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

Over on the Switchboard blog written by Kaid Benfield, he writes today about a free downtown circulator that Baltimore has recently put in place. (pasted below) This is a great heads-up to those cities that are cutting back on transit in tough times. I’ve thought for a while that we need an entirely new service model for transit in most American cities, and will write about this more in future posts. The reality is the current system in most cities is so completely unsupported by fares that we might as well have completely free zones in order to encourage denser, walkable development. And then, we need to find a new revenue/service model that works for other day to day service. What Baltimore is doing is very encouraging – let’s hope more cities follow their lead and really begin to see transit as a tool for economic development.

Kevin

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/free_downtown_transit_could_be.html

Last week Baltimore launched the Charm City Circulator, a free bus route that connects the city’s downtown with neighborhoods east and west and with other transit routes.  At a time when many transit providers are having to cut back on service, Baltimore is betting that the new service will entice economic activity.

Even better, the Circulator has a dedicated lane through congested areas and, by putting seven buses on the Orange Route (route above), the first of three planned, free Circulator routes, the city will be able to offer service at 10-minute headways. Neighborhoods served by the Orange Route, in addition to downtown, include the city’s popular Inner Harbor, Little Italy, and the University of Maryland’s Baltimore campus.  The fleet consists of environmentally friendly diesel-electric hybrids.

Writing on the web site Autopia, Zach Rosenberg reports that the system is funded by a 16 percent tax on parking, which will raise about $5 million annually, and that its underlying logic is compelling:

“Despite the high costs and massive subsidies implicit in driving, forking over a relatively small fee to ride a bus or subway is a psychological barrier to getting people out of cars. Even the most efficiently run buses can be crowded and slow, but by running at frequent intervals on dedicated lanes between fixed stops — as the Circulator does — delays can be kept to a minimum. The bus might not stop next to, or even near, every rider’s point of origin or destination, but it ensures a measure of proximity for most riders.”

The Charm City Circulator’s own web site stresses the environmental benefits:

“We service residents, downtown employees, students and tourists and anyone else who wishes to ride. The shuttle is intended to reduce congestion and greenhouse gas pollution by offering a convenient, reliable and eco-friendly form of public transportation.

“We’re not only dedicated to offering a stellar form of public transportation that links critical parts of the city—we are interested in doing it in the cleanest way possible. That’s why we’ve chosen 21 DesignLine 2009 EcoSaver IV LF Hybrid Electric vehicles—the first fleet of this type in a major metropolitan area. The Charm City Circulator is one part of Mayor Dixon’s vision of a ‘cleaner, greener Baltimore.’”

The Orange Route serves an east-west corridor, as can be seen above.  When introduced, the Purple Route will serve a north-south corridor will run all the way from Penn Station in the north to Federal Hill in the south. The U-shaped Green Route will run from City Hall down through Fells Point and then up to the Johns Hopkins University’s East Baltimore campus (see photo set).  The routes intersect each other at several points and also connect to other forms of transit, including trains, light rail, buses and water taxis.

Portland has long had a free downtown zone for its regular light rail service, but has had to cut back recently to address budget shortfalls.  Several cities in Europe have free transit zones.  Washington has popular circulator bus routes that link downtown with nearby neighborhoods and that link to but are operated separately from the main Metro transit system; the DC Circulator is not free, however, but operates on a reduced fare system.  Baltimore’s bold venture into free transit service is an exciting initiative well worth following.

This is an excellent post that reveals again how markets and market preferences are not stagnant – they respond to many variables. And, in this case, we see what might be a minor trend for now, but something to consider strongly for the future.

Click the screenshot on the left to go to the post from the National Resources Defense Council’s Switchboard blog: “Never mind the Prius – the new chic is going car-free entirely”

The following was written by Kaid Benfield and originally posted on the Switchboard, the NRDC blog:

As many readers of this blog already know, Orenco Station was built as one of the country’s first new, suburban transit-oriented developments. It’s on Portland’s MAX light rail line in Hillsborough, Oregon, and comprises some 1,850 housing units and a town center that includes 68,000 square feet of neighborhood-serving, ground-floor commercial space (with lofts above) on a total of 190 acres.

The now-iconic community was one of the first choices we made while researching NRDC’s book of smart growth success stories, Solving Sprawl (Island Press, 2001). What I liked about the development from the start was that it was quiet and suburban, with lots of single-family houses and open space, giving suburban residents much of what they seek, but in a nonsprawling form incredibly convenient and oriented to transit. Relatively new at the time, it was receiving a lot of attention, including an NAHB community of the year award. Although Orenco did not set out to follow new urbanist design principles, the results were certainly similar to those advocated by new urbanism, and the design movement has certainly claimed it as one of its own.

In fact, the community is featured in a front-page story in the September New Urban News written by publisher Robert Steuteville, because new research shows Orenco to be achieving some remarkable results in performance. The new work continues the research led by Bruce Podobnik at Lewis and Clark College, who first published a study on the development in 2002. Steuteville reports that the new study, which compared Orenco to three other neighborhoods in the region with differing design and location characteristics, “will be published in an upcoming urban research journal.”

For now, the results are summarized in the New Urban News article and in another article in Builder, written by Teresa Burney. Of the other neighborhoods studied, Burney reports that two of the neighborhoods were urban (one poor and long-established; the other middle-class and also well-established, but hilly and lacking in sidewalks). The third was a suburban middle-class development of cul-de-sacs.

Steuteville’s article includes tables of findings, one quite remarkable: Fifty percent of residents of Orenco Station report walking to a store or shop 5 or more times a week; that is ten times the rate of the cul-de-sac neighborhood. (The other two apparently were not surveyed on the point.) In addition, 67 percent of Orenco residents say they use mass transit at least once a week; the cul-de-sac neighborhood is also within a quarter-mile of a light rail station, but only 42 percent report using transit. One reason may be that “Orenco Station has pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, while the Beaverton suburb has few sidewalks.”

While a strong majority of Orenco residents report using transit more frequently since moving there, they tend not to use it for commuting to work more often than do the residents of the other neighborhoods. In fact, they use it for commuting a little less than the others, although their use of single-occupant vehicles for commuting is no higher (and lower than that for the Beaverton cul-de-sacs), because they walk, bike, carpool, or use “combination” modes of commuting more frequently than do the others.

Michael Mehaffy, who was a project manager in the development of Orenco Station, speculates that the transit commuting number may be low because many of the community’s residents work at an Intel facility “right on the community’s doorstep” but not on the MAX line, likely resulting in short car trips (still good for reducing carbon emissions). One must also keep in mind that this is metro Portland we are talking about: Orenco’s relatively “low,” 15% mode share for transit commuting is still three times the national median.

Beyond transportation habits, the community’s level of social activity has apparently risen substantially since 2002, when the development was still relatively new (and unfinished?). By wide margins, residents of Orenco Station outpace those of the comparison neighborhoods in reporting more friendliness, more “community,” and more group participation than their previous communities. Steuteville believes the new study is the first of its kind to show big differences in social activity between new urbanist neighborhoods and more conventional development, and also the first to show such a high rate of walking to stores.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog’s home page.

In his seminal book “Great Streets”, Allan Jacobs wrote “given a limited budget, the most effective expenditure of funds to improve a street would probably be on trees.”

I couldn’t agree more.

This is not simply an exercise in greenwashing or tree-hugging. In fact, when planning for cities one of the more damaging paths to go down is to think that green is always good. It’ll be interesting in fact when the current phase of green fancy dies down so we can start to have more rational discussions of what “green” is appropriate in a walkable environment and how much.

But I digress.

Street trees, on the other hand, are a simple intervention that is almost universally of value to walkability. And by street trees I do not mean ornamental, fruit, or flowering trees. Instead, I’m referring to the kind of tree that actually grows tall and provides shade over the sidewalk and the street. The virtues of these trees (or as engineers like to refer to them – fixed hazardous objects) are so numerous that it’s a wonder we often don’t have more rigorous programs for planting and maintenance. Here’s just a few:

-they provide shade and comfort for pedestrians
-they cool the pavement, extending its usable life (moderating temperature swings reduce cracking/swelling)
-they add beauty to the walking experience

And I’m sure we could go on.

Of course, there are important design issues to consider. First, try not to do too much; a consistent spacing of the same species not only provides a better canopy, but is more harmonious in appearance.

Second, be careful about the space needed for a good quality street tree. A minimum space is usually needed for long-term health (and sidewalk protection), but overdoing it in width is also unnecessary. High quality trees can very often work in 4 or 5′ grates or lawns. Again, match the species to the design goals and don’t fall back on one-size-fits-all solutions.

One other important thing about trees is that people love to volunteer time to plant them. So in terms of an effort that can be undertaken with fairly minimal expense, consider establishing a tree fund that volunteers can implement. It need not be brain surgery to lay the groundwork for a quality tree canopy.

Finally, a note on maintenance. Simply planting trees alone and letting them grow will not achieve the desired result. Trees do need some form of maintenance, including watering, fertilizing, and especially pruning. Limbing them up as they grow so that the trees grow “over” pedestrians (and building signs) is critical. Sometimes volunteer groups can do this, but often this kind of long-term effort requires a dedicated paid person or persons.

Below are two examples of tree use in the Kansas City area. The top example is that of the Westport area, home to many different shops and bars. The bottom picture shows a more residential setting in the Brookside area, south of downtown Kansas City.