Author Archives: Betsey Buckheit

More about parking

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For transportation geeks: parking, parking lots, parking pricing, price of parking…here’s a selection of what I’ve been perusing:

The aesthetics of parking lots: Taking parking lots seriously as public spaces.  Michael Kimmelman, art and architecture critic, argues we should treat parking lots more like architecture than mere infrastructure.

new technology, new money and parking: the National League of Cities with its corporate partners IBM and Citi announced a $25 million credit facility for parking innovation.  Reading further on IBM’s Smarter Planet site reveals they aim to improve “drivers’ experience, not just where and when they drive. And it could lead to advances in the cars we drive, the roads we drive them on, and the public transit we might take instead.”  I remain skeptical that their modeling, traffic flow analysis, and the like are going to be sufficient to manage traffic for their projection that the 1 billion cars on the road today will double by 2020.

Atlantic Cities’ It’s the parking, stupid describes Nelson Nygaard transportation consultant Jeffrey Tumlin’s anti-free parking mission which he describes as operating “like a methadone clinic to get cities off their parking addictions,” he says. “And each addict goes through a different route.”

More about the problems with free parking, minimum parking requirements, and other “traditional” practices can be found in Parking Policy Reform More Important Than LEED Certification by Todd Litman (the guy behind the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute – check out the page on parking and land use).

And some questions about parking over at Finding a place for parking at the Project for Public Spaces  designed to get planners to think less about parking spaces and more about bringing people to places, as well as practical questions about how to maximize existing parking.

And some blogs devoted to parking: Reinventing Parking and Parking World.

Domestic partnership registry update – an updated update

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May 15, 2012: Making progress!  The City Council received the domestic partnership ordinance from the HRC and set the date for the first reading as June 5, 2012 (see the Charter for ordinance procedure) on a 5-1 vote (Rhonda Pownell voted no; Suzie Nakasian was absent).

It was gratifying to see and hear more people speak in favor of this ordinance – thank you all, with particular thanks to Phil Duran from OutFront MN.

April 15, 2012: The Human Rights Commission approved a draft ordinance to create a domestic partnership registry in Northfield.  The forecast of Council agendas puts this issue on the May 15 meeting agenda.

Thanks to the Commission for doing the work, Phil Duran, the legal director for OutFront Minnesota for help with specific language, Dan Hudson for getting this issue moving in Northfield and to all of you who have called or emailed in support.

Hospital study

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Why study the hospital/city relationship at all since this is obviously an emotionally charged issue?

The city needs to ask tough, even painful, questions because it has real, structural budget issues which cannot be solved by a few cuts or some temporary austerity.  Even assuming the city keeps receiving local government aid from the state, it cannot maintain the infrastructure and facilities it currently has and struggles to continue services at the same levels.  The council is already facing the need to increase property taxes for the new public safety facilities and it cannot use the tax tool to solve all the problems.

What else can the city do?  Ask tough questions about everything the city owns, provides, and maintains to understand city operations and be able to make better decisions.  Ask if there are different ways to provide services.  Ask what the city can do to enhance its economic development potential.  Ask what tools are available (legally, politically, practically) to help ensure Northfield is a financially resilient city for the long term.

The hospital is our biggest asset.  Over just the last few years, starting in 2005, “the hospital” has grown to be the Northfield Hospital and Clinics in Northfield, Lonsdale, Lakeville, Farmington, and soon in Elko Newmarket.  The council and residents need to know how Northfield city ownership of a regional health system works, then ask what actions we might take to ensure the financial health of city and its healthcare system for the long term.

The City Charter divides up the responsibilities between the council-appointed hospital board and the council.  The hospital board controls and manages all hospitals and related medical facilities, but has no power to construct additional facilities, buy or sell any of these, or to levy taxes.  The council has the powers to construct new facilities, buy and sell them and levy taxes, but has no role in the operation of the hospital.  Despite approving the expansion by approving each land purchase, clinic project, etc., the council has not kept current with hospital strategy in a way that lets it understand what it means to own a regional healthcare system rather than a single hospital.

What basic principles will guide the discussion?  Perhaps some like this:

  • The council will not attempt to study healthcare industry, the future of healthcare, or the success of the hospital (which is shorthand for the entire system) as a healthcare provider – the council has no expertise and the Charter assigns this to the hospital board.
  • No action to benefit the city will be taken which can be foreseen to undermine the hospital’s financial or operational success – the suggestion that the council simply wants to get cash now, regardless of the impact on the hospital and the community is ludicrous.
  • The city values and wants to sustain a hospital in Northfield – in other words, it is important to have a high quality hospital in the city.
  • The city would like to understand more about the hospital, its operations, and strategic planning in order to make better informed decisions within its power as owner.
  • The city would like to develop a better framework for collaborating on decisions which impact both city government and the hospital.

Possible questions:

Basic, broad questions: what are the costs, benefits, and liabilities of owning a regional healthcare system?

Where do city/hospital needs, plans, missions intersect?  For instance:

  • what are the hospital’s infrastructure needs, are they considered in the city’s CIP, and how will costs be assessed?  The fringe location of the hospital increases these costs, so how do we plan for them effectively?
  • What does the city do which impacts public health and could benefit from participation (which could be informational, financial, etc.) by the hospital?
  • What development plans of the city impact the hospital or vice versa?  For example, could earlier conversations about the EMS facility have helped the council decide on a location for the public safety center sooner?  How does creating a public service cluster at that site guide future development?
  • How can the hospital participate in the city’s economic development efforts?  Healthcare has been identified as a target industry in the city’s economic development plan as has the more general objective of retaining existing businesses (and the hospital is one of our largest employers).

How can the city measure what matters about the hospital as it makes policy? In other words, how does the financial information figure in a larger picture of economic, environmental and social sustainability?  We’ve heard a lot about “quality of life” as a goal of city services, as something which attracts residents and businesses, and which contributes to our identity and well-being as a community.  In addition to being worth a lot of money, the hospital has great value for the city.  How does city ownership of the hospital increase the value?

IKEA as urban planner

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IKEA's neighborhood planning plan

As an about-to-get married 20-something, I was glad IKEA opened its first US store in King of Prussia, PA, a short drive from my Philadelphia apartment.  We’ve been married 25 years and are still using the IKEA shelves we bought to replace our student cinder block and board constructions – we felt so grown up!  And IKEA has followed us across the country so we can still buy cheap candles, LACK tables, and BILLY bookcases.

But what about an IKEA neighborhood?  Jokes come to mind about all the houses coming flat-packed and assembled with those little hex-key tools with pieces not quite fitting, of course, but the idea is really quite interesting.

The project will redevelop 11 hectares (a bit more than 27 acres) in east London with 1200 all-rental housing units built following in typical (for Britain, anyway) rowhouses and flats for a variety of incomes and in a variety of sizes.  Busier edges of the development will have office/commercial space while IKEA will encourage such things as farmers’ markets and small local businesses. The whole shebang will be owned and managed by IKEA.  The Globe and Mail says IKEA is

not interested in a Disney-style kind of an animatronic spectacle. Rather, they’re seeding Strand East with evocations of spontaneous urban life in hopes that it will become spontaneous urban life; they say they’d be happy to see it shift and evolve to suit market conditions. It’s not clear, though, how this desire will coexist with Ikea’s desire to keep the place under its control.

Construction is planned for 2013.  Knowing IKEA’s philosophy of trying to use good design to solve problems and reduce costs as well as their good company logistics, the experiment seem like it should be efficient and can, perhaps, give municipal government some hints about how to operate.  I want to see what’s happened on my 50th anniversary.

 

Encouraging citizen engagement of another sort

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High there!

Can street furniture encourage social interaction?  Worth a try.  Or perhaps “meeting bowls”?  And, don’t forget all the fun ideas over at The Fun Theory by VW dedicated to the idea that making things fun can help us change behavior for the better.

Bicycling and the NRA

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This is my bike

Bike Advocacy from the NRA Playbook got my attention since I am pro-bike and but not pro-gun.  The idea is not to whip your handgun out of your saddlebag or jersey pocket to shoot the motorist who ran you off the road.  No, apparently the NRA’s success at growing the organization and its almost legendary lobbying power comes from its strategy to make gun ownership something for ordinary people.

So, for cyclists, rather than trying to make riding a bike a special, environmentally-friendly, physically fabulous, morally superior sort of activity, we should be trying to show how regular people ride bikes and you can too.  If we marketed cycling and bicycles in NRA fashion, here’s what author Tom Bowden suggests:

The important lesson is to stay on the main messages — the ones most people can accept.

  • Bikes are good for America! Let people make their own assumptions why.
  • Bikes solve problems! Just let people decide which ones they care about.
  • Bikes are fun! But let the riders decide how and where they like to ride.
  • Bikes are healthy! And riders can decide if they are interested in weight loss or improving their half-ironman times.
  • Bikes are safe! And let people make their own judgment how much protection they need based on the riding they do.

This won’t help with road and street design which overwhelmingly favors cars or funding more complete streets, but I do think making cycling more appealing for regular folks is more likely to succeed than trying to get them to join the lycra-clad, tech-obsessed racing group.

On the flip side, here are 9 reasons not to ride your bike to work which pokes people for making excuses, but also provides some practical advice (like not worrying about having the perfect bike and rain pants).

Not just liberal types believe in downtown

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I get a bit peeved when people talk about downtown Northfield as if it is a museum which, while cute, is not really very important the economic vitality of the city.  I get beyond peeved when the same critics suggest that a pro-downtown position is somehow indicative of liberal, economically-ignorant, anti-development, anti-growth, rose-colored glasses thinking.  I’m pro-downtown because that’s where we can really grow the tax base and add jobs without adding to the costs associated with extending infrastructure AND create a place which is lively, walkable, and people want to be (and spend money).

First, let’s do the Simple Math and start adding more value per acre to all the land in Northfield, especially downtown.

Now, let’s add some support for this New Urbanist (smart growth, Strong Towns, sustainable development) view from the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

More thoughts about citizen engagement

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Using our power for good, not evil.

I went to the Rice County DFL convention today, which is citizen engagement up close and personal.  But that’s not the topic here.  Griff Wigley, our locally grown online engagement guru, linked to Steve Doyon’s Public process: Don’t botch citizen engagement which has some pithy advice not (yet) followed in Northfield.

Raw data is not enough, no matter how much of it you upload to the city website.  Northfield’s website provide lots of links to project pages with unsearchable pdfs and, indeed, Council packets tend toward lots of undigestible raw matter, too.  Providing clear, concise, compelling and relevant information remains a goal for the future.

What do you think about _______? is raw data in question form.  To elicit useful, relevant, targeted engagement and feedback, folks need to know the limits of the discussion: what’s the budget, what questions are up for discussion and decision, and what policies affect the outcome.

Northfield will be updating its website soon, but as Griff has pointed out already, the shortcomings of the current online presence are not technological, but human – we still need to have the human intervention which turns the data into usable information, frames questions appropriately and presents it all in an engaging way.

Voter ID and Northfield-UPDATED

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I’ve been thinking Northfield voters should care about the proposed Voter ID constitutional amendment (similar legislation was vetoed by Gov. Dayton last year) wending its way through the state legislature because it would have a particularly big impact here.

Voter ID provisions would require voters to show government issued photo identification with current address, age, citizenship, etc.  The simple intent to have voters demonstrate they are who they say they are and live where they say they live is not particularly objectionable (which might explain why some polling suggests voters would be likely to approve such an amendment).   The practical problems, however, are extensive and expensive; the political debate is intensely partisan.

If, like me, you care about the cost of government, the first question before enacting a new rule which imposes new procedures and costs is: what problem does this rule try to solve and how much will it cost?  Answer: Depends.  If the problem to be solved is voter fraud – a very small problem -  this is a lot of new regulation to solve a perceived threat more than a genuine issue.  If the problem is how to disenfranchise certain kinds of voters: students, older adults, election day voter registrants and those likely to cast ballots for Democrats, then it is more narrowly tailored, but starts smelling funny.

If, like me, you think we should try to increase voter registration and voter turnout by making it easier to register and vote, what effect will this have?  Biggest impact will be on election day voter registration and here’s where it gets interesting.  Take a look at MinnPost’s snazzy interactive map:

Mapping same day voter registration

Several of Northfield’s precincts have very high election day registration – almost 40% in one precinct.  That same precinct voted almost 80% for Democratic candidates for both federal and state office in 2008.  There is a clear correlation between high election day registration and voting Democrat.  I’d bet there’s also a good correlation between high student turnout and election day registration – and Northfield has lots of students.

But what I really care about are fair fights.  I’d think GOP candidates would like to be able to win because their message and policies are more appealing to voters rather than because they keep more likely DFL voters from the polls.  I’d also think they would NOT want to increase government bureaucracy and costs (especially to local government) to the extent necessary with the Voter ID requirements.

UPDATE: After a couple of weeks of debate and a few amendments, the Republican-controlled Minnesota legislature has approved the Voter ID proposed constitutional amendment on a party-line vote on April 4.  Now it’s up to voters to vote on the amendment in November and, since this amendment will make voting more difficult for many in 2013 if approved, now’s the time to take action against voter suppression.

 

Bicycle planning and infrastructure, continued

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Here’s a nifty little video showing some of the Netherlands’ bicycle infrastructure with commentary by visiting American planners.  Bikes Belong, through their Bicycling Design Best Practices Program, took a group of planners and engineers from Miami, Chicago, and Washington DC on a study tour of cities in the Netherlands to learn more about how the Dutch have very deliberately built bicycle facilities, required cycling education, and planned traffic flow to encourage cycling.

The video shows lots of people bicycling, a variety of bike lanes, intersection designs, cycle-specific traffic signals – good to see how it can be done when government plans and follows through on a vision (of course, high density helps, too).  Bikes Belong also has a short document describing some of the Netherlands’ efforts.