Think Globally, Act Locally . . . Petaluma Style

Once again, I apologize for sometimes being Petaluma-centric.  I truly try to maintain a North Bay focus, but there is so much stuff going on under my nose here in Petaluma that I can’t ignore it.  Today will be a blow-out of Petaluma updates.

Fairgrounds Re-Use: Here is my long-promised update about the efforts by Petaluma Urban Chat on the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds.  As a recap for newcomers, the Fairgrounds are owned by the City and leased to the Sonoma Marin Fair Board.  The current lease will expire in 2023 and the City has expressed an interest in continuing to have a Fair, but also in reclaiming a portion of the site for other economic uses.

In support of the City direction and to ensure that the new site uses incorporate the urbanist direction in which Petaluma should be heading, Urban Chat has prepared an independent plan for re-use of a portion of the Fairgrounds.  The plan was prepared over a course of several months and involved at one time or another up to forty members of the community.

It’s a good plan and there’s much to commend in it.  However, a two-dimensional depiction of colored blocks isn’t always the best tool to fire the enthusiasm of those not accustomed to reading land-use plans.

So, the Urban Chat Fairgrounds group has decided to develop renderings of the plan, presenting three-dimensional perspectives for presentation to the general public.

But renderings are a major endeavor.  We’ve located design professionals who are also excited by the vision for the Fairgrounds site and who are willing to work cheap, but not for free, to prepare renderings.

To fund the effort, we’re establishing a fundraising effort on IOBY, a Kickstarter-type organization which works exclusively on non-profit land-use, public place, and community involvement efforts that focus on the betterment of cities and towns.  (For those who enjoy a good acronym, IOBY stands for “In Our Backyard”, an alternative to the frequent urbanist NIMBY “Not in Our Backyard” foes.)

We’re still working on the IOBY paperwork, so the Fairgrounds efforts isn’t yet posted on the IOBY site, but I suggest taking a look at the projects now on IOBY to learn of some of the great ideas being pursued elsewhere.  Then, hopefully by early next week, you can return to participate in the tax-deductible fundraising for the Fairgrounds re-use renderings.

Food Trucks: In another update related to Petaluma Urban Chat, we had a good May meeting on the idea of food truck parks.  Not everyone was convinced that the concept was an unalloyed good, but all agreed that the conversation should continue.  And City of Petaluma staff has asked to be kept apprised of our thinking as they try to find an official City position on food trucks.

The tentative plan is to arrange an Urban Chat outing or two to food truck parks.  At present, no outings have been scheduled, but stay tuned for updates.

Petaluma Urban Chat: Looking ahead at Urban Chat, the next regular meeting will be Tuesday, June 9, 5:30pm at the regular meeting place, the Aqus Café at 2nd and H Streets in Petaluma.  I’ll suggest we convene for a discussion of the Fairgrounds effort and perhaps also a chat about urban destinations for summer travel.  (Personally, I’ll be visiting New Orleans for the first time and will be eager to observe the urbanist lessons that came from the redevelopment after Katrina.)

But I’ll suggest that the meeting on the 9th stay casual and short because I have an idea for a second Urban Chat meeting in June.

If Urban Chat is going to offer thoughts on the future of the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds, we really should be attending the Fair to ensure that our understanding of the role of the Fair is up-to-date.

I suggest an Urban Chat outing to the Sonoma Marin Fair on Wednesday, June 24.  The musical group that evening is Tower of Power, the most urban of the acts booked for the Fair.  (Plus, I’m a sucker for a rocking brass section.)

Furthermore, because the Urban Chat plan for the Fairgrounds calls for a strengthened transit connection between the Fairgrounds and downtown, I’ll suggest that the Urban Chat group assemble downtown and ride Petaluma Transit to the Fairgrounds.

We can discuss details at the June 9th meeting.

Fair Street: As a result of the City Repair conversation about 18 months ago, the residents along Fair Street in front of Petaluma High School have put out a questionnaire about Fair Street traffic.  (I also played a small role.)  They will use the results to formulate a possible City Repair project.

If you drive Fair Street often or just want to see what a neighborhood traffic survey might ask, check out the survey here.

And keep an eye on this effort.  It may become a template for other civic activism.

Municipal Committees: Every year about this time, the Petaluma City Council appoints new members to commissions and committees, from the Planning Commission to the Animal Services Advisory Committee.  I suspect other North Bay cities have similar processes.

If you’re excited by the urbanist thinking in this blog, but are unsure where to direct your new enthusiasm, several of the bodies may offer an opportunity.

To be clear, it’s not like any of the bodies have specifically urbanist goals, but there are opportunities to push urbanist perspectives.  On the Transit Committee, I’ve continually advocated for awareness of the opportunities that SMART will provide.  I’m also pushing for an ad hoc committee of Transit and Pedestrian/Bicycle members to look at pedestrian connectivity to bus stops.

But not every urbanist concept is readily accepted.  My suggestion as a member of the Recreation, Music, and Parks Commission that we consider selling portions of a few parks to fund improvements needed to make the parks more popular fell completely flat.

If those kinds of opportunities intrigue, and you’re willing to deal with disappointment of the occasional rebuff, you should look at the appointment possibilities.  Further information can be found here.

Transit Coordination: My last post was on the need for constant attention to regional transit coordination while also maintaining strong intra-city transit service.  Only hours after publishing that post, I heard good news on the regional coordination front.

Working under their Transit Sustainability Project, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has selected a team of consultants to work with the transit agencies of Marin and Sonoma Counties to develop a coordinated strategy for the coming SMART commuter rail.

One might argue the transit agencies should be able to sort out coordination issues without the need of an outside consulting team.   But one could also argue that couples should be able to make relationships work without a need for marriage counselors.  Sometimes outside observers are necessary to break down walls and to provide new perspectives.  And, by my count, the SMART corridor coordination is a six-agency marriage.  And six unique agency perspectives likely have a greater need for intervention than the two perspectives in a marriage.

The transportation firm Nelson\Nygaard will be part of the consulting team.  The firm is well-known for their cutting edge thinking on modern transportation systems.   I became acquainted with several members of the firm during their work on the Petaluma Station Area master plan and I’m pleased that they’ll be involved in this effort.

I’m excited by the MTC effort and will be eagerly observing as it proceeds.

Measure A: To close with more of a North Bay note, this blog encourages a Yes vote on Sonoma County’s pending Measure A, a five-year quarter cent sales tax increment with proceeds targeted for transportation projects.

In part, my endorsement is the result of many cities pledging 10 percent of any proceeds for transit.  But more important is my continued belief that if we built roads, we need to maintain them.  I still believe we need a parallel conversation about whether we should be changing our approach to new infrastructure because of our frequent unwillingness or inability to fund the upkeep.   But regard of when that conversation begins and where it leads, we should maintain the stuff we already have.

In my next post, I’ll begin a multi-post assessment of a situation that is developing around the two proposed SMART stations in Petaluma.  But before anyone grumbles about the continuing Petaluma-centricity, let me say that the Petaluma situation is only a lens to look at how communities should grow, a subject that has regional and national importance.

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

CNU 22: Techno Narcissism

I returned a few days ago from CNU 22, the 22nd annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism.  The conference was filled with urbanist ideas and will lead to many blog posts.  Going to a CNU annual meeting to learn more about urbanism is like standing under nearby Niagara Falls to slake a thirst.

This will be my third post based on CNU 22.  I began with some broad insights about urbanism that were honed by the conference.

Next, I began to focus in a little more tightly on urbanist themes, but not in depth.  Just short snippets of conversations or observations to give a flavor of the conference.  That’s the mode in which I’ll continue today.

Eventually, I’ll delve more deeply into to the CNU 22 content, but that level of analysis is still more than a week away.  For today, it’s strictly snapshots.

Techno Narcissism: I’ve written about James Howard Kunstler on multiple occasions, including a review of his book “The Geography of Nowhere” and his response to the Chris Christie bridge controversy in New Jersey.

At various times, I’ve described Kunstler as an urbanist rabble-rouser or an urbanist flame-thrower.  But at CNU 22, I decided that he was more the urbanist Hunter S. Thompson.  The image was cemented when he attended an early Saturday presentation, deep in the bowels of the convention center in a partially dimmed room far from sunlight, wearing the darkest possible sunglasses.  Perhaps he was hiding the damage from a busy Friday night.  Perhaps he was burnishing an image.  Either way, he made a statement.

But he’d made his greatest mark at CNU 22 when he spoke at a plenary session the day before.  He’s a fiery and compelling speaker.  As the speaker after him noted, the scariest three words on the urbanism speaking circuit are “You follow Kunstler.”

He made numerous outrageous and incendiary comments, reminding me that I’m happy he’s on my side of the debate, not the other.

But that one comment that stuck out for me was his description of the vertical farms that have been proposed by a handful of architects.  The concept is large, multi-million-dollar green walls dedicated to growing produce for the population.  It seemed an odd and unnecessary idea to me, filling a need that could be met far more cost-effectively on an acre of bare land at the city fringes.  I suspected that architectural egos were overwhelming common sense.

Kunstler wasn’t as temperate in his response.  He described the concept as “techno narcissist bullshit”.

Not the words I would have chosen, but not ones with which I would disagree either.

(For the record, Kunstler is fine with urban gardens, using the flat rooftops that would otherwise sit empty.  It’s only the expensive vertical farms that attract his disdain.)

(Also for the record, I share most of Kunstler’s concerns about the path of civilization, but not the full extent of his pessimism.  I expect that we’ll muddle through with less catastrophic disruption than he does.  Although it’s past time to start muddling in the right direction.)

Under- Representation of Engineers:   On the first day of the conference, I attended a session on tactical urbanism, which is comprised of small-scale, low-cost interventions that try to prove up the concepts of urbanism without significant risk.

As the half-day session got underway, the organizers asked for a show of hands about the backgrounds of the participants.  Not surprisingly, most were urban planners, architects, or community activists.  But it was still disappointing that in a crowd of fifty-some people, there were only two engineers, including me.

I suspect that much of the conference had a similar ratio.  It’s a shame that more engineers don’t look at the bigger picture.  Perhaps it’s an indictment of the engineering education system.  Perhaps it’s the nature of the folks who are attracted to engineering as a career.  Either way, I’m pleased to fall several standard deviations from the mean.

Daffodils: At the tactical urbanism session, a community organizer from near Buffalo described a clandestine traffic project undertaken by him and his cohorts.  It was a great story that I’ll describe more fully in another post.

The climax came when the group, in the dead of the night, marked out an alternative curb line, trying to slow traffic and to improve pedestrian safety.  In addition to white paint, they marked the new line with orange traffic cones screwed into the pavement.

Then, to ensure that the citizens understood that it hadn’t been the public works department doing the work, the vigilante traffic engineers put a daffodil into each cone before they disappeared into the night.

To me, the thought of orange traffic cones topped with yellow daffodils is an enduring mental image of tactical urbanism.

IOBY:  An organization has been founded to help with crowd-funding of tactical urbanist projects.  The founder spoke at the tactical urbanist session, noting that her company accomplishes two goals, raising money and raising public awareness to opportunities and challenges.  She suspected that the latter will ultimately prove more important.

But the fun part was the name she chose for her organization.  Recognizing that NIMBYism (Not in My Back Yard) is often the opponent of tactical urbanism, she called her effort IOBY for “In Our Backyard”.   I love the message.

In my next post, more on CNU 22.

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

P.S. The photo is of a former single-family home about a block from the convention center and reflect the former glory of Buffalo.