Blogging About Planning... It's The Cool Thing To Do

by Marley Bice, MCRP '12

Today I discovered the APA is a fan of blogging as well. Of course, at first glance my favorite is their Sustaining Places blog all about environmental planning, sustainability, renewable energy, coastal management, even complete streets. If you're like me, and you are overwhelmed by all of the information and resources on the APA website; check out one of their five blogs for a snap shot of the most innovative and up-to-date info related to your concentration or interests.

Recovery News: http://blogs.planning.org/postdisaster/

Sustaining Places: http://blogs.planning.org/sustainability/

Policy News for Planners: http://blogs.planning.org/policy/

Kids' Planning Toolbox: http://blogs.planning.org/kids/ (brand new this month!!)

2010 Census and Planners: http://blogs.planning.org/census/

Transportation Fridays: Three Ideas to Change Transportation Planning

by Betsy Harvey, MCRP '12

What emerging ideas and trends of today will change the course of transportation planning for tomorrow? This week I want to touch on three new policies and ideas that I think will do so, and in the next three weeks, I will dedicate a post to each. While they are still in their infancy, I think they have big implications for the future of transportation, and cities in general. No longer, it seems, are activists the only ones pushing for safer, more inclusive roads; policy-makers are also moving toward viewing streets as public spaces for all users. This doesn’t cover all of them, of course, so what else do you think will change planning?

1.       On May 5 and May 24, the House and the Senate, respectively, introduced the Safe and Complete Streets Act of 2011. If passed, the act would require all federally funded transportation projects include proper facilities for all road users, including bicyclists, pedestrians, children, the elderly and transit users. They are currently being reviewed by subcommittees. The law would not only make streets more accessible safer as well; in the last ten years, 67% of pedestrian deaths occurred on federal roads.

Source: http://www.completestreets.org/policy/federal/senators-act-for-pedestrian-safety-introduce-safe-and-complete-streets-act-of-2011/

2.       On March 5, the Christian Science Monitor reported that New Haven, Connecticut is tearing out the highway that has sliced through the heart of the city for decades. Other cities are taking out their highways as well, including Providence, Road Island and Baltimore, the latter of which is being replaced by parking and a light-rail station. Razing highways will not alone revitalize a depressed neighborhood, so it will be interesting to see the consequences for the affected neighborhoods.

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0302/Downtown-need-a-makeover-More-cities-are-razing-urban-highways

3.       We’re familiar with private and public space . . . but what about social space? It’s a new way to look at streets: as social space, the theme of the recent 5^th Annual Congress of Cities for Mobility that took place on July 3-5 in Stuttgart, Germany. How can imagining streets as social space change the way we build and use them?

Source: http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/editorial-on-private-public-and-social-space/#more-6434

What do you think are the policies and ideas that will shape planning in the future?

Stormwater Tuesdays: You Design It!

by Marley Bice, MCRP '12

I have so much more I could tell you about why we need to manage stormwawter sustainably (rainwater as art... rainwater as an educational opportunity... rainwater as an important resource...) but I stumbled on a great case study of green stormwater infrastructure so I am going to dive right into the first case study for this series.

MAPLEWOOD, MINNESOTA

Maplewood is a small town of 38,000 with a big passion for rain gardens; so much so that they have established a program to implement as many rain gardens as possible whenever there is a city street reconstruction project. Each year the City comes up with about ten new rain garden designs that land owners adjacent to the streets projects can select from. The designs are all different sizes and shapes and color combinations... even great names like "Butterfly and Friends Garden" or "Cool Whites and Jazz Brights Garden." And if that isn't enough to prove that they must be doing something right; just look at the numbers. Maplewood now has over 620 rain gardens with 60 of those on city-owned property.

What has got great color, a great name and great benefits for stormwater management? The Sunny Border Garden. http://mn-maplewood.civicplus.com/DocumentView.aspx?DID=218

YOU DESIGN IT... THEY BUILD IT... YOU MAINTAIN IT...

How much maintenance is required for a rain garden you may ask... especially for a rain garden that is meant to treat road runoff? Rain gardens are designed specifically for your climate zone and water-tolerant plants are placed in the center and upland plants along the permiter of the rain garden. Because the plants are selected for your climate zone's temperature and rainwater averages, once your rain garden is established it won't even need to be watered most of the time. On that note, it is important to remember that rain gardens are designed to infiltratie or evaporate all of the rainwater collected within 24 hours so that mosquitoes are never a problem.

One major contaminant that will end up in your rain garden is fine sediments from the road surface. Gravel and large rocks are often placed at the outfall or entrance to the rain garden to capture the fine sediment in one place where it can be easily cleaned out. Another common contaminant, especially in the winter, is salt. Therefore, salt-resistant plants are identified and selected for rain gardens in areas where salt is a common pollutant in street runoff.

Other property owners are concerned that directing road runoff into a vegetated depression on their property is wrong because the contaminants from the road will hurt their plants. But no need to worry. The whole idea is to slow down the runoff and treat the runoff through the natural phytoremediation (using plants to clean up soil or water) benefits of vegetation and soil. You definitely shouldn't grow food in your rain garden but if designed correctly the plants in your rain garden will be able to withstand the runoff volumes and mild contaminants.

This diagram explains how the soil filters and breaks down the pollutants from street runoff. http://www.ci.maplewood.mn.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=246

Virginia Tech is in the midst of a study evaluating how well woody plants can be used for phytoremediation of stormwater runoff: http://www.arec.vaes.vt.edu/hampton-roads/research/horticulture/index.html

Colorado State is looking more specifically at aquatic vegetation species that can effectively phytoremediate urban stormwater runoff in constructed wetlands: http://rydberg.biology.colostate.edu/Phytoremediation/2003/Knuth/home.htm

Kentucky City has a great online database of plants where characteristics such as "deer tolerant" and "drought defiant" can be selected to narrow down the best plants for your rain garden: http://www.rainkc.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/plants.search/index.htm

Transportation Fridays: Politics, Money and Planning

by Betsy Harvey, MCRP '12

Today I want to discuss something that may seem off topic, but that greatly impacts the planning profession. Earlier this week I listened to a presentation given by Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig at Dartmouth College. He talked about what he calls “good soul corruption,” corruption that is institutionalized in government at all levels. This is not the illegal bribery that we see in cases like Rod Blagojevich’s attempt to sell a senate seat, but rather money that is legally given to politicians through established routes such as the financing of election campaigns. Donors assume that by giving elected officials money their causes will be the supported, and it has been shown that this is frequently the case. Public officials, especially elected officials, are often beholden to the interests that fund them.

The public knows that. About 11% of Americans have confidence in Congress according to a recent Gallup poll, believing that money controls congress’s votes.

This is troubling, for as planners we rely on the public’s trust and participation. As Lessig says, “Money may lead us to mistrust what was said. . . . This low trust erodes people’s participation in the system.” Without public trust in their institutions, planning, including transportation planning, will not be as effective as it can be. Without trust in government, people will not want to be involved in the planning process. We know that involving the public is important in ensuring the success of our plans and advancing the public good. But lacking the trust of the people we serve, it will be difficult to involve them in the process of planning their own neighborhoods, threatening the viability and legitimacy of planning.

We planners are idealists; we have visions of the future that are beautiful and hopeful, and we look forward to stepping into the role of community-builders as our parents’ generation steps down. But as we do so, we will also become immersed in the murky and sometimes distrustful world of politics that will – and probably already has – confront our cherished dreams and most deeply held beliefs. It is vital, therefore, that we understand where money is coming from and how it influences planning and the communities we serve.

Disaster Movie Week

by  Marley Bice, MCRP '12

Retroplex is having a 70’s marathon this week. Of course that means… disaster movies! Now I’m sure everyone has heard of the more notorious transportation-related disaster movies Airplane (reproduced recently as Snakes on a Plane) and The Poseidon Adventure (reproduced recently as just Poseidon) but I, at least, was pleasantly surprised by the planning- and building code-related disaster movies such as Earthquake (with the dashing Charlton Heston) and The Towering Inferno (with Paul Newman). These movies, both set in California coincidentally, chose to shock their audiences by reminding them that their engineering and building technologies and ambitions were outpacing their out-dated zoning and building codes.

In The Towering Inferno “The Glass Tower” (which at 135+ stories was hypothetically taller than even the famous World Trade Center Twin Towers) didn’t survive its inauguration party due to faulty electrical wiring and a sundry of other mishaps. In Earthquake, a sleepy-looking-1974 Los Angeles is shocked by a magnitude-7 earthquake. A graduate assistant (of course) at the California Seismological Institute warned of the catastrophe but his scientific evidence could not break through the barrier of party politics in time to save hundreds of thousands of Angelinos. Charlton Heston, a noted engineer in this role, reminisces on how they shouldn’t have built “these 40-story monstrosities… not here.”

Today as we watch cities like New Orleans be devastated by hurricanes and half of the Midwest be wiped out by tornados, along with wildfires, black outs and heat waves, we must ask ourselves; have learned anything from the 1970s disaster movies? Are building code disasters a thing of the past or are developers still building just to code and putting lives in danger? Zoning code disasters certainly aren’t a thing of the past. Maybe Hollywood should come out with a movie Suburbia in which Hugh Jackman fights the sprawl of an undefined Sunbelt city. He and his sidekick Shia LaBeouf quickly find out that although crafty developers can somehow get as many variances out of the zoning commission and nuclear energy out of the government as they need to fuel their housing development clones, there really is a finite amount of land that you can build on.

Photo source: imdb.com

Stormwater Tuesdays: Rainwater as Art

by Marley Bice, MCRP '12

Last week I mentioned that rainwater can become art. Usually this takes the form of green stormwater infrastructure such as rain gardens, bioswales, green roofs, green walls, pervious pavers, porous pavement, street trees, stormwater tree trenches, curb cuts, curb bump outs… should I go on? The idea is to let the rain water slow down long enough to soak into the ground (or the vegetation on your green roof). Once water is in the ground it is put back into the natural water cycle and enhances the natural ecosystem so that the built environment has less of a negative impact on our waterways and natural habitats. As an urban planning student with one year of study under my belt I have to admit that a city is the most efficient way for our modern society to live, but there are ways to break down the perceived barrier between our built environment and natural environment especially when it comes to the urban water cycle.

Some green stormwater infrastructure ideas like rain barrels and cisterns actually harvest the rain to be used for irrigation or non-potable uses. This water doesn’t always get back into the water cycle but it still reduces the amount of water that goes straight into the city’s sewer system and decreases pollution in our water ways and erosion of our stream banks. Water really is a resource and we need to remember that and use it wisely whether it comes out of the sky or out of our water faucet.

One of the things most of these green stormwater concepts have in common is that they keep the water visible. Instead of immediately piping the water away from our view like traditional sewer systems, green stormwater infrastructure lets water trickle and settle and infiltrate. This creates great opportunity for education also. By seeing the water cycle in action we become connected to it and develop a water ethic and respect for this scarce resource.

Some people get really creative!

Besides, would you rather see more of this... or this?

  


















Photos: http://goldenbelthistoricdistrict.wordpress.com/ and http://www.mapleleaflife.com/2011/06/07/praise-for-thornton-place-natural-area-from-the-atlantic-magazine/

Transportation Fridays: Touring the Other Side of Town

by Betsy Harvey, MCRP '12

Earlier this week I biked out Route 27 towards North Brunswick. I’d never travelled down there before, and my bike map of Middlesex County indicated that it was a good road for biking, highlighting it in red. So I decided to go down 27 until I got to Cozzens Lane and take that to Jersey Avenue, which would then lead me back to New Brunswick.

                Let me say this straight away: Route 27 is not a pleasant road to bike on, even on the weekend. I’m baffled as to why the Middlesex County decided to put it on the bike map of the county. It became clear to me about a mile down that only someone as foolish and curious as me would tolerate four lanes of traffic whizzing by 50 mph without a shoulder. There is a narrow sidewalk but it ended quite suddenly (and just when I needed it most) after 2 miles or so. Cozzens Lane is a pleasant, winding road through residential neighborhoods parks. That is, until it suddenly hits Route 1, and you wonder where Jersey Avenue is and if you’ll have turn around to trek back down Route 27 in shame, while motorists stare at you as they hurry by. Checking my map, I saw I was just a few blocks from Jersey Avenue. I found it quickly and took the straight shot back to New Brunswick. Being much less busy and having only two lanes, the road was not a bad ride. But its depressed surroundings served to highlight an easily forgotten aspect of transportation: streets are not isolated entities; their quality and purpose are bound to the quality and purpose of the land that surrounds them.

I try not to disdain New Jersey’s poor quality roads, though they take some getting used to for one accustomed to small, rural New England towns. But I do struggle to excuse rundown roads – anywhere – not when they are so important to quality of life. It must have been every other building on Jersey Avenue that was shuttered up and for sale or rent. The roads are decrepit, the stores are empty, and now what do we do with them? As planners, how do we make the road pleasant for all users and how do we bring businesses into those boarded-up buildings? Those are not isolated questions; busy, diverse street life is important for a healthy neighborhood. Who lives there, what are their needs, and what are the best transportation solutions to accommodate them?

One last lesson I’m taking away from my bike ride is the importance of planners visiting neighborhoods and travelling their roads on bike and on foot. The car is too easy; problems seem to disappear. By walking or biking you see the small things: the decay of a crumbling sidewalk, the gravel and glass that chew up your bike tires, and the neat little garden that someone has planted on their front lawn. People care for their places, their homes, and as planners we must put forth the effort to understand the intricacies of neighborhoods. Only then can we properly provide their residents and visitors with what they need.