A Week of Public Involvement and Urbanist Advocacy

Walkable urban setting in Sonoma

This is a post about which I’ve often thought but never executed.  I feared it might seem selfish or self-aggrandizing.  But having recently participated in an extended discussion on the effort needed effect change in land use policies, I decided to share what a week in my life can entail.  It can be an example of what public involvement and advocacy requires.  The topic also builds upon my last two posts (here and here) about public involvement.

I should begin with a disclaimer.  Doing what I describe below doesn’t make me a great guy.  Most days, I enjoy the involvement, so what I do is largely a labor of love.  Also, I happen to be at a time in my life when I can devote the hours.  But I’m not in the league of teachers who spend unpaid weekends grading papers or of parents who juggle work obligations to be home for dinner and homework checks.   They’re the heroes.

With that understood, here is a recent week in my civic life.  Perhaps a little busier than most, but not greatly so.  To avoid complicated and tangential explanations, I’ve simplified a few details.

Monday Morning: The week began early.  A project was the agenda for City Council approval that evening.  At the last minute, the developer was asking for relief from a requirement to build a bike path.  Several people contacted me, asking that I attend the City Council meeting to argue against the request.  I agreed to attend, but without speaking on the bike path issue.  I’ll explain why a little later.

Monday Early Evening: To prepare for the City Council meeting, I had dinner with the Chair of the Pedestrian Bicycle Advisory Committee (PBAC) to talk strategy and philosophy.  As the appointed liaison from the Park and Recreation Commission, I’m also a PBAC member, so we’ve often chatted.  Plus she’s a fun person.

In addition to the pending Council decision, we conversed on many points, including coordination between PBAC and the Transit Advisory Committee (TAC) which I chair.  (For those counting, yes, those are three city commissions and committees on which I sit.)

Monday Evening: The PBAC Chair and I arrived early for the City Council meeting.  Although on a different matter, I needed to talk quietly with the developer who had the bike path issue.  I had to resolve a point of miscommunication that had arisen at an earlier meeting.  And I wanted to talk about a pedestrian connectivity issue that hadn’t been addressed because of the miscommunication.

I pulled the developer aside for a private chat.  He saw the value in the pedestrian feature, but asked for more time to discuss it with partners.  (I’ve continued coordination with him and remain hopeful that the amenity will be implemented.)

In the Council meeting, I still chose not to speak, fearing that participating in the bike path discussion after asking privately for the pedestrian feature would undermine my request.  But I offered suggestions to the people who spoke in favor of retaining the bike path.

The bike path requirement was removed by a vote of 4-3.  The bike proponents left unhappy.  But I’d expected the vote to be 5-2 so saw a small ray of hope in the defeat.

Wednesday Afternoon:  SMART is a North Bay commuter rail line that will soon begin service.  I hadn’t planned on attending the SMART Board meeting, but was advised in the late morning that the Board might be prepared to jettison the second Petaluma station from their near-term planning.

I’ve written often about the alternative locations for the second station, arguing in favor of Corona over its competitor.  I also testified before the City Council the evening when they put their weight behind Corona.  With the decision arrow beginning to point toward Corona, it seemed the wrong time for the SMART Board to opt out.

Luckily, the rumor was wrong.  But I was nonetheless pleased to be at the meeting for a couple of agenda items.

First, the Board voted to officially move ahead with a third station in Novato.  Years earlier, Novato hadn’t seen the value of a downtown station, so had asked SMART to locate the two Novato stations in drivable locations away from downtown.  But the community gradually saw the light and asked about adding a downtown station.  SMART agreed to facilitate as long as Novato covered the cost, which the City Council accepted.  I was happy to be present when this walkable urban amenity was officially blessed.

Also, SMART handed out a draft train schedule.  Although everyone knew that a schedule would soon be forthcoming, it was still a symbolic moment to have an actual schedule in hand.  The trains suddenly felt more real.  And I was pleased to see enough time between the Cotati station and the downtown Petaluma station to accommodate the Corona station.  (A SMART official denied my suggestion that scheduling flexibility had been intentionally left for Corona.  I didn’t believe him.)

Wednesday Evening: The monthly meeting of PBAC was also dedicated to the SMART system.  SMART representatives spoke about the alignment and funding for the bike/ped paths near the rail alignment, on which PBAC had earlier successfully encouraged changes, and about bike parking at the downtown station, with which PBAC was actively involved.

But my most interesting moment came late in the meeting.  The City Engineer reported that construction plans had been submitted for a project that PBAC had previously reviewed.  It was a project on which, aware of the concerns of the neighbors over traffic speeds and safe biking, I’d lobbied the Planning Commission for narrower driving lanes.  In addition to leaving more room for bike lanes, narrower lanes induce lower driving speeds.

I was only partly successful in my lobbying.  The draft approval called for 12-foot travel lanes.  After my efforts, the adopted approval called for the lane widths to be as established by the City Engineer during design.  So I now eagerly asked the City Engineer about the lane widths on the plans, hoping for 11 feet or even 10-1/2 feet.

They were still at 12 feet.

Although there was little opportunity for further discussion, I expressed my exasperation at having so meekly surrendered a hill that had been so hard-won.

To his credit, the City Engineer noted my frustration and emailed me later that evening, suggesting a meeting to discuss further.  (The meeting took place a week later.  We had an open and productive conversation about the benefits of narrower lanes and the geometric challenges of narrowing the travel lanes.  We ended the meeting with the City Engineer recommitted to seeking a narrower lane solution.  Some hills must be won several times.)

Thursday Afternoon: The monthly meeting of the Transit Advisory Committee was devoted to reviewing the Short-Range Transit Plan, a state requirement for all transit agencies.  A key element of the Petaluma Transit SRTP was revisions to bus routes to better connect with SMART.  And a key topic of conversation was a scheduling challenge that had been created by the draft SMART schedule.  Finding the best scheduling fit between SMART and Petaluma Transit will be on-going task, on which the TAC and Transit staff will continue to coordinate.

Thursday Evening: Parklets, the reversible conversion of street parking into public gathering places, were invented in San Francisco about a decade ago and have now spread nationwide, including adopted policies in the North Bay cities of Sebastopol and Ukiah.  But Petaluma has neither a policy nor the staff time to develop one.

I had organized a working group, headed by a young planner with deep Petaluma roots, to remedy the gap.  To finish my Thursday, we had our regular meeting to discuss the outline that would be shared with City staff at an upcoming meeting.

Friday: On Friday, I rested, except for finishing my third urbanist blog post of the week and responding to a jammed inbox of emails.

I’m sure many are shaking their heads, complaining that the process shouldn’t take this much effort and that most people don’t have time for this much community involvement.  On the first point, I’ll disagree.  Given the complications of existing improvements, community preferences, CEQA, financing standards, consumer behavior, and much more, it’s understandable the process doesn’t pivot well.

Indeed, I’m pleased that the process doesn’t pivot too easily.  If it did, our forefathers would have razed most of the best North Bay downtowns in the 1960s and replaced the historic buildings with parking lots.  So we were lucky on that point.

On the reality that many folks don’t have as much time as me to be involved, I agree fully.   I have the inclination and flexibility to do what I now do, but can’t expect others to follow my lead.  But I do believe that folks who want our towns to look and function differently must to find enough time to participate in the process a little bit.  Perhaps a monthly conversation group on land planning plus a public meeting or two.  Too many important decisions are made in public sessions with no members of the public present.

On that segue, my next post will be about Petaluma Urban Chat, a monthly gathering to discuss walkable urbanism.  After recently out-placing its care and feeding to someone else, it seems to have come back to me.  I’m disappointed, but have also gained a new hope about what Urban Chat might be.  I’ll write more next time, while also looking for new adoptive parent.  My schedule can use the relief.

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

Finding the Elusive Public Input Sweet Spot

Walkable urban setting in Napa

In my last post, I wrote that public input can sometimes go awry, with concerns about flawed ideas triggering rules that consume both good and bad ideas.

The examples I cited were from my personal history with small-scale hydroelectric projects.  In that field, logically dubious demands for “cumulative impact” studies, raised by those who had legitimate concerns about projects proposed in inappropriate locations but lacked a bigger perspective, bogged down the review process such that few power projects, even the good ones that could have slowed climate change, moved ahead.

I then expressed a concern that something similar could happen to walkable urbanism if a long list of projects, undifferentiated as to their impacts on traffic, water usage, or other local hot buttons, triggered a public demand to slow all development.

A new reader to this blog might interpret my concern as a preference for little or no public input.

That interpretation would be wrong.

Long-time readers know that I encourage public input.  Indeed, a primary thrust of this blog is trying to motivate people to participate in the land-use process, hopefully in support of walkable urban development. 

But that motivation can be difficult to incite because effective public participation isn’t easy.  Instead, it often stumbles on three hurdles, education, persistence, and opportunity.  I’ll expand on the three.

Education: I’ve long been intrigued how the general public decides the range of topics on which they can make useful comments.  As a civil engineer, I’ve described the phenomenon as “Everyone has an opinion on roundabouts, but no one ever comments on sewer sizing.”

From an engineering perspective, the design difficulties of the two are roughly similar.  A young engineer with moderate competence and a few years of experience can do a reasonable job with either.  But the public feels that they can make helpful input on roundabouts, while staying away from sewer design.

I understand why there’s a difference.  As drivers, the public thinks they understand roadways, but prefers not to think about sewers.  (In a recent public meeting, I made a mild jest about sewer flows.  The City Councilmember sitting next to me commented acidly, “Thanks for putting that image in our heads.”)

But the fact that the general public thinks it understands driving doesn’t make it so.  A good example, although far from the only one, is induced traffic, the theory that there is latent traffic demand awaiting reduced congestion before coming forth.  The theory explains why new roads, even in communities that are demographically and economically stable, quickly fill and become as congested as older roads

This theory has been understood and applied in Europe for decades, but is only now gaining traction in the U.S., in large part because many didn’t find it intuitive.

(Of course, engineering isn’t the only field of endeavor in which the willingness of the public to offer opinions doesn’t map well with their knowledge.  Lots of folks have opinions on vaccines, but no one weighs in on transplant rejection drugs, although both deal with the immune system.  I’ll leave it as a party game for readers to come up with examples in other fields.)

When it comes to public input, an under-informed public can still be effective, but may end up being effective on the wrong points, helping to effect “solutions”, such as cumulative impact studies, that ultimately work contrary to the public good.

To make the world better through public advocacy, one must not only be willing to make one’s voice heard, but to also make sure that one is saying something that advances the common good.

By saying this, I’m not setting myself forth as the fount of urbanist knowledge.  Far from it.  Instead, I find myself learning something new every day, often challenging or modifying earlier beliefs.  This blog isn’t a source of ultimate knowledge.  It’s a cooperative effort between readers and me to continue working toward better and more complete knowledge of land use that can be used for public involvement.

Persistence: No matter how ill-conceived, there’s one advantage to making a ruckus on a single point such as cumulative impact studies.  Because it doesn’t require interaction with the current processes, one can choose any time to make the argument.  If enough supporters can be secured, new rules can be implemented relatively quickly and the proponents can soon move onto other challenges, usually without a look back at the carnage left behind.

But working within the system, choosing to support “good” projects and to oppose “bad” ones, requires a different timescale.  It requires constant attention to the process and careful scheming about the right moment to put a drop of oil in the right place to change the outcome.  It requires persistence.

In my time of actively promoting urbanism, I’ve worked with a lot of people who bought into urbanism and vowed to make a difference.   Then they realized the glacial pace at which true change, not superficial disruption but true change, is effected and soon wandered away.

I don’t necessarily blame them.  It is hard to sit through weeks and months of city council, planning commission, and advisory committee meetings, waiting for the exact moment to make the right pitch.  But it’s how good projects, those tailored to best serve the public good, get moved along.    

Opportunity: Over time, I’ve had the chance to chat with many North Bay municipal officials about the land-use process and public input.  Although far from unanimous, one response that arises occasionally and concerns me greatly is unease with public input and a preference to defer it to the end, after city staff has had months or years to polish the project, leaving only a few intractable issues for public decision.

The problem with that approach is that many good ideas may have been left on the cutting room floor before the public ever has a chance to touch the project.

Perhaps an 80-unit apartment project has been trimmed to 40 units to reduce massing, although pedestrian vitality would have been served by the greater number.

Perhaps the parking count has been bumped to avoid parking management issues, although the public would have preferred to encourage non-auto travel.

Perhaps an opportunity to provide a convenient connection to a bus stop has been lost.

If the public is excluded from the process until the final approvals, we’ll almost certainly get development that looks much like what we’ve always gotten.  And in a world where climate change and municipal fiscal collapse are hanging on the horizon, continuing the status quo shouldn’t be our aim.

So, earlier and more significant public input should be the goal.  But of course, that participation in the early stages of a project should be calm, temperate, and cognizant of the political and financial realities of development.  The goal should be cooperative problem-solving, not the bashing of developers or city staff.

So there’s my philosophy.  I believe greatly in public input.  Indeed, I consider that opportunities for public input are essential to healthy cities.  But that input must come with education and persistence.  And my fear is that video that triggered the rumination in this post and the preceding one, although not the intention of the videographer, didn’t promote opportunity, education, or persistence.

My next two posts have long been planned to touch on a recent week of community involvement and on a restart for Petaluma Urban Chat.  However, I now see that each topic has become a logical continuation of the threads above.  So the topics will remain as planned, but will be woven into a bigger tapestry.

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

New Year’s Resolutions 2016: More Folks and More Tenacity

Urban setting in Spokane, Washington

This is the fifth New Year’s Day that I’ve been writing this blog.  Once again, best wishes to all for a productive and increasingly urbanist New Year.

A tradition of this blog, although an admittedly trite one, is New Year’s Resolutions.  In past years, I’ve touched on subjects such as doing more urbanist reading, becoming a better educated urbanist traveler, and making more numerically-based urbanist arguments.  As the best resolutions should be, they were stretch goals, perhaps beyond reasonable reach, but encouraging beneficial growth.

Not surprisingly, I’ve not fully achieved any of the goals.  But the process of setting them and reaching for them made me a better advocate for urbanism, which is how it should have worked.

This year, I’ll set another pair of stretch goals, ones in which your assistance will be sought.  I want to expand the North Bay urbanist advocacy in two ways.

A few weeks back, I was invited to participate in the holiday lunch of a North Bay advocacy group.  They might not have called themselves urbanists, but their advocacy targets were closely aligned with urbanism.  I had worked with them several times during the year and thought we made a good team.  So I was happy to join them for lunch.

The conversation was sparkling.  A few speakers leaned toward the pedantic, forcing the chair to exercise his authority more than he may have wished, but the comments were all educated and insightful, offering a tutorial to attentive listeners.  They represented a level of community advocacy that should encourage all who hope for a better world.

But when I looked around the table at the participants, I saw folks who were mostly grey-haired, wrinkled, and walked with a stiffening gait, a description that can also apply to me on many days.  I’m not always good at estimating age, but I guessed that I was the fourth youngest person at the eighteen-person gathering.  And I’m sixty-two.

I understand why land-use advocacy often falls to the older generation.  Financial security has been achieved.  Children are educated and gone.  Even if retirements haven’t yet arrived, careers are winding down.  Lifetimes of observation and consideration have identified the issues that really matter to the advocates.

And perhaps most importantly, seniors sometimes have an extended vision that often eludes the young.  When I speak with high school juniors about land-use possibilities, they hope for changes that can be made before their senior year.  When I talk to thirty-two-year-olds, they hope for changes that can be made before they buy their next house at age thirty-five.

Perhaps because they’ve had a lifetime to observe how long some goals take to attain, it is often only the seniors who are willing to embrace and to work toward forty-year visions, even with the knowledge that they’ll almost undoubtedly have left the stage before the vision is achieved.

At the holiday lunch, mention was made of several former members who had passed on.  There was no disappointment that the departed folks had gone before the goal was achieved, but only satisfaction that they had gone knowing that progress was being made.

But for all the reasons that long-term land-use advocacy often falls to the elders, there are good reasons why young advocates are necessary.  The young can bring an energy and enthusiasm that can be more difficult for elders.  Also, many public decision-makers are still in the heart of their working careers and can too easily dismiss as “old coots” the older advocates who totter to the microphone with their grey hair, even when those old coots deliver well-honed, insightful, and essential wisdom.

But when I think about the folks who I see regularly, who speak to city councils about urbanist ideas and who write to local papers to complain about anti-urbanist biases, those folks look a lot more like the me of today than the me of thirty years ago.  And that’s not good enough.

So my first resolution on this New Year’s Day 2016 is to encourage more urbanist advocates across a broader age spectrum, with a particular focus on the young.

To be clear, I know I have many readers who are significantly younger than me.  And they’re good folks.  But I may not see them or hear from them for months on end.  And I virtually never see them at City council or planning commission meetings.

I understand the family and career reasons why that is so.  But it still leaves a hole in the ranks of advocacy.  And it fails to meet the expectation set by Gandhi, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

My second resolution touches on a related issue, which is the essential tenacity of advocacy.  The folks around the holiday lunch table knew what advocacy truly requires, which is crafting five stratagems for moving a boulder, celebrating briefly when it moves an inch, and then creating five more stratagems.

But I see much current advocacy coming from a different place, which is the dispensing of perceived wisdom, often to those are already converted, and nothing further.

In a meeting of advocates on how to promote mixed-use development, someone will flutter in, suggest we need more mixed-use development, and flutter back out, thinking that advocacy has been achieved, when the truth is that nothing was achieved.

So my second resolution is to do more to impress upon folks the dogged and persistent nature of the advocacy required to affect change.

These two resolutions may sound as if they are being applied to others, which would be the easiest kinds of resolutions to set and the least troublesome to keep.  (“You should lose weight and you over there should exercise more.”)  But they are truly internally-directed.  I worry that my approach to advocacy is failing to attract the kind of advocates needed for long-term change and that I’m failing to impart lessons about the essential tenacity of advocacy.

So the resolutions are about me looking in the mirror during 2016 and seeking changes in who I am and how I present myself, so that I can better attract urbanist advocates.

Whether or not I can make myself a great leader, I can still take encouragement from this quote from journalist Walter Lippmann, “The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.”  All of us who advocate for long-term urbanist goals should rally to that flag.

In my next post, I’ll return to the upcoming StrongTowns visit to Santa Rosa, giving reasons why attending the public sessions should be worthwhile, even for the Petalumans who may feel jilted.  The effort can be a test of my ability to gather urbanist advocates.

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