Newsweek weighs in on death of suburbs

Well, the writer doesn't actually predict the death of the suburbs, but he raises some of the concerns that have been addressed elsewhere, including the earlier Atlantic Monthly article on the subject.

Celebrate

Thanks to the folks at Planetizen for finding this post. It's June, so, besides being Gay Pride Month (yay!), it's now Public Participation in Urban Planning Month. I like the sounds of it. As I've written before, it costs way too much to join some of these organizations, so how can we citizens participate if we have to pay the grocery bill. Perhaps a movement is afoot ...

That 'Divine' nature lover - Bette Midler

You never know what you might find when you tune in to National Public Radio. I listened today to a "Talk of the Nation" interview with Bette Midler - the Divine Miss M herself - and while I've always been a fan of her music career, I was pleasantly surprised to hear of her New York Restoration Project, an effort she founded to re-green New York City. Divine, indeed!
In fact, one of my passions is how cemeteries can be an integral part of greenery in cities (and countrysides, too!). My other blog is devoted to the issue of planning and land use and cemeteries, so I encourage Miss M. to consider that in all her good work.

North Carolina growth

I've blogged in the past a couple of times about North Carolina, which has surpassed my home state of New Jersey as the 10th most-populous state in the nation. One was an essay, reprinted from an earlier blog, urging North Carolinians to make sure to consider mass transit it their growth plans. The other was a post about people meeting to discuss the state in the 21st century.
Now comes an article by a California planner, who notes that the amazing growth experienced by North Carolina is very similar to what California experienced after World War II. Seems like more words of wisdom -- and warning -- about a state that can no longer be ignored. As this writer suggests, just ask Barack Obama.

Not part of the "in" crowd

Here's a piece about the (as-yet) failings of the New Urbanism movement to change our landscape, except on the periphery and a few other spots (we call this spot "anti-zoning"?). Some interesting points here. I wonder, too, whether the New Urbanists are "uncool," as this piece suggests, because they often are neo-traditionalists with a kind of back-to-the-future mind-set, perhaps even nostalgic. Nostalgic to a fault?
This writer also raises a point about NU's "insular mentality." Here, too, I agree. McDonald's Dollar Menu commercials aside, folks, the dollar's dropping: $185 to join the Movement at Congress for New Urbanism? $375 at Urban Land Institute? That's at least a few tanks of gas.

A shout-out to not-just-any blogger

City planning officials in Oak Harbor, Washington, have opened a blog where citizens can comment on development issues. A local newsaper wrote a piece on it.
This sounds like a worthwhile idea for all sorts of organizations; a good way to keep the citizenry involved.

Pave the streets green

Found this at a Web site from Canada. Is it doable? There are some towns - early "garden cities" the likes of Radburn, NJ - where housing fronts greenery and driveways are in back. Worth doing?

SongScape: "My City Was Gone," by the Pretenders

Welcome to a new, regular feature of Eclectic Pedestrian. While American popular music long has addressed social-justice issues, it less frequently directly addresses such topics as sprawl and development. My goal here is to begin a different type of conversation, one where geographers, planners and others in related fields can let their hair down a bit, perhaps pick up an air guitar instead of a PowerPoint clicker, and talk about meaningful music and how this particular type of music can change our landscape - figuratively or literally.
First up is this classic from the Pretenders. Chrissie Hynde and the lads succinctly express the disdain, even sorrow and lamentation, at returning home, only to find that home has been stripped of all its dignity.
In September 2007, Hynde returned to her hometown of Akron, Ohio, to open a vegetarian restaurant and to talk about her love of the city, saying in the Akron Beacon Journal:
"My blood is Akron. It courses through my veins ..."
"Let's get rid of the malls and bring it all back downtown."

MY CITY WAS GONE, by the Pretenders; written by Chrissie Hynde
I went back to Ohio
But my city was gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
South Howard had disappeared
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
Reduced to parking spaces
A, o, way to go, Ohio
Well I went back to Ohio
But my family was gone
I stood on the back porch
There was nobody home
I was stunned and amazed
My childhood memories
Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees
A, o, oh way to go, Ohio
I went back to Ohio
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that had no pride
The farms of Ohio
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And muzak filled the air
From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls
Said, a, o, oh way to go, Ohio

Uncle Sam *doesn't* want you ...

The Pentagon has asked - and Google has complied - that the online mapper stop showing some Street View images of military installations, out of fears that national security could be compromised. The story is all over the Web. One from Reuters is as good as any to get a sense of what's going on.
As you probably know, this is not Street View's first step into controversy. Other folks have complained about privacy invasions, as SV has offered some "peeks" into people's windows as the SV crews have happened by, snapping away.

The New Cartographers

Thanks to one of my fave sites, Planetizen, for directing me to this article from "In These Times," which notes how the Internet has made it possible for almost anyone to map almost anything. Just make sure there's enough work out there if I need to change careers, OK?

The new slums of America?

I just started reading this article, from The Atlantic monthly mag, on how the combination of the subprime fiasco and the coming energy crisis will - some predict - help turn America's suburbs into a new slum. More on this later, after I read the piece.

North Carolina's 21st-century vision

A while ago, I posted an essay I wrote on an earlier blog, imploring North Carolina not to become another New Jersey. It seems they are taking steps in the right direction -- at least some North Carolinians want to take steps in the right direction.
A former state transportation secretary is proposing a series of ideas to help fund "urban transit" in 21st-century North Carolina, specifically, creating a "congestion fund" to finance rail, port and other public transporation needs. Critics are sure to rail against any proposed tax increases, but a tiny increase has made the light rail in the Charlotte area an early success.
Says the official, Sam Hunt:

"The congestion and the growth in these urban areas is a reality that can't
be ignored. If we don't come up with money to answer these needs, then the rural
areas can rest assured that their money will be transferred to those urban areas
-- because that's where the people are and that's where you have a majority of
the votes. So unless you come up with revenue to solve their problem, in the
long run the rural areas will lose, too."

Philly's walkability

Here's an interesting post about Philadelphia's walkability factor -- and the need to do more in the area. In case this link goes away someday, pay close attention to this one, as well: WalkScore.com

"Lost" map

Now, here are some folks with a creative spark: This is a site with maps of the fictionalized island on the TV show "Lost."

A geographer's nightmare, not to mention an accountant's, politician's, historian's ...

The Nashville Tennessean reports that Georgia and Tennessee could be headed for a border war -- literally. Georgia wants to redraw the state line northward about a mile, just far enough to allow Georgia to "tap into the waters of the dammed Tennessee River."

Brookings weighs in on '08

The always interesting Brookings Institution is weighing in on a variety of subjects that the candidates ought to be talking about this presidential election season. Among its many position papers is one to rebuild Middle America (the geographic middle, not political), and includes some good ideas on sustainability, particularly on the "North Coast," along the Great Lakes:

While other regions face long-term sustainability challenges from lack of water,
congestion, costs of infrastructure, sprawl, and risk of natural disaster,
the country’s "North Coast," with proper policy actions now, offers the
prospect of environmentally and financially sustainable commercial and
population growth.

By the way, if you get the chance, you should set up your own portfolio at the Web site. You can choose the categories you want to study and add articles to your portfolio, without filling up your own computer.

Going green not always easy for towns

The sluggish economy is among the factors affecting communities' efforts to go green, the New York Times reports. Other factors are legal/jurisdictional restraints and public resistance to change.

Biodiversity of parks

This post originally appeared March 8, 2007, on my recently deleted blog, Faux-Pen Space:

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Here's a link to a Penn State report on the biodiversity of urban parks. They studied 10 parks in the Northeast U.S. and found almost no common species -- except, I guess, humans:http://live.psu.edu/story/22534

GPD, not GDP

This post originally appeared Feb. 27, 2007, on my recently deleted blog, Faux-Pen Space:

Found this trolling around the news world today. We at Faux-Pen Space play golf (we stop short of saying we're golfers), and we know a study like this has all sorts of ripple effects, including the need to mow more (and put more pollutants from gas mowers into the air), the need to fertilize more (and put more pollutants into the ground) and the need to drive to the golf course (putting more pollutants from our cars into the air). It ain't just about golf, or the faux-pen spaces they take up:
Study Examines Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Golf IndustryANAHEIM, Calif., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WeatherBill, Inc.published a study today at the National Golf Course Owners Association annual conference analyzing historical weather data to determine changes and trends in annual Golf Playable Days* (GPD). The study concludes that U.S. GPD are increasing in 95 cities, primarily due to higher average temperatures. The study also identifies increasingly rainy trends in the Northeast and Southeast, a drier Southwest and West and increasingly uncertain weather in 33 cities. The free study can be downloaded at http://www.weatherbill.com/golfstudy."The average number of Golf Playable Days across the U.S. is 268 a year," says David Friedberg, CEO of WeatherBill. "In the West and South, given the extended season, the average golf course can expect 297 playable days a year vs. the 226 days in the Northeast and Midwest." The study includes a reference table showing the range of GPD in 195 cities as well as the 30 year trend in both GPD and weather certainty. The guide should be a useful financial planning tool for golf course owners and managers."Warming temperature trends during January, February and March were the most impressive weather change we observed," says Friedberg. "Half the cities in our study showed significant increases in temperature, particularly in the Southeast and Southwest. Rainfall changes were more widespread across the year and across cities, with about 1/3 of the nation showing a change in rainfall trend in any given quarter. Raleigh, North Carolina, Miami, Florida and Portland, Oregon showed a very challenging combination of more rain and more variability, which makes revenue planning for the weather sensitive golf business more difficult."WeatherBill published this first of its kind study to create awareness that climate change is starting to have an impact on the business of golf. "Golf course owners and managers will find it more challenging to predict golf playable rounds, product demand, revenue flows and maintenance expenses in many cities. WeatherBill hopes to adequately address these issues by providing the first online service for protecting revenue and earnings from unpredictable weather," adds Friedberg. Golf businesses can also use the free tools on http://www.weatherbill.com/ to compare their financials to historical weather data for a more detailed understanding of how weather may affect their business.WeatherBill, Inc. (http://www.weatherbill.com/) provides the only online service that allows businesses to protect revenue and earnings from the impact of bad weather. Founded by David Friedberg and several other former key members of the Google team, WeatherBill, Inc. is funded by New EnterpriseAssociates and Index Ventures. WeatherBill, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California.*Golf Playable Days are defined as the number of days that the max dailytemperature is between 45 degrees and 105 degrees F, and the precipitationlevel is less than 0.25 inches (i.e. dry and warm enough to play golf).

Don't Let North Carolina Become Another New Jersey

This post originally appeared on May 24, 2007, on my recently deleted Faux-Pen Space blog:
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As my aunt pulled up to a stoplight outside Durham, North Carolina, one afternoon last July, she told me that at one time, hers would have been the only car there. This time, six cars were ahead of her.
More than once during my weekend visit, she remarked how the Triangle had built up in her 31 years of living there, and how tough it would be to get around without a car. I had a similar experience; I was staying at the Washington Duke Inn, and unless I arranged a ride, I was forced to limit my explorations to wherever my feet could take me. How many times can you visit the Duke student center in one weekend?
As someone who had not been in North Carolina since 1978, I was wowed by the growth of the Triangle. And now, you may have read, that state outranks mine - New Jersey - in population.
Yet, while my "Garden State" faces the prospect of becoming the first state to reach "build-out," some North Carolinians are wasting the opportunity to get things right where we’ve gone way wrong – public transportation.
Don't let the light-rail opponents get away with getting rid of the half-cent transit tax. You will pay dearly in the end.
Up here, the Delaware River Port Authority’s high-speed line carries 33,000 riders a day to and from Philadelphia. In fiscal year 2005, NJ Transit carried some 800,000 riders a day and another 620,000 riders on the weekends. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority carries 299 million riders a year on its rail lines, trolleys and buses in and around Philadelphia. Just imagine all those people driving on our (still-crowded) highways.
Now, imagine those kinds of numbers on North Carolina's highways. I’m no demographer, but it wouldn’t surprise me if many newcomers moved there to get away from the mess we have here.
Your light-rail foes don’t get it. The idea is to build the light rail before North Carolina becomes another New Jersey. Before they join us at "build-out." The unintended consequence of keeping mass transit out of your back yards is that you will get more cars passing by your front yards.
It is encouraging that a Charlotte area poll shows a majority favoring keeping the tax, but 57 percent is not a large figure. Don’t be NIMBYs; embrace the rail. Perhaps all these foes need to be convinced is to spend time with me on New Jersey's roads. And I promise I won’t wax nostalgic about how things used to be.