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Looking Backward

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Some quick shot updates and observations to start this week’s contribution.

Kids are doing wheelies in areas with heavy concentrations of pedestrians in places other than Springfield as it turns out. Commercial Street in Provincetown is the finest example of a shared space corridor that I have seen anywhere. For cars and delivery trucks it is a one way street, for bikes it is a two way corridor, and pedestrians wend their way along sidewalks on either side or along roadway. 

Twice I saw kids “riding recklessly” up Commercial Street, and I was quick enough to snap a picture of it once:

The shops didn’t close, people didn’t run away in fear, and that despite the fact that in one case the miscreant was clearly of the minority persuasion. On that occasion the cyclist did, in fact, slam into a car, but since the car was barely moving there was no noticeable damage to car, to bicycle, or to the rider.

KMO appears to be getting fed up with Bellows Falls, Vermont. My readers might recall I visited Bellows Falls a few years ago with my wife to attend a screening of the Wizard of Oz, and we passed through it while taking the Vermonter to Burlington. It’s a picturesque little town perfectly situated to be just the kind of community which could thrive in the Long Emergency, but KMO is less interested in collapse these days, and much more focused on the chaos which Artificial Intelligence will unleash upon us all. As is always the case with these questions I think the best strategy is to create a life you love which has facets that can be helpful in as many as possible of the multiplicity of scenarios we may face.

As an interesting aside, KMO has spoken at length, many times, about his view that it was at least in part a crisis in his own life which caused him to latch on to what might be termed “sudden collapse doomerism”. While he still concedes that the Peak Oil phenomenon is having and will have far reaching effects, he regrets that his doomerism caused him to both alter his life so drastically, and distracted him from the impacts technological advances were having on society.

All very reasonable. There’s a lot in the tech sphere which doesn’t interest me, most of it in fact. My lack of interest in it, of course, doesn’t preclude it from biting me in the ass, and so I try to keep abreast through those who are interested in it; like KMO.

On the other hand, I find his assertions regarding “doomerism”, and its correlation to an overall failure in life, interesting. For many people it may be so, I wouldn’t argue against that. What interests me more, however, is the tendency of the depressed to actually be better at assessing themselves, i.e. avoiding Dunning-Kruger, and their life situation. That is to say that people going through tough times may very well be more likely to become doomers, but that not only doesn’t mean they’re wrong, it may mean that they are more likely to be right.

Hampshire College appears to be pulling back from the abyss, but their plan for survival, surprisingly, doesn’t appear to follow the guidelines I suggested. I recommended they sell the entire property so that it could revert to farmland, and that they move their campus to downtown Holyoke. For those unwilling to follow the link, the reason I suggested that is that one of their professors, Michael Klare, is perhaps the world’s leading expert on resource depletion, and yet the campus of Hampshire College is perhaps the finest example of edu-sprawl in the United States with a Walkscore of 17 whereas downtown Holyoke has a Walkscore of 90!

Instead, the plan is to sell land for…auto-oriented sprawl! 




Do as I say, not as I do?

If you haven’t read Chuck Marohn’s series on his transformation from free market ideologue to Strong Towns advocate I recommend you change that. The core of the Strong Towns message is still the most important in the United States today. As with many simple messages it can become corrupted with well meaning but misguided and naive orthodoxies, but supporting the traditional development pattern and eschewing auto oriented development is the key to economic and environmental survival.

To close on an optimistic note, some years ago I remarked on the general skepticism of the public regarding intercity rail in the region by highlighting how two significant local radio personalities mocked the rehabilitation of Union Station and the expansion of CT Rail into Springfield as a ridiculous backward looking fixation on a “choo-choo”. Last week Bax and O’Brien discussed (minute 14)the Springfield to Boston rail study, and their only critique was that the state was not moving fast enough to expand commuter options via rail.

That said, the success of the CT Rail Hartford Line hasn’t been well advertised; I’ve yet to see a story pop up at City Lab or Planetizen despite the fact that the New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield metros it serves have a combined population of 3 million people in an area 1/2 the size of greater Denver. The expansion of service north to Holyoke, Northampton, and Greenfield next month has likewise received no attention despite the fact that it is the start of what I believe could be the most significant transformation this region has seen since the National Armory was situated in Springfield by George Washington. 

Those three communities plus Springfield connected, eventually, by frequent and reliable rail service make the region one of the most dynamic its size in the country with: the second highest concentration of universities, lots of low cost housing, major corporate headquarters, abundant water for drinking, manufacturing, and hydro-power, loads of tourist attractions, quick and easy access to a wide variety of recreation, all wedged in neatly between Boston and New York City.

Lobster Dogs

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An interesting discussion has been taking place at Strong Towns about whether or not the public wants drastic change; for me there are a tremendous number of right answers to this question, all of which contain some truth and many of which seem contradictory. Do people in suburbia want to change the way they live? No. They want to keep doing what they’ve been doing but with different outcomes be they financial, social, or environmental.

A long time ago Chuck Marohn used the hot dog versus lobster example to elucidate the preference for suburban living. While I experience urbanity as the crustacean and the suburbs as the frankfurter in my own gastro-urban aesthetic what he goes on to say  is that the suburban subsidies present in the build out phase of suburbia gave people the option of choosing between lobster and hot dogs without accurate information regarding their relative costs and so people have become accustomed to getting the high cost option without regard to its expense.

Now that the costs are becoming harder and harder to hide with further growth within the Suburban Ponzi scheme, asking if that public wants drastic change is, perhaps, a question which is too easily, if willfully, misinterpreted: Drastic change? Yes, in that they want a drastic change in the reality which doesn’t allow them to consume lobster at hot dog prices indefinitely. 

As a resident of a city where the entirety of the preceding is nearly meaningless, my experiences with the public have been starkly different and in many ways inverse. Here we’ve been paying a different price for a development pattern which, while a bit more on the hot dog end of the expense continuum, has managed to leave us impoverished in many ways and in the here and now. Many people here, especially those who haven’t been exposed to places where the traditional development pattern has continued to function without the baleful impacts of suburban vampirism (i.e. continental Europe), still see auto oriented development as the road to prosperity even as its first adopters fall into decline. 

What this means is that much of “the public” wants buildings razed and the space devoted to parking increased, among other things. As with cargo cults, what they have witnessed is that certain behaviors have brought sought after results but they do not know that the circumstances under which that relationship obtained were provisional. What makes it even harder is that in the case of auto oriented development the benefits of acting out the cultic rituals still bring immediate benefits; if I am the only retailer on a strip of traditional Main Street with an exclusive parking lot the harm to walkability accrues to all, but all the benefits belong to me. This more or less invisible externality gives the public not just erroneous but inverted market signals.

It’s not surprising then that the public often begs to have its throat cut on the altar of sprawl.

In my experience the planners and the experts in economic development HERE have been just as ignorant as the general public on all of these issues until very, very recently and so asking about whether “great men” should contrive to “push through” their grand plans in contravention to the public’s ignorance isn’t a thing I’ve contemplated. I have learned from reading and listening to people whose opinions I respect that other places are very different in this regard; in some the leaders are enlightened and the populace is benighted, in others the reverse is true, yet still in others minorities of the enlightened, or not, hold sway over their adversaries disproportionately. In some areas meetings last into the wee hours with multitudes wishing to have their say, in others, no one gets involved.

Finding a “one size fits all” process which can be trusted to give a desirable outcome is the procedural equivalent of a mega-structure or silver bullet. The processes by which to create the drastic change we need from a system in which the momentum of even the desire for drastic change often flows in opposition to the change that’s needed will have to be as emergent as the change itself.

Chuck’s Response 

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I sent the text of the post entitled Magically Fallacious to Chuck Marohn before I published it. The interchange didn’t seem particularly enlightening so I didn’t include it. At Chuck’s request I’m posting it now:

(Chuck’s response)

Thanks for the interest and passion. I feel you’re falling into the trap of taking each utterance as a discrete thing instead of part of a larger body of work. Of course I’m not for highway interchanges and parking lots, but I’m also a skeptic of the person who thinks they can get a big budget and solve the world’s problems. We empower charlatans and fools when we think we’re so smart.

I know the starting point — better than most — and I know the destination. It’s each step on the journey I don’t feel confident prescribing, so we take them a step at a time and see what happens. 

What I see is a lot of people who are basically clueless about the starting point (except their one or two things that bother them), have an obsession about solving a problem and are ready to put on a jet pack and get to that destination as quickly as possible, everything else be damned. Well, those people are the problem in my world. 

Hope that makes sense.
-chuck

(My response)

That you “know the starting point — better than most — and…”know the destination” is my point! It’s really not about scale. Of course I understand that at the micro level “knowing where to put the crosswalk” can/should be tested first before it’s permanently installed, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t see that a few million dollars to better link a dozen solid traditional city/town centers is better spent than some fraction of that amount to spur on more auto oriented horizontal development in an ex-urban environment! 

Some bigger ideas are good, and some smaller ideas are really bad. Incrementalism can do wonders, I agree, but there are silver bullets which hit the bulls eye too!

(Chuck’s response)

I’m sorry, but I think you misunderstand me. Probably my fault.

Yes, we know the destination — or we think we know — but as with all long and endless journeys, the destination will change over time. Working incrementally respects that and actually induces it. We’re never done. Silver bullets have place in an approach that is never done.

-chuck 

I assume that the last line contains a typo and was meant to read: “Silver bullets have NO place in an approach that is never done.” My lived experience in a place which has its share of silver bullet projects is that many of them have proven invaluable to the city’s survival and progress. If I’m wrong and it was supposed to read: Silver bullets CAN have A place in an approach that is never done” then I concur. To me, the podcast which inspired this post was a call to engage. I did so. If my polemics were “dickish” so be it, given that Chuck doesn’t cede the point that scale isn’t the only operative characteristic in moving forward, I assume that he disagrees. Great. I’ve made him aware that one proud, founding member of Strong Towns disagrees.

It’s Magically Fallacious 

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My youthful preference for cities was sociological and aesthetic with a soupçon of Club of Rome Limits to Growth. That was enough to make me fertile soil for Chuck Marohn’s message of the suburban Ponzi scheme in the Curbside Chat; sprawl didn’t pay for itself but traditional development did. With that a farm boy from Minnesota said to the entire world that the mightiest, wealthiest, most technologically advanced empire in all of history had feet of clay. The American Way of Life which was proclaimed “non-negotiable” was a chimera in more than one way: it was both illusory and monstrous. 

Was it hubristic to believe that a few dozen studies of post war auto-oriented design, a comparison of a taco joint to a block of mediocre buildings, and an anecdote about a small town being encouraged to double down on a waste water system it already couldn’t afford was sufficient to call out the American Dream? Not if you’re right. It’s amusing to listen to the humble Midwesterner project on to his own true believers the hubris he fears in his own message, even going so far as to call himself…I mean members of his own movement…”idiots” if they believe they know the solutions to the problems we face today.

Yes, I agree that our current situation is more of a predicament than a problem and that what we have before us are responses and not solutions. But I do know what we ought to do in the broadest sense, at least here in my corner of the world, facing the predicaments we are facing. And I am not an idiot. In greater Springfield we have a population growing at a snail’s pace and dozens of traditional, walkable city centers and neighborhoods which are underpopulated and underutilized. They already have the infrastructure to satisfy the needs of our citizenry for decades and decades without any more horizontal expansion.

Of course, not only do I know it, Chuck knows it too. To listen to him you’d almost believe that he doesn’t believe his own message here. But as he continuously carries on about “the magic of the incremental” it’s important to understand that he really doesn’t believe in the absolute hegemony of small scale developments, though perhaps he thinks he does. I can give 2 examples from this place (Western Massachusetts) of small scale, incremental plans that he would be four square against. 

1) Now that technology has replaced toll takers on the Massachusetts Turnpike there is a movement to add an exit and an entrance along the 30 mile stretch between Westfield and Lee. The cost wouldn’t amount to a blip in the Mass DOT’s budget, but it would open up hundreds of miles of roads and thousands of acres of greenfield to auto oriented development in a region, as I have already stated, with minimal population growth. 

2)The South End neighborhood is slowly, and incrementally in tiny chunks transforming from a traditional walkable neighborhood to a car centered place. One by one, hotels, car dealers, and fast food joints are purchasing traditional buildings, knocking them down, adding parking lots, and constructing buildings with stroad type set backs. The developers are making money, and unlike the Taco John’s model, the tax impact on the city has been positive, at least in the short run. 

Hey, these are small, incremental bets, but based on the auto oriented model. So you’re in favor of them, right Chuck? Or do you have the hubris to claim that you know better?! I know I know better…but that makes me an idiot, right? 

On the other hand we have MGM. A huge “silver bullet” project if ever there was one. But not all silver bullets are of the same caliber: The enormous highway viaduct separating the downtown from the river? Horrible! the enormous urban renewal district north of downtown? Disposable. But a half a dozen projects enumerated here? Spectacular. My city exists as it does because of the ultimate silver “bullet” project (quite literally) and preserved its regional preeminence by yet another.* Under the circumstances which go well beyond this one community’s ability to control (the legalization and proliferation of casino gambling for example), the city is leveraging this HUGE project to repair, restore, or redesign 3 downtown parks and miles of sidewalk and bicycle infrastructure; this mega project has shown a respect for the scale existing of the downtown and is designed to encourage walkability in a way that none of the small scale projects have over the last 30 years with the exception of those restricted by the demands of historic preservation.

*(A public-private partnership to build a bridge across the Connecticut to regain the regional pre-eminence lost to Northampton)

If you’re asking me, do I know the best way to communicate to my neighbors the critical nature of the decisions we are making regarding traditional versus auto oriented development? No, I don’t. Which plans in the short term will serve as the best exemplars of traditional development? “Tampoco”. But that is not the same as pretending I don’t know what the broader choices are and what the correct answers are. I do. 

I do get, though, that other parts of the world might be dealing with different issues and people might be positing ridiculous “solutions”: massive, brand new hugely expensive high speed rail projects connecting no place to nowhere in hopes that things will densify on either end. Here, though, we’re just taking already existing rights of way and infrastructure, and used rolling stock to double or triple connectivity to New Haven and New York City: Not high speed, not maglev, just some old trains adding 17, 12, and 2 trains a day at distances of 30, 60 and 100 miles respectively. 

To me, and probably to you, smart, small, and incremental. But to people who view rail as a relic it’s an ill conceived reversal, and a governmental white elephant; why not just a couple more lanes to Interstate 91? It’s incremental! “Use the rest of the $ saved not improving Springfield’s rail connectivity to fix the potholes on my street!?” 

We know better. You know better. THAT’S a stupid argument. To say so only demonstrates hubris if you’re wrong. And you’re not wrong.

As I’ve said before, Paris was a big idea, and it was a good one. Did Robert Moses draw inspiration from Haussmann? Probably. But Haussmann was right and Moses was wrong. Yes, smaller bets pose less risk than larger ones, and there are things we know, and things we don’t know. Of course knowing which is which is key. It is pretending the difference doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist that is idiotic.

We’ve Been Here Before

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“The thing that many people forget about today’s urban revival is that people are actually moving into our downtowns again. ”

Mattoon Street

Stockbridge Court

Armoury Commons*

Morgan Square (now Silverbrick Lofts)

Ashford Place* (now Museum Park)

Classical*

The Macintosh

Chestnut Towers

122 Chestnut

The Kimball

Park Street Lofts

From the mid 1970’s all through the 1980’s Springfield saw these areas and buildings rehabilitated, refurbished, or repurposed as housing; some as condos or townhouses, most as apartments. While most of these projects at first attracted what were then called yuppies and now hipsters, as well as a few empty nesters, all but a handful saw a radical transformation to housing poor individuals and families or some level of serious decline.

I lived in three* of these developments in four intervals from 1987-2008 and experienced both as a resident and as a representative of the civic association the changes each has undergone. Almost all of these projects created fairly unique, stylish living spaces even by today’s standards: high ceilings, enormous windows, exposed beams, brick walls, historic built-in carpentry; one unit at Classical has its own observatory! Today perhaps 3 have maintained their value and their clientele, 3 have been redone and are striving to remain market rate, and the rest, at best, represent a challenge moving forward.

More importantly, their existence didn’t in any noticeable way slow the decline of general livability downtown; retail shops continued to close, small groceries didn’t move in, cafes didn’t open and stay open, all the diners closed. 

Now, on the other hand, there is a real chance, albeit only a chance, for the downtown to have all of the amenities I’ve looked for and dreamed of since I moved downtown 30+ years ago, but it comes tied to (cue ominous music and thunderclaps) a huge “silver bullet” resort casino designed to attract visitors to my community. Jane Jacobs forfend.

Anyone who reads my work knows that I am critical of a number of decisions and priorities of the local economic development cabal, but mobilizing in favor of the MGM proposal for the tornado ravaged South End was not one of them for the following reasons:

*The Commonwealth specifically designated this region of the state for a casino development, there was little to no chance that no casino would be built in the area, and the other four proposals had all of the drawbacks with few of the positive attributes of the MGM plan.

*The enormous tornado damage to block after block of historically significant structures in this economically struggling neighborhood made it very unlikely that a patient incremental response would be up to the challenge of remaking the neighborhood before even more vacant, undeveloped structures began to further erode what remained of our good bones.

*ALL smaller scale projects in the last 20 years in the South End have followed a suburban auto-oriented design model and MGM showed a commitment to good urban design principles even going so far as calling on Jeff Speck as a consultant.

*The MGM proposal takes an area which paid roughly $500,000 a year to the city in taxes and guarantees to increase it to more than $20,000,000.

The simple truth is, inviting this behemoth in is a risk, for the last 40 years different pundits and experts have promised a resurgence based primarily, believe it or not, on many of the very same arguments the most sober commentators make today. The city put lots of effort into façade grants, quality of life improvements, schools, parks, and library enhancements in the urban core; all to no avail. Yes, other silver bullet approaches were tried too: the downtown mall, the no car zone, large scale “urban removal”, the giant arena, the convention center (phases 1 and 2), and the Basketball Hall of Fame (versions 2 and 3).

There is a nagging voice in the back of my mind saying “this is too easy, this is too simple, this is too good to be true”. From the movie theaters to the street level retail this project produces ex nihilo all of the amenities I’ve been waiting to see return downtown for the last 30 years: in many ways it isn’t “promising” to bring what I want, it IS what I want. At the same time it could be, I think only without looking at the specifics, the most un-strong-townsy project ever.

Moving forward everything good or bad that happens in the city will be claimed to be a consequence of MGM. Given that there is no way to double blind the future we’ll never know, if “Mom and Rico’s” closes, it will truly have been because of MGM or if it would have happened anyway. Maybe the TD district will thrive as an alternative to the Vegas environment, or maybe it will fail because the billion dollar resort casino consumes all of the available development “oxygen”. What I do know is that most opponents will claim the city was destined to thrive if not for the project, and opponents will say doom was inevitable without it. 

I know that I don’t know and that I’ll never know. but since MGM IS coming to town, my town, I want to make it work. It should work. Not because casinos are a wise economic development model but because the city is built on a fundamentally strong foundation of prewar design, extremely high quality housing stock, dozens of walkable neighborhoods and arguably the best designed municipal water system in the country.

The Stormcrow

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“You have ever been a herald of woe. Troubles follow you like crows, and ever the oftener the worse. I will not deceive you: when I heard that Shadowfax had come back riderless, I rejoiced at the return of the horse, but still more at the lack of the rider; and when Eomer brought the tidings that you had gone at last to your long home, I did not mourn. But news from afar is seldom sooth. Here you come again! And with you come evils worse than before, as might be expected. Why should I welcome you, Gandalf Stormcrow?”

(Theoden to Gandalf-The Lord of the Rings-J.R.R. Tolkien)

From the moment I heard Chuck Marohn speak I knew that his message was one that not only needed to be heard, but which could also be translated into action. If Jim Kunstler was John the Baptist raling against the American Automobile Slum, Chuck’s message appeared softer and less judgmental, less that is until he commanded your fig tree to wither and die.

Knowing that there was a Curbside Chat program that was ready to be presented to the public in communities just like Springfield I set about to get him here. Post tornado Springfield had developed a plan for recovery and had empowered a local non-profit development organization to spearhead the efforts; it seemed to me that DevelopSpringfield could use the “chat” to give people a broader framework for understanding what was happening, what had happened, and what was potentially going to happen in Springfield. 

I was sincere about what I viewed as the importance of the message, but I also had a selfish desire not so much to meet Chuck, but for Chuck to meet Springfield. The further east he ventured from Minnesota the more he gushed on his blog and in interviews about the “good bones” for building Strong Towns that existed here; in Pennsylvania, even in North Adams, Massachusetts. I knew that I might finally meet someone who would see the beauty which I had always seen here. 

Jay Minkarah, the president and CEO of DevelopSpringfield, took Chuck and his incredibly insightful sidekick Jim Kumon on a walking tour of the neighborhood and I was hearing what I knew I would hear: Chuck and Jim were impressed with Outing Park, a subsidized housing complex that looked more like a million dollar enclave in Manhattan; Jim made the whole group pause to appreciate the architectural detail of the façades of two buildings facing each other in an alleyway; later we bought grinders at Frigo’s and Chuck famously bought some pastries at La Fiorentina and went back to my house to talk about schools, cars, making America function again, and how it was that so much good food could cost so little money!

The chat went well. I was a little too passionate in my intro to Chuck but the rest of the program along with its Q and A were exactly what we had hoped for. Chuck had changed the bit about “believing that growth could solve all your problems” at my behest: No one in Springfield is infected with that mindset. Our problem is that we don’t see how our stagnation over the last 40 years has left us with a lot of neighborhoods and streets which, with a little TLC, could be transformed into truly prosperous places. The major take away from the chat and the follow up discussion on the next day was that the North End was a perfect place for the city to focus attention. It constituted a real small town Main Street on its own, but the beat up sidewalks, declining street trees, along with its isolation were leaving its potential untapped. 

On the way out the next day I gave Jim and Chuck a quick auto tour of State Street. Jim laughed at our New England version of a stroad. We didn’t make it as far as the changeover from State Street to Boston Road where our Yankee stroadiness is as crappy as anyplace in the good ole U.S. of A. because I wanted them to tour the North End. They could see the potential we had discussed earlier. I told them that Holyoke was like the North End on a much larger scale. As an aside: In my opinion there is no better community in the Northeast in terms of its long term future potential than Holyoke, Massachusetts; I cannot believe that no one in Holyoke has thought to bring in Chuck.

But now we get to the sad reality of the aftermath of the Curbside Chat in my hometown, of the unforeseen consequences of that amazing visit by Chuck and Jim: Springfield has become a hiss and a byword. (Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) One of the worst things imaginable for any neighborhood took place in my neighborhood on the evening Chuck was presenting the Curbside Chat, perhaps even while he was asking all of us what our priorities were regarding traffic engineering and design: 


A little girl was killed, and her mother and her cousin seriously injured in a crash on State Street. 


As fate would have it the crash occurred in the exact spot my own daughter had made a video about pedestrian safety in conflict with street design which I had sent to Strong Towns to be part of their “See It Differently” YouTube channel. I had sent it because another video had appeared on their channel with a much less impressive library on a much less impressive corridor; it was a humblebrag: “When we screw up our pedestrian-traffic interface we do it with City Beautiful architecture on historic avenues!”

Chuck, much to his credit has made not just pedestrian safety in this city, or in this neighborhood, but on that very street at that very spot his cause. He has made our decades long fight his fight without being asked to do so. I want to say “I don’t believe in destiny”, but under the circumstances I must use the more clumsy “I have no belief in the supernatural”. Chuck does. And I do believe that he sees or feels that this confluence of events: publishing the video, being in the neighborhood, crossing that street, giving the chat, and spending the night in a home all in close physical and/or temporal proximity to the death of Destiny González makes him somehow obligated to take up this cause both as symbolic and as an end unto itself in his efforts to protect the American people, and in particular American children, from the scourge of the automobile.

I’ve contributed something to this fight, but what I have “sacrificed” pales when compared to what the González family and thousands like them have sacrificed and what Chuck Marohn, Jason Degray, and countless other members of the Strong Towns movement have given to change everything from the overall zeitgeist of a continent to one small stretch of roadway in an insignificant New England city. From a completely selfish perspective it hurts to know that, in the short term at least, my efforts have redounded to the discredit of the city I love so much, but I also know that to enable and overlook is not to love; helping another to overcome their weaknesses and achieve their potential is love. May we prove worthy of it.

Of Blind Squirrels and Broken Clocks

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I’ve been involved with the issue of pedestrian safety on State Street for more than two decades now so when Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns asked me to snap some pictures of the “desire paths” around and through the fences and hedges the city had “strategically placed” to discourage people from crossing the street at the Central Library’s main entrance I was eager to oblige. Word is that Chuck’s open letter on the topic has created a stir at Tapley Street and around City Hall. 

The 5 minutes I spent snapping pictures were entertaining, infuriating, and encouraging. Entertaining because I saw people scrambling between the chains along the desire path:

Infuriating because I feared for this older gentleman as he made the dangerous crossing:


And encouraging because, as I explained to people why I was taking pictures of them crossing the street to go to the library everyone agreed that the current situation was ridiculous and dangerous.

What I failed to notice until I passed by the library just yesterday however, is that the traffic itself is quite literally going out of its way to destroy the most prominent feature of the engineering profession’s failed attempt at a fix:


Can you see it? Automotive impacts are eating away the concrete and have eliminated entire segments of the safety rail. Imagine the inconvenience created if someone notices and these stairs are closed off to the general public while they await repair. I mean, if anyone ever used them it might create an inconvenience. Actually, since that stairwell provides the ONLY official pedestrian access to the lot, shouldn’t the entire lot be closed? You can’t have people entering and exiting the lot via the automobile entrance or down the embankment…”officially” I mean…since nearly 100% of visitors actually DO that already. But the city can’t admit that by just allowing this ridiculously expensive, unused, and now NOT TO CODE (is it?) stairwell to just sit there as is…can they?

Actually, the lady who was sitting on the concrete ledge waiting for her bus to arrive told me it had been like this for a long, long time. It does make for a nice place to sit and wait for the bus at least. Something to add to the list: broken clocks, blind squirrels, and ridiculously expensive over-designed staircases.

MegaProject versus the North End

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We’re running, quite by accident, a nearly perfect test of the philosophy that the small project focused on marginally increasing value in a relatively undervalued neighborhood is better than a mega project designed to transform a place. It would appear to be a totally unfair fight between a project in the North End which repairs sidewalks, improves lighting, plants trees, and re-paves the street, and a nearly billion dollar hotel, entertainment, retail, and housing project in the South End.

The South End would appear to have all the advantages: It is connected to the downtown, it has retained a healthy core of businesses from its Italian heritage, and it connects to a number of healthy, and relatively wealthy, historic neighborhoods. The North End is separated from the downtown by a Le Corbusier inspired urban removal district and a massive highway interchange, whatever the North End’s previous ethnic heritage (French Canadian? Polish?) it is such a distant memory that I can’t recall what it is, nor do I see any remnants thereof, and the one huge employer in the neighborhood((Baystate Medical Center) is so monolithic and self contained that there is no tradition of leaving the campus to purchase even lunch from one of the many Caribbean restaurants along Main Street.

The North End does have a much more visible and lively public park than the South End, and both connect at about the same distance to at least somewhat comparable larger parks in Forest Park from the South End and Van Horn Park in the North End. Both are poor even by Springfield standards, both have a majority of Hispanic residents with the North End being less heterogeneous. The North End also carries with it a heavier burden of being perceived as dangerous. From my own childhood the North End and what used to be called “Winchester Square” were understood to be two nearly “no-go” zones for the White middle class. 

On its face the North End experiment has every disadvantage: no connection to the amenities of the downtown, ethnic isolation, physical isolation, endemic poverty, and is getting a relatively small investment. On the other hand there is very little to lose here. Property values are already low, there are some incredibly well maintained and well restored historic buildings, but there are also vacant and blighted buildings as well. At least one major employer in the neighborhood is moving operations to a different part of the city(PVTA), whether they will continue to own and maintain their property or retain it for some use I do not know. Near the southern terminus of the neighborhood there is already some investment going on, but there are also a half a dozen or more vacant lots along Main Street which haven’t been turned into parking lots.

The North End (aka Memorial Square)

Le Corbusier-ville and the viaduct:

Main Street in the North End:



If we see over the next 5-10 years further movement toward rehabilitating the vacant and blighted structures, and some infill development occupies the now vacant plots along Main Street then I think the city will have seen adequate return in terms of maintaining the infrastructure of this stretch of Main Street and its environs.
The South End is a much trickier proposition. Keep in mind that the South End got the new sidewalks, lighting, and amenities nearly 8 years ago, but a tornado ripped through it just a few weeks after the project’s completion and a number of highly productive commercial and residential buildings were destroyed. Apart from the MGM project I can only think of one building which was completely destroyed having been replaced; many severely damaged structures were repaired, but there are still a handful of vacant lots along Main Street which had contained significant buildings before June 1, 2011.

The South End:


MGM and Main Street in the South End:

One consequence of the combination of the damage from the tornado and the volatility created by the enormous MGM project is that a very high percentage of store fronts from Central Street to State Street remain vacant. It has been reported that landlords have raised rents in anticipation of an MGM boom, and it is clear that potential retailers and entrepreneurs have no desire to get out ahead of the curve. In this we can glimpse a very large potential downside to the project; instead of breathing life into the district, it could suck all the life out of it. The tens of thousands of square feet of retail contained within the project could soak up all the demand created by the project and then some, the developer’s desire to give the core of the development a local flavor could remove that same flavor from the surrounding streets. 

On the other hand the potential upside is enormous. If the resort complex as a whole transforms the perception of the city and the massive investment in policing the Main Street corridor 24/7 induces people into engaging with the center city as a whole the benefits could be immeasurable. A 15-20 minute “walk shed” with museums, entertainment venues, restaurants, hotels, historic architecture, a major transportation hub, and a variety of residential options is not combination to be found just anywhere in North America.

Only time will tell. I hope that both projects will prove successful of course, and as with most “experiments” in the social sciences double blinding is really impossible so we’ll never truly know if the city might have been better off with one particular strategy or with no strategy at all.

All Thinking No Doing Makes Stevie a Dull Boy

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Whenever the topic of social capital comes up I’ll say to my wife that Duncan Crary, a Troy, New York cheerleader, would know more people in the neighborhood after living here for 9 days than I would after 9 years; it’s just the nature of who he is and who I’m not. I was able to put a corollary to my Duncan Crary hypothesis to the test through a recent visit from Johnny Sanphillippo. We had never met but we had gotten to know one another through our work for Strong Towns. 

Johnny and I share a common interest in places which are under-appreciated, under-utilized, and, perhaps, misunderstood. We couldn’t be much different in our methodology, however, when it comes to how we go about our study. Johnny visits new places all the time, scouring the landscape in search of a combination of data, better understanding, and stunning visual representations of what he perceives. I live in my particular model of an under-appreciated, under-utilized, and misunderstood place and try to come to a better understanding mostly by sitting on my couch and thinking.

Johnny said he was looking forward to seeing Springfield through my eyes, but of course, I would be much better served by seeing it through his. I know that there is quite a bit I have a hard time seeing clearly, there are so many places here in my hometown which I still see as they were when I was a kid or as I want to see them or as others have convinced me they are. It would have been really eye opening, I think, had Johnny never heard of me, never read my blog, and yet had visited Springfield and written a piece on the state of my city. 

What he has written is masterful and does a magnificent job of describing my Springfield Strategy: “Live beyond your means within your means”, or perhaps (if you’ll pardon my English) “Live well by living wrong”. Beyond that, knowing what he likes to see I took him to two places, Gasoline Alley, and the Indian Orchard Mills, which I knew would give him glimpses of what he wanted to see.

But I have a confession to make (To you dear reader, not to Johnny, he already knows, I know): These are not really my places. Another friend, who has lived here less time than I’ve been blogging, had to remind me of the existence of Gasoline Alley. I had been there, and to the Indian Orchard Mills perhaps a handful of times in my life (they’ve been around for decades) before Johnny came to town, and seeing them with him made my greatest deficiencies both painfully obvious and horribly clear. I observe, but so does he. And then he barges in, takes pictures, asks questions, asks more questions, laughs and comments, sits and talks, stands and walks, says goodbye…and he’s off to the next place to do it all over again! 

To my credit I was inspired enough by Johnny to start up a conversation with a man who, as it turns out, had just finished running a workshop at his hydroponic farm on a part of the property which didn’t used to be part of the Alley, but was instead a retailer of used building materials; a place I did visit many times while refurbishing my house. I introduced him to Johnny and…the next thing I know we’re getting a personalized tour of his operation. Magic. Turns out he’ll be selling his produce every week at a farmers market just 10 minutes from my house. Good to know for weeks when our CSA or our backyard isn’t fulfilling our produce needs.

The whole experience made me vow to open up a bit more, to widen both my circle of interests, and my ways of knowing. Standing back and watching has its esoteric and antiseptic merits there can be no doubt, but to be “comprometido”, to engage more directly in the struggle can lead to even greater rewards. Partly due to being inspired, and partly as an offshoot of the reaching out I had done to prepare logistically to show Johnny around I had been reminded of an event in my old neighborhood; at the place where my wife and I held our wedding reception. There I saw Jack Wysocki, the hydroponics guy, for the second time in a week, I talked with a candidate for city council and he complimented me on a piece on my blog, and I walked down some streets that I hadn’t walked for decades. Streets that reminded me of what I love most about my city; Vietnamese old ladies watching kids play in the streets, two girls speaking Spanish haphazardly walking a dog while clearly gossiping about something, the back door to a pizza shop,open to let out hot air, revealing the chatter of the cooks. I crossed mid block, like I used to, and went into the Bing theater. 

The Bing, where I watched the world end more times than I can remember, once or twice in “sensurround”, and where my own life started fresh again with Elizabeth. I owe it to her to explore a little bit more some of the other parts of the city; the places Johnny Sanphillippo and I didn’t even get to like the North End, and places outside the city like Holyoke…or Chicopee. I’m not even sure I know how to get to Chicopee. We’ve never explored West Springfield or Westfield. This summer we hope to go back to Europe again, but maybe in the interim we should get to know where we live just a little bit better.


Thanks, Johnny!

The Dog Whistle

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When it comes to the topics significant to Rational Urbanism my favorite minds are those of James Howard Kunstler, Chuck Marohn, John Michael Greer, Andrés Duany, Leon Krier, and Chris Martenson. When any two of them get together for a conversation I’m hopeful that they’ll break some new ground. In the latest tete a tete among my six horsemen of the apocalypse Chris Martenson discussed a combination of the basics of the Crash Course and his new book Prosper with Chuck Marohn. 

  

The interview started swinging through all of the various elements of Chris Martenson’s ideology, and I was not only on board, but I could point to areas of my life I had transformed in just the ways Prosper and the Crash Course recommended. I was proud that most of these transformations were the results of decisions I had made and understandings I had come to long before I had ever heard of Mr Martenson. (There’s nothing like the anxiety of influence!) 

One of the reasons, from a psychological perspective, I find it so important to point to some level of independence from the ideology of the Crash Course is that I know where we differ, and I know where the Crash Course doesn’t lead; and that is to repopulating underutilized urban settings. Predictably, in the 33rd minute of the Strong Towns podcast Chris responds to a question about the importance of place by referencing a video he posted on the Peak Prosperity website of young men in Oakland firing guns into the air and of police fleeing the incident in fear. What he extrapolates from this is that “some places”, too risky to live in now, are only going to get worse, and that he would recommend moving away from them. 

Scale matters, and Springfield, Massachusetts is not Oakland, California. Having said that, I don’t want to besmirch Oakland either; I have no idea if neighborhoods in Oakland fall into my Rational Urbanism critique of exaggerated societal fear vis a vis American cities. To anyone in western Massachusetts (where Chris Martenson lives by the way) however, the local analog of Oakland is Springfield. 

  
 
My wife was coming to bed late the other night and was witness to an actual arrest just outside our front door. In contrast to whatever anarchic chaos Mr Martenson sees in Oakland, here the interactions between the police and the individuals being arrested were matter of fact, respectful, and so quiet that they failed to awaken me though I was sleeping just 20 feet away.  That really isn’t in any way a direct response the idea that most of urban America is only worthy of abandonment, it’s just an observation. But Mr Martenson’s claim that places like Oakland will only get more dangerous after an economic crash is, I think, much more suspect than he knows. He goes out of his way to say that this claim isn’t really a prediction or a trend extrapolation, but rather an observation, by which he clearly means that it is an obvious irrefutable fact.

But it is a prediction, (here’s my version of his prediction) and it’s probably wrong.

You see, Oakland, and in some ways parts of Springfield are already living in the post apocalypse. Chris is saying, “if this is how people behave during the good times, imagine how they’ll respond in hard times”. Perhaps, but there is an enormous assumption imbedded in that idea. It is up in the little Happy Valley that he inhabits where we have no idea how people will respond to hard times. My neighborhood has been living hand to mouth, scraping by on what could be salvaged, for more than a generation. Going without food for a few days, looking for odd jobs to get by, crashing on a friend’s couch for a few months are par for the course. Now. 

The “urban violence” Mr Martenson references stems from an irrational failed drug policy. Change that and you change the culture almost over night. On the other hand I can foresee the trigger fingers of the Happy Valley preppers getting just a little twitchy as their stockpiles dwindle and the gas tanks on their SUVs deplete. We’ve had crises here in my neighborhood: a tornado, a huge natural gas explosion. There was no looting, there was no chaos. Police were out in force immediately, ambulances were lined up in front of my house waiting for the flood of wounded which never came. Emergency shelters were opened but most people found shelter in the homes of friends and family. 

What happens here when gas prices go to $10 a gallon? We can all walk everywhere we need to go. What about food? Unless Chris Martenson’s predicted crisis comes just at harvest time his neighbors are not only going to be dealing with the exact same shortages as everyone else but the difference will be that my neighbors and I are sitting on all of the region’s primary infrastructure for transportation, water, power, health care, security, fire protection…I have a feeling our minimal needs will be met, and most people here aren’t used to having anything more than their most minimal needs met anyway. 

Look, I agree with Chris Martenson on so many things, first on defining the primary problem as being a belief in infinite growth on a finite planet, followed up with what many of the rational responses to that erroneous cultural belief should be: Get yourself in good physical, and economic condition; prepare yourself to live on much less and in ways that require much less in the way of energy; make yourself as resilient as you can. But I’m not deluded. I know that most of my neighbors aren’t aware of just how wedded to infinite growth our current economic system is. I know that they aren’t preparing for an impending status quo changing economic downturn. But they were never expecting to see the benefits of that fantasy anyway.

By contrast his neighbors, not the ones that come to his retreats and read his blog but the ones who don’t, not only have no idea about the significance of exponential growth or the “rule of 72”, but are completely bought in to the myths he rails against. They’re not growing food on their 2.3 acres and they have no idea how to survive without making the 60 mile daily round trip to work and the 24 mile round trip to the grocery store and heating their 5,000 sq ft McMansion with the heating oil that gets delivered by truck. Yes, those neighbors have never exhibited any bad behaviors but, then again, they’ve never had any reason to. 

I don’t think either one of us has a monopoly on security. The truth is neither one of us knows exactly how impending changes to industrial civilization will play out on the micro scale, and maybe he knows that too, but to write off moving to pretty much any urban place with a large minority population, which the Oakland reference was clearly intended to be a dog whistle for, is both ridiculous and irresponsible. If a successful response to what is sure to come is possible it will involve the utilization of all of our preexisting resources, from man-made infrastructure to natural resources, as responsible stewards. If you think you have what it takes to move to the hinterland and become a self reliant or nearly self reliant farmer then by all means do so. If, however, you are less able or less desirous of that circumstance then finding a place well suited to doing more with less in an urban environment isn’t an unenlightened way to go.