Signs of the Times #16

Smile your on camera.

[Ice cream shop door. North End, Saint Paul.]


Property

[Stake in ground near tree. Location forgotten.]


Vote
No
To
Song-Bird

[Election season yard. North End, Saint Paul.]



We pledge
To say no to gangs

We pledge
To stand up for
a better future

We pledge
To work through
differences together

[Sidewalk stencil. North Minneapolis.]


Come on in!
It's cool in here.
Cool air.
Cool stuff.
Cool books.

[Herb and bookstore window. South Minneapolis.]



Door
Blocked

[Door of shop converted into a home. North End, Saint Paul.]

This Section
CLOSED!
Do Not Enter
WARNING!
Alarm
Will Sound

[2nd story skyway space. Downtown Saint Paul.]

Health is a rhythm

[One of the everyday urban rhythms and patterns from Christopher Alexander's "Timeless Way of Building".]

What is a city rhythm? Is is something we can see? Is is something we can change?

This interesting article came out a little while back about an experiment in Albert Lea, Minnesota, to try and change the rhythms of everyday life.

Everyday life is the quotidian idea that there is something important in all the unimportant things things that happen all around us all the time. It is the way we tie our shoes, brush our teeth, cook our food, walk around, drive around, use the phone, etc. etc. .... All these small acts depend on architectures that we take for granted. All these small things form patterns that play huge roles in our lives, and (in the case of most of America) are causing us to lead very sedentary and isolated lives.

Lately, the public health world has been trying to change this fabric, and to make exercise and movement a part of American everyday life again. But that is a very difficult thing to do, precisely because all these systems of movement, shopping, interacting, and living are everywhere. In most Minnesotan homes, we need cars to do just about anything. Most of the time, you don't have a choice to walk or bike to do an errand.

So, efforts like Albert Lea's Blue Zone project are really tilting at windmills (just like this blog, in fact.) Here's an excerpt:

The fundamental principle behind Albert Lea's makeover is that diets and exercise alone don't work. Changing health requires changing the community -- the normal rhythms and expectations in schools, workplaces, restaurants, government, grocery stores -- even within families and in neighborhoods.

...

The project's impact shows up all over town, from lunchroom conversations over fruit instead of donuts at Lou-Rich Machine to City Council meetings to approve about 9,000 feet of sidewalk construction -- three years' worth -- in a single year.

Of course I found it excellent that the city identified sidewalks as a key factor in reinstalling walking within everyday life. It's just a very difficult thing to actually accomplish, because of the interlinked nature of movement patterns. Even if you have a sidewalk, without a corner store or small library (without a giant parking lot in front of it), the actual concrete slab doesn't do you much good.

It took 50 years to change our cities so that walking and biking are nearly impossible. It's going to take a long time to make them easy and convenient again.

By city rhythms, we mean anything form the regular comigns and goings of people about the city to the vast range of repetitive activities, sounds, and even smells that punctuate life int eh city and which give many of those who life and work there a sense of time and location. This sense has nothing to dow ith any overall orchestration of effort or any mass coordination of routines across a city. Rather it arises out of the teeming mix of city life as people move in and around the city at different times of the day or night, in whaya ppears to be a constant renewal process week in week out, season after season.

--John Allen, Works within cities (fm. Massey "City Worlds")

Is Light Rail a Gentrification machine?

"The building of railways seems to be a simple, natural, democratic, cultural and civilising enterprise; that is what it is in the opinion of the bourgeois professors who are paid to depict capitalist slavery in bright colours, and in the opinion of petty-bourgeois philistines."

--Lenin, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism," Preface to the French and German Editions.

I have a friend who hates light rail. He sees it as a tool for gentrification, and a plaything of the wealthy. Shiny toy trains for people too proud to ride the bus, that run through nicer neighborhoods, causing a thousand condos to flower in their wake, blossoming up like techno-sequoias filled with yuppies.

Well, he's not wrong. Light rail is all of those things. It's a big tool for capitalism and development But is it something else too? I just wrote an email about it, and I'd be curious to know what you think...

Nice quote. I think Vladimir is talking about rail barons? Well, streetcar systems were also private enterprises funded by 'rail barons' (in Mpls, it was a guy named Lowry) and used as development tools to grow the city and make a killing off real estate. But I'd certainly not condemn them just for that reason. After the fact, weren't streetcars still a good public transit system? Didn't they still serve as a more equitable, and green, form of transportation?

LRT is, just like any transportation project, an opportunity for capital to organize itself. in way way, LRT is simply more comfortable transit. (that's the main reason white people like them.) At another level, LRT looks a lot like a rail baron situation. It's a tool for developers to make money, cities to increase their tax base, politicians to cut ribbons and give jobs to construction firms, lots of planners to earn livings, etc.

In all of those ways, though, they are no different than freeway projects. in fact, the only way that they are different from freeway projects is that they are (or have the potential to be) more energy efficient, and that they tend to create development within cities that have more economic and other kinds of diversity as opposed to in the middle of nowhere. When you build a freeway in the middle of nowhere, you build a lot of new, typically (income) segregated areas in the middle of nowhere. When you build a LRT through a city, you're usually encouraging capital investment to occur in already-exiting places. at a certain level, I think the gentrification debate is, or should be, a debate over the right to housing. sometimes I wonder why we target the idea of wealthy people living in cities when the goal should be to make sure the working class has a decent place to live.

Its not that I don't see the argument that it is just another bourgeious subsidy. rather, it seems to me a smarter bourgeious subsidy than most of them. Compared to the amount of money spent on, for only one example, the mortgage interest tax deduction, which only goes to homeowners (e.g. the rich half of the US) and encourages them to build even larger homes, money spent on rail is hardly the battle I would choose to fight.

I sometimes wonder about whether movement and capitalism are intertwined. can we think of the circulation of value without thinking of the circulation of people or goods? Is capital growth necessarily spatial? Is the very idea of transportation and movement the problem?

One of the reasons i am studying walking is that it seems to escape from some of these binds. The only people that make money off of pedestrians are the manufacturers of sneakers. umbrellas, and handbags.

[Gerald Ford loved Light Rail. Jimmy Carter hated it.]

Central Corridor fight points to need for sidewalk advocacy

It was a cold day in Saint Paul. The mayor stood on the sidewalk in front of the bus stop, and shivered through his grey suit. His voice carried through the microphone, and a dozen journalists scribbled down a few words about cities and equality. They knew what he was going to say, and they knew what they were going to write. The train was a political hot button, and everyone wanted a piece of the action. Lots of money was going to flow through this street soon, and everyone knew it. The only question was: who was going to get it?

Later, in the men's room, I overheard the cameramen grumbling about the quality of the video. The bus was idling by the microphones, ruining the audio. It was raining. You couldn't make out where you were. The backgrounds weren't very nice...

It can be hard to make low-income housing into a sexy story. Where do you get good footage? Where do you find someone angry enough for television? How do you make people care about gentrification that hasn't happened yet? The last thing that's going to make the evening news is a bunch of people standing around in suits talking vaguely about bright futures. But that's what we had here, on this Light Rail bus tour.

Thanks to a reader of this blog, a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to get invited along on a PR tour of the Central Corridor put on by the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative, a group of foundations that is working on land use and equity issues along the LRT line. I showed up around noon on a Thursday, and boarded a fancy motorcoach semi-filled with reporters, foundation professionals, and various hangers on. It took us up and down University Avenue, from Western Avenue (my home street) all the way over the border in Minneapolis to the Downtime Cafe parking lot. At each stop, we all trouped out of the bus and listened to some speechifying by the newly-reelected Mayor, a foundation head or two, and some folks representing neighborhood groups.

[Reporters and foundation types rode a bus that had previously carried the 2007 Northwoods League champions.]

It was an interesting experience for me, not because I learned anything new about University Avenue. (Hint: I didn't.) Rather, it put into focus the incredibly complex politics surrounding transportation planning. This train project is a great example of how big a deal all this stuff is. I used to work at a library at the legislature, and we had a shelf of old plans and impact statements for the University Avenue light rail train that went back into the mid-1980s. You could make a life-long career out of planning this project.

The thing you quickly realize if you're paying attention to the LRT debate is that when it comes to planning politics, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Every possible business or community interest knows about the coming construction, parking changes, and landscape. The largest players have their lawyer on speed dial. And everyone is trying to scrape for every dollar.

Anytime you build anything, you create winners and losers. Most obviously, all the people involved in the construction are winners, and the businesses and homeowners that are shut down or hampered by the construction are losers. But then you get the different transportation patterns. The light rail will dramatically change how people move around through a large part of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. It'll replace car lanes with train rails, take out parking spots, slow down speeds, increase traffic in some places and reduce it in others.

In the end, certain land uses will be hurt (auto shops, places that require really easy access) and others will greatly benefit (office buildings, any sort of dense residential use, things that benefit from pedestrian activity). Anyone who owns land along the line will benefit, probably, from increased land values. Anyone renting will receive a mixed bag of higher rents but easier transportation access and more choices in their neighborhood. It's hard to know how it will all play out!

In a funny way, in talking to people, you realize that the short-term concerns are paramount. Business owners don't really care about what the street will look like 4 years from now. They are mostly concerned with what it will look like one year from now, when there are bulldozers in front of their entrance. And, that's why so many people are pissed off and suing each other over this situation.

[Apparently the abandoned yogurt factory on the corner of Western and University epitomizes the promise of Light Rail in Saint Paul.]

In think this press tour was an attempt to show that there are groups coming together to address some of these fractured issues -- gentrification, business mitigation, and promoting walking and biking. But, without an effective coalition of groups interested in making sure that University Avenue is a pleasant place to walk, bike, and take the bus, sidewalks, streetscaping, and crucial infrastructure will likely be lost amid the cacophony of groups angling for a stimulus package.

I fear that pedestrians could get screwed with this project. The problem is that, compared to the amount of people concerned with gentrification and parking, there are far fewer folks out there who are making waves about the importance of wide sidewalks, bike lanes, or public infrastructure. I can only hope that the planners spend money on the right things, and that sidewalks don't get lost amid the political shuffle.

[Bowties are very popular among planners and non-profit professionals. Planning drawings are used only for decorative effect.]

Reading the Highland Villager #7 (October 21 - November 3 Edition)

[Basically, the problem is that the best source of local streets & sidewalks news in Saint Paul is the Highland Villager. This wouldn't be a problem, except that its not available online. I'm reading the Highland Villager so that you don't have to. Until this newspaper goes online, sidewalk information must be set free.]

Total # of articles about sidewalks: 7
Total # of articles about sidewalks written by Jane McClure: 7


Title: St. Paul looks to spread wealth of $2M windfall: Large utility bill refund could benefit a dozen city projects
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: Como Park conservatory has been overpaying its utility bills for many years now [Oops! -ed.], which means that the city will build new picnic benches, a new park field, and start work on a "circulator bus in the Summit-University neighborhood".


Title: Reuse of Ford site may require big subsidy
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: Retaining industrial jobs at the massive Ford Plant site in Saint Paul will be expensive. [It's too bad because its an ideal waterpower and cave location for a factory. -ed.] Saint Paul is in stiff competition with every other de-industrializing city in the country for industrial and "green" industrial jobs.


Title: City lowers fees but keeps petition in place for backyard chicken coops
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: A chicken permit in Saint Paul only costs $27 now, down from $72. Bur you still have to get 75% of your neighbors to sign off on it.


Title: Sweeping changes urged for off-street parking requirements
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: St Paul planning commission is suggesting changing required off-street parking. [This is a big deal. Fewer req'd parkign spots = fewer cars = more transit and walking neighborhoods. -ed.] Many public meetings to come in November and December, but this issue will be hotly contested because people cling their neighborhood parking spots white-knuckled death grips.


Title: University businesses given an early warning on light rail
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: DT StP businesses got shafted during construction earlier this year, b/c the construction crews didn't put up "we're open" signs. They are advising University Avenue business owners to be sure to do that pronto when construction begins on the LRT.


Title: Council approaves increases in right-of-way maintenance assessments of 8-plus percent
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: State LGA-cut induced budget crunch at the city means that Saint Paul will be charging more for street maintenance. Obviously property owners don't like this.


Title: Commission supports variances, rezoning for a Subway on Selby
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: St Paul planning comission approved variances for a Subway sandwich shop on Selby Avenue and Victoria Street, on what used to be a gas station site. The plan required parking variances, of the kind noted above. Full vote to come soon.