Managed Retreat and Economic Development… at the same time

There’s plenty of talk about the need to retreat from the shoreline –Hurricane Sandy made this clear.  In fact, Sarasota is already dealing with the “repair versus retreat” question on Siesta Key with Beach Road.  Most literature on retreat focuses on structures located on shorelines, and frames the entire conversation around doomed property.  But planning for climate change is not a lot-by-lot exercise, nor one to be viewed as all negative.  For coastal towns like Sarasota, hope comes in the form of couple of questions:

• How can we maintain access as long as possible?
• How do we deal with the certainty of damaging storms, but uncertainty of timing?
• Can we actually prepare for climate change and boost economic activity at the same time?

For Sarasota, one of the best ways to maintain the economic activity at the beach while limiting exposure is to create “jumping off points” to provide access to the beaches on higher ground.  These areas are close to the beach, but on terra that’s a bit more firma.

The photos above shows one of Sarasota’s greatest climate adaptation assets, located on the mainland at the foot of the north bridge to Siesta Key.  The main feature is Southgate Mall.  While not dead, it is losing its premier anchor next year (Saks) and is losing hope for an Apple store.  The area is already mixed-use; rich in roadways, but not connections.  It would be easy to classify this as a mall retrofit, but it is not: it’s an area retrofit given the numerous strip centers that radiate along the arterials.  Even if there were no such thing as climate change, this would be a smart place to undertake world class redevelopment.   

But climate change, sea level rise and storm surge are factors.  While a typical mall retrofit might look at housing, retail, and transportation, retaining the economic vitality of the keys requires additional thoughts on how to also add the beach experience to the use mix. The image above illustrates a potential strawman for a jumping off point plan.  The primary planning area geared to redevelopment is in red, with a second tier next to neighborhoods.  This yellow area would not see new zoning, but instead would get special attention in the planning process to ensure livability. The green shaded areas are most vulnerable to surge and need their own round of retrofits.

This type of planning – servicing the beach away from the beach – will require some thinking on the nature of lodging and access.

• What kind of housing and hotel product? – Sarasota already represents about the widest gamut of lodging and housing imaginable:  permanent, seasonal (snowbirds), sporadic (snowflakes) and tourist.  Housing usually includes single family, townhouse, condo, apartment, assisted living, time shares, trailer parks, and hotels.  But old definitions are changing.  Sites like airbnb and Homeaway are blurring lines between ownership and hotel.  Time shares are actually a key climate change real estate product, because owners still have other property even if storms wipe out buildings.  For managed retreat, we need to rethink products in order to meet the three questions asked above. What would the real estate products and mix need to be?  What needs to drive design and operations?

• Transportation – For managed retreat, transportation is as important as use mix and in fact the development needs to be planned around the transit and transportation system.  In fact, we likely need new transportation “products” and mix.  First, the circulatory system to the beaches forms a core.  As long as we are planning transit to the beach, we may as well link it to downtown.  We should also form a better hub for the local bus system (Southgate now qualifies as one of the suckiest transfer hubs in the transit kingdom).  Walking will need to link the core to the immediate area, so sidewalks, shortcuts and crossings need special attention before buildings are planned.   Finally, car hire completes the picture with traditional rentals, but also car shares like car2go and Zipcar.  Tourists could still rent minivans and whatnot, but imagine the vacation savings if you can rent a car on the spot only as long as you need it. Young renters would not need to fork out cash for cars. Snowbirds could leave the car up north.  This idea would help limit congestion for cities that need to manage current demand while looking ahead.
• New Zoning - I would invent new zoning: R-H-Tr: Residential-Hotel- Transportation.  Just as developers need to install stormwater and HVAC, car share would be part of a building’s utilities (one they can share with other buildings in an area plan).

Note: Sarasota is developing a Post-Disaster Redevelopment Plan(or PDRP).  Get used to this lingo.

PB Placemaking and the Big Question: Who will Pay for Planning?

Two recent news items on either end of the planning spectrum are worth noting:

1) Last week, Parsons Brinkerhoff dissolved the Portland OR office of PB Placemaking, the firm’s premier planning office that recently gathered prestigious awards for Tyson’s Corner presented in the video above.

2) In August, a Sarasota City Commissioner forecasted a grim budget in front of civic activists, noting rising pension costs as the deficit driver.  

Both these news items involve money and planning, but actually they form a larger story on the state of planning.  To understand this story, it helps to look at the various planning scales and ponder their funding sources (I realize there are other types of plans along the planning gradient; this is a rough outline).

1) Regional – Thanks to the Sustainable Community Planning Grants from HUD, there are great regional planning efforts underway.  These federal grants seem to have ushered in a new era for multi-county planning around the country to turn self-defeating competition into powerful collaboration.

2) Sector (or sub-regional) – In talking to other planners around Florida, planning at this scale is happening around big infrastructure projects, such as airport expansions, interchanges and ports. Localities are leveraging federal and state dollars for local land use and transportation planning surrounding the projects. 

3)  Comprehensive Plan – Comprehensive Plans for cities and counties are common around the country, though vary in the level of required elements, analysis and ties to state dollars.  Comprehensive plans are typically paid by localities, though can be supplemented with grants, foundation dollars and state funding.

4) Corridor/nodes – Here in Florida, FDOT has been leading corridor projects along with MPOs.  Our local example is Sarasota’s Citywide Mobility Plan.    

5) Small Area and Neighborhood Plans – These plans are almost exclusively left to localities.  For sprawl repair, redevelopment and smart growth, this is the most important planning increment BUT one that relies on foundational work of visioning, comprehensive planning, and in some cases corridor planning.

Some thoughts on the future of funding:

• The Sustainable Community Planning Grants program had to fight for another round of annual funding.   No matter who wins the next election, the pressure on budgets, especially discretionary items, will only grow. 
• The downsizing of PB Placemaking should be a wake-up call to the planning profession.  It’s important to note that PB also transferred 147 employees from NYC to Pennsylvania, so there are likely factors other than planning TOD involved.  For transit oriented development, the truth is it feels like we are at the tail end of a golden age of TOD planning.  The pipeline is thin, project planning is long, and much of the TOD work was the realization all at once in the mid 1990’s that urban and suburban stations built long ago were actually economic and land use assets. 
• While much of the ballyhoo over pensions is a convenient way to swipe unions and wriggle out of contracts, as more boomers retire, pension costs will crowd out other budget items – like planning.
• When the Florida legislature reduced planning requirements last year, the urgency of data, analysis and planning dissolved.  With less pressure, local budget hawks are demanding no dollars be directed to planning, since we are no longer legally bound to do so.  While they may not succeed at getting zero dollars, they set up a negotiating process that bends the budget downward.  I imagine this is not just a Florida phenomenon.

None of this means planning is dead.  I realize there are a lot of people smarter than I am helping frame new directions but there are a couple of themes:

• Competition for infrastructure-related planning jobs will be fierce
• Although “heavy” transit projects and TOD are slowing down, the real opportunity is bus TOD.  I’ve written on this before, and if you think it’s obvious to localities, it’s not. 
• Planning needs to be rebranded as portfolio management.   Just as families seek advice on their income, taxes, assets and allocations, communities have to do the same thing.  This asserts an economic role for planning, but also provides comfort for stewards of the environment, because they are now an asset class on par with everything else.   Arts lovers will also see an explicit tie since artists build their work in portfolios.  

In closing, I would like to give a virtual nod to G.B. Arrington who worked with PB Placemakers.  He has a way of mixing the technical, practical and artistic aspects of planning communities in an approachable way.  He has made me smile on many occasions. He will no doubt re-launch soon as he is one of the best in the planning business. 

Want to Expand Arts in Sarasota?

Virginia Hoffman wrote (actually continues to write) impassioned pleas regarding support for the arts that is on par with other efforts.   In the June 16^thedition of SRQ Daily (subscribe here) she introduces the concept of the Cultural Stadium – hoping to elevate the arts among the power and money brokers in town by talking in sports metaphors.   Bingo Card from Bike Jax (dot org)

Linking arts to sports is one way to go about it, but there is another game, so to speak, where art is taking center field.  To whit:

• The Project for Public Spaces has a new effort called “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” in response to planning fatigue where the patience with endless planning runs out, but money for implementation is scarce.   Opportunistic, short term projects are now popping up all over; think pop-up festivals, food trucks, yarnbombing and tactical urbanism.
• Artspace is a POWERFUL partnership of funders and arts agencies that just gave away over $15 million in 47 cities and rural areas.  Some of the examples: in Boston, money to fund “random acts of culture” and ventures to engage artists to creatively combat urban vacancy in several cities.   
• There seems to already be quite a bit community initiated arts here already.  sARTq, launched by the HuB is a good example, and the Chalk Festival  began as a bootstrap event.  Several local artists have successfully used the crowdsourcing website Kickstarterto raise funds.   Ballet practice takes place downtown in an empty storefront.  Flashmob dances show up on Siesta Key. 

There are a couple of themes worth noting. 

• To borrow words from a Bruce Katz tweet, “The new era in (art) will be crowd sourced vs. close sourced, entrepreneurial vs. bureaucratic, networked vs. hierarchical.”  He was talking about metropolitan areas, but the same applies to the arts.
• Arts have to help solve something, fill a gap, and be related to placemaking.
• Art projects in the age of austerity, if publicly funded, will need to perform double and triple duty.
• If placemaking and the arts are not hierarchical, a new kind of leadership needs to combine the best of the established art community with these new spontaneous random acts.

In Sarasota, what are the opportunities?

Homemade wayfinding signs in Raleigh NC

• Arts and Transit – SCAT’s transit maps, bus stops and other information are pitiful.  Other cities are using information graphics, technology, and better sign posts to help patrons navigate the system.   Asheville, NC transformed its buses into art and performance spaces.

• Arts and Stormwater –Much of our public space is dominated by palm trees and high input (water and fertilizer) landscaping.  We can turn that around as other places have with installations that actually clean water before it enters the Bay.

• Arts and Health – Columbus Ohio’s Department of Public Health sponsors Columbus Art Walks in nine different neighborhoods.  Yes, the Health Department and Public Arts got together.
• Arts and Economic Development – Sarasota has tons of video production talent, but it seems scattered.  Imagine a consortium making a video like this, but instead of “Made in Brooklyn” it’s “Made in Sarasota.”  By the way, like Brooklyn’s Makerbot company, have a growing 3-D printing industry growing here.  Call me if interested because it looks like the early applications are jewelry, art and 3D printing for food.  No kidding.
• Art and Underused space - Imagine all the places in Sarasota where a dusty lot or even cracks in the sidewalk might be transformed.

Let’s cut to the chase here.  Placemaking+arts immerses people in art on a daily – even hourly – basis.  Linking arts to other passions ensure wider support, so someone who loves the idea of a healthier community will be all over arts and walking.  We know who does art - who does place? 

Thrown Under the Bus - What We Need in a New SCAT Team

“Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus. “
David Hockney

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!

Augmented Reality and Urban Planning - It's Coming (actually It's Here)

Last week, Google launched a new project called “Google Glass” to introduce augmented reality (AR)eyewear.  The response seems to run from one polar end of skeptical all the way to Orwellian panic.  Fears of Google collecting more data aside (or the annoyance of Google pushing its own apps for photos, maps and social), the important point is that augmented reality can be good for cities and will be great for suburbs.   

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!