Public Committee Meetings

Public Committee Meetings

I was listening to the MAPS 3 Streetcar Citizen Advisory Board Subcommittee meeting that was recently recorded and uploaded to Soundcloud by Jeff Bezdek of Modern Transit Project OKC.  I went ahead and embedded it below because I know several people that read this blog are from Oklahoma City and I encourage them to listen to it.



It is the first time, to my knowledge, that one of these MAPS 3 subcommittees have been recorded and posted online.  As silly as it sounds, this is huge.  Why?  Because, although the information discussed at the meetings is critical to the development process, not much of it ever gets disseminated to the general public.  That's essentially because these discussions are not taking place in a council chamber -- they just don't get reported on very well.  And that is too bad.

Michael Bates from Batelines.com just recently wrote a post about why it is critical to record and broadcast these types of board/committee meetings.

Much of the substantial discussion about a city decision takes place in the recommending body, with the decision maker (City Council or Mayor or both) often deferring to the recommending body's judgment without comment or discussion. For this reason, video recordings of Tulsa's authorities, boards, and commissions are central to the public understanding of the official actions of city government. 

It is 2012 and we should no longer be debating about if we should be providing this information to the public.  In fact, we should be so far past that, it's rather inexcusable that the vast majority of cities still do virtually no recording and publishing.  If you are serious as a city about providing information to the public that makes them more informed citizens, then recording and posting those recordings online is a fantastic first step.   The tools are available and with smart-phones, you can actually do the whole setup for free now by simply using your phone as a recording device.  Rudimentary, but it is at least a start.  

[Video] Naptown to Super City - A story of the Sports City, Indianapolis

[Video] Naptown to Super City - A story of the Sports City, Indianapolis

Conversation with an Engineer [Video]

Conversation with an Engineer [Video]

Historian, journalist, and my good friend Steve Lackmeyer posted an xtranormal video on his blog.  The video is a conversation between an architect and a contractor.  Pretty funny stuff. 

My favorite xtranormal video to date is one done by Strong Towns. "Conversation with an Engineer" has had over a hundred thousand views and is one of those funny, daft, and yet educational.  The truth always has a funny side and when we start discussing projects like widening streets, we say things that are funnier than we might think.

Enjoy the video after the jump.

Room Please

Room Please

It is unmistakable.  The feeling you get when you notice you are not just walking along a sidewalk, but the space you are inhabiting is in fact an outdoor room.  A room designed just for you and for many, many others.  It is room to move, to breathe, to succeed, to fail, to stop and go and to simply watch the world go by.  Outdoor rooms are rare these days.  Sidewalks as we know them are a pittance of the opportunity afforded to generations long gone.  Today, our broken rivers of concrete are narrow hallways that line places once valued simply because they were connected to this room.  Today we treat this relationship like a burden or an afterthought of connectivity.  We need these outdoor rooms.  They are the public spaces that our nation's ideas were debated on and quite literally fought over.   We need them now more than ever.

Walk Friendly Communities Deadline Approaches

Walk Friendly Communities Deadline Approaches

Every year cities battle for status in the Walk Friendly Communities contest.

"Walk Friendly Communities is a national recognition program developed to encourage towns and cities across the U.S. to establish or recommit to a high priority for supporting safer walking environments. The WFC program will recognize communities that are working to improve a wide range of conditions related to walking, including safety, mobility, access, and comfort." walkfriendly.org

The deadline is approaching fast but there is still time.  Register by January 19th by going here.  It cost nothing and could be a fantastic way to get your neighborhood thinking about pedestrian projects for the new year.  If you are submitting an application, let us know.  We will want to follow your progress through the year.

Understanding where you should not be walking

Understanding where you should not be walking

Microsoft recently secured a patent on a "Pedestrian route production" tool. VentureBeat

The idea is simple.  The walking navigation tool will direct you around areas you wouldn't want to walk.  These could be areas that are unsafe because they have high crime rates or they could be areas that simply lack proper pedestrian facilities.  The concept, especially as it relates to pedestrian accommodations, could prove to be very useful.  More and more I am starting to use the "walking" navigation option built into my Google Maps.  Sometimes it is just easier to glance down from time to time and see myself creeping along that blue line than to try to memorize street names and routes.  However, if you walk as much as I do, you have no doubt, at some point, found yourself walking down a sidewalk that you wished hadn't been on your route --for one reason or another.

I am, in fact, a little sad that this patent went to Microsoft.  I think it might prove to be valuable as a navigation tool, but I actually see more value in the concept as a community/neighborhood tool.  Imagine being able to see pedestrian trouble spots.  If Bing doesn't think that the adjoining avenue to your neighborhood would make for a pleasant walk, then you could arm yourself with this new information and seek to correct the problems.  Homeowner associations could quickly see where they need to focus next year's big dig project.

Of course, you don't need a computer to tell you the obvious.  If you lack a sidewalk, well, you need one.  Which is why I wish this patent went to a company like Walk Score.  Walk Score is a company that provides millions of people with basic data about neighborhood walkability.  Specifically it provides an address with a Walk Score, or a rating of how walkable that particular area is.  For example, a place with a high walk score will likely have plenty of places to eat, shop, recreate, and get healthcare nearby and ideally, all without having to jump in a car.  Lower-scored areas generally are lacking at least some of these basic amenities.   I wish Walk Score had this patent because I think that this kind of walking route logic will be most valuable to citizens and neighborhoods when viewed holistically with other neighborhood information --like a Walk Score.  I also want the data to be publicly available and I have my doubts that Microsoft will open up all of this data.

Most importantly, if Microsoft turns this into a feature on Bing Maps, my hope is that pedestrians will not only get value out of it but that community leadership will use it as a tool for finding and addressing problem areas.  Let's make sure we use technology to help us address the problems and not simply go around them.

[Image via vancity197]

Public Space Banking and Thoughts of Flexible Street Uses

Public Space Banking and Thoughts of Flexible Street Uses

Streets are tricky things.  I was reading Car Parking vs. parks vs. restaurant patios, over on Richard Layman's blog, Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space.  It is a short but good article that made me think about why we don't allow more uses of on-street "parking spaces".  The strip of street running parallel to the curb is a public space, but generally isn't viewed as anything more than a place to park cars.  Communities could create so much more value in the places they already have by exploring alternative uses for parking spaces.  So here is my urban, multi-use plan for on-street parking...

If a business wants to install outdoor seating on what used to be a parking space, then we could ofset the lost "public space" by charging a fee that can be used to reclaim or preserve public space elsewhere.   Call it a Public Space Bank.  As businesses come and go, they can choose whether that public space that is currently being rented by a car would be more valuable to them as seating.

Such an idea might require the defining of a "citizen to public space" ratio.  And perhaps that gets too technical.  But the idea isn't that complicated.  It also probably sounds more fair to the "I pay taxes to the center of the road" crowd.  Our public spaces on our streets have been taken over by cars for a long time.  Theoretically, we are getting paid for this invasion.  Let's disrupt things a bit and let uses other than cars have a chance.

If you want to avoid the complexity of a so-called "Public Space Bank" then simply charge the requesting business the same amount a car would pay to literally sit there and call it good.

Let's keep the math simple.  If you pay $1 per hour to park your car, then a business would have the ability to use the space for $24 per day.  It could be that simple.  They could even use the parking meter to pay for it if you have meters that accept payment forms like credit cards.

This would turn this area into "flex space" essentially.  During busy times of the year, a business could use the added seating.  Parking garages would fill up faster and sidewalks would benefit from added outdoor activity.  I can even see areas being designated as "flex districts" where the city has actually installed receiver slots for the metal poles that could act as temporary barriers during non-auto uses.  Making a street-long transformation a quick process that would fundamentally change the use of a street.

The notion of flexible public space instead of "parking space" also helps us better understand the true value of that space.  By allowing for more uses, we can better understand the demand side of our commodity.

 I always have believed that when you allow for more mixed uses, you generally get a better result.  By essentially condemning this space as "parking" (whether used or not), you will never be surprised by all the great place-making possibilities it holds.

What Do You Think About Places You Have Never Been?

What Do You Think About Places You Have Never Been?

In the article, Do Rankings Affect Our Opinions of Cities?, Samuel Arbesman tries to find out what a group of random people thought about the 50 different major metros of the nation.

The results are interesting and conclusive, in that they tell us what a sample of people think.  What Arbesman was trying to do was to tap into popular beliefs of a city.  Do people really think of Oklahoma City so poorly?  Despite the statistical advantages it has over some of the better ranked metros (low cost of living, lots of new projects, lowest unemployment in the nation) , there is a clear bias prejudice against it.

Is this a trained bias prejudice?  Did it come from reading too many articles about Sally Kern?  Is it merely the "Oklahoma" in the Oklahoma City then?  Or does Oklahoma City rank lower in people's minds simply because it doesn't rank higher.   Meaning, did it just slide down the list because it wasn't a lot of people's early choice.  It is a small city compared to most of these others, so this latter theory I think should have some validity to it.  People just simple don't know much about it.  They do know that Seattle is beautiful though.  Everyone says that.  Of course, about 10 million people visit Seattle every year so it is easy to propagate positive notions about the place.  I had a hard time finding visitor information on Oklahoma City (or my Google was just broke at the time) but I found something perhaps more telling.  An About.com article titled, Readers Respond: Do You Love Or Hate Living in Oklahoma City?.  Well over 50% were what I would call negative or very negative.

So before my friends back home in Oklahoma City think that just because I moved means I am opening a can of haterade up on OKC, I am in stark disagreement with the negative bias.  In fact, I was one of those people who moved to OKC fully expecting hate it.  Oklahoma City is certainly one of those places where you can make wonderful home there and there is always stuff to do, especially if you enjoy walking.  Sure, lots of room for improvement, but the same could be said for all of these metros, right?

But this predjudice is (apparently) real and I am curious what others think can/should be done about it?

So, of these 50 metros, would you rank higher the cities you have been to or not?  I suspect we would rank them more honestly.  Personally, the more times I go to Houston, or Dallas, the less I like those cities.  If you graphed my desire to visit or live there over time, it would look something like this.

City officials shouldn't underestimate the influence of this perception.  Nor should the rush to spend their way into the minds of Americans.   You might just start with doing your own, more focused Amazon Turk surveys to try to better understand what people are thinking.