Can Twenty be Plenty?

In my last post, I wrote about how our grandparents and great-grandparents yielded our streets to the automobile in the early 20th century, with the result that we’re no longer even allowed to hold block parties in the street.

Before the advent of the automobile, most street uses occurred at speeds and intervals that didn’t threaten nearby people.  Faced with the motor vehicle, capable of outrunning a drayage wagon or horse-drawn cab, able to sustain those speeds for hours, and often driven by a partially-skilled operator, our ancestors had two choices.

They could have restricted automobiles so streets remained comfortable for all users.  Or they could have abandoned the streets to cars, pushing the other users to the fringe of the right-of-way or even to oblivion.  Under a strong lobbying effort from the automobile folks, they chose the latter.

That decision had dramatic consequences, ones that have been true for all of our lives but are still startling when we consider them anew.

My front door is about forty feet from a traffic lane.  The speed limit on my street is 25 mph.  But, despite the stop signs at both ends of the block, drivers often reach 30 mph by the time they reach my home.  And pedestrians usually die if struck by a car traveling 30 or more mph.

So, forty feet from my door, a distance I can cover in fifteen strides, is a place where, unless the driver spots me in time, I can quickly become a traffic fatality.  When I chat across the street with a neighbor walking her dog on the far sidewalk, a killing zone lies between us.  I find that creepy. 

But there may be an alternative.  In “Happy City”, Charles Montgomery writes that the probability of a car/pedestrian collision being fatal to the pedestrian drops quickly below 30 mph.  By 20 mph, the pedestrian is very likely to survive.  Montgomery even speculates that pedestrians have an innate understanding of this fact, so become more comfortable when nearby vehicles travel at closer to 20 mph.

In “Walkable City”, Jeff Speck writes that many European communities are recognizing this possibility and pushing for a maximum speed of 20 mph in all residential zones.  Their slogan is “Twenty is Plenty”.  And they’re making progress.  The “Twenty is Plenty” group in Great Britain claims that over 13 million Brits now live in communities that have adopted the “Twenty is Plenty” standard.

The concept has been slower to take root on this side of the Atlantic, with the greater expanses of U.S. suburbia acting as an implicit counterargument.  But there have been pockets of progress.  In an article from 2010, Grist writes about residents in Hoboken, New Jersey arguing for a 20 mph standard.  In the quixotic hope that sarcasm can help sell the idea, Grist describes the crusade as a “crazy stance against running over children”.

More recently, residents of Brooklyn have been surreptitiously posting guerrilla traffic signs with “20 is Plenty” as a run-up to a lobbying effort at the state capitol, where they’ll argue for greater local control over speed limits. 

For those of us, which is pretty much everyone, who grew up with residential speeds of 25 mph or higher, it may seem awkward to poke along at 20 mph.  But I’ve been occasionally driving the lower speed on streets near my home.  (Warning: Don’t do this if there are cars behind you.  The drivers can quickly become agitated.)

The lower speed can soon become comfortable, with a feeling of rightness to it.  There’s more of a sense of being part of the neighborhood, rather than hurrying through to another place.

And if one has a trip of a mile through residential streets before reaching a collector or arterial, which is fairly typical, the travel time difference is only a minute, which seems a small price to pay for restoring a balance between cars and other users of the street.

If we check the possible 20 mph standard against Speck’s four criteria for walkability, we find that it improves both pedestrian safety and comfort, putting us halfway to a more walkable city.

However, converting a neighborhood to a 20 mph zone is a complicated, nearly impossible, task under California laws and mindset.  When I next return to this topic, in about a week, I’ll write about these issues.

Before closing, I’ll touch on cul-de-sacs.  Some readers may be congratulating themselves for living on cul-de-sacs, thinking that cul-de-sacs aren’t subject to the 30 mph speeds noted above.  Those readers are partially correct, but don’t get partial credit.

While cul-de-sacs, particularly short ones, don’t have speed problems, what they’ve done is shunt travel to other streets where the speed issues are at least as bad, if not worse, as drivers speed to make up for the out-of-direction travel required by cul-de-sacs.  At best, residential traffic under the current mindset and rules is a zero-sum game, with cul-de-sacs exporting their portion of the problem elsewhere.

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

What Do We Know and When Did We Learn It?

As I’ve written before, much of our attachment to a drivable suburban lifestyle is the result of growing up amidst a drivable suburban lifestyle.  If a particular environment is all one knows, that environment seems natural and unavoidable, no matter how much of a historical anomaly it might be.

In “Walkable City”, Jeff Speck makes that point that even our youthful television viewing implanted suburban lessons.

Speck describes himself as a late baby-boomer.  As a result, much of his early television watching was “The Partridge Family” and “The Brady Bunch”, both presenting attractive, functional families living in leafy, low-density suburbs, which created positive impressions about suburbs.

His youthful television watching also included shows with urban settings.  But “Dragnet”, “Mannix”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, and “Hawaii 5-0” were mostly about urban crime, so didn’t offer positive images to the young potential urbanist.

He reports that his awakening to urbanism didn’t come until Mary Tyler Moore, thrilled by her upcoming adventures in downtown Minneapolis, tossed her woolen hat into the Minnesota air.

Speck concludes that the generation after his had a better grounding in urbanism because they had better urbanist role models.  The characters in “Friends” reveled in the perks of a living is a city.  And “Sex in the City” offered its own lessons.

I’m a half-generation older than Speck.  The lessons I learned from television were different, but still meaningful to how I came to think about urbanism.  I even learned a few lessons that I had to unlearn.

Over summer breaks, especially when arising late and dawdling over a bowl of cereal, I remember watching reruns of “I Love Lucy”, “The Andy Griffith Show”, and “The Dick Van Dyke Show”.

Although “Lucy” was set in New York City, the city was never a character in the show.  Instead, the city seemed a place to endure before returning to the home nest.  Nor was the thought of having Ricky and Lucy as neighbors an inducement to urban living.  I’ve previous suggested that better soundproofing is an essential element of successful urbanism.  That insight may have had its genesis in a long-ago shouting match between the battling Ricardos.

It’s also instructive to remember that, when Ball tried to recapture the success of “I Love Lucy” with later shows, she moved first to Danbury, Connecticut and then to suburban Los Angeles.  It wasn’t the geographical path of someone who loved living in the city.  As an urbanist role model, Lucy was a failure.

“Andy Griffith” was closer to the urbanist mark, with Mayberry’s friendly, walkable downtown.  In retrospect, it’s instructive that there wasn’t even a gas station in downtown.  The nearest station was Gomer’s, outside of town on the road to Mount Pilot.  No wonder Gomer left to join the Marines.  He couldn’t make a living with his tiny cashflow.

But the shortcoming of “Andy Griffith” was its setting in the hills of North Carolina.  It was so remote from the suburban lifestyles that most of my cohorts were living that it didn’t feel like a real possibility.  Instead, it was a fable, instructive but not a reasonable aspiration.  Although many of us now find ourselves wishing that we could walk a few steps to get a haircut from Floyd.

Which leads us to “Dick Van Dyke”.  At first, it seems that Rob and Laura Petrie were living a suburban lifestyle like the “The Partridge Family” and “The Brady Bunch” would live in another few years.  But there was at least one key difference.   At the end of his workday, Rob Petrie entered by the front door.  Yes, he usually tripped over the ottoman, but the key point was that he arrived on foot.  There was a garage off the kitchen, but Rob didn’t use the car for his daily commute.

Living in New Rochelle (like many of my generation, I can’t hear of New Rochelle without thinking of Rob and Laura) and working in New York City, it seems likely that Rob took the train to the city.

Given the size of the home, it was unlikely that the Petries lived within walking distance of a train station.  The more likely scenario is that Rob walked to a bus stop from where he rode to a train station.  It was a multi-modal commute.  The only missing piece was Rob arriving at the front door with a bag of fresh produce purchased from a stand near the train station.

Although not an urbanist lifestyle, it seems that the Petries lived with some environmental awareness.  Although it would have been nice if Rob had occasionally complained about Robert Moses’ failure to adequately plan for transit.

Thinking back over my life thus far, I find that I’ve often measured my living situations against Lucy Ricardo, Opie Taylor, and Rob Petrie.  As Speck wrote, those youthful lessons embed deeply.

What about the readers out there?  Anyone who can dredge up and share the urbanist messages, good or ill, that came from youthful television viewing?

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

BART TOD: Design Matters

In my last two posts (here and here), I wrote about a recent visit to transit-oriented developments (TODs) on the BART system.  The outing, in which I was joined by a friend, was undertaken because the Petaluma City Council will soon consider the Petaluma Station Area Plan, which will also be a TOD.

Today, I’ll use the Richmond TOD as an example of how design details can make a difference in the livability of a TOD.

Look at the photos of the first two blocks as one leaves the Amtrak/BART station.  Perhaps photography doesn’t adequately capture the reality, but my friend and I agreed that the first was a more uncomfortable place to walk.  As pedestrians who didn’t live in the neighborhood, we felt like intruders.

We tried to determine the reason for the different feeling.  We first speculated that it was the architecture.  But the architecture of the two blocks is identical.  Next, my friend guessed that it was the more mature trees in the second block.  I concurred that the trees might be a partial reason.

But I believe the primary reason is the cars.  Or perhaps I should say the curbs and parking strip vegetation that are part of allowing cars into the second block.

In my last post, I noted that Jeff Speck in “Walkable City” writes about the human genetic predisposition to prefer a location at the edge of the public realm, which often means a sidewalk.  At the same time, we’re hesitant to be too close to front doors, feeling that we’re intruding on someone else’s private life.

In the first block, pedestrians are forced to choose between the two unpalatable choices.  The sidewalk feels too close to the front doors.  But the plaza feels too exposed.  So we traverse the street constantly reassessing our decision about where to walk.  And having to make a decision between two equally unacceptable alternatives is uncomfortable.

In the second block, the second choice is taken away from us.  The sidewalk is the only option.  We still not like the front door proximity, but at least we don’t have to balance that discomfort with alternative discomforts.

It was a subtle point, but surprisingly real.  My friend and I both felt that the pedestrian experience in the second block was superior.

This doesn’t mean that we must bring cars into TODs to enhance the pedestrian experience.  Sometimes streets are required for vehicular or emergency access.  But if they’re not, a community garden or playground surrounded by a fence will fill the same role of removing uncomfortable decisions from the pedestrian.

TODs, like many urban places, are delicate assemblies, especially as long as they're forced to engage in unequal competition with drivable suburbia.  Getting the details right is essential.

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

BART TOD: Stoops

In my last post, I wrote of touring transit-oriented developments (TODs) along the BART system.  A friend joined me in the travel.  Our goal was to gather insights that might be useful during the upcoming review of the proposed Petaluma Station Area plan by the Petaluma City Council.  In this post, I’ll dig deeper into some of the TOD design details, specifically the approach to stoops.

A few months ago, I wrote that a longstanding assumption about mixed-use TODs was breaking down.  Urbanists had long anticipated that the ground floor of most mixed-use structures could be retail.  However, changing consumer patterns have reduced the need for retail, with the result that less retail space is needed.  For many projects, the market is demanding that much of the first story be residential.

But the relationship between sidewalks and buildings is different if the use adjoining the sidewalk is residential instead of retail.  If the space is retail, having pedestrians peak inside is desirable.  It’s called window shopping and is a precursor to commercial activity.

If the space is residential, having pedestrians peak inside is undesirable.  It’s called voyeurism and is a precursor to criminal complaints.

Instead, residential space requires a perceived separation from the public space of a sidewalk.  In his book “Pockets Neighborhoods”, Ross Chapin writes about the need to create transitions with elements such as low fences, landscape buffers, and front porches.

But TODs typically don’t have as much room for transitions as pocket neighborhoods.  Creativity is required.  In the Petaluma Station Area plan, the consultant team offers a couple of transition suggestions for first story residential space.  They suggest small enclosed gardens.  And they suggest stoops, between the back of sidewalk and the front door.  (Depending on the other site conditions, stoops can also facilitate tuck-under parking at the rear of the residences.)

But there is drawback to either solution.  They require space that could otherwise be included in the square footage of the home.  One can argue that private gardens and/or stoops offer a sense of place that creates more value than mere square footage, but developers and lenders often disagree.

In the Petaluma Station Area, the owner of the land closest to the SMART station is already suggesting that the proposed promenade approaching the station is wider than necessary and can be narrowed to create more building space.  One could expect that stoops will be the next target.

With the background in mind, my friend and I noted the transitions at the BART TODs.  We were mostly disappointed.

The photo above is of a stoop at the Pleasant Hill TOD.  To be fair, there isn’t much need for stoops at the Pleasant Hill TOD.  Much of the ground floor space is dedicated to retail or other non-residential uses.  Only a few first story homes require separation from public sidewalks.

Which is a good thing because this stoop configuration has minimal effectiveness.  All it truly accomplishes is vertical separation, which is good, but not enough.  With the minimal horizontal separation, as soon as a resident exits the interior space, he is effectively in the public realm.  Nor does the configuration allow space for plants or other decoration that might enhance the separation.

But as mediocre as the Pleasant Hill solution was, the Richmond solutions were weaker.  The photo is of the first block leading away from the BART/Amtrak station.  The architecture differs on the two sides of the plaza leading away from the station.  To the left, small entry porches offer a minimal public/private separation, although even less than the Pleasant Hill solution.

But it is to the right that there is truly no public/private separation.  The unadorned front doors are perhaps a foot from the back of the sidewalks, creating an interaction that is likely uncomfortable on both sides of the door.  Residents probably must feel that they are an unacceptable part of the street life.  And pedestrians must feel as if they are intruding on private life.

In “Walkable City”, Jeff Speck writes that humans have a genetic disposition to prefer the boundary between woodland and savannah, where they can control the risks from either habitat.  In an urban setting, the genetic preference becomes a desire to occupy comfortable, well-framed sidewalks at the edge of the public realm

The Richmond solutions, particularly on the right side, take away that safe place.  On the sidewalk, pedestrians feel that they are encroaching on the homes.  But if they move into the plaza, then they lose the safety of the boundary.  It’s a solution that takes away any comfortable places.  The result is an underused plaza.

Fruitvale, with its full retail use of the first story, largely ducks the public/private problem.  But to the small extent it remains, it has been addressed elegantly, with Spanish-inspired steps leading from the plaza to the residential stories.

There are few immediate lessons for Petaluma from these stoop observations.  The Station Area consultant has already identified good solutions, which need only be retained when the plan is adopted.

Instead, the concern could be longer term.  When a developer proposes replacing the solutions in the Station Area plan with alternatives such as at Richmond, will a future City Council stand firmly by the plan?  Or will they yield to the political expediency that any development is better than no development?  Arguing firmly in favor of the design details in the Station Area plan could be a task for urbanists over the next two decades.

Scheduling Notes

Saturday, May 4, 11am – A small group will gather in Petaluma to take Jake’s Walk.  All are welcome.  Be at the corner of B and 10th Streets at 11am to participate.

Monday, May 6, 7pm – The Petaluma City Council will take up the Petaluma Station Area Plan.  The meeting will be in the Petaluma Council Chambers at 11 English Street.

Tuesday, May 14, 5:30pm – Petaluma Urban Chat will convene at the Aqus Café to continue the discussion of “Walkable City”.  All are welcome, whether or not they’ve read the book.

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

Urbanism Gaining Ground, but the Outcome May Remain in Doubt in the North Bay

For the last few posts, I’ve riffed on arguments made by Jeff Speck in his book “Walkable City”.  It’s been a remarkably easy way to write, because Speck offers a wealth of riff-worthy arguments.

I’ll continue on this path for today before leaving Speck for awhile.  But I will return to “Walkable City”.  It’s a remarkable book that I continue to recommend highly.

Speck argues that the battle between urbanism and sprawl is tending different directions in different places.  There is much confirmation to be found.  Kaid Benfield of the National Resources Defense Council looks at the numbers and points to places where sprawl seems to have the upper hand.  Closer to home, Sacramento County has recently approved a project that appears to be textbook sprawl.  Ultimately, I’m thankful to live in the North Bay where we haven’t been as fully seduced by sprawl.

From Speck’s introduction:

“We’ve known for three decades how to make livable cities – after forgetting for four – yet we’ve somehow not be able to pull it off.  Jane Jacobs, who wrote in 1960, won over the planners by 1980.  But the planners have yet to win over the city.

“Certain large cities, yes.  If you make your home in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, or a handful of other special places, you can have some confidence that things are on the right track.  But those locations are the exception.  In the small and midsized cities where most Americans spend their lives, the daily decisions of local officials are still, more often than not, making their lives worse.  This is not bad planning, but the absence of planning, or rather, decision-making disconnected from planning.  The planners were so wrong for so many years that now that they are mostly right, they are mostly ignored.”

Benfield concurs, looking in depth at where sprawl continues to be the predominant form of new land use.  Consistent with Speck’s observation, Benfield finds sprawl occurring not in metropolises, but in the hinterlands.

Closer to the North Bay is a recent land-use approval in Sacramento County.  On a controversial vote reported in the Sacramento Bee, the County Supervisors approved an 8,000-home master plan on 2,700-acre site, which is a disheartening 3 homes per acre.  The approval was based on the hope of a university occupying a portion of the land, an anticipation that, if not a complete pipedream, is at least unlikely.

Luckily, the North Bay, although not yet a bastion of urbanism, hasn’t been as badly seduced by sprawl.  Perhaps “stroads” function as our canary in the mineshaft.

Chuck Marohn of StrongTowns writes about stroads, a coined word for a roadway that a part rural highway and part city street, usually an overwhelming width of pavement with too many driveways, often accessing outsized retail, and providing an inhospitable environment for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Folks in the North Bay sometimes ask me to point to a stroad in our part of the world.  I struggle with the question.  Perhaps South Santa Rosa Boulevard in Santa Rosa?  Or maybe Soscol Avenue in Napa?  But neither is nearly as bad as the Midwest examples to which Marohn points.

One of the North Bay folks recently took a trip to Albuquerque.  He reported back that now he had truly seen what a stroad was.  And that he was thankful to live in the North Bay where we didn’t have stroads.

He’s right.  The North Bay wasn’t as fully seduced by sprawl as many other places.  Benfield doesn’t list the North Bay among his worst sprawl offenders.  But Speck would put us among the places where there are lessons still to be learned and minds to be changed.

The transition to urbanism will be easier for the North Bay.  But it’s a transition that still must be made.  The North Bay may have a competitive advantage over other regions because we have a headstart on urbanism.  But it’s a headstart that we can squander if we don’t pay attention.

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

Shared Streets: Novelty or Panacea?

I’ve previous written about the complete streets concept, which aims to give pedestrians and bicyclists facilities equal to those given to drivers.  I’ve also written about woonerfs, low speed residential streets in which the distinction between sidewalks and roadways is removed, forcing cars to drive slowly to accommodate folks not in vehicles.

In “Walkable City”, author Jeff Speck points toward a combination of the two, a European concept called “shared streets”.   On streets for which conventional traffic engineering would normally call for stop signs or signals, all traffic controls devices are instead removed.  Curbs and crosswalks are also removed.  And the streets are designed to encourage cars to move continuously but cautiously.  The expectation is that traffic movement will be improved.

Ten years ago, I would have called the concept a fairy tale.  And also made a comment about having a bridge to sell.

But ten years have taught me that urbanism, and drivers, can work in ways that don’t conform to our deeply-rooted expectations.  There is surprising evidence that shared streets can work.

Exhibit A is Poynton, Cheshire, England.  A surface intersection of two highways in the center of the village was creating large traffic jams and, by discouraging pedestrian crossings, was effectively dividing the village in half.

A shared street solution was proposed, in what is called a double-roundel configuration.  Sarah Goodyear of Atlantic Cities  describes further.  The article includes a video which, at fifteen minutes, seems twice as long as necessary, but is a good introduction to the problem and the apparent solution.  (Language note: The British use “pavement” to describe what those in the U.S. would call “sidewalks”.  Knowing this makes the video a little less confusing.)

Despite much initial skepticism, the Poynton traffic modifications seem to be working.   A local newspaper offers a cautious thumbs-up.  An internet search yields voices still willing to decry the solution, but those voices will always be present.

Even more surprising are the residents on the video who tie an uptick in local civility to the road configuration.  I believe that social interaction can be affected by physical form, but am surprised that casual observers could make the same connection as quickly as they did.

As Goodyear notes, the video producer is an advocate of shared streets and the concept has been less effective in other locations, but every new idea has a period during which its implementation issues are sorted out.

I’m not willing to concede that shared streets can be a panacea, but the concept seems to offer more potential than I would have expected.  And I offer kudos to Poynton and the other funding entities for spending the British equivalent of 6 million dollars on such a novel idea.

Bringing the issue closer to home, is there a traffic situation in the North Bay to which a shared street concept might apply?  My nomination is the street loop around Sonoma Plaza.  The stop sign controlled intersections have always seemed inefficient, especially at the corner of Broadway and Napa Street.

Shared streets offer much about which to think.  And more proof that Jeff Speck has written a book that is doing much to change the conversation about how cities, and villages, work.

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

“Walkable City” Filled with Well-Polished Insights

“Walkable City” by Jeff Speck doesn’t break much new ground.  But it doesn’t need to.  Instead, Speck takes a wealth of accumulated wisdom about walkability, polishes it to a warm patina, assembles it in a cohesive format, and presents it back to the reader.  An anecdote will help illustrate.

I know an architectural project manager who once took a creative approach to the development of adjoining parcels.

The development firm for whom he worked was committed to revitalizing a Sacramento neighborhood.  The area had once been bustling, but had fallen on hard times.  The neighborhood economy was so bad that the firm was able to acquire a pair of prime but vacant lots on the primary street.  And they decided to gamble big on a neighborhood rebound by concurrently constructing multi-story office buildings on both parcels.

The project manager selected a pair of architectural firms.  He specified brick as the facing material for the buildings and set the floor elevations for the upper floors.  He then insisted that each firm work solo.  He refused to tell either firm who the other firm was. 

At first, the firms were puzzled.  Then they became frustrated.  That wasn’t how modern architecture was done.  The designs needed to be coordinated so the buildings could look like they belonged together.  But the project manager was adamant and refused to proffer the names.

I was surprised by his courage in the matter, but am convinced he was right.  Jane Jacobs would have described his decision as promoting “fine-grained” development.  She was a proponent of having cities built in the smallest chunks possible.  She believed that a fine-grained land-use pattern would maximize the chances to experiment with different forms, finding the ones that would work best in particular neighborhoods.

Jacobs also believed that there are more reinvestment incentives in a fine-grained neighborhood.  The owner of an aging building can always spot a more successful building in the neighborhood to which he can aspire with a remodel.

And now Jeff Speck offers another common sense reason to commend the project manager’s decision.  In “Walkable City”, Speck writes about the four elements needed to promote walkability, which are usefulness, safety, comfort, and interest.   Speck specifically notes that architecture which changes as a pedestrian walks along a street creates interest.

Perhaps a pair of dissimilar buildings is only a small step toward building pedestrian interest.  But the fact that a step doesn’t comprise the entire journey isn’t a reason to reject the step if it’s heading in the right direction.   And walkability, like urbanism, is comprised of many small steps (pun intended).

What makes this insight about pedestrian interest particularly remarkable is that Speck presents it in a few sentences.  And that every few sentences in the entire book contains an insight of comparable value.  A highly walkable street is said to draw the pedestrian onward with promises of new points of interest in the next block.  Similarly, “Walkable City” draws readers onward with promises of new insights in the next paragraph.

Despite the continual cascade of walkability insights, Speck never comes across as a professor.  Instead, the mental image that appeared in my head was of a wise bartender, polishing walkability thoughts with a well-worn bar towel and dispenses them across the bar with an engaging good humor.

I won’t try to summarize the entire extent of “Walkable City” in a single blog post.  Instead, I’ll return to Speck regularly over the next few weeks.  And I encourage you to find a copy to read along.  I promise that you’ll enjoy the journey.

If you’re wondering what happened to the adjoining Sacramento buildings, the story ends on an unhappy note.  The economy collapsed, the design on both projects was halted, and the project manager moved to a different job.  But I still respect his vision.

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

Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my 60th birthday.  It’s also United Nations International Happiness Day.  I’m unsure how to reconcile those two facts.  Adding another level of coincidence, this is the 200th post that I’ve written for this blog.  I’m piling up milestones today.

Back to the birthday.  I don’t feel anguish at being 60 years of age.  Instead, I’m astonished at how the time has flown.  What happened to that gawky high school student and when was he replaced by the grey-headed gent in the mirror?

But it’s okay.  Time passes and memories are accumulated, most of them good memories.  And the support you’ve shown me over my first 200 blog posts is certainly among the good ones.

Nor do I have plans to end this blog anytime soon.  My father lived to be 88.  My mother will turn 82 next month and is going strong.  With any luck, a thousand blog posts or more aren’t out of the question.  (Although I remain willing to share the writing task if anyone is interested.  You know where to find me.)

Meanwhile, the motivation to write remains strong.  Blaise Pascal was a brilliant mathematician of the 17th century.  Near the height of his creative genius, he left the world of mathematics to throw himself into religion.  His argument, which is still known as Pascal’s Wager, was that if there was a god, spending full-time in worship was appropriate.  And if there wasn’t a god, then mathematics didn’t matter.  So the only rational course was to believe in god and to abandon mathematics.

Perhaps it’s presumptuous to argue with one of the most brilliant minds of all time, but maybe it’s my day to be presumptuous.  I believe Pascal had a third option.  To believe that there might be a god who prefers that we spend our energies in making life better for his creatures, not in following religious dogma.

I once worked with a very competent engineer.  He believed firmly that engineers should base decisions on data.  He argued that “The only rational position for an engineer is agnosticism.”  That sounds right to me.  I can’t prove the existence of any particular god, but neither can I disprove one.  So atheism would be as much of a leap of faith as religion.

(This isn’t meant to criticize those of faith.  There are days when I envy your beliefs, even if I find them puzzling.  And as John Lennon wrote, “Whatever gets you through the night, it’s alright, it’s alright.”)

If there is a god (and I hope there is) and if there is an afterlife (and I hope there is), then my belief is that the admission ticket to the best seats in the afterlife should be awarded based not on conformance to dogma, but on service to fellow human beings and to the world they share.

Once I decided that secular service was a third path in response to Pascal’s Wager, there were a number of options that I could have pursued.  I find that arguing for more urbanist land-use patterns is a reasonable one.  I believe that urbanism will give humankind more opportunities to thrive, and better odds to survive, in an uncertain future.  Besides, the cause resonates with me.  So here I am and here I will continue.

Now, I’m off to celebrate.  Or to begin writing my next blog post.  (They might be the same things.)

P.S. My sister, doing what sisters are good at, began my day by emailing me a quote from Washington Irving, "After a man passes sixty, his mischief is mainly in his head.”

With all due respect for his skills as a writer, I think Irving failed to adequately foretell the 21st century.  (If I can challenge the wisdom of Blaise Pascal, questioning Washington is nothing.)  In the 21st century, the post-60 man remains capable of mischief both on-line and in public forums.

Scheduling Notes and Follow-Ups

The Petaluma Urban Chat conversation last week was great.  The only shortcoming was that the reading assignment extended only through Section I of Jeff Speck’s “Walkable City”.  The real meat of the book is in Section II, so we left ourselves without much of a bone to chew.

However, everyone, especially those who had begun Section II, found the book particularly readable and informative, so we decided to read all of Section II by the next Urban Chat, which will be Thursday, April 9.

If you haven’t done so already, I highly suggest securing “Walkable City”.  And then I suggest joining us in April.

Also, the Petaluma Planning will begin consideration of the Petaluma Station Area Plan at their regular meeting on Tuesday, March 26.  The public is invited to the meeting, which will begin in the City Council chambers at 7:00pm.

Finally, last week’s post on “Jake’s Walks” didn’t receive the response for which I had hoped.  Not one person offered a route for an urban walk in their own communities.  However, several folks, including some not from Petaluma, were intrigued by the Petaluma walk I described and asked if we could schedule a group walk along my route.  No date has yet been picked, but perhaps we can do something on the day of Jane’s Walk, which is Saturday, May 4.  What do others think?

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

Moving from StrongTowns to Walkability

Over the past few months, I’ve written often about the StrongTowns theory.  The argument is that our economy is unable to fund the maintenance of the infrastructure we’ve built, a shortfall which has long-term implications for our lives and our places.  It’s an intriguing theory in which there seems to be much truth.  To me, the only question is how much current infrastructure is economically unsustainable.

Many have read the StrongTowns Curbside Chat booklet.  For those who haven’t, it remains recommended reading.

In Petaluma, the culmination of the StrongTowns discussion came last week, when StrongTowns founder Charles Marohn participated in a video chat, including a question and answer session.  We asked Marohn about how to do a survey to assess our local infrastructure issues.  He provided some general guidance.

We also asked about his position on economic stimulus during hard times.  Marohn is known for describing “shovel-ready projects” as the projects that a municipality designed but then shelved because they were so financially ridiculous.  The plans only come off the shelf when the federal government offers free money.

Marohn was ambivalent about the role of stimulus, but concluded that if stimulus is used, he’d suggest that it only be for maintenance.

It’s also good to note the press is beginning to recognize the StrongTowns works.  In this article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a reporter consults local tax rolls to determine the validity of the StrongTowns argument.   He finds exactly what StrongTowns told him to expect.

But all good things must end.  The StrongTowns theory will remain something to which I’ll return when it’s appropriate to the conversation.  Which I expect to be frequently.  But for the next few months, walkability will take a leading role in this blog.  Not in every post, but walkability will have a recurring place.

With a particular role will be Jeff Speck’s recent book, “Walkable City”.  A month ago, I noted that “Walkable City” was the hot book in urbanism as 2013 dawned.    Nothing has changed since then, with Speck doing talks across the country as his book attracts broad interest.

Speck’s public role includes this podcast with Marohn of StrongTowns interviewing Speck (click on Podcast #127) and this YouTube video with Sacramento Press interviewing Speck.   For those who know the downtown grid of Sacramento (I spent my high school years in a suburb of Sacramento), Speck’s Sacramento Press comments have particular pertinence.

To give an overview of the book, Speck begins by making the case for walkability, covering a range of motivations for more walkable places, including property values, public health, climate change, and infrastructure.  He concludes by noting that for a route to be walkable, it must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting.  (In the StrongTowns podcast, he notes that walkability efforts in the U.S. have typically focused only on safe.  And haven’t done that particularly well.)

Speck then offers design strategies for providing those four elements of successful walkability.

I’ve completed much of the book and found it remarkably accessible, insightful, and motivational.  I look forward to sharing thoughts about it with you.

Also, Petaluma Urban Chat has selected “Walkable City” as their next reading assignment.  If you live near Petaluma, you’re encouraged to join us on March 12 for a discussion.

As spring approaches, let’s get walkable.

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