The perfect storm, summed up, is:

1. Not much stock – the building boom pre-2007 focused on single family units.
2. It’s old stock -  Renters have the luxury of seeking out new.  One developer’s observation is that older stock is less wired and gadget people need outlets.  Lots of them.
3. Demographics - As reinforced by data, the Boomer + Millennial cohorts are large, like urban living, and see renting as an advantage at this stage in their lives.  Again, I will turn you to another one of Kaid’s posts on evolving markets, which is filled with other great references.   
4. Don't want to commit to a house –Renting lets people take a trial run at a region, neighborhood, or even a building.  This is key for the quiet-loving, suburban empty nesters who are moving to more urban areas.
5. Rents going up – This has caught the eye of investors.
6. Costs are low – One developer said contractors in his region are doing work at cost or slightly higher (though this can’t last much longer).
7. Can't get financing for anything else –For any other product, banks are requiring demonstration of up to a 70% commitment for inking a finance deal, such as pre-sales for condos and signed retail/office tenants.  You can’t require this kind of commitment from apartments because people don’t really go apartment shopping until a month or so before move-in.   

On the one hand, multi-family dwelling enthusiasts see this as sweet irony.  Apartment housing seemed to be the forgotten stepchild of the building boom, despite its important role in better housing/transportation/economic patterns.   The fact that financing is finally meeting demand just feels good.  On the other hand:

• The storm is dying down as rents are increasing to tip the “rent versus buying-a-house”balance. 
• There is no guarantee that the apartments being financed are in the "right" place.  A Walkscore analysis would be fun.
• Question: Is Wall Street being driven by fundamentals, or has the pendulum for up-front commitment swung SO far that money is chasing the one product that can justify not having commitments?
• One developer had to disassemble his vertically mixed use site plan and plant an apartment building at the high traffic corner just to get started.  Whether this will dilute the smart growth performance of the site plan is a question.  However, most of us in planning know that in walkable communities, increasing distance and separating uses by even a small amount makes a big difference.
• We still need to solve the HUD/Fannie/Freddie restrictions on commercial components for mixed use.  One developer purposely designed a first floor to LOOK like units in order to get financing, but which could be converted later.  The Fannie Mae caps draw the most ire, and are particularly painful here in the land of three-story smart growth.  The taller your apartment building, the less these numbers have to matter, since the residential component on upper floors dilutes out the commercial contribution of dollars and floor area. But, important new buildings like this one in Sarasota have the roughest time.

• See this CNU website for more on this chart.

This brings us to the billion-dollar question: once the apartment construction markets are saturated - what's next?  Batten down the hatches. 

@CNU20, @Kaid, @CNU

While I generally agree that it's time to pull back, I also think that beaches are special places and the more people cycle through them, the better the shared sense of value for natural places.  We don't know when the "big one" is coming, whether its horizontal (surge) or vertical (sea level rise).  So we may as well make best use of those community places where there are lots of rentals and hotels.   Anna Maria Island is one of those places. 

The owners of a small commercial area went all out with green with a first of its kind LEED platinum commercial area and net zero buildings.  The use of geothermal is particularly intriguing to me.  I've embedded video on the series:

1) Introduction

2) Historic Preservation

3) Sustainable Development

4)  Moving and Retrofitting a Sears Cottage

5) Sharing Power (Geothermal, solar)

6) More on Geothermal

However, through great up-front design, good policies, and a commitment to maintaining good features over the long haul, we can make sure the new development is a great neighbor.  And if I sound confident, it's because I was one of those anxious neighbors who saw a big project become one of the best examples of how to bring new density alongside established neighborhoods. It also became a neighborhood where families like mine can no longer afford to live next to great new places. 

The bigger news, though, is a new mural, which replaced a controversial old one.  The sequence of events:

1. A mural called “Fast Life” was painted on the side of a prominent building.   The mural’s name comes from the eight letters  painted on a would-be gangsta’s knuckles.
2. Fast Life gains immediate notoriety, with pushback from this historically African American (and crime besieged) neighborhood.  The mural seemed like a recruiting tool glorifying gang life. Perhaps more galling to the neighborhood was the fact there was no outreach in the first place. 
3. Earlier this month, Fast Life was painted over by the building owner, who was sick of the vitriol.
4. Last week, a new mural by same temperamental French artist appeared on the side of Sarasota Architectural Salvage.  This mural contains all sorts of imagery mocking removal of Fast Life, with stinging, but less controversial content.

Here is where #5 gets interesting.  The owner of Sarasota Salvage, Jesse White, at first expressed apprehension about the pointed painting, but then did something unexpected: he put a chalkboard at street level to solicit opinions from the people.  

This marks a new direction for public arts talk here in Sarasota.  While we all love spirited public debate, all too often, art talk is uncomfortable for the wrong reasons.   Arts, which is supposed to tap the talents of the many, is perceived (right or wrong) to be a possession of a few.  The chalkboard may or may not attract that many comments, but all of a sudden, it is part of a mural, that is part of a neighborhood, that is part of our collective artistic heritage.  We are MTO (whether he likes it or not). 

This is not the only way chalk has become a transformation in communities.  In Charlottesville, Virginia, the popular pedestrian mall is home to the First Amendment Wall. 

In New Orleans, a large project called “Before I Die” hit town, combining the ultimate morbid thought with aspiration and inspiration.     

What Jesse White did was something Sarasota needed: he shifted the way we look at things from problem to asset.  The mural seems to still be a work in progress and there are all sorts of ways this may not become the transformational piece we need it to be.  But that’s our job.   

Matt Orr of www.thisweekinsarasota.com and the Observer group

This morning, Matt Orr was the guest on the Sustainable Sarasota radio show.  Matt is one of those people you would describe as “the smartest guy in the room,” and today he talked about jobs, creative economy and technology.  Consider these two points:

• “A W-2 to a 1099 economy” – A W-2 is a tax form sent from employers to employees, and describes the economy must of us have always known.  The 1099 is a form typically used by the self-employed.  But this country still tends to work on the old model of the big employer.  Florida’s biggest incentive, the Qualified Target Industries program, sets a minimum of 10 jobs for qualification, but that may be 9 more jobs than the new reality.
• Jobs –My sister-in-law, who is a business analyst, has long noted that the most important value of clusters is often overlooked.  While the concentration of ideas and complementary services is important, smart employees know that if their job is lost in a merger or failed company, they can immediately find a job that is as attractive and well paying.  In the new economy, Economic Development types not only have to attract smart people to a job, but their next one as well.  

In a nutshell, employment will be a string of 1099’s.  For some creatives, there will still be a full/part time gig with an employer, but they might also be up late working on an app, a website, or an invention.  Matt also has some other key nuggets:

• Work to your strengths – While economic diversification is vital for adapting to a changing global economy, we can’t pretend that real estate and tourism are not.  We need to figure out diversification within these areas, while worker better to turn visitor into repeat visitor.
• Hubs –The HuB, is an incubator for ideas and businesses.  One of the best roles the HuB plays is convener where “1099’s” who work independently come together to share ideas with other smart people.  Matt’s observation is we need LOTS of these around the county.
• Vision –  Vision drives everything.  Despite straying in some areas of implementation, though, downtown went from sleepy to cosmopolitan.
• The false age thing – There is an artificial (and not helpful) age line drawn between them (old) and us (young).  For example, the noise ordinance is often attributed to “gray hairs,” though some of the ordinance’s biggest critics are older Sarasotans who want live music.   The Creative Class has no age brackets.
• Feet on the Street – Technology is great and can be a spark for getting people together, but nothing beats face-to-face (again – the importance of hubs where people can work together).
• Don’t Kill the Golden Goose – Amenities matter to the creative class, and we have them: great weather, recreation, beaches.  This means that every dollar spent to preserve land or clean up stormwater before it goes to Siesta Key is an Economic Development dollar.
• Leadership – The places that seem to thrive have one thing in common: a strong, accountable mayor.  The individual Board Members in the City and County are great, but the structure means no one is accountable.  However, there are substitutes, and in many ways grassroots support for good ideas can be brought forward, championed and widely supported.   Activists need to figure out “4-1 vote” leadership rather than the one strong leader model.

This is only the beginning of a longer conversation on the 1099 economy where long term, guaranteed employment is replaced by the ability to successfully pull together a sequence of projects.   What does a community need to do differently with Economic Development, incentives, quality of life and signaling?

Note the W-2 to 1099 Economy is a topic from author Patrick Schwerdtfeger, an expert in self employment.  Read some of his stuff here.

If you don't want to hear the entire show - here are highlights from the conversation:

Florida House will have stuff up and running soon.  The web site will be www.theFLhouse.org

We talked about civic apps that would make it easier to find - and comment on - decisions before local Boards.  Right now, the system is so complex it favors a handful of people who know the system. I described a dream app-

• The dream app would let you see weekly what is going on.  You could customize so only actions within 5 miles or so from your house would show up, or by interest areas like budget or parks.  The dream app would have the hearing date, deadlines,  a short summary of issues, and comment fields for reading others' comments and providing your own.
• This app would also include fun stuff (e.g., classes, events) and stuff to know (Holiday Hours, household hazardous waste collection).  Emergency information would also be pushed.  The mockup below is rough, but shows how a drop down menu could show - on a map- what's going on - in this one pretend street cleaning.

There is an app called YouTown that looks like it is getting closer. 

We also talked about tech usage - not everyone has tech.  But the statistics show trends:

Stats (from the Pew Internet Project):

• Over half the adult population has a smartphone, 87% have a cell phone, 20% own tablets and another 19% own e-books like Kindles. 
• 22% of Americans do not have access to the internet (that's 1 in 5 - so still a big gap).  BUT - of the primary factors of why a non-internet user is not on internet – 31% of non-internet users say they have no interest or motivation – only 10% said money was a factor.   Only 4% said it was because of age.
• Sites like Virgin Mobileare bringing dow the cost of mobile internet - www.virginmobileusa.com

 Sarasota Apps - Sarasota actually has a digital presence     

• SCATTRAC– SCAT has placed GPS enabled transponders on buses, so a new web site lets a rider see where their bus is and an estimated wait time.

• Twitter  - Sarasota has a good Twitter presence: @SCgovconnections, @cityofsarasota, @visitsarasota, @scgovlibrary

• Emergency Response - Emergency Services helped form the first civic apps since emergency response tends to trump old school inertia on adopting new things – @scgovEOC

• Tourism – The Sarasota Convention and Visitors Bureau has an app, and of all things, there’s a Walk Tour app! 

Best of the Best - Check these out!

Transit – Look to apps like Embark, which seem suited to users (like tourists) who don’t know the stop, route and destination routine.  Features like service alerts, geolocation, and even business purveyors of groceries and beach supplies on a map are what we need.

Planning – Other cities are using apps to collect input, hold design contests, and map assets.   The magazine Next American City has its list of top apps for wellness, travel, data, and community brainstorming.  There are LOTS of complaints that the workings of the city and county are not connected to a vision.  Visioning activities are one of the hottest areas of app development right now.  SARA is the first augmented reality app for picturing a building on a site.

Of course any app needs to be coupled with good old fashioned human outreach and talking.  The best app of all.

I am outted.... (this did not get picked though - too outre).

Check out this great video called “Made in Brooklyn.” Again - outted.

So, like a handcuffed mobster shoved under a lone lightbulb, I too am gonna sing on cheap design tricks.

Tools - More Powerpoint than you think

Powerpoint (2007) has been ramping up photo editing components like filters, cropping, borders, etc...

You can also amass lots of images and text boxes, hit "Control A" and "Save as Picture."  I did a logo in two minutes doing that on the fly.  If you want more options like Photoshop, check out this article on new sites, including one called "Fat Paint," which seems to be Photoshop in the cloud.  I do use Photoshop - mainly with screen capture (round button+ on/off for iPad and Prt Scr on a computer).    I do manipulate a lot of screen capture images. 

Font

My friends know I love nothing better than the hate on Comic Sans.  But really - font is one way to grab attention.  I use the website www.dafont. com to get fonts.  They are free (but when I use the material I ALWAYS tip) and I have not had malware installed (yet). Once you install the fonts  the new font will appear in the font dropdown window among the fonts installed on your machine.  Here's a screen shot of the font "California" and the result when I typed in Florida House (my new gig).  I LOVE the grunge look, but my fellow Board members did not.  Ahem.  Also note - there is a way to import for web, but I am not there yet.

Graphic Art

Of course you can pay for clip art, but why?

The Graphics Fairy

This is the site I've waited for my whole life - full of vintage graphics.  If you are in the Farmers Market and local food movement, or are trying to bring back bustles & corsets, this site is for you.  The SEARCH page is the way to go (and click on the WORD not the images). I really love the Fruits and Veges, Transportation and The Sea.  The Octopus in the screenshot above is from this site.

Pinterest

Pinterest is addicting for a reason - it's a great way to see pretty things and right-click-save-target-as.... and yours.  Well, not exactly take it and run - Pinterest lists "Pin Etiquette" and suggests linking back to original posts.  Still, it has that "this is not going to end well" outlaw feel of Napster circa 2001.  Digital paternity is not as easy as Pinterest makes it out to be. 

My favorite search terms for work graphics are "Graphic design," "poster," "business cards," and "resumes." For images, I get interesting pins from search terms like "bike lanes" "urban design" "transit stations," "great streets," and "coral skinny jeans."  "Sprawl" gets you lots of pictures of sleeping cats.  More organizations are pinning onto Pinterest, so you can follow them.  If you are an organization or designer and NOT on Pinterest, get crackin.'

 Meme Generator

You can either curse "I can Haz Cheeburger" or roll with it.  The site Meme Generator lets you plaster your own sayings onto hundreds of memes, including  "Advice Yoda Gives," and "Philosoraptor."  Oh Come On - you know these are perfect for your next public meeting.... 

Apps (you can look these up on the app stores). 

I think Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram to procrastinate more on improving the crappy iPad camera, but gotta admit the they are fun.  For the same reason, these filters let wannabe graphic designers get away with a lot. 

My favorite photo and instructional apps are:

• Instagram and Phototoaster.  I've hears Snapseed is also really good.
• Videopix for videos
• My favorite sketch apps are Penultimate and iNapkin2  (the paper looks like a cocktail napkin - do I need to explain the appeal?).  The app ArtRage actually lets you paint, but it takes getting used to.   There is also a blend tool that lets you "art up" a photo with oil paint effects. This "photo" is of the new Janie's Garden mixed use development in Sarasota. Yeah - I did that.
• I like Skitch for writing on photos (built to work seamlessly with Evernote - another fave)
• Doodlecast Pro lets you produce sketches with voice over.  I'm still learning, but can see how it would be great to communicate back and forth with clients).  The final product is sent to a You Tube account so it's really easy to share.

Trends

1)  Clean white backgrounds and clean fonts - For my organization, we are doing our own printing, using using QR codes to lead to more information.  Two pagers (at most) will be housed on Dropbox as we fan out into the community.  There is more white space, with smaller or filtered photos & gray font to use less ink.  I noticed this trend in catalogues as well - Walgreens and the outfillter CCS.  Bold color, posters and maps still have a place, but use is more strategic.

2) Hand-drawn look - Bill Dennis has a great blog called "Draw Your Own Conclusions."  Likewise popular fonts on dafont are hand-drawn-ish. 

3)  Modern & old fashion - Word-press like images, tags and stamps are appearing with regularity, with use of vintage images and modern fonts.  Like my Florida House "problems" with catching the attention of several generations, it's a great way to merge traditional with modern.

4) Two minute video, but done well - The ease of embedding video onto websites is a blessing - and a curse.  Nonetheless for community and urban planners, there are so many times when a video crams in a lot of information.  The trick is to move away from the handy-cam interview to good prep, professional shooting, captions and music.

Here ya go.  It did occur to me that I don't get hired for graphic design - I get hired for making great communities happen.  My job is easier when I can point to great stuff others do, so to the extent design tricks I put in your hands comes back to me - I win.

A couple of weeks ago, the head of Sarasota’s transit operations (SCAT) submitted his resignation, ostensibly because the fire extinguishers had expired the day before.  There is likely more to the story than this, and there was undeniable disruption for a growing cadre of transit riders.  But now’s the time to think ahead.

OK  - So some might wonder why we should think about transit at all – it’s a bus.  But Sarasota’s at a point where it needs to think big about moving people:

• For starters, gasoline is hitting record prices as are local and national ridership numbers.
• Younger people are eschewing the car, according to new research  (and my own observations of my 15 year and his cohort).
• Transit is a big indicator – visitors from Europe and big cities know transit.  Moreover there is a growing “cool” factor to transit, biking and walking.  Even if visitors don’t step foot on a bus, a working, state of the art system send big signals about a community, its priorities and its savvy.   
• It’s a big part of the county budget that’s here to stay – so why not crank it?  Transit is budgeted at $36,000,000 (out of a close to $900,000,000 total budget for the County).

Now that we’ve settled that transit as worthy of lots of attention – here is my wishlist of priorities for the next transit administrator: two of them deal with transit and what the administrator can control and the others are my expectations out of everybody else.

The New Head of SCAT

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) –Like other creative class cities, Sarasota has a Bus Rapid transit project in the making.  This project, expected to cost roughly $100,000,000(of which Sarasotans would kick in $12 million or so), runs from the airport south to Southgate Mall (or where the new Apple Storewas supposed to be going).  But this ambitious project seems to repeat a theme that has dogged Sarasota for the past several years: the attention to innovation sapped attention to the basics.  The BRT project is worth continuing, but you are not going to get public support until we see a kick-ass transit agency on a daily basis.

Technology and SCAT– Shifting from BRT to regular SCAT does not mean abandoning innovation.   In fact, there is a lot that can be done with our system with attention to a couple of things.  First, establish a vision that SCAT will be recognized for deploying imaginative technology that rivals what big cities are doing.  The anemic SCAT TRACneeds to be appified for Android and smart phones to get rid of glitch presentation and make it user friendly.  Second, the vision should be to make those SCAT poles meaningful.  SCAT TRAC assume a potential rider knows more than a typical potential rider actually knows. You don’t have to do it all at once, and you don’t have to roll out Bus Stop Mahal’s.  Small stickers on poles that lead users to the SCAT TRAC and the name of the  stop as it is listed would go a long way (see photo).  For these apps, keep in mind tourists don’t know where they are, or even where the store they want to visit is.  The digital “You are Here” through geolocation is a must. 

Everybody Else

The Public– The past year was hard: we needed to vent.  But now, we need to craft every statement to make a difference.  We need to be the best watchdogs, commentators, data collectors, and researchers we can be for transit.  Fabulous transit does not rest on one person’s shoulders – it is crowdsourced.

County Leadership– First, take SCAT out of Planning and Development Services.  It would be the proper place if our transit system and better land development were feeding into each other.  But it hasn't turned out that way (the isolated Cattleman Station is Exhibit A - but perhaps I need to reserve judgment as the area develops).   Right now SCAT needs to move people.  Make it standalone or put it in Information Technology.  Second, hire somebody from an organization that turned procurement around.  Why not a two-fer?  Third - get a tech savvy entrepreneur - not a whipping boy, not somebody scouting out retirement homes - but a young-ish professional who can inspire.  There are capable people within SCAT for operations.

Others – Anyone supported by public grants or other funds needs to build support for mobility  on their website and in print.  Washington DC set up an entire website targeted to tourists for ”Getting Around” that includes every option  – including by foot and bike.  New York’s MTA has the “Arts for Transit” program to marry arts and transit.  For crying out loud, we have some of the best animation, design and graphics talent in the world here – how can we use it to make getting around easier and more fun?  The private sector can also get involved.  Any app can show stores and attractions for a small amount of money.

Finally - next Thursday April 19th is "Try Transit Day." Free rides - so my expectation is that everyone tries transit!

Here’s the promo from Google (if you don’t want to watch the whole thing – here are highlights:  weather report while looking out window (16 seconds), subway alert & alternative route  (38 seconds), missed opportunity with what dogs are really thinking (48 seconds), purchase tickets while walking past promo poster (1 minute), creepy exact location of friend he is supposed to meet (minute 1.20), take photo with glasses (minute 1.45). 

Right now AR feels like a coffee-spotting, let's turn a city into a game board video game, but for urban planning, there are four big uses of augmented reality.

Transit and Transportation

The opportunities for use in transit are humongous for both big ticket transit and local bus.  Phone and tablet Apps for larger transit agencies are on the rise and getting better (HopStop, Embark), though most urbanites know their routes.  However, with aging infrastructure, one of the bigger uses (alas) will be faster, more accessible system alerts and immediate presentation of alternatives. 

The other market is for what I call “tourists.”  These are people (including non-transit using residents) who don’t know the basic information needed to embark on a transit tour, know exactly what stop is theirs, and can be unfamiliar with their surroundings.  While apps are adding step-by-step directions, augmented reality allows a user to point their screen in a direction to see where to go/disembark rather than rely on “go north two blocks.”   Augmented reality also allows presentation of multiple information points on one screen (restaurants, bathrooms, theaters,……… coffee).

Areawide Planning

In the beginning, there were stacks of legos.  While regional scenario planning can actually be successful with checkers and legos, it’s the next level down augmented reality adds detail and value.   For neighborhood planning, augmented reality can activate comments on massing, tiering, tree canopy, shadows, new street grids, and location of public amenities and parks.  In fact, one of the most important conversations cities and suburbs will be having is the pattern of redevelopment.  Seeing where to put "right density, right place" is essential and current 3-D material models are expensive, time consuming and difficult to redo on the fly.

This, of course, means that you need technicians at the table who can identify early where a scenario-in-the-making is not feasible.  Planners used to saying “I’ll get back to you” won’t have that luxury when technology brings the ability to shape and reshape on the fly.

Individual buildings & Projects

For residents, the more “real” redevelopment gets, the higher the anxiety level.  And nothing is more real than an actual project proposal.  Augmented reality may pose a conundrum, since it takes the proposal building or center, and then makes that even more real.    Imagine taking locals to a site, holding up a tablet computer, and showing the design in situ.  But as the publico and technocrati become one and the same,  the ability to see this level of detail is inevitable, so we might as well begin redirecting public processes in that direction.  The photo is from an excellent 5 minute video from Greg Tran.

 Public Engagement

This is where augmented reality gets really fun.  Perhaps one of the more immediate uses is for asset mapping.   NearestWiki from Acrossair and Wikitude allow participants to geocode locations and enter information. This can be an easy fun way to get more local icons into Wikipedia.  Geocoding is also great for promoting small and local business – augmented reality allows small business without a massive PR and sign budget can compete in the virtual space.

Of course, not everyone at the public participation table will be out there coding, and one theme of this article is how augmented reality applications complement good old fashioned maps, comment cards and conversation.  

The Spoofs

Of course the best part of new technology (especially when launched by a huge company) are the spoofs.  The following is by rebellious pixels.   Enjoy!