While the country staggers towards economic stability, the design professions are feeling their worst economic times since the Great Depression. Depending on the region of the country, the unemployment and underemployment rate for design professionals is anywhere from 20% to 50%. I feel this daily as President of the Kansas City chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and as an owner of a small architecture / planning firm.

What I hope to convey to you in this note is not just the seriousness of our situation, but how you can help at the Federal level while achieving your stated goals of preparing the country for long-term economic and environmental prosperity.

As someone who is generally an optimist, it pains me to write something that is so overly negative. However, the economic situation today is dire for architects, engineers, planners and anyone involved in design. Simply put, all of us have friends and colleagues who are highly qualified, talented individuals that have no work. All of us in ownership situations have had to lay off trusted employees, who have little hope of finding full-time employment. College graduates are facing a job market that is essentially non-existent.

It’s also safe to say that the majority of these folks are people who support the Administration’s agenda of progressive energy policy, transportation reform, environmental advocacy and health care reform. In other words, these are some of your core constituents, who have much talent to offer the country.

And with all due respect, tax credits for new employees, or tax credits of most any kind are worthless to those of us in the design industries. We cannot hire because there is no work, not because we need a tax incentive to do so. Our clients are not proceeding with projects, even in markets where the economy is stable, because lenders will essentially not do any new lending for development projects. The credit markets on Main Street are tighter than they have ever been in many of our lifetimes.

What can be done, then? Plenty. The Recovery Act had many of the right ideals, but lacked proper implementation of those ideals to help maximize the dollars spent. For example, focusing solely on “shovel-ready” projects only benefits a few contractors and subcontractors on the construction side. And, this is not to mention that many of those projects were “on the shelf” because they were poorly conceived, and didn’t meet the needs of the 21^st century.

Instead, any additional stimulus or Federal money spent going forward should focus on how to a) create as many jobs in the supply chain as possible, and b) match up with the Administration’s goals on Sustainability and Livability.

The best way to do this is to fund new efforts now that require the work of architects, engineers, planners and more. By doing so, not only do you help to create jobs in this important sector, but you also get the additional benefit of construction jobs on the back-end of the projects. Funding projects that require thoughtful design solves a) and b) above, and additionally benefits all taxpayers as we move towards more efficiency in the use of resources.

What are some examples of how to do this? The list is much longer than what I have noted below, but some examples include:

1. Grants supporting new plans for municipalities and local governments, emphasizing Livable Communities goals.
2. Grants supporting new form-based zoning and zoning reform for local governments
3. Grants supporting Complete Streets approaches to transportation, as well as planning for integrated land use and transportation plans.
4. Grants for design of civic structures and public parks and plazas
5. Bond issues for design and construction of new educational facilities
6. Seed money for micro-loan programs that implement the planning efforts above

Any of these efforts would be, like many New Deal programs, a long-term investment in the future health of our country. In fact, we can still point today with pride at many of the structures and public spaces that were built in the 1930’s as some of our most-loved places.

In addition, all of these prepare us for a more economically and environmentally sustainable future. Mr. President, you recognized early in your term that we cannot keep building sprawl forever and ever – that we realize now it’s too inefficient and doesn’t meet the needs of our citizens. This is never more evident than in an economic downturn, and it will be even more apparent as worldwide oil supplies put pressure on our lifestyle in the near future.

So in summary, what you have before you now is an opportunity to have a true win-win situation. Put people to work now. Create thoughtful long-term solutions. Help the country make the transition to a more prosperous and livable future.

Please do the right thing – we stand ready to help.

Sincerely,

Kevin Klinkenberg, AIA

Principal – 180 Urban Design & Architecture

AIAKC 2010 President

Posted by: Kevin Klinkenberg

It’s often said that Americans love their cars above everything else, and many question the demand for walkable neighborhoods. And yet, as this and other studies have revealed, quality walkable places are highly valued. This shouldn’t be surprising – as human beings, we inherently like to interact with others, and we prefer to have options on how to experience life. Walking/biking, etc are all just examples of how to achieve what’s in our nature.  This is a blog post that I would like to share written by Kaid Benfield, who is the director of the Smart Growth Program in Washington, D.C.

How walkable neighborhoods increase home values

Home values in walkable neighborhoods are measurably higher than those that are not, even when other relevant factors are controlled in the analysis.

Below is an illuminating slide show on the subject that was presented by economist Joe Cortright at a transportation colloquium recently hosted by the Congress for the New Urbanism in Portland. Some key points from the presentation:

• “Walkability” is not just about sidewalks. Are there places you can walk to?
• Examining data from 98,000 home sales in 15 metropolitan areas, and controlling for other relevant factors, each increase of one point on Walk Score’s walkability scale raises home values by $700 to $3000.
• In Charlotte, the increase in value was $1,986 for each Walk Score point.
• Improving walkability raises home values by $10-30,000.
• Because mixed-use development produces big gains in walkability, the findings are evidence of a strong market for mixed-use neighborhoods.

I have to admit that the slide show was a little clunky on my computer (and there is no narration), but it is manageably short (24 slides) and well illustrated. Enjoy:

Click here to view

We’re obsessed with big: big houses, big churches, big cars, big stores, big food portions. It’s in our nature I suppose to be impressed with size.

When planning for our communities, though, it’s often best to think small. Not small as in small goals or dreams; but small as in the kinds of spaces that fill up our neighborhoods. This is especially true when it comes to spaces that sell things – shops, restaurants, etc.

What are the benefits of small spaces? For one, they are cheap to rent – very important to mom & pop operations and start-ups. If you want to encourage local flavor, local business, etc, thinking small is critical. An all-too-common mistake made by many new businesses is in trying to occupy a space too large from the beginning; especially for dining. But also, an abundance of small spaces creates more street life – just think of the impact of 10 small storefronts vs 2 large ones. And, more businesses means more competition, which is ultimately good for consumers as well. Places that are dominated by a handful of large operators are not only less interesting, but ultimately less responsive to their patrons.

But how to do small and cheap, especially with new construction? In this case, there’s no single answer, as it relies upon the creative possibilities inherent in each place and person. That said, a few examples keep coming back, including some themes we’ve discussed on this blog before. One story buildings that are modest in construction, for example; food carts, mobile stalls, etc. But another idea to examine is an updated version of market stalls, that can be inexpensively built and maintained. One of the best examples of this case is in the early New Urbanist community of Seaside, FL. You may know Seaside as a hallmark of pricey, resort-oriented New Urbanism. But the reality is it has some of the most effective approaches of any new community for how to create incubator retail with success.

Seaside’s town center has a variety of all the techniques mentioned above, in order to deal with the seasonal nature of its business. As the town has matured, more permanent structures have been able to work, but the bulk of the “selling” of things still happens in very informal, inexpensive construction (see photos). Some of the shops shown simply lock up their stall at night, and share a common courtyard with others. It’s a highly effective way to nurture small business in an emerging walkable environment.

Jane Jacobs used to write repeatedly about the virtue of cheap space for shops in an urban environment. She was writing to extol the benefits especially of older buildings. But in many cases we don’t have the older building stock to use, so instead, think about how to creatively build new space that has the same qualities. Small, flexible and cheap is good when it comes to successful, walkable retail.

Kevin Klinkenberg reviews Kansas City street design and the importance of getting the details right. By comparing and contrasting two sections of Westport Road, he looks at how each of the street designs work, the details of each and then show why one is so much better than the other.

Click here to watch video

Peter Park has certainly been on the vanguard of Planning Directors in the last decade or so, first in Milwaukee and now Denver. This article profiles his current thinking and what they are doing now in Denver in terms of planning and zoning.

Park: Milwaukee’s former planner embraces rail as key to urban development
11/16/2009

By Marc Eisen
For WisBusiness.com

Peter Park, the star urban planner behind Milwaukee’s downtown revival, returned to Wisconsin Friday to discuss the lessons he’s learned in his new work as Denver’s planning chief.

“We need to look at transportation and development together. They’re not separate,” he told a gathering of several hundred environmentalists at the Promega Corporation’s Biopharmaceutical Technology Center in Fitchburg.

Park, 46, is working the land-use side of the most ambitious transportation project underway in the United States — the $4.7 billion FasTracks program. It promises 119 miles of light-rail and commuter-rail tracks by 2017, including 70 train stops that are expected to be the focal point of new residential and commercial development in the Denver area.

“Doing all this at once is crazy and scary,” Park admitted. “But if we’re going to grow [the transit system], now’s a great time for it.” Metropolitan Denver’s population of about 2.7 million, he noted, is expected to hit 4.3 million by 2035.

Park’s talk to the “Bringing Bioneers to Wisconsin” conference was a stark reminder that Wisconsin’s marquee cities, Milwaukee and Madison, are laggards in sorting out their 21st century transportation systems.

Suburban protests killed a planned light-rail connection between Milwaukee and Waukesha County in the 1990s. A proposed commuter rail connecting Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha with Chicago’s Metra rail system is facing similar fire. Transit planning in Dane County has proceeded at a snail’s pace, though the Dane County Board has just approved a skeletal regional transportation authority. In both cities, conservatives and talk radio hosts raise the cry that rail construction is a costly boondoggle that will do little to relieve highway congestion.

The Denver area followed a very different script. In 2004, voters approved (by a comfortable 57 percent to 43 percent margin) the $4.7 billion FasTracks plan funded by a .4 cent sales tax. Led by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, 31 mayors in the seven-county Denver region endorsed the plan. In the balkanized world of Wisconsin’s regional politics, such shared vision is, in a word, inconceivable.

It was Hickenlooper who set his sights on luring Park away from Milwaukee. Park had captured national attention for turning Mayor John Norquist’s expansive vision of walkable, neighborhood-focused development into the nuts and bolts of city policy.

“Peter and John saw eye-to eye on almost every planning and development issue,” says Stephen Filmanowicz, a longtime Norquist aide.

The mayor and his planner’s work included the Riverwalk path that enlivened street life (and new housing) along the Milwaukee River; the audacious leveling of the Park East Freeway spur and replacing it with a neighborhood-friendly boulevard; fashioning the upscale Beerline neighborhood out of an industrial brownfield; and devising a new downtown plan and zoning code that banished suburban standards and stressed downtown housing, mixed-use streets and a streamlined approval process for developers who had the right ideas.

“I need more than two hands to count the number of times that someone brought in a plan for a strip mall or some other ill-conceived project and walked out with a decent urban plan after Peter took out his pen and started drawing,” says Filmanowicz, who worked in the planning office before becoming Norquist’s press secretary.

Shortly after Norquist resigned as mayor in 1993 to become president and chief executive officer of the Congress for New Urbanism and moved to Chicago, Park accepted Hickenlooper’s job offer and headed to Denver to run a planning office roughly four times the size of Milwaukee’s.

Whitney Gould, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s formidable architectural critic, summed up Park’s work by saying he “has made Milwaukee a national model of how to reinvent communities battered by freeways, demolition and suburbanization.”

Gould added that Park’s admirers even compared him to Baron Georges Haussmann, the famed planner who remade Paris in the 19th century.

Much of Park’s Fitchburg speech, as well as his comments in an earlier interview, focused on the mechanics of restoring urban character and rejecting the suburban alternative of multiple car lanes, sprawling surface parking lots and segregated land uses.

“Urban streets, squares and blocks make for unique urban places,” he said. “It’s a matter of seizing opportunities rather than managing growth. We can fundamentally reshape our growth pattern, but we need to plan and engage our communities up front.”

Park added with a disarming candor: “I’m a planner, but it’s not like I’m an expert. I know a couple of things, but I need to know what folks think about their neighborhoods. What’s important to this place?”

The irony, he said, is that the most attractive neighborhoods in both Denver and Milwaukee are products of the old streetcar lines that once served city neighborhoods.

“When people say transit-oriented development is new, I wonder what’s that about?” he said. “Do they know South Pearl Street [in Denver]? That’s where streetcars used to run, and it’s one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city.”

Streetcar lines (some 300 miles in Denver) ruled at a time when homes were smaller, shopping was nearby and parking was relatively scarce because of high transit usage. But while those transit lines are long gone, their DNA remains to shape modern day life in the neighborhood, according to Park.

“I see my job as extending that urban fabric into the newer parts of the city,” he said. To this end, the 70 proposed transit stations stops weigh heavily in Denver’s planning.

Park and his planners want the stations tailored to their surroundings. A station serving the downtown business district would look different than one serving an urban neighborhood. Same would be true with a small-town Main Street and college-campus stations. Each would have its distinctive feel.

The goal is anything but radical. Park sees transit stations catalyzing private investment. He believes developers will want to put housing and stores near them.

That’s not so much the case with bus stops and their flexible siting. “With a bus system it’s a little more fuzzy,” Park said. “Certainty is what really matters, especially as we pull out of this great recession. Those who build really want certainty.”

Of course, there’s never certainty with development. Markets change, economies shift, political favor reverses and 50 other things can go wrong. FasTracks has had its own bruising encounter with reality, according to press reports.

The recession has punctured the revenue expectations for the new sales tax of four cents on a $10 purchase. Projected construction costs, meanwhile, have soared to almost $7 billion. Analysts say that the financial double whammy will necessitate either a referendum on another sales tax hike or a slower construction schedule that will stretch beyond the 2017 completion date now envisioned.

In the interview, Park grimaced when he acknowledged the financial complications, but basically was unperturbed. The recession has battered the suburbs worse than it has the older downtown neighborhoods, he pointed out.

“It’s the those big houses that sit on the market the longest,” Park said. “I think it’s a good thing is that a lot of folks are realizing the virtues and values of the not-so-big house.”

In any case, Denver is already enjoying a big surge in transit ridership. Federal data shows ridership almost doubling, from about 5 percent of city commuters using transit in 2004 to 9 percent in 2008.

Park is optimistic. “You got to be!” he said with the bright confidence of man who thinks he sees the future.