Managing the Clash of Order and Anarchy

The acknowledgement page of the Petaluma Station Area Master Plan lists my name near the top of the Citizens Advisory Committee, behind only the City Councilmember who chaired the committee.  (The placement of names reflects the alphabet, not value of contributions.)

What the committee member list doesn’t show is that, from my recollection, of the seventeen folks who were appointed to the committee, only four were present for the last meeting at which we accepted the report and recommended approval by the City Council.  It was the final stage in the gradual diminishing of the committee from the first meeting to the last.

I don’t know all the reasons why thirteen members drifted away, but I got feedback from one.  He felt that too many of the master plan decisions had been pre-determined and that the committee had little or no opportunity to change the conclusions.  I suspect that at least some of the other missing members would have expressed a similar disappointment.

Even if my particular experience on that committee was slightly different, I could empathize with the concern.  I’ve sat through many public meetings where it felt as if the only role of the public body was to rubberstamp a decision that had already been decided elsewhere, often in a room where none of the committee members were present.  (Although I should note that many of the apparently pre-ordained decisions were still appropriate.)

It’s an element of what Professor Emily Talen described at CNU 23 as the tension between order and anarchy.  In her words, the relationship between the two is “A grand manner of order provides the urban framework on which diversity and chaos can hang.”

For the Station Area Master Plan committee, order was represented by the consultant and the City staff who brought a wealth of prior experience and a clear vision of the final product to the process.  Anarchy was represented by the committee and by the general public who brought ideas that threatened to upset and redirect the process.

But this example is far from the only interface where order and anarchy meet in the land-use arena.  A few other examples are:

·         A city has an orderly expectation of downtown retail storefronts.  An entrepreneur seeks to drop a shipping container onto a vacant lot to serve as a pop-up store.

·         A parks department has a master plan to provide a balanced range of recreational and leisure activities to the community.  A coffee shop owner seeks to convert a pair of parking places in front of his store into a parklet, complete with bike racks, potted trees, and sofas.

·         A city lays out standard setbacks and architectural rules for homes in single-family neighborhoods.  A developer tackles a challenging parcel by proposing a compact neighborhood in a form not anticipated by the zoning code.

And those examples don’t even touch upon oddball adjacencies such as a comic book store next to a dinner theatre house next to a stalled building remodeling project, as shown in the photo from Johnson City, Tennessee.  No planner ever envisioned the anarchy of those types of adjoining uses.

Our old friends at StrongTowns characterize often characterize order as top-down and dumb, with anarchy being bottom-up and smart.  I can see their point, but don’t fully accept it.

To me, top-down is dumb only to the sense of being unwilling to consider new points of view.  That’s an unfortunate shortcoming, but order still carries a lot of accumulated wisdom.  Having a minimum sewer size of six inches, an optimal household water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch, and a maximum road grade of 18 percent may be boring, top-down standards, but they work far better than if we make those values subject to public consensus.

Meanwhile, bottom-up can sometimes offer helpful new perspectives, but if the public is left alone with a blank map and no sense of the practical, a land plan of purple unicorns browsing in a field of candy canes next to a babbling brook of cherry soda is often the result.

In my experience, the best results always come when anarchy suggests an idea far outside of the box.  Order gives a good reason why the idea is impractical, but takes up the thread of the idea and proposes and alternative that is a great step forward.  The best processes come with both order and anarchy represented at the table and mutually respectful.

Which brings me back around to the Petaluma Station Area Master Plan and my small attempt to be an agent of anarchy.

I came onto the committee with three pet ideas, one about a changed city policy that would lead to a better mixture of residential uses in urban settings, another about a district that could complement the station area, and a third about a neighborhood that could be adversely impacted by new development, making proactive mitigations appropriate.

But I knew enough not to toss my ideas into the maelstrom of general public comments where good and bad ideas are quickly swirled and then lost forever.  Instead, I bided my time, waiting for the right moments for one-on-one conversations with the members of consultant team would I thought would be amenable to my ideas.  I found my openings, made my 60-second pitches, and waited for responses.

When those responses came, the general form was that after consultation with the remainder of the project team and City staff, the ideas, however intriguing, weren’t something that could be considered with the current project scope, budget, and/or mindset.  Order had managed to repel even a carefully planned campaign by anarchy.

Unlike many of my fellow committee members, I didn’t choose to cease my participation.  Instead, I stayed on, working in good faith to make the final report as good as possible, and still looking for opportunities to add a bit of anarchy to the process.  Above all, anarchy must be persistent.

Although I find it unsatisfying, that’s really the only conclusion I can bring to this subject.  Both order and anarchy can bring value to land use planning and to most decisions regardless of the subject.  Any process that seeks to optimize its outcome must find a way to balance the two.

Having introduced order versus anarchy into the conversation, I expect the two are a theme that will often be cited in future posts.

I recently spent a morning becoming reacquainted with one of my favorite rock bands.  Perhaps not surprisingly, my musings about the band soon led me to an insight about urbanism.  I’ll share the train of thought in my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Haystack Landing by Any Other Name Would Fill the Need as Well

Long-time Petaluma residents may remember the proposed Haystack Landing project, sited midway between downtown and the future SMART station, bounded by E. Washington, Weller, D, and Copeland Streets.

Over a great many years, the former owner of the property put forth a great many alternative plans for the site, some of which would have supported Petaluma’s urbanist future and some of which are better forgotten.

Eventually, time and a weakening economy robbed the earlier efforts of their last shred of momentum and the property moved into different hands, eventually ending up owned by Pacifica Companies of San Diego.

Pacifica has now brought forth their plan, a plan that looks much like the final iteration under the previous owner, not surprising given that some team members remain the same, but with a sense of commitment and a level of credibility that gives hope that this time the project will finally move ahead.

Although Pacifica hasn’t yet submitted land-use applications to the Planning Department, they rolled out the preliminary plans for community review earlier this week.  There was much to like in the plans.  There was also room to chat about possible tweaks.

(One thing that Pacifica hasn’t brought forth is a new name for the project.  They seem committed to moving on from the previous Haystack Landing name, but are as yet undecided on a new name.  After offering the obligatory jest about PTBNL for project-to-be-named-later, a reference to a player-to-be-named-later in a baseball trade, I’ll continue calling the project Haystack Landing for now.)

To begin my comments, please understand that I would be happy if the project as now presented could go into construction tomorrow.  Indeed, happy would understate my emotions.  If I could get my wife to agree, I’d probably put our names on the reservation list for one of the units.  I hope to one day live in an urban setting near the heart of Petaluma, a hope that has twice been stalled when earlier projects failed.  Haystack Landing is now my newest great urban hope.

But construction isn’t going to start tomorrow.   So there’s a window to talk about the good, the possible areas of improvement, and the impractical suggestions put forth by others.

The Good: As a member of the citizens committee for the Station Area Master Plan, I may be overly committed to the vision that resulted from that process, but I’m pleased that the Haystack Landing conforms well to the master plan, with a new street dividing the parcel, multiple four-story buildings mostly ringing the resulting two blocks, and parking, at the minimum allowed under the SmartCode, in the center of the blocks, largely removed from the view of pedestrians.

In a detail that wasn’t foretold by the master plan, but is a welcome addition, much of the parking is covered by a roof that will support social activities and areas of greenery.

(The project architect pointed out that the strictures in the master plan and the related SmartCode gave relatively few options for the site plan, largely dictating the proposed plan.  Short of asking for a bundle of variances, the site plan had to look much as it has been designed.  One could argue from this that the master plan and SmartCode, even if they’re stifling innovation, are still leading to good results.)

Looking at one small site plan detail, I’m thrilled by the solution along D Street.  A long-ago realignment of D Street left an awkward triangle of pavement, comfortable for neither pedestrians walking between downtown and the future train station nor drivers unsure how to steer a right turn onto Weller Street.  The triangle can’t contain buildings because of overhead power lines, but the site plan converts that space into a landscape and sculpture garden, with outdoor dining for a proposed café.  It’s a fine solution to a vexing problem.

The Room for Improvements: I’m not an architect, don’t have the eye of an architect, and am impossibly far behind in my attempt at remedial architectural training, but I find that the Haystack Landing architecture, while well articulated and richly detailed, still screams early 21st century American development style.  I don’t intend at all to suggest that the architecture looks like a Walmart.  With its detailing and varied use of materials, it’s far from that architectural nadir.

But, to my untrained eye, it still looks too much like the same architectural solution that would be proposed for infill sites in Seattle, Denver, or Charlotte.  It’d be a good solution in any of those places, but nothing in the design says unique, Petaluma, or even California.

For corroboration of my impressions, I checked with an architect friend.  He used different words, but largely agreed with me.

I suspect that various constraints, from the site to the Station Area Master Plan to the construction economics in the second decade of the 21st century, restricted the architect such that this may been his legitimately best solution, but I can still chafe at the result.

In a situation for which an easier fix would seem to be available, Transverse Street, the interim and unpoetic name for the street that will subdivide the Haystack Landing site, will be the preferred route for most pedestrians walking from downtown to the coming SMART station.  But that route may not be obvious to first-time visitors.  Indeed, the route may seem unintuitive from downtown.  So wayfinding guidance at the Weller Street entrance into Transverse Street would be appropriate, perhaps a sculpture or signage that sends the unmistakable message that this be the way to the train.

Rounding out my thoughts on the preliminary plans are responses to some of the issues raised by the public for which there are no solutions and for which the developer should be given absolution.  But I’ve already claimed enough of your time for today, so I’ll defer those to my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)