urbanplanningadvice

Madison, WI

I was recently in Madison, WI and I thought I’d share my impressions with you. I love wandering around new to me cities and thinking about how they are put together. This is great way for me to think about planning theory. I only visited downtown Madison so this post will focus on that area.

One of the things I enjoyed in Madison was the many great signs. These signs allowed me as visor to learn more about the city and added a sense of history that locals probably appreciate too.

Historical plaque outside the Baskerville Apartments

3D map of the counties of Wisconsin, with the capitol building showing the location of Madison

sign explaining the geology of Madison

Sign explaing the mushroom growing exhibit

Here you can see a 3d map of the state with a capitol building model, a sign explaining a historic landmark, a sign explaining the geology of Madison sign, and a sign telling about the mushroom farm outside children’s museum.

As the sign explains, Madison is glacial landscape. The capitol building for the state of WI sits on a drumlin, a type of glacial hill, between two lakes. It’s a neo-classical building with a domed roof like many civic buildings in the US. It is very well situated, with the building sitting on top of the hill and eight streets running up to it and terminating at the capitol. Four of these are part of the grid in that area and four run at diagonals to the grid. Each street gives a lovely view of the building at top of the hill. The building itself is surrounded by a square where a farmers Farmers Market is held on Saturdays.

I’m an early riser so I got to the market in time for breakfast. It was lovely to walk around and see all the produce. Above are two pictures of the market and picture of some of my spoils: cheese curds and honey cake, they made a tasty breakfast.

I forgot to take a picture of state street! This might be the most famous (among planners anyways) feature of Madison. State St runs from the capitol building to the campus. It is one of the streets that cuts across the grid at a diagonal that I mentioned. Its a charming main street with many local businesses and good walkablity. I ate at several resturants on State St during my time in Madison, all of which served me tasty food.

While overall I thought downtown Madison was lovely and enjoyed getting to explore the city, there are always things to improve. In Madison one of these is access to the lakes.

img_20180525_080533979_hdr

Here is a picture I took at the end of the sidewalk near the lake. As you can see the sidewalk ends, then there is are two lines of railroad track, then a four lane highway then a pedestrian path then a park and finally the lake. From where I was standing there was no easy way to get to the lakeside park. I believe that there is a pedestrian crossing to the park in downtown but I didn’t find it in my wanderings.

Still downtown Madison is lovely to visit and walk around it and I hope to go back again.

Just for fun I’m going finish off with a picture of cow sculpture:

img_20180525_082444918 — life sized cow with a picture of Wisconsin on her side.

Book Review: The Color of Law

Color of Law cover

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein is book that takes a long hard look at how the US government at all levels has created segregated communities for African Americans. This book starts with the passing of the thirteenth amendment ending Slavery and continues to the present day and makes clear that current residential segregation did not “just happen” but was caused by active government policies

Rothstein is lawyer working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) who became interested in this topic as a result of Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v Seattle School District where Roberts stated that the neighborhood segregation which led to school segregation was “not traceable” to government action and therefore the government was not required to remedy it by taking race into account when assigning students to to schools. Rothstein suspected that Roberts was mistaken and researched the history of government involvement in racial segregation in the US and wrote this book

What’s great about this book but also makes it tough to read is how thoroughly it explores the topic of residential segregation. The book discusses how segregation happened all over the US. It covers zoning laws, red lining, white flight and even ways the government has suppressed the income of African Americans making it tough for them to buy into middle class neighborhoods. In some cases the sheer pettiness of the government made me extremely angry.

Rothstein’s legal background shows throughout the book. He continually focuses on the constitutional necessity to provide remedies to African Americans affected by unjust government policies. However for planners working at the local level the book does not offer many ideas about what can be done improve the situation, though it does provide a strong reminder to consider possible “disparate impacts” of local planning policy.

This is an important an infuriating book and you should read it you are at all interested in racial justice in the US. It’s imperative that we don’t assume that the current state of residential segregation was created without government intervention, and this book shows why that assumption would be false.

Why Don’t Sidewalks Get Built?

Dear Building Community

In my city, we have a massive highway that cuts its way from the south into the northeast. A decade ago this road wasn’t heavily trafficked, and there were hardly any businesses. In 2018, it’s the retail center of a huge swath of Northeast Arkansas from its southern tip to the northeastern city limits. Development on the road started with the additional of our new mall in the mid-2010s, and most recently a massive hospital was finished at the north side of the city that brought even more businesses. But as the rest of the long stretch of highway has been developed, one thing has seemingly gone ignored: sidewalks. This has created a situation where a massive highway with lots of businesses is incredibly inaccessible to people without cars or using mobility devices. It’s dangerous for pedestrians and most parts aren’t walkable at all when it’s raining. It’s additionally puzzling because this same road runs right by a state college; sidewalks leading downtown could promote student interaction with the city, and seems odd that the city would have let this road develop this way. How does something like this happen, besides the obvious thoughtless, ableist nature of city government? What makes sidewalks so hard for cities to grapple with that highways like this develop that are unsafe, inaccessible, and hostile to anyone not inside a car?

-Renay

Sidewalks are really great so it’s always a shame when they don’t get built. As well as being an important part of accessibility as you mentioned, sidewalks also help reduce car trips, by making it easier and safer for people to walk instead of drive, and help to create a sense of community. Sidewalks are place where people meet by chance, say hello and pet each other’s dogs. Sidewalks are also important to communities with less access to cars like students.

The main reason sidewalks don’t get built is that sidewalks are what economists call a public good — everyone can benefit from them, and one person using them doesn’t take away from other’s ability to use them. Some other examples of public goods in this sense are clean air, knowledge and national defense. Since everyone benefits from public goods and once they exist people can’t be excluded, its is in everyone’s selfish interest not to pay for them but instead to hope that others create them.

In most US cities sidewalks are on private land. The city might own the street but they don’t own the sidewalk, the people who own the lot next to the sidewalk own the land under it. Building and maintaining sidewalks is generally a requirement in the city building code but that doesn’t mean sidewalks always get built. Even though everyone benefits from a good network of sidewalks, the people who own the property don’t benefit very much from that one section in front of their house or business so they are not incentivized to pay for it.

For many public goods, we as a society address the problem by having people pay taxes and then using the tax money to pay for what the public needs. However most cities do not use this model for sidewalks. One of the reasons for this is the US historical prioritization of cars over other means of transportation. Also since sidewalks are technically on private land some people have objected to using public funds to pay for improvements to private lands. Because the Fifth Amendment states that private property cannot be taken by the government without “just compensation” if cities want to own that land they would have to buy it at fair market rate. Very few cities have that kind of money. So sidewalks get stuck in this weird limbo where the people responsible of building them don’t have much incentive to do so.

Having sidewalks paid for by the homeowner is not a red state/blue state divide. My parents who live in the San Francisco Bay Area recently had to pay to repair they sidewalk in front of their house. While they could afford it I’m sure they would rather have paid the same amount in small yearly taxes rather than a lump sum all at once. And for people who are less financially stable than my parents having to pay a big sum like that unexpectedly can be a major problem. So the current system can be really hard on struggling homeowners. However most people don’t think about how sidewalk installation and repair are funded and assume that the city pays for it.

I also want to mention that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not require that sidewalks be built, only that sidewalks which are built or upgraded meet certain standards of accessibility. So that makes sidewalks more expensive to build but doesn’t deal with what is a key issue in many communities, the lack of any sidewalk at all. Another common problem with sidewalks is lack of connectivity — where you have sidewalks in some places but not everywhere, for example I’ve seen sidewalks that end in the middle of blocks, and places where the sidewalk is just missing for a block. Things like that make it hard for people to get around on foot and are very challenging to people with mobility issues.

I hope this helps you understand why your city doesn’t have sidewalks in that commercial district. I think the solution is to change the way that sidewalk installation and maintenance are paid for but that it will be tough to overcome years of inertia, fears around raising taxes, and concerns about private property rights. Best of luck!

6 Things Most People Don’t Realize Actually ARE Urban Planning

Urban planning covers a wide ranged of topics. Zoning codes, parking, and housing issues are some of the first things that come to mind. All of those are part of urban planning, but planning is a big field. When people ask me what urban planning is, I generally tell them its about who is allowed to build what where, but a simplified explanation can leave someone unsure of exactly the scope. Urban planning isn’t just concerned with the details of urban form, such as where to put new apartments or parking; it’s also concerned with the big picture of communities and regions. Here are some things that shape cities and communities but aren’t what most people think about when they think about planning.

1. Highways — Highways are key tool in regional planning, as they make travel along their routes quicker. Highways can change the geography of a region by making travel between two places more straightforward (at least for people with cars). Building a new highway or expanding and old one can change where people live and shape where people go. For example highways can be encourage urban sprawl by making it easier for people to commute to far flung bedroom communities. Federal investment in Highways as opposed to other forms of transit has shaped US cities Highways encouraging car centric low-density communities.

2. Water Infrastructure — Everyone needs water to live, and urban dwellers also like to have green landscapes around them, which frequently need to be maintained by water. In many places the water comes from somewhere else, and that requires infrastructure and maintenance. If you live in California you probably get some of your drinking water form the Central Valley Project (which includes Shasta Dam and the delta pumping stations) but you might not even know that this vast system involves dewatering the San Joaquin River pumping that water south and refilling the river down stream with water pumped through the delta. Water infrastructure is huge and landscape altering but also almost invisible to most urbanites.

3. Street Trees —I love street trees! They help reduce the urban heat island effect (where urban areas are hotter that surrounding rural areas), they look good, help reduced air pollution, and they help increase walkabilty by providing shade when its hot as well as visual interest for walkers. Its impressive just how many ways trees help cities. Trees might seem like a small detail but most trees you see in urban areas are carefully selected. Planners select hardy trees that don’t shed messy fruit. For example Ginkgo trees have been popular street plantings in recent years but cities carefully plant only male ginkgo trees which produce pollen but not fruit.

4. Food Systems — As well as water people need food. Since most food is grown in rural areas getting food into urban areas can be very complex. Food has to be grown, packaged and processed before it gets to urban consumers. All of that takes a lot of planning. Unfortunately we generally leave all of this planning to corporations who are more interested in profit than justice. This means that some areas are under supplied with access to fresh foods. The term “food deserts” has been used to describe these areas and planners have recently stared paying attention to this aspect of the food system.

5. Wayfinding —Have you ever tried to figure out which train or bus to get on in a strange city and wished that the signs where more helpful? Then you have some idea what wayfinding is and why planners need to keep it in mind. Wayfinding also includes street signs, maps and signs giving directions. When well done, wayfinding takes into account people’s varying abilities and makes everyone safer and more efficient, since when other people know where they are going they are less like to get in the way or bump into other people.

6. Fighting Climate Change — When discussing how reduce the impact of climate change we frequently talk about national governments, but even small local governments like cities and counties need to address climate change. Plus some of the actions national governments should consider taking are planning related. The most important planning consideration for addressing climate change is urban density– the number of people who live in a given area, the more people the denser the area is considered. Density reduces the number and the distance of trip that people make, eg commutes, trips to the store and trips to visit cultural attractions such as museums. Transportation is responsible for twenty-seven percent of US carbon admissions so by reducing trips we can reduce emissions. Local governments can also help reduce carbon emissions but requiring more energy efficient buildings and making it easier to install solar and wind power, among other things. In addition to reducing emissions we also need to plan for the effects of climate change. What are we going to do about rising sea leaves and increased weather events? We’ll certainly be better off with a plan than without one.

So as you can see urban (and regional planning) covers a lot of ground! Many things that are part of your everyday life touch on urban planning even though you might not have thought of them that way.

Learning About Local History

People often ask me how they can learn more about the history of their local built environment. I’ve put together a list of specific strategies for learning about local history. For me, understanding history is a way of understanding the present. History lets us know why that one street is at an angle to the grid, or why your neighborhood is so segregated. But people also use history to sell their location to others so be careful about boosters who will try and minimize the nastier bits of local history.

Libraries are a great place to start learning more about the history of where you live. Many libraries have special collections dedicated to local history that contain things like old maps, archives of local papers, and yearbooks for local high schools. Also a reference librarian can help you find good resources even if there isn’t a special collection.

Another good resource is local historical societies. Even quite small towns will sometimes have these — so don’t assume that one doesn’t exist until you look. If you can’t find anything online it is worth asking a local librarian. If you do find one these, contact them and ask them questions or if you don’t know where to just ask them for advice on that. Some local historical societies have museums as well, these can be interesting starting places with a lot of old photos and such.

You can also go look at formal records at city hall. These are not generally very accessible in that they are often hard to get at and hard to make sense of. You will probably have to physically go to the location the records are kept which will only be open during business hours. It can also cost money to take pictures of or photocopy records for latter study. However more and more records are starting to go online.

What kind of records might a city keep? I would expect to find things like the minutes of city council meetings, records of property ownership, old blueprints, records of permits, maybe even photos of historic occasions. There might be restrictions on some records. Things like deed transfers can be technical, and hard to make sense of, and meeting minutes often say what was done but not why. So these types of documents are therefore not the best starting place but can help supplement the overall picture, or provide specific details

Local history focused walking tours can be a good resource though of course they are not available everywhere. Walking tours can be really fun and the people who give them generally do a lot of research on the topic. Some walking tours are just general history focused but some deep dives into specific topics. For example I’ve been on a walking tour about the history of South Asians in my city. Walking tours are nice because they engaged several senses at once. Plus it can be nice to learn about history while moving around outside.

The final strategy I’m going to talk about is developing your eye for historically relevant detail. This a bunch of work but I personally find it very rewarding. If you start with some of the resources above you will probably start to learn a bit of the things to look for. You can use architectural details to give you clues to when buildings were built. Books such as A Field Guide to American Houses can help you learn more about how buildings have changed overtime. The internet also has architectural history resources.

However some of these details can be misleading since people update buildings, add new siding, upgrade windows, and add whole additions. And some telling details are only available inside of buildings which you probably don’t have access to. So it’s also good to learn to look for things like street patterns that don’t change as much. Once you’ve build a street it’s much harder to change. For example railroad towns tend to have square grids oriented towards the railroad tracks. You can also learn about general trends in planning history, like Urban renewal and redlining. The nice thing about learning to read the urban landscape is that it not only helps you learn about where you live but also about places you visit.

Learning about your local history can be a lot of fun, and understanding how your city was put together and why can help you make better choices about how to change it in the future. Cities and buildings should not be static. While it’s important to remember history its also important to adapt to the present.

Tall Buildings

I live in London where we have very few tall buildings. What can the US teach us about doing ten or twenty floors well, to keep views and privacy and clean air and light and so on?

While many US cities have more tall buildings than London they can still be quite controversial. While major US cities do have many tall buildings they also have a lot of urban sprawl and low density urban and suburban areas. People frequently resist taller buildings in their neighborhoods. Sometimes this can be a form of veiled racism, as residents believe taller (and more affordable) buildings will result in black and brown people moving in. However there are some valid concerns regarding how taller building will affect things like sunlight and privacy.

Tall building do have many advantages. They allow more people to use the same amount of land. This means you can have more things close together and that more people can live close to their work and cultural centers, thus reducing the need for trips which take time and use fossil fuels. Building up not out also allows more land to be used for farm land or nature reserves instead of housing.

This doesn’t deal with the physical problems of tall buildings but one thing that US cities are doing that London should consider is Inclusive zoning. This is where building are allowed to be built taller if they include affordable housing units, where the rents are artificially kept below market rate. Like several US cities, London has a housing affordability problem and something along these lines would could help address that. New York is currently trying inclusive zoning at a very large scale and that’s definitely something to watch.

Let’s talk about the physical form of buildings and what can be done to make tall buildings more pleasant to live in and around. One thing that New York City is well know for is building setbacks. These are when the upper floors of a tall building are smaller and further back from the street than the levels bellow, giving the buildings something of the appearance of a wedding cake. This is done to reduce the shadow of the top of the building on other buildings and the ground. Today we can also use software to predict the shadows of new buildings before they are built and therefore mitigate the worst effects. Thus buildings don’t necessarily have to have that characteristic shape but can still be built to maximize sunlight.

Another thing that can make taller buildings more pleasant to live around involves paying attention to rooftops. Rooftop gardens are a great amenity for those who live in a building allowing them more contact with nature. Rooftops can also house other communal outdoor space, like tennis courts or space to BBQ. Plus any such amenity can add visual interests for people in nearby buildings.

So to sum up: Taller buildings can be a good way to for cities to be more resource efficient. They can also help increase the supply of housing and help keep housing prices down. To help make tall buildings nice to live around it’s important to pay attention to shadows. Tall buildings also create opportunities for rooftop spaces. I hope this helps!

Changing Bus Routes

How does my city decide on what the bus routes are?

And a related question, how can I influence my city to make their bus routes better for me?

-R

Dear R,

Bus routes are generally decided by trained transit planners but their priorities in choosing routes can be influenced by agency policy. This a very complex process that takes into account factors like how far people are willing to walk to the bus stop, how many buses are available, and where people want to go.

These planners generally don’t work directly for city governments. Instead regional transit agencies generally run bus and other types of transit (for example light rail or subways). These agencies tend to have names with the words Metro or transit in them, for example there are several Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA). These are public, tax funded agencies that typically cover a metro area — that is a city and its surroundings. Sometimes they overlap. For example in the Bay Area: AC Transit runs buses in the East Bay, Muni runs the buses and light rail in San Francisco, and BART, the Bay Area wide commuter rail, is run by its own board.

The heads of these agencies are public officials, many of them are elected. So you can contact them the same way your would another public official by calling or writing to express your concerns. To find out who runs your local transit search for the name of your transit agency or “[your city] buses”. The transit agency should have a website. If the public transit officials are elected you could also consider running for the office.

Another way to influence bus routes is to get involved with transit advocacy groups in your region. These are activist groups which focus on improving transit. I’d be surprised if any big metro area in the US didn’t have at least one of these groups. However if you do live in an area without one you could try starting your own. <a href=http://www.publictransportation.org/napta/Pages/default.aspx>NAPTA (National Alliance of Public Transportation Advocates)</a> maintains a directory of local transit advocacy groups. You can also try searching for “[your city] transit advocacy” There are also a variety of national groups.

Another way you can impact local transit policy is by voting. Many/most states allow ballot measures for local districts. Many of these are transit related for example measures that raise taxes to pay for transit. So pay attention and make sure to vote in those types of elections. Since we are on the topic of local elections you should pay attention to the elections of local officials too. If you have chance to ask candidates questions be sure to ask them about buses and the changes you would like to see specifically.

The specifics of bus route planning are not very publicly accessible but as member of the public can try to impact the routes in a variety of ways. It important to let the people who do make these choices know what the public’s priorities are.