Simplicity in urban planning

Thanks to the Permission to Suck blog I came across a talk Rhode Island School of Design president John Maeda gave at TED on the subject of simplicity.  (Maeda literally wrote the book on simplicity.)



I really started to appreciate simplicity when I was a student in Professor John Sullivan's fluid mechanics course at Purdue University.  Our first exam did not go well; Professor Sullivan said our class achieved one of the lowest test score averages in his career up to that point.  One particular test problem had most of us scribbling furiously for a page or more; when Professor Sullivan demonstrated the solution, it only required a simple, elegant, three lines.  It was a thing of beauty.  I don't always succeed, but the power of simplicity is a lesson I've tried to return to throughout my life.

Simplicity can be a valuable tool in urban design and city planning.  In his excellent book Green Metropolis, David Owen wrote, "Walking in much of Manhattan...is like walking on a map."  The average New Yorker lives nine months longer than the average American; there are several reasons for this, but one reason is the fact that they walk more.  The city is a walker's dream: plenty of landmarks, sprawling sidewalks, and a beautiful grid street layout.  The city is easy to navigate because of the grid.  Even if you get lost on foot, you'll rarely go more than a block out of your way.

I've lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, since 2004.  We do not come close to New York in terms of walkability.  But we have a street grid system that makes St. Petersburg a breeze to navigate.  Sequentially numbered avenues run east-west and sequentially numbered streets run north-south.  So if I'm looking for 5100 3rd Avenue North, I know I need to go to 51st Street and 3rd Avenue North.  If, from there, I need to go to 71st Street and 38th Avenue North, then I need to travel 35 blocks north and 20 blocks west to reach my destination.  This is perfect for the directionally challenged like myself.

(St. Petersburg, Florida)

I'll be moving to nearby Tampa soon enough.  Not quite as easy to navigate.  Yes, most streets are laid out according to an approximate grid.  But Tampa covers a much wider area than St. Petersburg (more on that in future posts) and, except for a few areas, the convenient numbering system is gone.  I don't know Dale Mabry Road from Hillsborough Avenue from Columbus Drive.  I'm looking forward to being in a new city and learning my way around.  It will just take longer than in St. Petersburg.  I'm also wondering if this has an impact on emergency services.  The street numbering system in St. Petersburg doesn't require much thought (or GPS help) once you're used to it.  It seems finding an address in Tampa, and most cities for that matter, will take precious extra time, even if only a few moments.

(Tampa, Florida)

Point A to Point B on the Tampa Express

How we get from Point A to Point B in our daily lives consumes massive time and energy.  My current home in Pinellas County, Florida, and my (hopefully) future home in Hillsborough County, Florida, are not hotbeds of public transit progressivism.  With a few exceptions, local civic leaders embrace the inefficiency of roads and highways and exclude other transit modes.  Thankfully, there is serious talk these days about light rail (often led by Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio), but that is far off in the future.  For now, bus travel is our only public transit option.

So from time to time I'll select a Point A and Point B, geographically, and use public transit to make the trip.  This week I went from my home to a Borders in Tampa via an express bus that crosses Tampa Bay, connecting St. Petersburg and Tampa.  Julie works near this Borders, so I had a reference point for driving (and a ride home, something most transit riders don't have).

Bay Area residents have some idea of how difficult this trip is.  I traveled through two counties via two different transit agencies: PSTA (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority) and HART (Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority).  My trip involved walking, riding a local St. Petersburg bus (PSTA), riding the express bus across Tampa Bay, and riding a local Tampa bus (HART).

According to Google, this is a distance of 21 miles.  My actual travel time was 1 hour, 23 minutes; Google Trip Planner estimates 1 hour, 48 minutes; Julie normally makes the drive in about 50 minutes.  Fifteen minutes of my travel time was walking from my house to the bus stop.

However, my total travel time, including waiting, was 3 hours.  I could have shortened this by taking a later local bus in St. Petersburg, but if that particular bus had been only 5 minutes late, I would have missed the express bus, leading to an additional 2 hour wait.  Wait time, of course, is crucial for transit users.

Here are a few take-aways from my bus experience:

• I haven't studied many of HART's routes, but many PSTA routes only run every half hour, some only once per hour.  This is not frequent enough to be practical for many people.  I don't blame PSTA for this; the real problem is that we have not sufficiently funded transit.

• Buses were clean and comfortable.  All the drivers were professional and courteous.  (This is more important than it sounds because I think driving a bus seems like a very stressful job.)  Buses ran on schedule; one even reached its destination a few minutes ahead of schedule.

• Counting student and senior discounts, PSTA offers 14 different fare options.  I appreciate the attempt to offer options, but this might be a little too much.  I would also like to see more area-wide fare options that integrate both PSTA and HART.

• The total fare was $6.50.  This is a little steep, but there are discounted multi-fare options for regular bus travelers.

• The individual fare for both HART and PSTA local buses is $1.75.  Exact change only.  For all those times when you have a dollar bill and three quarters handy.  This (not to mention potentially long wait times) can be a problem for the impulse traveler who just wants to go to a movie or shopping.  Until debit card readers are installed, the fares should be even dollar amounts.

• The day I took the bus was a beautiful spring day in Florida with high temperatures in the mid-70s.  Imagine waiting half an hour or longer at a bus stop during the Florida summer, with a heat index well over 100 degrees.  Now imagine that wait carrying groceries or with a child.  This is another argument for more frequent service.

• This was my first experience using Google's trip planner with public transit.  It was reliable and told me specifically which buses to take.  It did not, however, tell me the bus fare, so I still had to look at the individual transit agencies' web sites for this.

• The buses were not heavily used; there were only 5 passengers on the local PSTA bus and never more than 12 passengers on any of the three buses.  Many use this to support the abandonment of transit.  I feel the exact opposite is true - for all the reasons I've listed above (and more I'll surely think of later), this is evidence that we need to improve Bay Area transit and increase service frequency.  The more convenient it is, the more people will use it.

Movies and Place

A few location-specific movies I've watched (or re-watched) lately:

The Model Shop (1969):  Watch Gary Lockwood drive around late-1960s Los Angeles in an MG convertible.  The buildings are packed tightly together but seldom reach above two stories.  Yet it seems very neighborly.  Sprawl seldom looked so good.

Rocky (1976):  Philadelphia in the late 1970s was showing her years.  The buildings are crumbling but the mood of the city, like Rocky Balboa, is restless, a city paying dues for an uncertain future.  Watch for the great shot of City Hall.

Annie Hall (1977):  New York City vs. Los Angeles.  Woody Allen always prefers NYC, and it shows in the loving shots of the city that show up in many of his films.  Received the Academy Award for Best Picture.

King of California (2007):  Michael Douglas plays a character in denial of how suburban sprawl and big box retailers dominate the landscape.  Watch for all the corporate retail logos that represent the gentrification of an entire country (and someday the world?).  Turns out the real bargain is underneath CostCo.

A River Runs Through It (1992):  Rural Montana in the post-World War I years.  I've never been fly-fishing but director Robert Redford proves it's an art form.  The movie justifiably won the Academy Award for cinematography.

Home

Nature, it speaks true.  Why not man?

The Tempest (1982)

One morning Julie and I found a turtle in our back yard.  Being tree-huggers of sorts, we were at a loss.  Although for me, the love of animals has more to do with their helplessness than any sense of conservational responsibility.  We couldn't leave the turtle in the back yard because the dogs might hurt it.  Our house sits close to the street, so the front yard wasn't an option.  We called an area nature center and were advised that a turtle will do just about anything to return to its place of birth.  This gave me some relief that turtles lack firearms and opposable thumbs.

The guy at the nature center told us the turtle was probably headed for the nearest body of water.  The only thing we could think of was the drainage ditch that runs across the street.  So we left the turtle out there and hoped for the best.

Every year a pair of doves nests in an orange tree in our back yard.  Not only the same tree, but the same branch of the tree.  I've read that the average life span of mourning doves is 1.5 years, so maybe these are descendants of the original doves.  Either way, I appreciate their consistency.

This theme of returning to the place of origin seems common in nature.  I've met people who never left the county in which they were born.  I've met others who spend their lives wandering and have no wish to settle in a specific location.  I left my home state of Indiana in 1989 to go to school in Texas.  Since then I've returned to my hometown exactly three times; two of those trips were for funerals.  It's not that I don't like the place; funds and time are always limited.  In 2001 Julie and I sold our house in California, moved to North Carolina, and bought a new house there - all in one month.  This adaptability, the ability to position ourselves in more viable locations relatively quickly, has clearly been critical to our survival as a species.

Only economics and politics - national borders - complicates this social and biological freedom to move from place to place.  And technology has gradually chipped away at economic factors, making it easier for more and more people to live and work in completely separate locations.  What is home, then?  A physical space?  A state of mind?  A collection of emotional or social bonds?

We affect our location and our location affects us.  Where to live is not a trivial decision.  In the United States, Sperling's BestPlaces helps you figure out the city or town best suited to your likes and dislikes.  (San Francisco came out at the top of my list, which makes me think their algorithm isn't giving enough weight to my desire for affordable housing.)  Either way, living a thoughtful, deliberate life involves giving serious thought to our location.

I admit, some days I still wonder how things worked out for that turtle.  But the baby doves left the nest recently and it was a real treat to watch.

Traffic Circles

Traffic management is a vital aspect of community.  In his book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us, Tom Vanderbilt cites research showing that traffic roundabouts can reduce traffic delays as much as 65% compared to intersections with conventional traffic signals.  That's because at roundabouts all drivers have to slow down, but they rarely have to stop.

(Traffic circles and roundabouts are technically different.  In traffic circles, priority is often given to drivers entering the circle.  In roundabouts, drivers entering the circle generally have to yield to drivers already in the circle.  I often use the terms interchangeably but the efficiency increased mentioned in Traffic applies to roundabouts.)

(Satellite view courtesy of Google Maps)
Above is a roundabout in a residential area of St. Petersburg, Florida.  I'm not wild about this one; based on observation it's not effective at slowing traffic.  Traffic from two directions does not have to reduce speed until it's well into the circle, so drivers from these directions often force the right-of-way, increasing the possibility of a crash.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure of an effective solution because of the divided road on the east side of the circle.  Expanding the width of the roundabout might work, but this would require acquisition of substantial amounts of the surrounding private properties.

(Satellite view courtesy of Google Maps)
The above roundabout is also in St. Petersburg.  It seems effective at slowing traffic.  It's smaller than the earlier roundabout and it's located in a commercial district.

Above is a photo I took of Columbus Circle in Manhattan in 2005.  This is a traffic circle; entry is controlled by stop lights.  Traffic circles and roundabouts can do more than calm traffic.  They offer a public space - note the benches around the interior of the circle - and they offer a forum for public art, in this case a statue of Christopher Columbus.

(Satellite view courtesy of Google Maps)
One of the highlights of a recent trip to Washington, DC, was an evening hanging out in DuPont Circle.  It not only manages the intersection of four streets but provides a public greenspace.  Benches line the circle.  Julie and I sat with cold beverages while enjoying the diversity of ethnicities, ages, income levels, and activities around us.  Dog walkers, athletes and families passed by, along with people who appeared to be homeless and others dressed in a formal business attire.  On nearby streets we found a range of shops and restaurants, as well as a DC Metro station, giving us easy access to the entire DC area.  It's the kind of public space all communities could use more of.

Where to see a movie in a small town

Well Saturday night about eight o'clock

I know what I'm gonna do

I'm gonna pick my baby up

And take her to the picture show

The Drifters

When I was a child, I didn't realize the Castle Theater was such a unique place.  The Castle is a real movie theater, at the time the only theater in my hometown of New Castle, Indiana (there is a drive-in just outside of town).  It opened in 1935, before the days of metroplex shoeboxes where the sound from one microtheater leaks into the next.  I saw some of my favorite movies there, including the original Star Wars in 1977.  As I've written before, I've only returned to New Castle three times in the last twenty-one years.  On the last visit Julie and I saw American Wedding at the Castle.  The movie was forgettable, but Julie was impressed by the Castle and I couldn't help feeling proud that my hometown could sustain such a nice theater.

Except, it almost couldn't.  The Castle closed in January.  It was a real shock to many of us who grew up there.  The good news is the Castle is scheduled to open in March under new ownership.  I admire the new owners but I don't envy them; operating the only movie screen in a small city can't be easy.

I lived one terrible year in Stockton, in the Central Valley of California.  One of the few things I liked about Stockton was the Empire Theater, another historic movie theater.  They often showed classic films and I saw The Godfather there.  Some folks suggested the classic film route for the Castle.  I like the idea, but I don't know if New Castle has the population (18,339 in 2008) to sustain such a niche business.

Part of what defines a place is the kind of businesses it attracts and retains.  Cheap consumer electronics and a global trend toward urbanization haven't been kind to small towns and their movie theaters.  Movies are one of the things America has always done well and many of our fondest memories are what movies we saw, the theaters we saw them in, and who we saw them with.  A night at the movies is local entertainment that is culturally unifying whether we're in a theater in Newton, Iowa, or Middletown, Connecticut, or New Castle, Indiana.  Every small town theater that closes causes a disconnect bigger than the business itself.

The good news is that the Castle Theater will open again.  Maybe this is not a great thing in the grand scheme of economics.  But I'm relieved because in a world that changes more rapidly all the time, the theater's presence is a constant that links several generations.  And I hope for the best when the Castle reopens, because while the movies are still good, the movie theaters have really gone downhill.  And the Castle is a great theater.

I miss the bookstores, and so will you

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for nine years.  It was where I came to love bookstores.  It was where I developed an understanding of what Ray Oldenburg called the "third place," those places away from home and work that give character to communities.  Howard Schultz also developed an understanding of the third place; he put the insight to much better use than I have.

Anyway, there were great bookstores in the Bay Area.  Independents and used bookstores.  And when a Borders opened on University Avenue in Palo Alto, I enthusiastically accepted it as part of the local culture without understanding the impact Borders and Barnes & Noble would have on independent stores.  Amazon.com had not yet conquered the world.  The bookstores I loved were not only places to browse books, but because many of them had attached cafés, they were ideal places to meet with a friend for a hot beverage and good conversation.  (Printers, Inc., was one of the best; their space in downtown Mountain View is still a bookstore/café operated by Books, Inc.)  Used bookstores, like BookBuyers in Mountain View and Know Knew Books in Palo Alto, were treasure hunts where I found the likes of The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer and Hemingway's A Moveable Feast; books I would probably never have stumbled onto in a chain retailer.  Those bookstores helped define the community and so they helped define that stage of my life.  I'm thrilled that a few of the bookstores I frequented are still around.

Culture shock hit when we moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and found that independent and used bookstores were much less common.  Third places were more likely to be chains like Starbucks.  Borders became a guilty pleasure.  We moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2004.  More culture shock.  Our local Borders is usually filled with people shouting at each other (or into their cell phones).  Much of this is more about changing times than changing geography.  We do have a large and popular used bookstore downtown, but they have a shrine to extremist idealogues that I find too distracting.  A few other used bookstores in St. Petersburg, but the selection is limited.  It's not their fault; there's not enough business to support the kind of stores I fell in love with.

Borders recently closed its B. Dalton bookstore in Laredo, Texas.  That makes Laredo one of the largest cities in the United States without a bookstore.  There are suggestions that Barnes & Noble will open a store there in the future.  Should we worry that a city of 250,000 people can't support a bookstore?  Or should we accept that online booksellers and Kindle-like e-book readers are good enough?  I don't have the answer.

I don't know what the future of literacy in our country is.  Or the future of third places.  I don't know if it's a bad thing that the internet (and bloggers like me) seem to be shortening our collective attention span.  I can't prove that it's a bad thing that we spend more time in third places text messaging people remotely than we spend talking with the people in the room with us.  I feel that our society has been unraveling somewhat in recent years and that this trend is continuing, but I don't have data to back that up.  I just know I miss the bookstores, and I think we'll all miss them someday.  I miss them like I miss my wasted youth.  I miss them like a lost love.  And I don't think they're coming back.