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Sunday, August 15th, 2010

Rebranding Columbus

It’s no secret I’m a fan of Columbus, Ohio, one of those under the radar cities that’s a whole lot better than its external brand image would suggest.

That frustrates local civic leaders, who’ve undertaken a major re-branding effort, as discussed in a recent NYT piece, “There May Be ‘No Better Place,’ but There Is a Better Slogan:”

Quick, what do you think about when you hear the words “Columbus, Ohio”? Still waiting…. And that’s the problem that civic leaders here hope to solve. This capital city in the middle of a state better known, fairly or not, for cornfields and rusting factories has a low cost of living, easy traffic and a comparatively robust economy….What Columbus does not have, to the despair of its leaders, is an image. As home to major research centers, it has long outgrown its 1960s self-concept as a cow town, and its distinction as the birthplace of the Wendy’s hamburger chain does not quite do the trick these days. The city lacks a shorthand way to sell itself — a signature like the Big Apple or an intriguing tagline like Austin’s “Live Music Capital of the World.” As a result, those working to attract new companies, top professors, conventions and tourists have a hard time explaining how Columbus differs from dozens of other cities that likewise claim to be livable, progressive and fun.

As I’ve said many times, branding isn’t marketing. It isn’t about tag lines, messaging, or talking points. Yes, there’s an element of that and getting your message out. But branding starts with what’s on the inside not messages to the outside. It’s about who you are, what your values are, what you stand for, what you aspire to be when you grow up. The marketing part just helps communicate that.

I won’t reprise my general prescription on branding, but here are a few pieces you can review if interested:

• The Authentic City
• The Brand Promise of Indianapolis
• Our Product Is Better Than Our Brand

Despite what the title of the NYT piece might suggest, I think Columbus gets it on this:

How do you stoke the imagination of outsiders and the enthusiasm of residents? Columbus, starting from relative obscurity, has found that you cannot just hire an advertising agency, like New York and Las Vegas did, and come up with a slogan. It needs to find something real and heartfelt to trumpet, a task force of business, educational, political and arts leaders here concluded.

Your brand has to be something that is authentic, that’s true to the place. It has to resonate with the people who are there. That’s not to say it can’t be aspirational. That’s how we grow. But to simply chuck your past and trying to be something completely different is overwhelmingly difficult and often fails. So kudos to Columbus for trying to find something true to the character of their city.

Apparently they’ve been at this a while, and one of the techniques has been involving residents in helping to define the new brand: “But this time, three years into their inner journey, city leaders expect to succeed by drawing the whole population into the process and teasing out shared points of pride.”

When I read something like “drawing the whole population into the process”, alarm bells go off. It’s not PC to say this, but too much public involvement at the wrong stage is a bad idea. Clearly, it’s important that the public buy in and that the results be shared and genuine input solicited without delivering a fait accompli. But design by focus group almost never works. I’ve seen a lot of civic visioning efforts that tried to be maximally inclusive – I even served on the steering committee for one – but I’ve yet to see one that produced compelling results or moved the needle. Think about it. Did Steve Jobs design the iPod by asking people what they thought about music players? No he did not. Apple, and all the best product companies, succeed by giving us the thing we didn’t even know we wanted until they gave it to us.

That’s not to say you ignore market research. There’s certainly an element of archeology and anthropology here. And it certainly has to go beyond simply hiring a fancy pants advertising firm, something Columbus wisely avoided. But community involvement isn’t probably going to get it either. Partially that’s because people who are too close, who are on the inside, probably have difficulty articulating the uniqueness of a place. I don’t have enough personal experience with Columbus to go into depth there. I’d have to get more deeply embedded in the community to really understand the place at a deeper level. But I’m confident that the qualities they are looking for are there to be discovered in Columbus. The city is doing well in a tough region. There have to be reasons why. It’s going to require digging deep though.

The Fallacy of Awareness

I gather from the NYT piece that the people in Columbus think they’ve got a pretty great city, and that if they could only get other people to see how great it is, their standing in the league tables of public estimation would go way up. I believe the first part is true, but not the second.

Wanting to have your city taken seriously is likely wanting to be a member of the cool kids club. How do you get in? Well, it goes without saying that you need to have the qualifications – to be good looking, rich, to suck up to the right people, etc – but is that enough? Sometimes yes, but more often not, particularly for people who don’t score overwhelmingly high.

Think about it, the defining characteristic of a clique is exclusivity. If it was too easy to get in, membership would lose its value. So if you think about cities, the urbanists, media types, academics, activists, etc. who are the arbiters to the public at large about what cities are the coolest and best generally all pick the same ones – cliques also enforce conformity of mindset – and it just so happen that those are the places that contain most of the said taste arbiters. Why would any of them choose to champion Columbus, unless they had some personal connection there?

People who are members of an elite clique generally spend most of the time talking with and about each other, and little time about anyone else, even to put them down. To be ignored is the ultimate penalty of being an outsider. This is true of almost any field.

Here’s a classic example from the blogosphere. There was a minor kerfuffle a while back about Andrew Sullivan using “ghost bloggers.” Fellow Tier One blogger Ann Althouse took extreme umbrage at this in a way I find very revealing about the mindset of members of an exclusive clique:

I seriously believed I was interacting with Sullivan, a writer I have respected for maybe 20 years. I wouldn’t have bothered with Patrick (or Chris). I really don’t care what they think. If they insult me, they are to me like any number of bloggers who insult me and whose bait I don’t take. I would always take Sullivan’s bait, because Sullivan is important. Not to know whether it’s Sullivan or one of them makes a mush out of the whole blog.

Of course when she says Andrew Sullivan is important, what’s she’s really implying that she’s important, and can’t be bothered wasting her time on anyone who isn’t also on the VIP list. To have fooled her into debating mere peons – whose writing she admits she can’t tell from Sullivan’s himself – is treachery of the highest order.

In fairness to Althouse, she does link to lesser known bloggers (including, once, me). The point is not that she’s evil, which I don’t think, but that this is how the world really works.

If you are the Columbus, Ohio of bloggers, how do you get Ann Althouse, Andrew Sullivan, etc. to care about you? I can actually share a personal story in that regard. The first two and a half years of this blog was almost exclusively about Indianapolis, and I had very wide readership there. But I received very little recognition or acknowledgment in that city. Quite the opposite in fact. As an example, one journalist I assisted with a story told me flat out I wasn’t authoritative enough to quote in the piece. While I hope I’m getting better over time, I don’t think my content was that much less compelling then than it is today. And it was obviously being read. So why the difference? It’s the same dynamic I’m talking about. They might not have known who I was, but they knew who I wasn’t – and that was one of the boys. Quality product and awareness had nothing to do with it. Having experienced that end of the spectrum is one reason I try to be a champion for new voices.

There’s an industry out there that creates the myth or fantasy of the instant or overnight success who achieves fame and glory when their talent is finally seen by the public or the right people. Susan Boyle for example. I’m sure that does happen from time to time. But is that the way it ordinarily happens? And how much staying power does fame and recognition have in those circumstances?

I’d suggest that this sort of thing happens far less than we are generally led to believe. I read a lot of magazine profiles of people and when I hear them talk about how they got their big break, I’m always amazed at how often there are one of two basic tales. The first is, “I was sitting in my office one day wondering how we were going to pay the rent when my phone rang and it was Frank Gehry asking if I could design some lighting fixtures for his new Guggenheim Museum”. The second is, “I just showed up at Vogue and lied that I was sent there by Steven Meisel and they interviewed me and I got the job.” How likely is it that most of these stories are true? Or at least that they are the whole truth?

One of my guilty pleasures is the New York Observer. One of the things I love about it is, that due to the gossipy nature of the publication, they always give you the back story on who the people they are talking about are. That 27 year old chief curator at the top tier museum? Yeah, his mom was an heiress. He wouldn’t advertise that fact in most of those other magazine profiles. I’d bet most of these stories would fare similarly under scrutiny, though perhaps in different ways.

Clearly, awareness, and awareness by the right people, is critical. You really do have to get out there and knock on Vogue’s door – probably getting it slammed in your face the first few times you do it. Everybody needs lucky breaks. I have no doubt that if my personal promotional skills were better, I’d be further along in achieving my own ambitions.

But there’s a lot more too it than that. You want to be a member of the club? You’ve got to break the door down yourself. You’ve got to make it so that they can’t ignore you. If Columbus wants to be taken seriously, it’s going to have to force itself into the conversation. That takes relentless hard work and creating a product so compelling that the urbanist elite has to respond to it and take it seriously. Simply being a great place to raise a family, having a relatively good economy, high quality of life and low costs – a value proposition virtually identical to lots of other cities regardless of what locals might think – is not going to get the job done.

One Columbus official said, “Candidly, we believe we are one of the brightest stars in Ohio’s future.” One of the brightest stars in Ohio? I’m sorry, that’s not going to cut it. It’s like I tell the people in Indy when they get excited about being the “Diamond of the Rust Belt”: that sounds an awful lot like bragging that you won the loser’s bracket in the JV playoffs again this year. There’s nothing wrong with being in Ohio – and Columbus would be ill-advised to try to pretend they are something different from the state. Columbusites can be proud of Ohio and their role in it. But if they want America to pay attention to them, they need a message and reality to match that ambition.

That’s what Portland did. Portland didn’t get to be Portland through superior marketing and talking points about having the lowest costs and quality of life on the west coast with all those natural amenities to boot. They went out and did nothing less than define a new vision of what a small city in America could be. And they delivered on it through relentless hard work and actual execution over the course of decades.

Staking Your Claim

If Columbus wants to raise its profile, then it has to start setting the agenda. That’s not to say they have to try to be the next Portland or anything. But they’ve got to find areas where they can stake their claim and create something that compels the world to pay attention.

I’ll be the first to admit that this section will be unfair to Columbus. I’m going to compare it to its “twin city” of Indianapolis, a place I know far better. So keeping in mind that I just probably know more about what’s going on in Indy, and that I’m clearly a partisan of that city, I’d like to note a few things.

First, Columbus just seems more with it than Indy on a host of matters. In fact, when it comes to things like urban design, density, public transit, and many other matters, Indy is almost worst in class. It’s hard for me to even name one urban infill project that exhibits proper urban design, for example, while in others cities I tend to note that the majority of new developments do. Columbus, by contrast, just seems to get it on most issues, from urbanism, to pedestrian investments, etc. Yet why is Indy much better known?

One reason is that while Columbus does a very good job of ticking all the boxes, I can’t name many areas where it has gone above and beyond the checklist. And therein lies its problem. Columbus is a quality follower and implementer of the right things, but isn’t an urban innovator or a place that has carved out a distinct and compelling offering versus broadly similar peers.

A lot of people from bigger cities don’t care for Indy much. If you want walkable neighborhoods, tons of independent restaurants, etc. it is not your place. But time and again Indy has gone out and pulled things off that many other cities can only dream about, and put themselves in the spotlight.

The NYT notes of Columbus leaders, “One model they have studied is Indianapolis, which raised its profile by describing itself as the amateur athletic capital of America.” The NYT gets it completely wrong. Indy didn’t raise its profile by describing itself as anything. Back in the 1970’s a group of glum city leaders sat around a table wondering what they were going to do about a city best known, if as anything, as “India-no-place.” They hit on the idea of amateur sports. But rather than a marketing program, they instead committed themselves to going out and making it a reality, a process that continues to this day, though not limited to only amateur sports.

Indy built a downtown arena in the 1970’s. They built a domed stadium at the bargain price of only $80 million in 1983 without a team to play in it in an era before widespread pro sports franchise relocations. This let them pick the Colts up in 1984 on the cheap. Yes, that was a lucky break, but one they were ready to exploit. They put the domed stadium next to the convention center, not just to help conventions, but anticipating that major sports events would have ancillary activities that would use the co-located space. They created the first of its kind Indiana Sports Corp. to oversee all aspects of luring and hosting events. They saw the benefits of industry clustering, and recruited sporting sanctioning bodies to town, culminating with the NCAA headquarters. They started off with unglamorous events like the trials for the 1984 Olympics. They took risky bets when opportunity presented itself such as jumping in to host the 1986 Pan Am Games when the original host city backed out. They built state of the art facilities for sports few people gave much though to like swimming and bicycling.

In effect, Indianapolis created the entire industry of using sports events hosting as an economic development platform, and they did it in a holistic, extremely intelligent way that involved putting some major chips on the table for projects with an uncertain outcome. And they are still at it today, 35 years later after, as all successes do, everybody and their brother has tried to get a piece of this pie. The competition is brutal, and Indy has spent big – some say too big – to stay at the front, such as by going full out to host a Super Bowl in 2012. Indianapolis is arguably still the best place in America to host a sporting event.

I’m a believer in all the research that suggests sports investment is a bad idea with a dubious payoff for cities. But Indianapolis is an exception. There’s no doubt this was a major force in transforming the city – and getting its name out there. How much would the city have had to pay for all the de facto advertising impressions they’ve gotten from all this sports investment?

Is Columbus willing to stake a similar claim in another speculative area and put big money behind it, staying with it over the course of decades? Is Columbus ready to pile $3 billion in chips on Red 14 the way Indy did?

Indy also conceived many other similar types of programs that not only add to local quality of life, but also get the city’s name out. Consider the quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, one of the most prestigious such competitions in the world. Why would anyone take seriously a fine arts competition in Indianapolis? Well, they wouldn’t, all things being equal. So when the city did it, they had to come up with an unbeatable package. First, they partnered with the world-renowned Indiana University School of Music to give them musical credibility. And they set up for the winner a year’s loan of a Stradivarius violin, a recital at Carnegie Hall and other places, intense coaching from some of the world’s best violinists, and more. That certainly got people’s attention.

Or consider the Indianapolis Prize for animal conservation. Again, why would anyone think of Indianapolis in this field? They wouldn’t – except that they city anted up and made it the single biggest cash prize in this field in the world and recruited a top international nominating committee and jury.

Or look at the currently in progress Indianapolis Cultural Trail, which is taking over 8 miles of downtown street lanes away from cars and giving them to people. It is a unique project, that includes the highest quality bicycle boulevard I’ve seen, along with an often separate pedestrian walkway, significant green features, and major public art installations. While honestly this has not received the publicity it deserves, it has been covered in Surface, Dwell, Streetsblog, and elsewhere. It’s a totally unique project. From now on anyone who wants to undertake a major downtown urban trail project is going to go to Indianapolis to see what it did. Why? Not because they want to, but because they have to. Because at some point somebody is going to ask the question, did you look at the Indy Cultural Trail? – and if they development team says No, they are going to look pretty stupid.

I’ve also noted how suburban Carmel, Indiana is staking out a claim to be a nationally premier suburb, with 5% of all the modern roundabouts in the United States, the largest deployment of roundabout interchanges in the United States, an ambitious agenda of New Urbanist retrofit, a $150M concert hall, and much more.

You might not know any or all of these, but in their fields, they are known. They are all projects of major ambitions, that attempt to innovate and set the agenda, and which serve a branding function for the city. They were also conceived with a recognition that nobody is going to pay attention to Indianapolis unless the city forces them to. And it has. And it’s not just in the traditional civic sphere. Here’s a point to ponder: with Columbus’ vaunted gay community, why is it Indianapolis that is home to the Bilerico Project, the Huffington Post of the LGBT community?

I could go on and on – best airport in the United States, anyone? – but I think you get the point. Indy isn’t in the club yet, and may never get there – but it has come a long way.

Again, if I knew Columbus better, I’d probably be able to give examples there too. I’m sure Columbus isn’t totally without these types of programs. But my blog has been traditionally Midwest focused. And I’ve tried to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s going on in all these cities, including Columbus. I read the Dispatch online for over two years and still read Columbus Underground regularly. But I haven’t come across that many truly compelling stories of national relevance – and certainly nowhere near as many as I’d expect for a city that’s rocking and rolling as much as Columbus is.

Maybe the painful truth is that Columbus today just isn’t very different from the other places with which it competes – and that’s what this re-branding should really address.

Columbus has most of the blocking and tackling nailed. It’s a city that gets it. But to break through at the national level, Columbus is going to have to do a lot more than get it. Columbus is going to have to start playing offense, start dictating an ambitious – and let’s face it, risky – agenda around items that are so compelling the world won’t have any choice but to sit up and pay attention. Because it’s unlikely anybody is going to start giving Columbus the props it craves otherwise. It’s just like they told me at my old firm about the secret to making partner – you’ve got to already more than be there.

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Urbanoscope

First a brief update on my Metra story. Commenter Alex B. raises a good point that the right of way is not being sold off or built on for something else. That’s true as regards the actual property lines. My concern is with the elevated embankment on which the rail line runs. This embankment was constructed and previously ran with three active tracks. After this project, there will only be two and to restore the third track will require extending the retaining walls. A few months ago I was given a major nine figure price tag to do that, meaning it would likely never happen, though it’s worth noting that in Metra’s response to my post, they give a lower figure today. I wanted to clear that up.

Speaking of Metra’s response, they copied me on one they wrote for someone else and I told them I’d post it here. I’m not going to do a line by a line analysis or anything because I don’t want to make this blog into “Aaron vs. Metra” and I don’t think it would be productive. But I will link to the complete, unedited document so you have a chance to read their position. I do want to respond to one item in it, which is where I got the idea that the grade raising on the bridge was the city’s idea. I attended a public meeting on the project and when I asked a Metra representative why they had to raise the grade, he said, “Because we couldn’t get permits from the city if we didn’t.” Apparently this was in error. I still continue to believe that highway funds should be used on projects that improve truck clearances. And while it’s not my primary concern with the project, as someone who lives in the area I’m confident the neighbors would strongly oppose anything that brings more and bigger trucks into their neighborhood, especially on residential streets.

Thanks to everyone who helped with this.

Top Stories

1. The Guardian: Cyclists vs. Drivers? They are often the same people

2. Human Transit: The Case for Frequency Mapping

3. Urban Cincy: The Urban Differences of Cincinnati and Chicago

The Real Megabus

You probably saw this craziness already, but China is looking at giant buses that can pass over top of cars:

It’s probably nothing, but it’s good to explore ideas.

Food Trucks

Food trucks are all the rage, but in a brief piece on his blog, Payton Chung takes a contrarian view:

I’m know it’s so very trendy, but I really don’t understand the fascination with littering Chicago with food trucks. I’ve found them quite annoying in NY and LA:

• they don’t pay rent for the valuable public space they take up
• they unfairly compete with fixed-premise restaurants, particularly since Chicago suffers from many miles of empty storefronts
• they only go to trendy areas which already have lots of shops and foot traffic, thereby merely overcrowding existing transient hotspots and potentially preventing new areas from emerging
• they leave clouds of diesel fumes and noise in their wake, since they run generators even when idling
• they generate mountains of trash in said areas’ already-overflowing trashcans, since there’s no capacity for onboard dishwashing and few sidewalk recycling bins
• they’d be yet more unwieldy vehicles careening through the streets, killing people in crashes.

I certainly don’t dispute the overall goals to have broadly available, inexpensive food and easing the way for entrepreneurs to open foodservice businesses. However, these goals frankly have nothing to do with adding more smelly trucks to already choked streets.

World and National Roundup

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a special section on high speed rail

A group of public radio stations has created a web new project called Changing Gears: Remaking the Manufacturing Belt. I haven’t dug into it yet, but thought I would pass the link along.

WORLD Magazing, Christian themed publication, has a special issue on cities. It looks interesting. It’s subscriber only, but looks like it’s only $5 to get a one month pass.

NYT: Outsourcing to India draws Western lawyers – In my recent post about Chicago and professional services, I noted that law was just starting to get hit the way technology did with offshoring. Here’s an interesting story on those lines. You don’t think it can happen to you? I can happen to you.

Global Urbanist: A city doesn’t need a center, but it does need realistic planning

WSJ: Parisians Find Playground Under the Streets

Richard Florida: Roadmap to a high speed recovery

NYT: The Coming Class War Over Pensions

Wendell Cox: US leads the world in per capita greenhouse gas reductions – according to a Dutch government study.

Richard Reep: A localist solution

Urban Out: Midwest urban forms present varying challenges and opportunities

NYT: Wringing art out of rubble in Detroit

Jason Tinkey: I Won’t Share You – a look at Chicago’s bike share program.

Time Detroit Blog: Detroit’s Model Train – Can a new light rail project help solve Detroit’s mass transit woes?

Cincinnati Enquirer: City’s pensions a disaster scenario

Chicago Magazine: Raising Chicago: An Illustrated History – raising the street grade in the city.

Replacing a Rail Bridge

I mentioned that rail bridges can sometimes be replaced by simply hoisting a new one into place over the weekend or something. Here’s a video of just that being done on a passenger bridge in Oyster Bay on the Long Island Railroad. (If the video doesn’t display, click here).

This was a small project at only $3.4 million, paid for by an FTA grant. It’s interesting that this project involves raising the vertical clearance as well. I wonder what the incremental cost of this is? And how much FTA money around the country has actually ended up going to make life better for road users. In an era of ultra-tight capital funding, America can’t afford to be spending precious transit dollars on trucking. The US DOT ought to take a look here. I’m not saying we shouldn’t raise bridge grades, but highway funds ought to make a contribution proportionate to the benefits.

Post Script

Free Basket (or as I like to call it, the Jungle Gym) by Los Carpinteros at the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s new Art and Nature Park.

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Lessons From Beirut

Update Aug-14: My timing was pretty good here as only two days later Tyler Brûlé writes another column “Behold Brilliant Beirut.” He bought the apartment after all.

While perhaps somewhat overtaken by Baghdad, it has not been uncommon over the years to hear people say, “This place looks like Beirut” when observing some piece or another of urban ruin or destruction. That long war-torn Lebanese capital has perhaps the world’s foremost reputation as being home to perpetual devastation and violence.

But despite, or perhaps because of that, Beirut has managed to capture a hold on the minds of people who come to champion it. Drawing on some of its unique character and long-ago claim to be the “Paris of the Middle East,” Beirut has managed to create a aura about it that has fascinated and attracted many interesting folks.

One of them is Tyler Brûlé, a journalist I’ve mentioned before. He’s a Financial Times columnist and editor of Monocle magazine among other things. He’s been singing Beirut’s praises for years. This year he’s gotten more serious as he took his magazine staff there for summer holidays and even says he’s considering buying a vacation home there. In an FT column called Why Not Put Down Roots in Beirut?, he acknowledges some of the city’s issues:

The last time I was in Beirut I left the city hours before Hezbollah got a bit excitable; and Lebanon had to endure yet another summer of strife….While there’s still enough of old Ashrafieh around to give it a sense of place (the little dry-cleaning shops, the sliver-width news-stands, domestic-staff uniform shops and pockets of 1960s graphic-design brilliance on shop awnings), it’s going fast…..Like most things Lebanese, the flavour of protest is going to need to be a little bit sharper (think, for instance, of the tart, satisfying effect of sumac and lemon in a fattoush salad) to stop the developers from erecting shocking off-the-shelf towerblocks that could just as easily be going up in Sharjah or the suburbs of Istanbul.

Still, he sees the positive as well:

As we drove through the streets of Ashrafieh, it was immediately clear that the cautious behaviour of Lebanon’s banks over the past 24 months had been good, even too good, for the economy: the city is in the middle of a building boom….What I can tell you is that the city is the best place to do a little shopping, sunning and dancing in June. My highlights include…

Now Brûlé’s been looking for a vacation spot for five years, so obviously he’s a bit of a tease. We’ll see if he really decides to man up and, er, pull the trigger.

Over in this month’s Monocle, it is their annual best cities/quality of life survey edition. The list of winners is familiar – Munich, Copenhagen, Zurich – perhaps even familiar enough to signal that it’s time to retire this annual tradition. But one thing they did was to highlight five cities that “may not be the cleanest, safest or most perfectly planned but are still incredibly liveable – if you accept them on their own terms.” These were Istanbul, Naples, Rio, Taipei, and, yes, Beirut.

Monocle notes that the New York Times ranked Beirut #1 out of 44 places to go in 2009 and says of it themselves:

Putting Beirut’s enduring cliches aside, you would be hard pressed to find any other Middle Eastern city bearing graffiti from the Arab Lesbian Liberation Front. And nowhere else could you be eating organic tabbouleh while army tanks rumble past you late at night. Beirut is not about sound urban choices, green architecture, or great public transport. As one friend put it, “buying a Humvee is still considered an ecological choice here.” Yet for all its contradictions, it is still a great place to live, with a palpable sense of freedom, a vibrant creative community and an unabashed will to lead the dolce vita, no matter the political odds.

I read this and immediately thought of Detroit and other struggling cities. These places too fail on any conventional measure of urban success. That might make some believe they’re doomed to failure. And no doubt many places won’t make it. But Beirut shows that it’s possible to find something of success, and what’s more a draw, even in a place that’s been an actual war zone for much of the past three decades.

As a someone from America’s frayed heartland, I particularly enjoy Monocle for this sort of thing. Every single issue there’s a major story of some remote or backwater spot in a corner of the globe you never considered to which all sorts of uber-cool people have moved in search of opportunities, lifestyles, or some other geographic quirk. Monocle is too heavily aligned with the international jet set elite to really take this to its logical conclusion – their resident profiles are too skewed towards designers and other high tone creatives that given these an aura of sameness – but if these places can do it, so can the American Midwest or the north of England or East Germany.

Like in many cities I know personally, I’m sure the pool of such people in these cities is small, but you have to start somewhere – and being able to be a founder, to be a producer and not just a consumer of a new future for these cities, is actually a big part of the attraction. It’s a true and legitimate entrepreneurial activity to move to one of these places.

The lesson of Beirut is that you don’t have to be Munich or Copehagen to carve out your niche – or to attract significant notice. Rather, you can understand who you are, and be authentic and true to yourself, and still create a place with real resonance no matter what the odds against you. There’s no need to travel all the way to the battle zones of Beirut to find it. The frontier opportunity awaits right under our very noses.

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Help Stop Metra From Destroying Part of Chicago’s Transit Infrastructure

Important Update: Do not follow the instructions in this document to contact Metra’s Board. The Board is already revisiting the project. Thank you so much for all of your help on this issue.

I am going to make a rare foray into direct advocacy because of something very important to Chicago’s transit future. Others may also be interested as some element are not uncommon.

As incredible as it sounds, Metra, Chicago’s commuter rail agency, is planning to spend part the region’s precious transit capital funds for the benefit of road users – and do it in a way that permanently destroys a piece of Chicago’s transit infrastructure. If this sounds as crazy to you as it does to me, read on.

If you are in the Chicagoland area I’m asking for your help. Please read at least the first part of this post, then write to Metra using the links I’ve supplied and tell them to stop and re-evaluate this project. Then spread the word to all your friends to do the same.

The project in question is on the Union Pacific North Line. Metra is undertaking a project to replace 22 bridges and rebuild the Ravenswood station at a cost of $185 million and a timeline of eight years (?!). The bridges are 100 years old and there’s no question they need replacement. However, as part of this project, Metra is using transit dollars to raise the grade of the railroad to increase vertical clearance on the streets below it, and permanently destroying fully one third of the transit right of way in the process.

The UP-North line runs on an elevated embankment through the city. The bridges along the route do not meet current standards for vertical clearance. Here’s an example of a 13′ bridge on Belmont Ave that is among the lowest clearances on a major street.

This isn’t ideal, but isn’t terrible either. Virtually all trucks can navigate even Belmont Ave. without issue, though a couple times a year a truck does get stuck there. I don’t philosophically object to raising the grade, but doing so dramatically increases the cost and complexity of the project. Metra is paying for that exclusively out of transit capital funds. One hundred percent of the value of raising the rail grade is for trucks. It has nothing at all to do with transit. Yet trucking and road funds aren’t even chipping in one cent.

I’m all in favor of an integrated transportation system without all these funding stovepipes but this is ridiculous. It should be a fundamental principle of planning that transit dollars should be for transit, and that transit projects undertaken for the exclusive benefit of roadway users should be paid for with highway funds. Greg Hinz over at Crains documented how Illinois had a record highway construction season while transit hadn’t gotten a dime from the state’s capital plan. After this was exposed, the state coughed up $500 million for transit, but it is still underfunded versus roads. Yet here we see a project that de facto siphons off transit funds for the benefit of road users and trucking subsidies.

If it were just a matter of money, I could probably forget about it, particularly since this type of thing is all too common. The real problem is how this grade raising is being accomplished. The UP-North Line embankment originally had three tracks, though only two are in service today. Here’s a photo showing the right of way:

Metra’s redesigned bridges will consume the entire right of way for just two tracks. So the third track of right of way will be permanently destroyed. Why is this important? The north side is the city’s strongest growing area, particularly among the middle and upper class professionals the city has worked hard to attract. This population explosion of people who work in the Loop put a ton of pressure on transit. The Brown Line L, which runs in the vicinity of the UP-N line, was so overcrowded, the CTA implemented a $550 million project to lengthen platforms to enable longer trains. But now the Brown Line is maxed out. There is no further way to increase L capacity if ridership increases even more.

But the UP-North Line runs through the area too. This provides the only real option left for expanding rail transit service in that area of the city. As the city grows in the future, and demand warrants, the city could build a number of new stations on the UP-North Line, add the third track back, and run high frequency shuttle service, at least at rush hour, while allowing suburban trains to run express. This is conceptually similar to the “Gray Line” idea on the South Side.

Also, the UP-North line terminates at Northwestern Station in the West Loop. The area from Wacker Dr. west is what has seen the most office tower construction and most of the vacant land for new development is there. The center of gravity of the Loop employment base is clearly going to shift west over time as this area fills in. The UP-N actually serves this area much better than the L does. And there’s a multi-billion plan to build a consolidated West Loop Transportation Center that would dovetail with this perfectly.

Will we ever need this line? I don’t know. I certainly hope the city keeps growing so that it does. I do know that if Metra does their project, if we do need it down the line, it won’t be physically possible except at ruinous expense. Thus it does not meet the definition of sustainability above, because it takes away the ability of future generations to provide for themselves.

It should be another fundamental principle of planning that the city will not permanently impair an irreplaceable piece of transit infrastructure unless there is no feasible alternative. Even then, it’s a decision that should be, like the Jackson Park L removal, made at the highest political levels and after extensive public consultation. That didn’t happen here.

I raised my concerns at the highest levels at Metra. They say that nothing can be done. It is very clear their project team does not believe preservation of the third track right of way is important. What’s more, they say doing so would be very expensive because, due to the nature of raising the grade for trucks, it would require extensive retaining wall work, and they don’t have any money. Also, they say that the right of way is too narrow to work with.

Having spent many years dealing with transportation agencies, let me put together a translation table:

We Don’t Want to Do It = There’s No Money, or It’s Impossible for X, Y, and Z Reasons
We Do Want to Do It = Money Is Available, and It Has to Be Done Exactly Per Our Current Plan

In this case, Metra clearly went out and found the money to pay for raising the grade for trucks, a part of the project with no technical requirement. Also, Metra’s new Ravenswood station is a Taj Mahal palace that far exceeds the standards of almost any existing commuter station. They found money for that.

What we need is an independent analysis. I am calling for Metra’s board to put the project on hold until an outside review can be performed. This review should be chartered with finding a cost-effective way to save the third track right of way, and re-examining the necessity, scope, and funding structure related to raising the grade for trucks. This will require the Board to politically engage with outside stakeholders, particularly around the funding issue. This review needs to report directly to the Board, not management, and should be conducted by someone independent who does not have future consulting dollars at risk if they give the “wrong” answer. If anything, the consultants should have a financial incentive to find a way to save the third track and either take cost out or find non-transit funding sources. And there should be a public involvement process.

When I spoke to Metra they said, “Don’t you trust us?” Trust has nothing to do with it. In fact, I do trust that Metra’s management undertook the project in good faith and have made the decisions they legitimately believe are correct. I also understand that they operate in a world of many constraints and pressures.

However, I trust my doctor too. But if he tells me we’ve got to amputate, you can believe I’m going to go out and get a second opinion from someone totally independent before I get anything lopped off. That’s not mistrust. That’s simple common sense. You’d be crazy not to.

Similarly, Metra is proposing to amputate one third of the ROW and spend precious transit funds on trucking subsidies. That might be the right answer. But it deserves a second opinion.

Other Reasons for an Outside Review

Even if you don’t believe me or share my concerns, there are clearly other reasons why this project should get an independent review. Among them:

1. Phil Pagano, Metra’s executive director for the last two decades, killed himself earlier this year after it was revealed he paid himself an improper bonus. Other similar types of matters then came to light. Reports commissioned by Metra’s Board subsequent to this found various controls and procedure issues and a number of reforms were made. While perhaps not related to any projects or transit operations, these items certainly do give reason for pause. The review I’m suggesting is very similar to what Metra did on more purely administrative matters, and I think it is entirely appropriate given the circumstances.

2. While Metra is justly famed and should be praised for its operational reliability – as they say, you can set your watch to Metra – it is also an agency also justly famous for its resistance to change and innovation. Metra only started accepting credit cards last year, and then only after being forced to by the threat of legislative action. Megabus might have wi-fi on its coaches, but Metra doesn’t and says it has no plan to install it. Heck, even Amtrak is rolling out wi-fi. Metra conductors still punch paper tickets the way they did back when those bridges were first built a hundred years ago while the CTA is looking at an ambitious open fare media project.

Given the historic “can’t do” mindset at Metra, I think there’s reason to push a little bit when we hear a No from them. After all, Metra said it couldn’t afford to take credit cards. But wouldn’t you know it, after legislative threats, they could. And the world didn’t end.

3. The ROW elimination was never vetted outside of management. When I brought this matter up to a Metra board member, it was news to him. So clearly the aspects of the project around removing the third track were not discussed with the board. And while I admittedly did not attend all the public hearings for the project, I googled extensively looking for evidence that this had been part of the public discussion and didn’t find anything. I only learned about it myself when told by my friends at the Transit Riders Authority. I don’t think it’s nefarious, I just think Metra’s management never really gave this aspect of the project much thought. We need to change that.

A Call to Action

If you think it’s a bad idea to spend transit funds on trucks instead of trains, and if you think it’s wrong to permanently destroy a piece of Chicago’s transit infrastructure, I need your help. Metra will go forward with their current plan unless they hear from enough people that this is unacceptable to the public.

So I’m asking you to email Metra and tell them to pause the project to conduct the review I discussed. They are already familiar with my arguments, so feel free to reference this blog post if you’d like.

Please email Metra’s Board of Directors at: metraboard@metrarr.com and also copy Noe Gallardo, Metra’s Community Affairs Specialist on the project, at: ngallardo@metrarr.com.

And again, please spread the word to your friends and ask them to write Metra too. If you run a mailing list, please distribute this link to it and encourage people to take action. Thank you so much.

For those who are interested, I will go into further details around various aspects of this project.

Raising the Rail Grade Reconsidered

Why is Metra raising the grade on the tracks? They didn’t come up with the idea on their own. The city asked them to. I would be interested to know at what level this was discussed within the city, especially since the city is on its sixth transportation commissioner in five years. Still, it’s worth noting this idea didn’t originate inside Metra.

Again, I don’t philosophically object to improving clearances, but let’s consider the need. Metra raised the grade on the UP-Northwest Line, but that route runs directly parallel to the Kennedy Expressway, a major truck route. The UP-North line runs along the Lakefront. It is never more than two miles from the lake and is often less than one mile. And the area east of the tracks is not a heavy industrial area that would drive large amounts of truck traffic. Also, the CTA Red and Brown Line elevated structures also have limited clearances in this area. So what is the actual need? How many truck movements will be facilitated and at what cost?

As I said, the major commercial arteries already have clearances already that are, if not ideal, adequate for the vast majority of vehicles. Irving Park Rd., a four lane arterial of the type that should carry truck traffic, has a 14′ clearance, for example. There are heavy truck routes in the city with less clearance than that.

One of Metra’s objections around the third track was that if more trains ran, that would be more noise and vibration in the neighborhoods. But trucks cause noise and vibration too. And unlike added trains, which would be mostly at rush peak periods, trucks are around all the time. I live on Belmont Ave. right at the UP-North bridge and I would certainly rather see more trains than more trucks.

Also, many of these bridges are on residential streets that have very low clearances such as 10′ that make them impassable to trucks today. If the grade is raised, this will actually open up many residential streets to trucks that don’t have them today. That’s not good.

Maybe the grade actually doesn’t need to be raised, or a much more limited effort should be undertaken only at a couple major crossing points.

Also, the funding for this shouldn’t come out of transit. Apart from highway funds, the city of Chicago is sitting on $1.2 billion in cash in its Tax Increment Financing districts that it has broad latitude to shuttle around the city through a process called “porting.” Infrastructure projects are exactly what TIF money is for. If the city really wants to raise the bridges, perhaps it can chip in some TIF money.

Every dollar that can be taken out of this project, either through reducing the scope of the grade raising, or getting outside money, is a dollar than can be put towards preserving the third track right of way.

Perhaps the city really does prioritize trucks over trains. That’s a decision that can be made, but it should be made by elected officials. If Mayor Daley is willing to say, “Yes, I agree we should raise the grade and destroy the third track using transit funds” then, while I might not agree with that, I would be willing to respect that the guy we elected to make the tough choices is the guy who made the call.

Cost of Bridge Replacements

One interesting question to consider is how much cost is added by the inclusion of the grade raising component to the project. I can’t say for sure, but I speculate that the amount is substantial. Let me explain.

Replacing a railroad bridge can often be a surprisingly easy process. Consider that many active rails lines only have one track, so taking it out of service for any length of time is problematic. The solution is to assemble the bridge superstructure adjacent to the track, then cut over by removing the old span and hoisting the new one into place. This sometimes only takes a couple days. You can do it on a weekend. For example, a company called Fenton Rigging cites several case studies of this. In one case they floated a span out into the middle of a river on a barge, and hoisted it onto the existing piers.

The Metra bridge abutments clearly require work, but there are also examples here. For example, when the CTA needed to replace steel piers on the Brown Line L during the station project, they put temporary bracing in place to support the elevated tracks, then poured a new footer and erected a new pier underneath it. All while keeping the tracks in service.

I can’t promise these techniques could be used here since I’m not an engineer, but when I see things successfully done in one place, it seems an indication that it’s at least not impossible. There’s plenty of room for construction staging because the majority of this rail route runs in the median of a city street. Perhaps temporary bracing could be used to support the existing bridge while the abutment is repaired and a replacement span assembled next to the track. When that’s complete, the old bridge is removed and the new one hoisted into place and the track rapidly replaced.

Of course that would be a lot tougher to do if the grade is being raised significantly. That’s a much more complex undertaking and is one reason that this project is going to involve eight years of service disruptions from reducing the line to only one track for an extended distance. (Yes, the right of way is for three tracks, but it is permanently being reduced to two by an eight year project that temporarily reduces it to one).

I don’t know how much extra cost this grade raising is driving, but it is surely tens of millions of dollars, in addition to the vastly increased construction complexity.

Ravenswood Station

As part of this project, Metra is also replacing the station at Ravenswood (Lawrence Ave). Here’s a photo of the rendering of the proposed station (via Flickr/vxia):

The current station has, as virtually all Metra stations do of simple asphalt platforms. There is no station house. As you can see, this is quite an upgrade. It has completely enclosed, sheltered platforms, a ticket office, and even a decorative retaining wall.

I haven’t been to every Metra station on the UP system, but I’ve been to most of them and I can’t name a single other station that has full canopies like this. If Metra can find the funds to build the most lavish platforms on the entire UP network, it is difficult to plead poverty when it comes to saving the third track right of way. Also, notice that this station consumes the entire embankment, thus it is another design element that has the effect of precluding restoring the third track to service at a future date. This design should be changed.

The Right of Way Issue

As I noted earlier, Metra previously replaced bridges on the UP-Northwest line, which dates from the same era. This one still had three active tracks and wouldn’t you know it, all three tracks were preserved during reconstruction, even as the grade was raised. To me that, along with the fact that the UP-N line used to have three active tracks itself, is prima facie evidence that three tracks can be preserved on this right of way.

According to Metra, the Northwest line had a wider right of way than the North line, 100′ versus 66′. I have no reason to doubt them. However, the North line also has ROW advantages. As I noted, the majority of the route is in the median of a city street that features low to moderate traffic. This provides significant opportunity for construction staging and temporary ROW encroachment that the Northwest line does not. That line cuts diagonally across the city grid and is directly adjacent to the busy Kennedy Expressway to boot.

Here’s an example on the UP-N line at Irving Park Rd. showing the width of Ravenswood Ave, the street whose median the train runs in. It’s wide enough for angled parking on both sides of the street. The rail line is on the left past the parked cars out of the photo, and there’s another side to Ravenswood just like this one on the far side of the tracks.

Not all segments are this wide, but there’s generally some space to work with, often quite a bit of it.

While construction in a urban environment always provides challenges, I still believe an outside review is warranted to examine the specifics of this and other potential issues. Every project has issues that must be mitigated. I think there are significant opportunities to examine the parameters of this one to look for creative solutions to meet the project needs while saving the third track right of way.

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

The New International Style

In 1932, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson published their landmark work The International Style in conjunction with a major exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Their proposition was that modern architecture had evolved into an explicit international style underpinned by a common set of rules and principles. Their three key principles that distinguished the international style from earlier architecture were: a concern with volume instead of mass, the use of regularity and repetition instead of symmetry, and the avoidance of applied decoration. The buildings conceived during this building looked, and to Hitchcock and Johnson, should have looked, as if they had been designed using these stylistic principles.

Fast forward through post-modernism and into today’s world, notably starchitecture, and we see rather than a unity of style, a great diversity of styles. Yet starchitecture and the architecture of today is also a self-consciously international movement, and despite its diversity of approaches, I believe there are also common underlying principles of this work, albeit of a somewhat different nature, that make this a sort of new international style. Those principles are: a return to beauty as an animating aesthetic principle; the primacy of the personal brand of the architect; and the use of novel forms, materials, and techniques for their own sake.

The Return of Beauty

The branches of philosophy are in effect quests for the answers to one of the great Eternal Questions. Metaphysics asks what is real, epistemology what is true, etc. Aesthetics is the search for the answer to the great question of what is beautiful. Or at least it used to be.

While I like many modern things and think that there are many works of modernism that will stand the test of time as among the best works of human creativity, I would have to say that something went very far off the rails aesthetically in the modern movement. This applies not just to architecture, but to virtually any field, including such things as art and music. People ceased attempting to create works of beauty. Indeed, artists often seemed to take a great delight in creating works designed to befuddle or even repel the average person who saw them: dada art, serialist music, etc. Given the characteristics of the age, this can perhaps be understood, but that doesn’t change what it is. Nor does it change that these works have seldom been embraced or become beloved of the public in the way that the works of previous generations did.

If you look at it, it is in the more purely aesthetic fields that things went the most bad. Classical music, with its embrace of atonalism, suffered the worst in my opinion. Those fields in which the product had to serve an actual utilitarian function fared much better. For example, the modern era was a golden age for industrial design, a discipline birthed by and perhaps most characteristic of the industrial age. Graphic and fashion design also did quite well. All of these fields not only had to produce items which carried out their function well, they generally had a commercial purpose, and so had to be popular with the public at some level in order to sell.

Architecture is one of those functional arts, but one that didn’t do so well. (It’s worth pondering why that is). While there are some outstanding modernist works, on balance I cannot consider the period a success. Soulless international style towers are a blight on the American downtown, for example. The gap between the masters and the average practitioner was a chasm indeed. Even at their best, these works were cold and austere, with a certain detached, inhuman quality about them, like the films of Stanley Kubrick. They are works more respected than loved. What’s more, many of them didn’t even function well. Modern buildings were infamous for leaks, for example.

But today’s starchitecture is different. While many of the buildings are outré in form, they are almost always simply gorgeous. They bring a smile to the face of the public. They are embraced and beloved by communities in a way modernist buildings were not. Milwaukee, for example, has even adopted the image of the Calatrava museum wing as a sort of civic brand image. Unlike with a Miesian monolith, no one has to explain to their kids or a bemused visitor why these are great and important buildings. It’s obvious.

This return to beauty as an animating aesthetic principle is breath of fresh air in the world today. The iron grip of modernism seems to be losing its hold on the creative mind generally. Today’s composers, for example, are creating much more accessible works than those of a few decades back. I’m glad I’m alive today to experience this.

Whatever else one can say of starchitecture and its offspring, it has done a lot to beautify our cities without a slavish imitation or patische of previous styles. For that, I’m thoroughly grateful.

Brand Architect

Hitchcock and Johnson wanted to see an international style in which there was a certain broad similarity in all the buildings created, regardless of who the architect was. The international style created a certain anonymity of the structures and architects.

In starchitecture, we instead see a great premium placed on a design style that is recognizably by a particular architect. Clearly, people commissioning these structures want them to be recognized not just a great buildings, but as buildings by a particular famous architect. I’ve criticized these starchitect buildings as often being repetitious extruded product, but to the people commissioning them, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. The fact that the Milwaukee Art Museum looks a whole lot like Santiago Calatrava’s other work is deliberate. Locally they even call it “the Calatrava” instead of the museum. Similarly, the fact that the Frank Gehry designed Pritzker Pavilion band shell in Chicago’s Millennium Park looks awfully similar to the Bilbao Guggenheim (and many other works) is the whole point.

I don’t think it is any accident that the world’s top starchitects have tended to cultivate personal styles that are very recognizable – Calatrava, Gehry, Piano, Hadid, etc. If they didn’t, people might not be able to tell that a building you commissioned from them was designed by a World Famous Architect. And we can’t have that, can we?

These cities obviously think that having one of these titans of architecture leave their mark locally is worth something from a marketing standpoint. Hiring them is as much about renting the brand as about the building. It’s in effect a celebrity endorsement deal. Thus the buildings themselves needs to reflect that. And to a great extent, they do.

Novelty for Its Own Sake

I mentioned the outré nature of many of these starchitect buildings. A lot of the strange shapes and such employed today are enabled by the rise of computer aided design. In fact, it’s not infrequent to hear that, “Only a couple years ago, it wouldn’t have even been possible to do this.” Ever more sophisticated modeling tools, along with advances in materials and construction techniques, have enabled an explosion of designs that would have been impossible to build not that long ago.

But just because we can do something, does that mean we should? I think perhaps it’s human nature than when we obtain new capabilities, we want to try them out and see what we can do with them. We want to experiment. We want to play. We’re still in that playful – or, to take a less charitable view, self-indulgent – phase with regards to a lot of these techniques.

Perhaps also this reflects the character of the moment. We live in a era of ever faster technological change. Everyone wants to have the latest cell phone, the latest computer, the coolest game console, etc. I think we’ve applied to buildings as well. We don’t want last year’s model, we want to leapfrog our neighbors and have the coolest, newest, most cutting edge buildings for our town.

Just as modernist buildings were probably too austere, these new buildings are probably too elaborate, and my hunch is that they’ll be judged as such later. The good news is that fashion trends like this tend to be cyclical and self-correcting. As we mature in these new technologies, and gain the ability to do almost anything, simply showing that you can do something will cease to impress. Rather, the question will be, what is it that should be done?

Starchitecture in History

Once, when Western cities chose to build major civic structures and create sacred space, they turned to the time honored methods of gothic or classically inspired architecture – the cathedral and the place. These are timeless, eternal styles. To choose them is to seek a sense of permanence and to anchor oneself in the long history of Western civilization and the values thereof.

Today, cities frequently turn to starchitecture. It serves some of the same functions. But it makes a very different statement. Starchitecture proclaims our lack of cultural anchor. As an international style, it is global and non-civilizational. It’s about ecumenical values, not tribal ones. It’s also a style that is fundamentally “of the now.” Cities seeking starchitecture are often doing so to show that they’re with it, they’re current. It’s an ephemeral, not a permanent choice.

That’s not to say it’s a bad choice. There’s no single set of values, objectives, and choices that is right for all situations. In the rise of a global era, cities are trying to meet the global challenge. Trying to show that they are “in the club” isn’t a bad thing. Nor striving to stay relevant in an era of rapid change.

Yet this means that starchitecture, like the modernist international style before it, is likely fated to become associated with this particular moment in history. Decades from now we’ll look back on this era’s buildings in the way that we look at the modernist utopian visions. Today’s international style, like the one before it, is fundamentally a product of its time, and one that seeks an explicit sense of rupture with the narrative arc of the past.

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Replay: Columbus – The New Midwestern Star

[ I recently wrote about Columbus, Indiana, but I haven't forgotten about Columbus, Ohio. That city is undertaking a major rebranding effort I'll comment on in the next week or so. But before getting to that, I'll share again my overview of this under the radar and under-appreciated city that is coming on strong - Aaron. ]

Columbus, Ohio is by far the best performing city in Ohio. In a state that has become a byword for the challenges and pain of de-industrialization, Columbus is a clear standout, with strong economic and population growth.

A lot of the analysis of what makes Columbus different from Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, Youngstown, and even Cincinnati often starts out by noting all the advantages Columbus had. It is the state capital. Ohio State University is there. It was not a traditional heavy manufacturing center (less true than you might think), and so did not have that legacy to overcome.

But what strikes me about Columbus is not all the advantages it has, but rather the handicaps it has when compared to other Midwestern standouts like the Twin Cities:

• The Columbus metro area has only 15% of the state’s population, and thus does not form a significant voting block in the state house. Compare to say the Twin Cities or Chicago.
• It is one of three major cities in Ohio (Cleveland and Cincinnati being the others), and is the smallest of them. There are also a number of mid-sized cities like Toledo, Youngstown, and Dayton. This makes Ohio an urban-friendly state, but also makes the competition for state resources intense. There is no other Midwestern state with anything like this.
• Cincinnati and Cleveland both came of age early and were giants of their ages, which endowed them with an incredible built environment legacy and many absolute top quality high culture institutions. Since Columbus lagged, and since Ohio already had these things through Cincy and Cleveland, Columbus is comparatively lacking in both regards. It is especially notable that Columbus’ high culture institutions are very weak compared to most Midwestern cities.
• Columbus does not have any of the top three professional sports team, again, probably because of the Cincy/Cleveland factor. People who think pro sports are overly key to urban success have to be able to explain away the Columbus example. It does have NHL and MLS franchises.
• Columbus has a comparatively weak central business district. It has the typical office buildings and such to be sure. But its downtown mall, City Center, is closed and will be demolished. It is not a major convention destination. Nor is downtown a major entertainment district for the city.

So you can see that there are a number of structural weaknesses working against Columbus. But the one that I really think is the kicker is the name “Columbus” itself. It is just very generic and has no brand recognition. Columbus is probably the biggest city in America where the state is almost always given along with the city, i.e., “Columbus, Ohio” versus “Cincinnati”. Say Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Louis and by themselves people know where you are talking about at at least something about it. But say Columbus and people probably think of a town named Columbus in their own state, like Columbus, Indiana or Columbus, Georgia. This is one area the lack of pro sports probably hurts the city badly, since cities with major league franchises are constantly getting their name on TV. (I have long endorsed viewing pro sports subsidies as basically a naming rights sponsorship, where the city pays to put its name on the team for marketing exposure. How much would it cost to buy all those TV impressions? A lot more than the cost of the team.) Heck, type “Columbus” into Wikipedia and you get back a disambiguation page.

In addition to just having a generic name shared with cities in various states, there is really nothing that would put Columbus on the mental map of the world. Louisville has the Kentucky Derby. No matter what else people may or may not know about Louisville, everyone knows the Derby and that it is in Louisville. It’s a similar story for the Indianapolis 500. But Columbus? Nothing.

I caused some pain for myself on a Columbus message board by suggesting that outside the United States, especially in Europe, Columbus, Indiana probably has better brand recognition than Columbus, Ohio and that among a certain social set if you just said, “Columbus”, the Indiana town is what would come to mind. This is because Columbus, Indiana has one of the world’s most important collections of modernist architecture by a who’s who of key architects. (It is an absolute must visit, incidentally, and be sure to sign up for the bus tour at the visitor’s center). It has an international reputation for this.

So I think in looking at Columbus, you need to be able to see its success in terms of the big headwinds the city faces in some respects. This renders its performance all the more impressive. Consider:

• The Columbus metro population is growing at a rate of 1.1% per year, which exceeds the national average. It is the second fastest growing large city in the Midwest after Indianapolis. What’s more, its growth held steady last year in a time when most cities suffered declining performance. Indy’s growth rate has eroded the last two years running, so if trends continue, Columbus will be #1 in short order. The Columbus region is adding people at a healthy run rate of 200,000 per decade.
• Columbus has net in-migration, including the rarity of domestic in-migration.
• Columbus has been adding jobs at one of the strongest rates in the Midwest. While its economy has taken a hit recently like all others, it has held up much better than the Midwest. Its unemployment rate of 8.1% compares favorably to other traditionally strong Midwest economies like Indianapolis (8.7%), Minneapolis (8.4%) and Kansas City (8.2%)

Columbus’ economy is powered by many of the same things that have led other Midwest peer cities. Columbus has a very low cost of living, an increasing array of urban amenities, and very high quality of life with regards to such measures as traffic congestion. It does also have the benefit of Ohio State University, the largest university campus in the country, which has the effect of almost making Columbus America’s biggest college town. Normally a school wouldn’t make as big a splash in a city this size, but OSU is so huge, it does. This has many positive impacts such as skewing the population younger, driving international migration, increasing college degree attainment rates, and enabling research oriented spinoffs. (It probably does act as a drag on labor force as a percentage of population, however).

Columbus also seems to have benefited from longstanding enlightened leadership. Back in the 1950’s or so, one of their mayors made a key decision. He refused to extend water service to places that did not agree to be annexed. Thus Columbus was able to expand geographically where most Midwestern cities got hemmed in. So while it does not have a city-county merger in effect, Columbus takes up a huge amount of the county, with a population in the city proper of over 700,000 people. Ohio has very favorable annexation laws for cities that control utilities. If you get utility service from a city, you can’t stop them from annexing you – and you can annex across county lines, something that Columbus has already done. While it now does have cities like Dublin ringing it in some respects, there seems to be a recognition that there needs to be room for the city to continue to grow, and from what I’ve seen, annexation boundary agreements with suburbs continue to provide more or less unlimited possibilities for Columbus to continue expanding.

The corporate community is robust and engaged. Columbus seems to have a very strong economic development mindset, and a pro-business attitude. The local corporate community has been very active in things like the development of the Arena District, and has pumped a lot of money into the downtown. There can be complaints, probably with some degree of legitimacy, that development policies are overly corporate driven, but this is true everywhere. Columbus has also notably maintained a large white collar work force.

The government and citizen base seems to be supportive of fairly progressive public policies. I noted recently how citizens of the city have routinely voted for bond levies to fund various civic improvements. Even in this recession, there was just a vote for a levy that is partially to maintain operations, but also partially to expand the parks. Like many cities, Columbus has a lot of overgrown country roads that haven’t been upgraded, but it is trying. Last year Columbus spend $50 million on adding new sidewalks, for example. There have been other bond issues and many of them are focused on things like sidewalks and other projects to improve the quality of the overall city’s general infrastructure, not a handful of splashy mega-projects. As I’ve long said, the mark of a great city is in how it treats its ordinary spaces, not its special ones. Every small town in America makes its Main Street look nice. But the ordinary street is much more important. Columbus seems to get that.

The one thing that has failed in Columbus is light rail. It was voted down. Actually, I think that’s probably a good thing since while improved transit is certainly needed there, a very expensive light rail system probably isn’t a fit for Columbus.

Columbus, like most cities, has an urban core that has many challenges. There are a lot of areas of the old city of Columbus that are as decayed as any other place. But Columbus also has a lot of urban gems in its central city as well. German Village is one of the top historic districts in the United States. It is truly incredible and a must visit. While the downtown isn’t that exciting, areas like the Short North and the entire continuous strip of urbanized development north along High St. through the University campus up to Worthington is impressive. There are a number of smaller Franklin County suburbs that are super-cool “old school old money” type places in their appearnce. Newer places like Dublin are starting to turn it on.

So what does Columbus need to do moving forward?

1. It needs to strengthen its brand. I wrote a lot about strengthening the brand of Indianapolis in this blog, but that city is one I know intimately. I don’t know Columbus well enough to judge what its essential character might be yet, but ultimately a real brand image needs to spring from the native soil. Columbus can’t be a world class city unless it is a world class Columbus. Great cities, like great wines, have to express their terroir. Trying to graft coolness onto a place apart from its essential character only looks pathetic. I think Columbus is still stuck in a insecure phase where it is engaging in braggadocio to make itself seem like it is one of the cool upperclassmen. The best example here is the city calling itself “The Indie Arts Capital of the World”. There is actually some goodness in this. I noted the city’s relatively weak high culture institutions, so focusing on indie arts makes sense. But is this brand likely to play in Chicago? I don’t think so. Nor do I think it works as a aspirational statement since it seems at odds with local character and difficult to achieve. This won’t be easy. The name Columbus itself is a bit of a millstone as I noted. But I think it can be done. It’s going to take a lot of digging deep and working hard, and finding an inner confidence in what Columbus is as a city.

2. Infrastructure is a problem. Columbus is growing and needs to expand its infrastructure to keep up and also improve and maintain its legacy infrastructure. The problem is that key portions of Columbus’ legacy infrastructure require very expensive upgrades that will likely suck up all available funds. This will hurt it if something creative isn’t found. For example, ODOT is going to spend over a billion dollars reconstructing part of the inner loop downtown. That is desperately needed since the road is unsafe, but is unlikely to add to Columbus’ competitive advantage as a city. And that’s a billion that can’t be spent on other things. Some locals want to put caps on the freeway to mitigate the “noose effect” it has on downtown. These are very expensive and have been considered too costly to include. This ought to be reconsidered. Yes, it won’t be cheap. But cutting out every “value added” element from a project to keep the cost down means you could ultimately end up with still an ultra-expensive project, but one that has little real boost for the city. If you’ve got lemons, you need to make lemonade. If you’re going to hold your nose and fix a problem like this, you might as well pinch a little harder and do the job right so that you get some actual value out of it.

3. Improve the quality of urban design. Columbus isn’t bad, but its built environment is rather generic. It needs to improve the quality of its architecture and public space, and what’s more use design as a way of expressing its brand. This is a huge opportunity area for cities like Columbus to create a differentiated physical environment at modest incremental cost. It seems to be something that doesn’t register with people, however. Indianapolis, as I’ve noted, has some simply superb examples of design in a handful of locations – but refuses to do anything with them. I am utterly befuddled by this. Even Chicago is backsliding on this front. It’s a big opportunity area for Columbus.

4. Tune-up the economic development engine. Columbus is doing well here – it’s hard to argue with the results. But I think a pro-active scan to find some specific niches where Columbus can create sustainable competitive advantage and get the benefits of being a first mover are would be good to do. I think the future is about micro-clusters made up of many small and medium sized businesses that in aggregate will add up to what say a single major HQ or factory might have had. Only looking at general mega-clustures like life sciences is not enough. Also, OSU brings huge numbers of outsiders to the area for four years. They probably had a great time. How can the city turn the OSU university alumni network into an urban alumni network?

On the whole, I think Columbus is rocking and rolling. Because of its weak name recognition and the fact that it is in Ohio, I think it flies almost completely under the radar. But this an impressive city and one that is arguably the best positioned of any Midwestern metro to really prosper in the 21st century economy. For those of you who haven’t been to Columbus, I strongly suggest a visit. This is not a Cincinnati or Chicago like place where you will be immediately wowed by the coolness of the built environment. But I think it will surprise you nevertheless. Before you go, drop by Columbus Underground and let the crew there tell you what you ought to see and do.

I don’t have pictures of all of the cool areas of Columbus, but here are a few samples for you.

Some scenes from German Village.

Here are some shots from the core of downtown. First the Ohio State House. Yup, no dome.

City Hall (I think)

Moving a bit north to the Arena District. I like to call this Columbus’ “Downtown 2.0″. They got it wrong bigtime the first time around by trying to spread major projects like City Center Mall around in order to act as anchors. The right approach is clustering multiple types of uses in a single district, which the city did right in the Arena District.

The downtown arena is named for Nationwide Insurance, which is the prime mover behind much of the downtown redevelopment.

The Columbus Convention Center. I’m not sold on the architecture, frankly, though they made an effort to do something other than the standard box.

Restaurants in the vicinity.

The Hyatt Regency Hotel. I’ve always thought buildings like this have a bit of an Orwellian aura about them. It looks like some Eastern Bloc country’s defense department.

Moving along to the north, we get to to a neighborhood called the Short North. The one photo I have of it in my archives doesn’t do it justice. Lots of arts related businesses here.

One of those old moneyesque suburbs I mentioned is Worthington in northern Franklin County. Here are a couple snaps.

The main street in north suburban Delaware, the eponymous county seat of the fast growing county in Ohio.

Here are thoughts on branding from Indianapolis that are relevant to Columbus, as well as a concept brand positioning for Louisville:

The Brand Promise of Indianapolis
Our Product is Better Than Our Brand
Louisville: Vice City

Thoughts on Urban Design that are relevant to Columbus:

15 Quick, Easy, and Cheap Ways to Make a Big Urban Design Impact in Indianapolis

This post originally ran on May 17, 2009.

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

The Demographics of Property Tax Revolts

We see in a lot of places – Indiana, Illinois, elsewhere – various tax revolts centered on property taxes. Property tax caps are a frequently proposed policy these days. Gov. Christie in New Jersey has just proposed them, for example.

A friend of mine had an interesting take on this related to demographics. He observed that there has been an increase in anti-property tax sentiment as the population has aged. Think about the various major categories of things that are taxed to raise funds at the state and local level – income, consumption, property. People who are coming up on retirement are going to see drops in income and consumption, but they own lots of taxable property. In fact, they probably have more wealth, much of it in the form of taxable property, than the younger families who are out buying clothes for their kids, furniture for their growing families, etc. Younger people are also those who are more likely to see their incomes go up, not down over time. Older households are also less likely to consume services, such as schools, typically funded by property taxes.

This person suggested that property tax caps are basically tax shelters for older people, and act to shift the tax burden towards the young. I’d be very interested to see some actual research around this topic, as the matter of demographic impacts on public policy, apart from some national level concern over entitlements, hasn’t gotten much airplay. It strikes me that the personal preferences and spending/saving behavior of people changes quite a bit over the course of a lifetime, and appropriately so. If that’s true, why wouldn’t there be policy preference changes as well? And what might that mean for an aging society? It’s an interesting matter to think about.

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

Noah Kazis: Shaping the Next New York – The Promise of Bloomberg’s Rezonings

The Department of City Planning has mostly zoned for growth near transit, as in its plan for downtown Jamaica (left). Where the city has encouraged growth far from transit, however, car-oriented developments have followed, like Schaefer Landing in Williamsburg (right).

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Department of Transportation has built hundreds of miles of bike lanes and given acres of Times Square to pedestrians. Together with the MTA, the city is moving to construct a new rapid bus network for New York. But when it comes to livability and green transportation, perhaps the biggest legacy of the Bloomberg years will be something less tangible: Zoning.

Since taking office in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg and City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden have rezoned one-fifth of New York City, approved countless special permits for developers, and assisted with financing for favored projects. Those decisions — the scope of which haven’t been seen since the total overhaul of NYC’s zoning code in 1961 — will shape the future of the city for generations. "The simple act of rezoning these areas," said Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, "has already or will spur significant change in the landscape, the skyline, and the character of these neighborhoods."

PlaNYC forecasts that one million new residents will call New York City home by 2030. Zoning determines where growth happens and where those new New Yorkers will live. It can focus development in dense, transit-rich parts of the city or in more auto-dependent neighborhoods. And that in turn can spell the difference between a New York that increasingly favors transit, walking, and bicycling to get around, and a New York with more congestion, pollution,
and dangerous streets.

Grading purely on location, the Bloomberg/Burden rezonings are, by and large, a bright spot in the administration’s record, though not without significant flaws and missed opportunities.

The general thrust of the changes has been to funnel growth into relatively transit-rich locations. Simon McDonnell, a research fellow at NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, has conducted a detailed analysis of recent rezonings that examines proximity to transit. His research determined that, between 2003 and 2007, about three quarters of the lots rezoned for denser development were within a half-mile walk of rail transit stations. However, two thirds of downzoned lots — where density has been restricted — were also close to stations.

McDonnell’s research suggests that even while the Bloomberg Administration has zoned for growth to be centered around transit, it has also closed off the possibility of more intensive transit-oriented development. The overall effect is positive, but it could be even better. "It’s fair to say," McDonnell concluded, "that a majority of the net new residential capacity that came online during this time period was near rail transit."

The Department of City Planning has rezoned 20 percent of the city under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden. Click for an interactive version of this map on the planning department site.

The Department of City Planning cites prominent upzonings in transit rich areas like Downtown Brooklyn and the Bronx’s Lower Concourse as examples of its transit-oriented strategy. At the same time, in particularly car-dependent areas like the Bayside neighborhood of northeastern Queens, the planning department has ensured that major development will not occur.

Joan Byron, director of the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative at the Pratt Center for Community Development, noted that "the political pressure to do these downzonings has often come from self-protective, predominantly homeowner communities," but that she still believes such downzonings promote sustainability.

The combination of zoning for density near transit and downzoning in car-dependent areas is a significant innovation, said L. Nicolas Ronderos, Director of Urban Development Programs at the Regional Plan Association. In praising what he called a "double approach," Ronderos argued that the planning department "sees transit-oriented development not just through the lens of rail but also of automobiles. It’s transit-oriented development not only as increasing density around transit, but decreasing density where there is none."

While most upzonings have planned for growth close to transit, there are important exceptions. Bowles pointed to the 2005 rezoning of Williamsburg and Greenpoint as an example of particularly backwards transportation planning. "There was a plan to create thousands of units of new housing on the waterfront," he said, "many of which would come in a Greenpoint neighborhood that had pretty deficient access to transit networks."

The typical rezoning is tough to classify as an attempt to increase or decrease density across an entire neighborhood. Rather, the general strategy at the planning department has been to increase density and introduce a mix of uses along avenues and in areas next to transit, while preserving the existing character of side streets and more distant areas, often through downzoning.

The rezoning in Jamaica channels growth along bigger streets and near transit. Image: NYC Dept. of City Planning.

Department spokesperson Rachaele Raynoff pointed to the major rezoning in Jamaica as illustrative of this approach. "Around the AirTrain, we zoned for growth," she said. "It’s a tremendous opportunity with the confluence of subway lines and the LIRR. And yet many of the low-density residential blocks further away from transit were protected."

All told, the rezonings of the last eight years have laid the ground for New York to build on its unique strengths as a transit-rich city. It’s a major accomplishment, but Bloomberg and Burden have more work ahead of them to fully deliver on the promise of a city that grows sustainably. As the next post in this series will show, zoning for growth near transit won’t necessarily translate into transit-oriented development or a walkable city.

This is the first of a three part series. You can read part two and part three at Streetsblog.

Noah Kazis is a reporter for Streetsblog, where this post originally appeared. Reprinted with permission.

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

The Mark of a Great City Is in How It Treats Its Ordinary Spaces, Not Its Special Ones

Cities turn to starchitecture in order to create iconic images to symbolize their city and its aspirations to the world. Famous buildings can, as with the Bilbao Guggenheim or the Milwaukee Art Museum, even come to symbolize a city itself. Such buildings or spaces also fulfill the human need for the spectacular, and for sacred space in the community.

Similarly cities create “gateways” to mark the entry to special districts, or engage in various “placemaking” initiatives around branding. We frequently see, for example, the main street, plaza, or square of a town especially beautified.

This is true of all great cities. Consider London, with its many famed iconic spaces and landmarks, such as the Tower Bridge.

The Tower Bridge – Photo Credit Flickr/wallyg

I could devote an entire post to showcasing London’s special places. Here’s Trafalgar Square:

Trafalgar Square – Photo Credit Flickr/steeljam

But these special buildings, structures, spaces, and elements are not what make London a great city. Indeed, because everyplace has these to some extent, they fail to distinguish a place. Go to any small town in America and find its Main Street nicely bricked, with old time gas lamp replicas, flower boxes, a statue or memorial, major civic buildings, etc. There’s nothing special in the special.

But leave the tourist district behind and check out the average street, the average building, the average design. Too often you will find that those are of another order altogether. It’s as if there are two separate cities. One place is the city of special events and tourists, existing inside a cordon sanitaire (whose boundaries are marked with gateways perhaps?) indicating its unique status. The other place is the city as it is actually lived in and experienced in everyday life. This latter city, that is to say, the vast majority of the city, is too often neglected. The gulf between the special and the ordinary proclaims the hollowness of these places.

The true mark of a great city is in how it treats its ordinary places and things, not its special ones. Does it invest as much care, or any care for that matter, into the ordinary, workaday aspects of the city?

Let’s again look at London, and we’ll see that what perhaps more than anything shapes our unique impression of London as a city are not those special landmarks at all, but rather the design of what in too many places are purely prosaic and utilitarian objects. It is the pervasiveness of these objects throughout the city, not just some special zones, that is one of the things that distinguishes London from the pack.

Double-Decker Buses – Photo Credit Flickr/wallgy

There is perhaps no more iconic image of London than its red double-decker buses. Even the single-floor buses are painted in the same red scheme, making them fit right in. I can’t even name one other bus livery in the world that stands out in any particular way (please send examples my way).

Something about these buses and other iconic designs of London is that they aren’t new. They go back a long way. One reason they are classics is that they’ve stood the test of time. While so many places discard the old in order to showcase some “new, improved” brand or design, London shows the value of continuity over time.

Here’s a 1928 photo of a London bus. Look familiar?

1928 Autochrome by Clifford A. Adams for National Geographic via How to Be a Retronaut

And what about these fellows?

Officers of London’s Metropolitan Police – Photo Credit Flickr/Risager

Note the nice mix of old (the classic hat) with the new (a modern reflective jacket also executed in a style recognizably London).

London Taxi Cabs – Photo Credit Flickr/StormCab

The black cabs of London are right up there with the buses. Of course, London’s cab drivers are also widely regarded as among the world’s best if not the world’s best, thanks to the requirement that they past an exhaustive test of geographic information called “the Knowledge.” London is unique in not using a medallion system regulate the quantity of cabs, rather relying on its rigorous standards of driver competency and professionalism, as well as very tough oversight of rolling stock.

London Phone Booth – Photo Credit Flickr/Shark Attacks

This is one that I believe is pretty much limited to tourist zones these days. In an era of mobile phones, who uses a phone booth anymore anyway? But the city does recognize the branding value in these.

Here again I’ll show a historic 1928 photo to compare:

1928 Autochrome by Clifford A. Adams for National Geographic via How to Be a Retronaut

Been around awhile, haven’t they?

Here might be the most famous London image of all:

Sign for the London Underground – Photo Credit Flickr/DanieVDM

And did I mention the famous map of the underground system? I’ll let you look that one up for yourself. And this one I found interesting:

London Bike Share Station – Photo via This Big City

I love how the new London bike share program, which I believe falls under the Transport for London umbrella, uses the same signage. This both adds a dash of prestige, but also signals the intent that bicycling be part of an integrated ground transport system.

Most of these items are what I’d describe as branding related. Of course there’s also functionality and many other matters of importance. It’s not all about branding and looking pretty. There are many areas where London does not live up to the high standards set by these branding items. I mercifully won’t be showing you any pictures of the queues at Heathrow T3 today, for example. London, like everywhere, has its share of problems. In some respects more than its share. And the underlying greatness of London is not to be found in material things at all, but, as with all great cities, in its people and culture. But that greatness does manifest itself into the physical world, and these are some of the ways. When you walk around London, which is not beautiful in the way of Paris or Amsterdam, you nevertheless know you are in a very unique and wonderful place, and these are some of the reasons why.

Given the overwhelming success and brand equity London has created with these items, it is a mystery to me why almost no other city has tried to replicate them. Many places enforce a common cab livery, but it’s very rare to get something beyond a standard issue yellow and black. Dittos for bus liveries, police uniforms, signage, etc. Perhaps it is because people associate these London items with the self-consciously retro traditions of royalty and such – the changing of the guard, etc. There’s no doubt that some of the same forces are at play, and that there’s more than a streak of shtick in the whole thing. But it’s effective shtick. And the principles that underlie it are available to all. It starts with caring about the ordinary elements of our urban existence, and a recognition that there’s no detail too small to be carefully considered in the urban environment.

I’ll leave you with another incredible blast from London’s past: a 1927 color film by Claude Friese-Greene. This 10 minute silent feature is pretty amazing. You can’t help but notice how many touchstones of this era are still alive today in London. While clearly of another time, there’s a certain evergreen nature to this piece that shows why London is one of the world’s greatest cities. This is also via How to Be a Retronaut, a site I highly recommend checking out if you don’t already read it. (Click here if the video does not display for you).

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