The New SimCity Baffles Urban Planners

In a fascinating experiment, Fast Company brought in teams of urban planners to tackle the new SimCity. All were supporters of New Urbanism, an urban design movement that focuses on sustainability, walkability, mixed-use developments, and connectivity.

The results were disastrous. Although the planing teams began with the best of intentions, they instead ended up with coal-fueled cities, sprawling suburbs, high taxes, and casinos.

Part of the problem was that the planners--just like real-life city governments--fell prey to short term thinking when the financial incentives for "bad" planning behavior were simply to appealing to ignore. But the larger problem was thinking that every element of city life can be controlled from the top.

Says Fast Company's John McDermott:

The game’s beauty lies in the fact that--like in real life--creating a “perfect” city is impossible. What makes cities great, rather, are their imperfections. By placing millions of error-prone humans within a limited vicinity, cities constantly force their inhabitants to bump into one another physically, mentally, and emotionally. A truly great city isn’t governed by an algorithm, it’s one that routinely delivers the unpredictable.

How Bikes Can Save Us

Via Brooklyn Cruiser

Hooray! A New Bike Boulevard!

I'm a big fan of bike boulevards and I recently mourned the fact that moving into a new house meant that I spent less time traveling this way. In my old apartment, being on the bike boulevard six or eight times a week was not unusual. As I said at the time, location is:

 "...the crux of the problem with such limited networks for bike travel. A mile or so of dedicated roadway is wonderful, until you have to go someplace else in town."

Imagine my surprise then when a city notice arrived at our house. Not only are they proposing to extend the current bike boulevard all the way to Stephens Lake Park (offering a safe and direct connection from downtown, through campus, and into the park) but they're also proposing turning our street into a second bike boulevard.

It makes perfect sense--the MKT Trail entrance is just a mile south of us and aside from having to cross a couple busy streets and climb the worst hill in the city, it's a straight shot. Heading in the other direction, it's also a nice connector to all the neighborhoods to the north looking for a safe route to the trail. Non-residential vehicular traffic will be directed to more appropriate thoroughfares, keeping the bike boulevard safer for two-wheeled traffic.

Portland's Bike Boulevards Become Neighborhood Greenways from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

Portland--no surprise--has added some great amenities to their bike boulevards that not only make it safer for cyclists, but will benefit the neighborhood as a whole:

• Speed bumps to slow traffic
• Concrete medians with cuts for bikes and pedestrians
• Stop signs oriented to give preference to cyclists
• Signage highlighting distance and time to key destinations
• Landscaping doubling as stormwater retention basins
• Mini-parks in neighborhoods with limited public space
• Integration into their version of a Walking School Bus program

These aren't just niceties, they are all elements that will ensure the success of this type of program. It's not a done deal yet here in our city but the public process is starting and I will definitely be there in support.

Arts Districts and the Power of Swerve

We walk through cities everyday but rarely do we ask how this messy mix of buildings, people and infrastructure come to be. Who planned this?

Planning used to be fairly straight forward. It came from a man with a vision. A planner would look at a public space, decide the best use for it, and then tell the public.

We’re all familiar with the spaces created by these men of vision. Pierre L’Enfant and his Washington DC. Lucia Costa and his Brasilia. Walt Disney and Tomorrowland.

But the problem with public spaces is that the public insists on using them.

So for every famous man who plans a pedestrian mall lined with monuments celebrating democracy, you've got a much less famous man who decides that’s the perfect place to sell t-shirts.

The problem is, cities are places where people live and because of that they are constantly adapting, molding, and reinventing their surrounding to fit their needs, not the vision of the planner. And that’s exactly what makes a city interesting—the ways people use it. I would argue that any public space that isn't being adapted by the public is, simply put, a poorly designed space.

Planners eventually got the message and the planning process shifted to incorporate the public. And in a nicely ironic twist, they gave this process a name no member of the public understands. They called it a charrette—which is apparently French for groups of people sitting around tables drawing on maps.

And that’s exactly how it works. The planner opens his doors to the public and they all sit in groups, drawing on maps and making lists of what they’d like to see. Ideally, the best ideas should rise to the top and the resulting space is one that will be used by the public because the public help create it.

I've participated in more of these than I can count and interestingly enough, regardless of the city, the area within the city, and the people involved, it’s pretty much the same list. People always want a farmers market, and usually a grocery store as well. Everyone wants to see artist studios, galleries, and public art. Loft apartments always make the list as does green space. Everyone wants a park.

So the planner takes all these ideas, put them in a well organized plan with lovely sketches of the streetscape, complete with 40 year old trees and fashionable people sitting in sidewalk cafes, and then puts it all in a binder and proudly hands it over to the community--here is your publicly-generated plan.

And the community says “thank you” and then puts it on a shelf and that’s where it usually stays.

There’s many reasons for this. Often these plans aren't much more than a community’s wish list. Market forces are glossed over, supply and demand are ignored, and funding sources are non-existent.

Our time would have been better spent writing a letter to Santa.

This type of planning is well-intentioned but it misses the key point. This is not how great cities are made.

Cities are messy, they’re alive and most of the time, the planners are struggling to keep up with changes that are happening naturally all around them. Great cities happen from the bottom up. Think New York City versus Irvine, California. A random encounter on the sidewalk can have a greater effect on the structure of the city than a formalized plan.

Author Steven Johnson describes these random encounters as “the swerve.”

How does this work? People travel through the city in set routes. There’s a well worn path between my office the nearest coffee shop. But if you see something interesting just off your route, you swerve. A new shop, a sidewalk café, an art installation. Pretty soon, traffic patterns change. That little bubble is incorporated into the larger whole.

Then the next guy comes along and decides he’d like to take advantage of all the new traffic. So he decides to open a business just outside this area—usually because that’s where the rents are low and vacancies are high. And people swerve again. And then the next person comes along and she decides to open up a restaurant and more people swerve. And over time, you've created a busy urban street where there wasn't anything before.

Who plans this? According to Johnson, No one--and everyone. There is no leader. It’s nothing more than a series of small, independent decisions but together, they become a whole.

You may as well ask, “who planned the web?” Google may offer us a directory but that’s like referring to the phone book as an urban planning document.

So given this, what’s the best way to plan? And if cities are created from the ground up, what’s the role of the planner? Part of it is adapting to what’s happening organically, on the street level.

The idea that some types of areas could emerge organically first took root with something called Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities or NORCs. It used to be that we’d create planned retirement communities with easy access to all the necessary health and social services. And then we’d pack up all the seniors and move them to this community. There’s a much easier way to do this though. Residential neighborhoods age at fairly consistent rates. A neighborhood is built and everyone moves in at the same time, they all have children at the same time, and they all retire at the same time—naturally creating a retirement community. A much better idea is to move the needed services into these neighborhood, leaving the people in place.

It’s the same thing with Naturally Occurring Arts Districts. These are areas that emerge organically from an existing base of community assets. They are formed naturally, by the swerve.

We’ve got one here in Columbia—the North Village Arts District. Seven or eight years ago, when my organization was doing some downtown planning, we drew a circle around one underused section of downtown—the North Village—and said “this is our arts district.”

It was utter hubris on our part. We had no plan, no funding, and no marketing campaign. But we had what we thought was a good foundation of existing assests. The area had historically been the bohemian counterpart to the rest of downtown—the Strollway where women shopped in hats and white gloves. Susan Taylor Glasgow, a nationally recognized glass artist, was doing some really interesting things with public art. And of course, there was Mojo’s so we had a steady stream of live music.  We started recruiting arts-friendly businesses to the area.

And then one day Mark Timberlake walked into my office and said, "I just bought an old roofing company over on Orr Street. What should I do with it?" I had been fielding calls for months from artists looking for affordable space so I didn't hesitate. "Artist studios."

To my surprise, he listened--and then he talked to people.  Artists. Contractors. He learned about adaptive reuse. And soon, we had Orr Street Studios. Artists leased space. They hung paintings on the walls. Hosted events. Turned the doors themselves into works of art. And soon, people started to swerve.

Enough that Mark bought the diaper factory next door and started to work on that. Then, John Ott bought some property in the area and started recruiting artists there as well. Lisa Bartlett opened Artlandish  Gallery and runs the Catacombs, a collection of artists in a warren of tunnels underneath her shop. More people began to swerve.

And then we worked with the city to improve infrastructure--undergrounding utility lines, installing street lights, adding crosswalks and bike racks, hanging banners. 

It expanded to all sorts of creative types--dance companies, graphic designers, photographers, web developers. Mojo’s grew and Forest Rose Park was born. And one day, the Cafe Berlin packed their entire restaurant into a caravan of bikes and moved into the old gas station. More swerve.

And then PS Gallery, a well-established gallery on Broadway, learned they had to relocate. The first question everyone asked was, “Are you moving to the North Village Arts District?” The answer was yes. Swerve.

So now you walk through the North Village Arts District and yes, we have both a Farmers Market and a grocery. We have artist studios and galleries and public art. We have a park. And we even have those loft apartments. 

But not because a planner, sitting by himself, envisioned this neighborhood in exactly this way. It’s because the artists and the business owners and the property owners and all of us had small, individual ideas on how to take advantage of the swerve. 

So we ask the question again. Who planned the North Village Arts District? The answer is no one. And everyone.

TEDxCity2.0: A day of urban inspiration.

"For one day only, the TEDx platform will harness the power of people across the globe to encourage them to host a TEDx event, themed "City 2.0," featuring the brightest local minds and biggest hearts.

In unison, we'll share the stories of our beloved homes. Where are the bright spots? The creative adaptations? The transformative responses to injustice? Who is asking the most pressing questions? Pioneering the most complex solutions? Speakers may focus on official City 2.0 themes, including Art, Education, Food, Health, Housing, Play, Public Space, and Safety--all elements whose presence will dictate the success of our future cities."

I'll have the pleasure of speaking at theTEDxCoMo event on Saturday, October 13, exploring how cities are planned (or not) and the rising phenomenon of organically occurring arts districts.

For details, visit www.tedxcomo.org or check out their facebook page at www.facebook.com/TEDxCoMo.

Keep Away From Our Fancy Houses

When the state began a rails-to-trails program to transform the KATY railroad line into a bike trail, the City of Columbia had the foresight to transform their own spur line as well. Now, the MKT Trail connects directly into the KATY Trail, bringing cyclists from all over Missouri right into Columbia.

The MKT isn't just for tourists--it's become part playground, part transportation hub for so many Columbians. Whether it's an afternoon walk with the family, a short cut for those biking to work, or a safe place for neighborhood kids to bike, the appeal of the MKT is unmistakable.

What it does depend on for its success is neighborhood access points. Formal or informal, public or private, these access points are how people discover the trail. Every time I've moved, one of my first objectives is to figure out how to get to the MKT from my new home.

There's one access point that I've used on a regular basis for the last 10 years--a path about 15 yards long located in a neighborhood that backs right up to the trail. When I lived in this section of town, I used it almost daily.

Imagine my surprise then, when I noticed that a "No Trespassing" sign had been erected at the entrance to the trail.

I don't know the rationale behind this change but at some point, the surrounding residents must have decided that allowing public access to the trail from their neighborhood was somehow detrimental. In my experience though, this path was free of any sort of problems. No one was getting mugged. No unsavory characters were hanging out. There weren't even many well-meaning families plopping down on people's yards to rest. In fact, homes bordering trails have lower rates of burglary and vandalism than the national average.

One interesting factor here is that the half million dollars homes in this neighborhood were actually built after the MKT Trail was constructed. There was never any misunderstanding that they would be living adjacent to a city trail.

This appears to be part of a larger desire among some to keep the public away. We've seen it before in other cities--protesting against new transit stops, for instance--and it's truly a method of closing down a neighborhood to outside interlopers. Transportation--be it a bus, a subway or a bike--is a great leveler. Not only does it allow people to travel into any section of a city, it also brings highly diverse people together.

This move shuts down a critical access point for the trail. It's a safe way to enter the MKT from a local elementary school and from other nearby neighborhoods and it allows everyone to avoid biking down a busy thoroughfare to the next access point about a mile away. Besides, it's such an unfriendly sign.

Imagine if the residents had instead decided instead to install a sign that said, "Welcome to our neighborhood. We hope you enjoy your time on the beautiful MKT Trail."

Bike Boulevards

I spent a lot of time last summer on our city's bike boulevard. It's a short, bike-friendly stretch of road designed to better connect our downtown with a college and a popular neighborhood to the east. I enjoyed winding my way past the community gardens and through campus into our arts district. And although they've faded somewhat, I loved the murals painted at the intersections.

Photo courtesy of comogardens.org

Photo courtesy of GearInches.com

I'd estimate I averaged between 6 and 8 trips a week down this boulevard, both during the day and at night, and I always felt safer than on other, more car-oriented streets.

I wasn't the only one. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune:

"Traffic counts the city conducted in spring 2010, when the boulevard was established, and this spring showed that motorized traffic reduced from 942 vehicles per day to 522 — a 45 percent reduction — and that bicycle traffic measured during peak times more than doubled, from 33 to 71.

The city also measured lower speeds for motorized traffic on the boulevard, with average speeds decreasing from 26 miles per hour in spring 2010 to 24 mph this spring. And residents living near the bike boulevard report liking what they have seen: A city survey revealed overwhelming support for the idea, and an overwhelming majority of respondents agreed the boulevard improves the image of the neighborhood."

I'm an avid cyclist--I have a trail bike and a commuter bike--and a bike is often my preferred choice of transportation when I'm heading to work, to the market, or even out on a Saturday night.

Imagine my surprise, then, when it dawned on me I hadn't been on the bike boulevard once this summer.

Why? Because I moved.

Last summer, I literally lived at one end of the bike boulevard and my boyfriend lived at the other. It was our own personal route between each other's homes. Now that we've moved into a house on the other side of downtown, we no longer have easy access to the bike boulevard and, more importantly, it doesn't go where we need it to.

And that's the crux of the problem with such limited networks for bike travel. A mile or so of dedicated roadway is wonderful, until you have to go someplace else in town.

Fortunately, the city already has fairly good trail system and is working on creating connections between existing trails. They're also looking at extending the current bike boulevard--but, unfortunately, not to the extent that it would be useful to everyone in town. In fact, going back and trying to establish a larger network of roads dedicated to bike travel by severely limiting current car traffic seems like it would be both a planning and a public relations nightmare.

So maybe our little bike boulevard can continue to exist for those who live along its route and prefer a bike over a car on a nice summer day. And maybe it can serve as a reminder that there are other models for building roads that include multiple forms of transportation. And maybe it will inspire us, as a city, to do more  to build these connections between well-traveled bike routes and popular destinations.

I've become much more accustomed to sharing the road with cars now so I only miss the bike boulevard occasionally. And on Saturday nights we're still cycling--only this time, we're on our tandem.