More than 100 trip reports from PCJ Editor Wayne Senville's meetings with planners along Route 50 during May-July 2007 -- available on our companion site.
Also available to order & download: printed highlights of Senville's trip reports & analysis.
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Hear about the new High Line park -- which makes use of an abandoned elevated railway line -- in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. Friends of the Highline co-founder Robert Hammond describes the origins of the innovative High Line park in this 3 minute video.
Visit the Friends of the High Line web site for more details. A wealth of additional information about the High Line and the impacts it is already having is available on The New York Times web site.
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Perhaps nothing gets a community more riled up than a discussion of density. Some fear that density, if too high, will create congestion, deplete open space, and block light and air. Others fear that density, if too low, will eat up valuable natural resources and fail to meet housing needs. A look at how you can plan for the density that works best for your community.
Plus: high-rise buildings are not necessarily the best answer to promoting denser, more walkable communities, argues Urban Land Institute Senior Resident Fellow Ed McMahon. Getting the Density You Want |
| Do you subscribe to the Planning Commissioners Journal? If so, we would be pleased to email you a complimentary .pdf of this article. Just email us at: pcjoffice@gmail.com (include the article title in your email). You may need to wait a bit if you email us when our office is closed. Not a subscriber? Consider starting with our Spring issue. Order online or phone us at: 802.864.9083 (Monday-Friday, 10am to 3pm Eastern). |
Read excerpt from Humstone article:What Does Density Look Like?
When residents hear the term high density, they often picture high-rise housing towers that lack privacy and open space, surrounded by surface parking. And when the term low density is used, large lot rural subdivisions may come to mind. Neither may be the case.
As has been aptly illustrated in Julie Campoli and Alex MacLean's book, Visualizing Density, even the same densities take many different forms and have different impacts on the viewer. Densities of 10 to 20 units per acre may still enable low-rise buildings with access to open space and privacy. Subdivisions that average 1 unit per 10 acres may minimize sprawl and adverse impacts on natural resources by clustering house lots.
Our perceptions of density are usually governed by the design of projects -- how high they are, how they are sited, how close they are to the street, how much landscaping there is, and how doors, windows, porches, and roofs are articulated. Visual preference surveys have shown that people may dismiss one project as too dense while approving of another project that has the same density. One of the challenges for planners and planning commissioners is to determine the qualities that will make desirable densities acceptable in their communities.
Planning for Density
1. The Municipal Plan
The starting point for deciding on density is the municipal plan. The plan sets forth the overall vision for the community and establishes the land use pattern, the transportation system, plans for public facilities and services, and natural resource policies. How do you determine how much density is enough or how much is too much? Each community will have to make this decision given its own situation and vision for the future.
2. Growth Estimates
One of the functions of a municipal plan is to determine how the community will meet current and future needs based on trends in population, housing, jobs and services, and existing conditions. How fast the community is growing, and what the characteristics of the new residents are likely to be, will help determine what densities need to be considered for the future. For example, if a new employer with low-wage jobs announces plans to move to the community, higher density rental housing may be needed. For those areas with a concentration of seasonal homes, low densities to protect lakeshores or steep slopes may be appropriate.
Many communities are now realizing that only a small share of their population (under 25 percent nationally ) consists of two parents with children. Their plans must also provide for single parents, the elderly, empty nesters, and young adults. These households have a variety of housing needs; many desire smaller units that are easily accessible to transportation, retail, and jobs and services.
... article continues with look at: 3. Inventory of Current Conditions; 4. Connecting with Community Goals; 5. Links to Transportation; 6. Links to Community Services; and 7. Environmental and Natural Resource Protection
Second part of article considers Factors in Making Density Work for You: 1. Height; 2. Setbacks; 3. Lot Coverage; 4. Planned Unit & Planned Residential Developments; 5. Bonuses; 6. Parking; 7. Landscaping; 8. Driveways and Garages; 9. Accessory Apartments & Duplexes; and 10. Tear Downs
The full article can be ordered & downloaded. Click this icon for details.
Why New Urbanism? This video -- which just won the Congress of New Urbanism's video competition -- offers a concise, and entertaining, explanation. All in under 3 minutes.
From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:
There's an interesting article posted online by Michael Saint, titled Carl Von Clausewitz, An historical yet timely perspective on "Zoning Wars."
Saint is founder, CEO, and chairman of The Saint Consulting Group, which provides consulting services related to land use politics. With Saint's permission, I'm reposting some brief excerpts from his article:
 "When Prussian solider and writer Carl Von Clausewitz wrote his classic book, "On War" in the 1830's, his words were directed at the philosophy, strategy and tactics of successful ground wars in Nineteenth Century Europe. But his ideas are equally relevant to real estate zoning battles in 21st Century America.
Twenty years ago, most commercial and residential real estate projects were easily approved at the municipal or county level. Development was seen as beneficial -- a sign of progress and growth, a source of new jobs and tax revenue for the community, a wellspring of new opportunity for the business community, and an example of accomplishment that local politicians could cite as a reason for re-election.
All that has changed.
Today from small towns in the Midwest, to suburbs on both coasts, to cities in the South, citizens are organizing to oppose all kinds of new projects: big box category killers (Wal-Mart, Home Depot), shopping malls, power plants, cellular phone towers, residential subdivisions, apartment complexes, affordable housing, office buildings, industrial parks and even churches, schools and playgrounds.
... To be successful, the modern real estate developer must assume every proposal will be opposed and that every project will require a campaign using the kind of battle strategy and analysis that Von Clausewitz brought to the battlefield two centuries ago.
COMMIT ENOUGH RESOURCES
... Real estate developers must commit sufficient resources to defeat the opposition, or face wasted opportunities, contentious hearings, long delays, and ultimate defeat. Few contests are won cheaply these days.
GET GOOD INFORMATION
... These days, devising a successful strategy requires polling, detailed political research, and analysis to identify likely opponents and tactics to neutralize or marginalize them; to identify potential supporters and methods of motivating them; ...
BUILD A CROWD
... Neutralizing the crowd, so that public officials can safely vote in favor requires the developer to produce as big a crowd at the hearing as the opponents do -- not an easy task in a NIMBY world. ... |
Personally, I've seen all of the factors Saint mentions come into play during the ten years I've served as a member of the Burlington, Vermont, Planning Commission. While NIBMYism can be a motivating force, I've also seen neighbors and neighborhood groups -- not just developers -- need to heed Saint's advice: marshall their forces, do "opposition" research, and turn out their supporters in large numbers. In some places, it's the developers who seem to have the inside edge.
One problem underlying all this is that land use hearings typically follow the adversarial model used in our legal system. Too rarely are consensus building techniques employed. In part, I believe that's because planning departments simply don't have the financial resources to provide for this. As a result, many times planning commissions or zoning boards have to leave it to the proponents and opponents of a project to come in with their own experts, and argue their case.
Planning commissioners and zoning board members, like judges, are often left in the position of having to evaluate often conflicting testimony. Sometimes staff can allocate the time to provide independent information and analysis, but many times not.
I'd be interested to hear your comments. How do controversial land use applications play out in your city? Are there better ways of doing business?
p.s., we've run a couple of articles related to the above. One is on the use of land use mediation. The other focuses on the growing use of charrettes -- a useful (but sometimes expensive) approach to resolving issues without needing to go to war.
Former Vermont Governor and DNC Chairman Howard Dean, at yesterday's Commencement Ceremonies at the University of Vermont, focused on the importance for new graduates to stay engaged in their communities, whether through service on a planning commission, city council, church vestry, or in other ways.
"Every single one of you has an obligation to stay involved in your communities," he said.
Governor Dean also made the interesting observation that the biggest mistake his generation made, after the activism of the 1960s and 70s was to "take a vacation from politics."
You've worked hard to organize a community visioning initiative. There's just one problem: how do you get citizens to participate? How do you persuade a cross-section of your community to attend vision meetings and share their ideas about the future? Pick up the phone, recommends civic consultant Otis White.
Dialing for Citizens
From the Spring 2009 issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal. Available to order & immediately download. Use icon button at end of excerpt below.
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| Do you subscribe to the Planning Commissioners Journal? If so, we would be pleased to email you a complimentary .pdf of this article. Just email us at: pcjoffice@gmail.com (include the article title in your email). You may need to wait a bit if you email us when our office is closed. Not a subscriber? Consider starting with our Spring issue. Order online or phone us at: 802.864.9083 (Monday-Friday, 10am to 3pm Eastern). |
You've worked hard to organize a community visioning initiative. You've raised the money. You've thought through how citizens will participate, how their ideas will be incorporated in the plan, how the plan will be compiled and presented. You've even considered how to bring along community leaders, like city council members and business leaders, so they embrace the final product.
There's just one problem: how do you get citizens to participate? How do you persuade a cross-section of your community to attend vision meetings and share their ideas about the future?
This is critical because, in my experience, visioning efforts don't succeed on the quality of the plans they produce. They succeed because citizens recognize these plans as -- reflections of their ideas and ambitions -- and support them. And for that to happen, you need the citizens to … well, show up and participate.
I've worked on a number of community visioning initiatives and, along the way, tried many ways of coaxing citizens out of their homes and into meetings, from publicity efforts to working with civic groups and neighborhood associations. We've built web sites, cranked out press releases, placed flyers in public libraries, advertised with online groups, mounted speakers' bureaus, and conducted e-mail blitzes. We even persuaded one business to donate time on its outdoor marquee signs to promote meetings. Most of these things work to some degree. My advice is to do them all.
But the single most effective way we've found of convincing citizens to turn off the television and spend a winter evening talking about their community's future is with phone trees. That's right. The old, reliable form of communications: one person calling another.
Make no mistake. Phone trees are demanding. We spend twice as much time organizing them as we do on all other communications efforts combined, including building web sites. If other ways of involving citizens worked as well, we'd hang up on the phone trees in an instant. But they don't.
... Otis White continues by describing the steps needed to organize an effective phone tree, and some things to watch out for.
The full article can be ordered & downloaded. Click this icon for details.
When we think of pre-fab housing -- are we thinking trailer? If we are, then we'd better think again. Now referred to as "off-site construction," modular, prefabricated housing is coming of age.
This type of housing can provide substantial opportunities to both communities and homebuyers -- where construction techniques can be cost effective and also provide significant environmental benefits.
Wendy Koch reports in USA Today about smaller, smarter homes. With family size declining, energy expenses increasing, and the economy facing an uncertain future, homebuyers may be more interested in factory-built, eco-friendly, smaller footprint homes.
In areas with expensive land, or strict environmental or design considerations, modular homes may present solutions.
In an industry newsletter, M & M Construction's Deric Aube says, "As the builder, one of the many reasons we use modulars in urban-infill areas is that we often run across unusual and unique shaped lots, with tight spaces surrounding them. Genesis Homes, as the manufacturer, can design floorplans for us just to fit those unique situations and lots, as well as design exteriors that fit with the architecture of more established homes next door or nearby." He also adds that modular homes can be "shoe-horned" into tight spaces without disrupting the surrounding homes and vegetation. "We can lift the home with a crane into these tight locations, eliminating the space requirements, noise and increased activity associated with site-building," he concludes.
David A. Keeps of the Los Angeles Times interviewed Allison Arieff, co-author of Prefab, which describes the history and offers a look at the future of pre-fabricated housing. Communities for decades have seen "manufactured homes" as cookie-cutter and cheap, and many have zoned them out of the mainstream and into parks or specially designated neighborhoods. Arieff finds it interesting that, "people speak all the time of 'context' or houses being true to their respective neighborhoods, but what I see when I travel around the country is the same boxes with a tacked-on facade –- French Country, Tuscan, Cape Cod, whatever. It’s not architecture, and it’s not good design." She sees prefab homes as opportunities for individual expression, and for homes to be built to meet the needs of the inhabitant, rather than the needs of the market. [For more on Arieff, see her New York Times design blog].
Another innovation is something called the "Everhouse" -- built from concrete wall panels that resist fire, wind, and mold. In an article in the Christian Science Monitor, Boston-based builder John Sawyer describes a construction concept based on the Swedish factory-crafted model identified with retail giant Ikea. When disaster hits, speed of reconstruction and the availability of both materials and a suitable workforce are of the essence, and he may have hit on a way to address both. Manufactured off-site, and then assembled in just a little more than a week, Sawyer sees his "Everhouse" as a one strategy to help hard-hit areas get back to normal.
And last, but not least, who can resist a yurt? Intershelter, an Alaska-based company, has updated the Buckminster Fuller dome for short-term use for disasters or field use. Look for the complete story in the New York Times (Mar. 18, 2009).
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Note: In an article on manufactured housing published in the Planning Commissioners Journal, Matt Weiser reported that "nationwide, about 22 million people now live in factory-built housing, or about one in 12 people ... and it still pales compared to all of Europe, where 70 percent of all new housing is factory built" (Weiser's article is available to order and download).
Transportation planners know how critical it is to assess safety issues. But what can we do if a strategy to improve safety for one group of roadway users, such as drivers, has the unintended effect of decreasing safety for others, such as pedestrians? Some ways to make roadways safer for everyone.
Growing Safer: Improving Roadways for Everyone
From the Spring 2009 issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal. Available to order & immediately download. Use icon button at end of excerpt below.
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| Do you subscribe to the Planning Commissioners Journal? If so, we would be pleased to email you a complimentary .pdf of this article. Just email us at: pcjoffice@gmail.com (include the article title in your email). You may need to wait a bit if you email us when our office is closed. Not a subscriber? Consider starting with our Spring issue. Order online or phone us at: 802.864.9083 (Monday-Friday, 10am to 3pm Eastern). |
Transportation projects travel a long road from concept to ribbon-cutting. Many hands, eyes, and heads are applied to each project along its journey, from policy-makers and community members to planners, financiers, and engineers. At each stage, the design and purpose of the project must be reiterated and interpreted by a different group of people.
Any engineer will tell you that his or her number one priority on any roadway design project is safety. All transportation planners know how critical it is to assess safety issues when they analyze the performance of a transportation corridor. Policy makers are sure to reference safety loud and clear on transportation mission statements. But do all of us define "safety" the same way? And what can we do if a strategy to improve safety for one group of roadway users, such as drivers, has the unintended effect of decreasing safety for other groups, such as pedestrians? ...
Transportation Policies: Spell It Out
It's no secret that America is an automobile-dominated country. When someone says "transportation," most of us picture a road with cars and trucks on it. Moreover, the vast majority of our literature and research about planning and designing safe roadways is focused on improving vehicle mobility and safety. But over the past decade or so, growing numbers of forward-thinking communities and transportation agencies have adopted "complete streets" policies to make their roadways safe and accessible for people of all ages and abilities traveling by all modes -- pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders, as well as drivers. Sidebar, Complete Streets.
The process of implementing a complete streets policy, however, can present planners and decision-makers with some difficult choices. A strategy focused on improving driver safety and mobility can end up making the roadway less safe for pedestrians. For example, adding a channelized right turn lane to a busy intersection may keep cars moving along, but it can lengthen the crossing distance for pedestrians and make them harder for fast-moving drivers to see. It is important to put these kinds of questions on the table when considering the consequences of roadway planning and design proposals.
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| Photo of small segment of 9th Avenue "complete street" in Manhattan. |
Cities and towns that have adopted complete streets policies are asking new questions and coming up with innovative solutions to balance safety, mobility, and accessibility for all roadway users. By contrast, communities with more traditional policies that just refer to general roadway safety have less incentive to move beyond "default" mode in which vehicle mobility typically takes priority. As a result, important questions about the safety of other roadway users may not be raised. ...
The full article can be ordered & downloaded. Click this icon for details.
Click on the Wordle image above to view it at larger size. Wordles are a clever device that search a blog, web page, or text you enter, to create a graphic representation of the text, giving weight to the frequency a word is used. This "Wordle" is based on the text in our last post, Train-ing for 2009. You can see another example on our CircleTheUSA blog. Try one out yourself -- they're fun, and revealing too.
National Train Day: Saturday, May 9th. For more information about this year's event.
Note from Planning Commissioners Journal Editor Wayne Senville:
In recognition of this annual event (actually, the second time it has been held), we're reposting a portion of my remarks from last year -- still pertinent. But there has been one huge +plus since last year: President Obama's dramatic recognition of the long-term value of investing in high-speed rail -- in the form of $8 billion provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
As President Obama recently observed, "A major new high-speed rail line will generate many thousands of construction jobs over several years, as well as permanent jobs for rail employees and increased economic activity in the destinations these trains serve. High-speed rail is long-overdue, and this plan lets American travelers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways." As Vice President Biden added, "railways are the best way to connect communities to each other."
Many American planners -- and citizens who have traveled to Europe or Japan and enjoyed high-speed rail service -- realize that our national system is far behind where it should be. With gas prices projected to keep on climbing, and concerns about greenhouse gas emissions, it's time we turned our attention to catching up with countries like France, Germany, Spain, and Japan. In fact, Obama explicity recognized this, noting at his April 16 news conference, that "high speed rail ... is happening right now. The problem is it's been happening, elsewhere, not here."
While there has been progress in many U.S. cities on light rail and trolley systems -- the same can't be said of our inter-city rail system. Even in our dense Northeast Corridor, our high-speed rail is nearly a generation behind that in use in Europe.
For just a quick look at high-speed rail in Europe, see "Touring Europe at 200 Miles an Hour: Travel by High-Speed Rail Catches On as an Alternative to the Hassles of Flying," in the Mar. 12, 2008 Wall Street Journal:
"Consumers are flocking to the comfortable, speedy trains -- while growth is slowing in parts of the airline industry. Eurostar reported a 15% rise in ticket sales for 2007, with much of the increase occurring after the London enhancements. Meanwhile, airport passenger-traffic growth has fallen to 2% in Britain for the past two years ..."
photo above is of the new TGV-Est line, connecting Paris and Strasbourg at operating speeds in excess of 200 mph. Interestingly, France views its high-speed rail system as key to strengthening regional economic development by facilitating access to medium size cities throughout the country. See, e.g., Strasbourg: a "Magistrale" city. The video below shows tests of the new TGV breaking the world speed record of 574 kph (344 mph).
| The following pages provide online resources & links supplementing articles published in the Planning Comm'rs Journal: |
 Tools to Use |
| Regional Retail |
| Public Hearings |
| Art in Our Communities |
| Libraries |
| Complete Streets |
| Density |
| Stormwater Management |
| Greenway Trails |
| Charrettes |
| Car Sharing |
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