do that you need legislative change at highest levels—you can’t just decide to do it, you need the Knesset [Israeli Parliament].”

Delays and Perseverance

Added Elian, in the process, infrastructure has been unearthed, utilities moved and upgraded, rails installed and reinstalled, and streets sometimes torn up twice. A controversial bridge design was implemented without public input. Citizens and businesses show the time-honored fatigue of disruption characteristic of any new transportation system. “We put the first line in the most difficult area of the city—with history, old infrastructure and density—the idea was to strengthen the historical core, but it backfired,” he said.

“We put the red line, the backbone of new transportation system on the main roads of an ancient city, and should have chosen a simpler first line for learning and come to the city center later. There’s been criticism, anger, and anxiety and the people are right. There were good intentions, but it takes too long,” he said.

“A former colleague told me that as a project, the first line failed—but let’s see if the train itself will succeed.”

Bicycle Integration

One byproduct of light rail is bicycle enhancement to enhance station accessibility. According to a planning consultant to the city, Selmah Nilson-Arad, walking distance to stations will often be too great for many users, so a system of bike lanes is under construction to serve at least five percent of light rail users, and traditional parking and automobile lanes are being retrofitted for bicycle use. At least in initial operations, bikes will not be allowed on the trains, at least during rush hour times. The bike lanes, with a special eye towards ultra-orthodox and student users, will follow a mixture of physically separated paths (6 kilometers), alleys or striped road and sidewalks (12 kilometers).

The BRT Future and the Transportation Plan

The city has responded in a just announced transportation plan with a changes in emphasis and claims of hard lessons learned, as officials claim to address many issues emphasized by Elian and Kadari. High on the new transit agenda is a new, north-south “blue line” dedicated to Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), with features such as a dedicated right of way, state-of-the-art vehicles, next-bus information, and uniform ticketing. In Kadari’s view, BRT 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.

Light rail expansion is part of the new transportation plan, but as described in the Jerusalem Post on May 25, the entire process will be centralized, more transparent and overseen from the beginning by a steering committee with a state approved budget, rather than a BOT bidding process that lacked full public accountability.

Learning the bottom line has occurred on the job in Jerusalem, amid challenges of engineering, funding, permitting and politics, and suggests BRT as the city’s mass transit future, supplemented by bicycles, and, perhaps by Israel’s cutting edge electric car technology, Better Place.

For modern “Innocents Abroad”, is there take home learning from the city in which Mark Twain observed that “no neighborhood seems to be without a stirring and important history of its own?” Is the lesson one of context, that, from the start, more simple and pragmatic solutions would have fit today’s “glass-walled” city? Or does the storied and eternal universality of Jerusalem live on?

After all, when complete next year, this complex tale may teach the world a real lesson: if light rail can be done in Jerusalem, it can be done anywhere.

See the refined and updated version of this post in Crosscut, here.