Where the (Brick) Sidewalk Ends

I was in Harvard Square one evening last fall when I light rain began falling. A girl dashed out of a convenience store doorway, hurrying for an unknown reason. Turning the corner she abruptly slipped and fell on the brick sidewalk. No quicker than she had fallen she jumped up, unhurt, to continue on her way. Yesterday in Downtown Crossing, a man using crutches slipped on wet and snowy brick just as I left my office. These incident are repeated thousands of times in Boston and around the nation, at times resulting in injury. Sidewalk slips are commonplace, yet illustrates the complex ethics of contemporary urban planning. The material that contributed to these falls, brick, has many well-known flaws including a low friction coefficient when wet. However in the convoluted calculus of sidewalk materials, the grip of material surface inevitably falls behind a host of other factors.

From the point of view of pedestrians, there’s not much to like about brick sidewalks. When wet they’re often slippery. Bricks easily become uneven or loose due to tree roots or uneven soil, complicating shoveling and leading to tripping. The uneven surface can be treacherous for bikers, strollers, or the impaired. Some even point out they can easily become projectiles in the hands of miscreants. Yet brick remains a common material throughout many cities. Boston’s tourist meccas, Faneuil Hall’s plazas, Downtown Crossing’s streets, and even the Freedom Trail itself are made from brick. In Washington, D.C., miles of new brick sidewalks have been installed in the past few years in some of the city’s busiest pedestrian corridors.

Not everyone agrees with the brick critics. Commenting on a neighborhood newspaper’s story, titled “bricks bring worries for some pedestrians,” the Washington City Paper’s sharp-tonged editor Erik Wemple rejects the complaints of a scooter-bound disability rights advocate quoted in the story and declares, “Brick sidewalks are one of the greatest ever streetscape accomplishments of the District government.” He neglects to mention that for recent streetscape projects, city contractors lay bricks on top of a solid pored slab of concrete, essentially building two complete sidewalk surfaces on top of each other. This approach combines the stability of cement with the aesthetics of brick, perhaps by sacrificing cost. (Government waste is another City Paper favorite topic)

Arguing they save money, trees, help recycle automobile tires, and create a superior walking surface, one California company is marketing rubber sidewalks. (Illustrated above) Despite a flurry of interest in 2006 (including here in Boston), the concept doesn’t have seemed to catch on in a big way, with local installations limited to a smattering across the country. The company’s own comparison chart may suggest the reason: it costs over $19 a square foot, versus an estimated $15 for concrete or $5-$8 for asphalt. I suspect other reasons are to blame, including the slow pace of change by municipal officials that make material decisions. The perceived pertinence and durability of cement may trump the actual durability, to say nothing about the demand for bricks based solely on aesthetics. Just the term “rubber sidewalk” conjures up images of a tactile, bouncy surface inappropriate for a city street.

The Federal Highway Administration’s report on designing sidewalks and trails orders sidewalk surfaces should be slip resistant under dry conditions (illustrated by this diagram), concluding “most asphalt and concrete surfaces are fairly slip resistant.” A Canadian report (Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Sidewalk Design, Construction and Maintenance) advises municipalities:

In choosing the material for the sidewalk, consideration should also be given to materials that are non-slip and provide adequate drainage, as well as the requirements of users with strollers, inline skates and also the visually and mobility impaired.

The report doesn’t even mention brick, but includes this list of factors for material selection conspicuously omitting safety: life cycle cost (initial construction cost, maintenance cost), durability, service life, location, maintenance, color (concrete reflects more light), vandalism during curing (pre-cast pavers), runoff potential. Just about the only people I can find considering safety in a serious way is the website of a odd advocacy group based in Arlington, Virginia, who complain about the rough surfaces create by bricks, cobblestones, course aggregate, and other materials.

Slippery sidewalks have become a problem, sparking legal action in that very pedestrian city, New York. A 1981 story in the New York Times describes how “new” materials like travertine and terazzo were slippery and resulting in lawsuits from people who fell on them breaking bones and suffering other serious injuries. According to the story, lawyers “in negligence suits, such cases are on the rise as a result of the wider use of a variety of materials for sidewalks to obtain a more esthetic effect than concrete provides.” A “noted” negligence attorney quoted in the story describes how he usually sues the property owner, not the architect or city, for putting down a defective sidewalk, noting adding the city to lawsuits “complicates” them.

With so many complex factors influencing sidewalk materials floating around, we should add the factor of local control. During a walking tour of Washington, D.C.’s H Street neighborhood last year, our guide told us how the most important factor in sidewalk materials was how well it resisted unsightly stains caused by chewing gum. They opted for a cement aggregate, rather than a plain concrete face or brick. Like in many issues, given the uncertain ethical calculus for sidewalks (how should professionals weigh aesthetics, cost, safety, vandalism potential, tree health effects, etc?) city planners defer to the preferences of active local residents. And if those who prefer a higher friction coefficient on wet days aren’t present, so be it.

In Harvard Square near where I witnessed the fall this fall, another person fell in October and was transported to the hospital for stitches. Maryan Amaral, a wheelchair user who frequents the area and witnessed the accident, convinced the City of Cambridge to re-build the sidewalk and crosswalk on the street after collecting 125 signatures on a petition. Happy with the new crosswalk ramps, she’s concerned about the material the city chose, however, pointing out that brick sidewalks often come loose. A lone comment on the online version of the news article about the case begs, “Please, let’s get rid of the brick sidewalks. I know some like their historic charm, but they’re just terrible in the ice and snow, both because they’re difficult to clear and because they tend ice over more readily than concrete. They’re also terrible for the handicapped.” Maybe the next petition will take up the issue.

> Federal Highway Administration: Designing Sidewalks and Trails for Access
> Cambridge Chronicle: Complaint Triggers Appian Way Rehab
> Book: Slip and Fall Prevention

Thanks to my friend Katie Mencarini with the Toole Design Group for help doing research for this post. Photos from Flickr users Lodigs and Supergiball

The Paradox of Cheap Parking, in Real Time

Last spring, I heard about an interesting dataset about Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I lived for four years as an undergraduate student. Busy with the flurry of activity leading up to my completion of graduate school, I stored it away to look at later. After all, real-time information on cities is hard enough to come by, let alone on the simultaneously ubiquitous and fascinating topic of parking.

The Data
The parking lots and structures in downtown Ann Arbor are operated by a quasi-public organization, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA). Together with their parking vendor, last April they implemented a system that provides real-time information about the number of parking spaces available in several lots and garages through digital signs at each garage and through their website. An old Ann Arbor friend Brian Kerr wrote a simple script to scrape that page every 20 minutes and record the number of spaces available at each facility. After letting it run for about two weeks, he posted the data file online. Subsequently a local blogger interviewed the DDA’s IT manager about how the system was implemented, and even posted some charts encouraging visitors to match the chart with the garage. The data sparked a bit of interest on local blogs but the conversation soon died out.

At the time of the completion of a recent parking study in 2007, the DDA operated lots and structures containing 5,770 parking spaces in downtown Ann Arbor. These facilities are concentrated in a relatively small physical area, as shown in this map from the study:

For my first pass at the data I thought I’d look at just one garage, indicated by the arrow above. As is shown, the Maynard Street structure is near two movie theaters, a busy commercial district, and one block from the University of Michigan Central Campus Diag, with many classroom buildings and a large auditorium. The first chart is the number of spaces available in just one day - Monday, April 7, 2008:

The first thing to notice is that the garage is never full during any 20-minute measurement. Although the technical capacity of the garage is 797, the garage flat-lines at 618 (perhaps due to long-term permits or construction). The garage is only filled over 90% of this reduced capacity for one 40-minute period, from 1:40 p.m. to 2:20 p.m, or roughly 2.7% of the entire 24-hour period.

Expanding the time frame for the next 7 consecutive days reveals this pattern:

The spikes correspond with the midday rush, and the garage only fills once, around 1:00 p.m. on Friday, April 11th. This seemingly dry data can tell a rich sociological story; everyone rushes in just after nine, with various people lingering around into long into the evening. In a sense, the curve represents a unique DNA of the local land uses and the preferences and customs of their auto-using patrons, residents, and visitors.

Observations
Based on the data we can make a couple observations. First, the vast majority of the parking lots and structures are almost totally empty the majority of the time. This means they represent a huge amount of inactive urban space. A common rule of thumb is each structured space takes up 300 square feet of floor space for the bay and associated aisles and ramps. If we use this standard, the same floor area in this garage could be 239 apartments (assuming they average a generous 1,000 square feet). Certainly good design would demand a residential structure be taller or configured differently on the site. However, given the extremely fickle use of the garage now, a residential use would mean more people physically at the site on average than are now.

Second, from the chart above we can see that parking demand at the DDA’s prevailing price structure is very spiky, with extremely high demand only at limited times. (This garage costs $.80 an hour, or $175 for a monthly permit) It would seem logical for the DDA to use variable or tiered pricing to create a market incentive for a more efficient use of their space. For example, parking overnight could be inexpensive given the very low demand, with parking around the midday peak much more expensive. Even a modest form of performance parking may change this observed pattern.

Overparked?

Despite nearly 5,800 spaces the DDA continues to develop more parking, this October publishing on their website details about a proposed underground lot near the library boasting green design. How will the city know when they have enough parking? After all, parking policy guru Donald Shoup points out one can rarely provide enough of something that’s under priced. The proposal for the new garage advises readers to “review the findings of the 2007 Parking Study to learn why vehicle parking is needed even with extensive investment in alternative transportation.” Unfortunately the 2007 Parking Study doesn’t exactly settle the matter, including as one of its final recommendations “Maintain a formalized process for determining when new supply is needed.” The study, by the alternative transportation experts Nelson/Nygaard, is chock full of state-of-the-art policy suggestions (including variable pricing discussed above) but avoids the sticky question of determining how much is necessary. Perhaps it’s because like other seemingly scientific questions in urban planning the answer is not scientific but value-laden and political. (A similar question: How many freeways and/or lanes do we need?) And in Ann Arbor, the people want more parking.

Parking in the Real-Time City
In another vein, publishing this real-time data (especially on a still forthcoming mobile format) could itself have profound implications for the transportation system. Could real-time data allow people to avoid full structures and make use of the resource more efficient? The Washington, D.C. suburban rail station lots tend to fill up early, and I’ve heard stories of people driving downtown stopping at each station to look for a spot. What if the space was beamed to their home computer or car? (The more important question might be, “How much parking should they provide to begin with, and what should it be priced?” One suggestive study I saw of San Francisco’s BART concluded replacing parking with offices would boost the agency’s riders and revenue) If the DDA makes summary data available on the website, it would make costly data collection unnecessary for this data point. All citizens would know exactly how full or empty the garages were, and the DDA would be able to observe the impact of pricing or policy changes in real time.

> Previous parking posts: The Urbanists’ Panacea: Parking Reform, Are Expensive Parking Meters Fair?, more
> Homeless Dave’s Interview with the DDA’s Stephen Smith
> Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority

Obama-Biden Transition Website Accepting Questions and Comments

Although overshadowed in the media, two recent initiatives by President-Elect Obama demonstrates his unprecedented commitment to Internet transparency and citizen engagement. The first concept, announced by transition head John Podesta last weekend, is called simply “Your Seat at the Table.” Obama-Biden Transition team will meet with hundreds of private organizations. Anyone they meet with must agree to allow any briefing materials be posted online, where citizens can review them and post their comments. Since launching last weekend, PDFs of briefing materials from over 100 organizations have been posted, and thousands of citizen comments posted in response.

Any presidential initiative that excites both Mother Jones Magazine and the Cato Institute must be unique indeed. Although the Cato bloggers griped that similar transparency is often not applied to budget matters, they should remember that as U.S. Senator, Barack Obama was a driving force behind USASpending.gov, whose sole mission is to let Americans “see where their money goes.”

The new initiative raises many questions — who will process the comments? How will they be recorded for history? How is the transition extending the dialogue to Americans who cannot — or prefer not to — engage with their government on a website? Are there any meetings where the briefs cannot, or will not be posted? These questions aside, the experiment fundamentally transforms the usual input process for government policy by allowing some conversation to occur between individuals. Some of the most exciting technology in this area are new social feedback tools like UserVoice or GetSatisfaction that attempt to create a technical framework for a collective discussion, without the prohibitively high technical barriers to entry (and problematic lack of user restrictions) of wikis.

This type of social feedback software is exactly the type of technology the fuels the other new tool, “Open For Questions” the campaign unveiled today, which “lets you ask the Transition team any questions you have about the issues that are important to you” and also “browse through questions other folks have and check off the ones you think are the most interesting.”

Fundamentally, both of these technologies of are applicable to policy-making at the local level, which unlike for the presidency suffers a lack of participants, and a need for better ways than public meetings to bring people together across time and space. If the Obama Administration can demonstrate their practicality at the national level, perhaps it will serve to debunk skepticism and resistance at over levels of government. What will remain is to extract the technical machinery behind Change.gov and make it available to local governments, overcome the political, cultural, and policy barriers to enhanced transparency and dialogue, and develop the expertise to deploy them in constructive ways.

> Change.Gov - Your Seat at the Table and Open for Questions

Urban Planning on the Web and Usability

In my master’s final paper I described how to adapt five basic criteria for public participation in urban planning to the Internet. The fifth criteria was information, defined as “provide more information in a clearly understood form, free of distortion and technical jargon.” For providing information over the Internet, the most important concept is usability.

If urban planners want to engage broad and diverse constituencies over the Internet through websites, forums, blogs, emails, or any web technology, they must consider the usability of these tools. It sounds like a simple concept, but anyone who has struggled to extract basic information from a convoluted government website will understand its importance. When we designed Rethink College Park, we used large fonts, a streamlined design, and intuitive interface to present information as clearly as possible.

That’s why I was particularly interested to hear from Julie Harpring, a master’s student in human-computer interaction design at Indiana University. She is interested in applying usability to urban planning for her capstone project. Although we just discussed possible ideas for the project and it won’t be complete until next spring, I liked the Bloomington by Bike and Bus map she created for IU last summer. Although technically it’s a simply application of Google Maps API, it seamlessly brings together disparate sources of information for students to use to plan travel (university bus routes, city bike lanes, bicycle rack locations and types, in addition to Google’s street map and aerial photos). Who knows how many bloated PDFs on government websites contain information that could be better displayed through such an interface?

Searching for Philadelphia’s Trinities

When I visited Philadelphia in April 2007, I stayed with my friend Emily in an improbably tiny house. She had explained that it was off a pedestrian alley off an alley – itself an unusual description – but when I entered I discovered the house had, apparently, just one room.

A tiny, twisting staircase led up one floor to another tiny room and bathroom, and the staircase led up again to a bedroom. Instead of conveying claustrophobia, the house exuded a comfortable, almost nautical sensation of functional smallness. The style was known as a “trinity house,” Emily explained, a uniquely Philadelphia invention. My interest piqued, I turned to the web and library for more information on these unique structures. My search eventually led to one of the city’s most famous residents, Benjamin Franklin, and offered a window into the city’s early history. Many trinity houses turned up for sale or rent on Craigslist, often along with photos of their interiors. A discussion forum operated by a local blog describes residents moving beds in through second story windows, and the unique quirks of living in such small homes.

Few websites could describe their origins, number, or typical form. One real estate website described the type as some of the city’s oldest houses, generally over 100 years old, cozy, and located off shared courtyards. A Frommer’s webpage describing the architecture one might encounter during a walking tour provides just one short sentence, contrasting them with their larger neighbors, “The less wealthy lived in ‘trinity’ houses — one room on each of three floors, named for faith, hope, and charity.” However, other sources contradicted the name’s origin. The introduction to a collection of stories about the 19th century working class neighborhood Flatiron reports residents of the Catholic section called their 14-foot-wide homes “Father, Son and Holy Ghost houses” for their three-room makeup.(1)

Early examples of the buildings dating from the 18th century have been preserved in a National Historic Landmark called Elfreth’s Alley. A nonprofit educational organization sponsors tours of the alley and boast it’s the oldest continuously inhabited neighborhood in America. While the official website doesn’t use the term, another unofficial website describes the architecture as Georgian and “trinity.”

A 1986 Philadelphia Magazine article by Stephen Fried points out the homes are precisely what city founder William Penn hoped to avoid when he founded a city he envisioned would be a “greene Country Towne” filled with homes set amid gardens. The article describes the homes usual form, reporting they are “much in demand” among the well-to-do, and that sometimes several are combined to form “quadities” or “quantities.” For an example of the form, the author suggests Elfreth’s Alley, or the 1900 block of Waverly Street. The author also describes a typical layout: a kitchen in the basement, and the homes often had two front entrances, one leading up to the living room and another providing access to the basement.(2)

An essay on housing for the poor provides additional insight into the origin and early history of the homes. The author describes how property speculators built long rows of identical row homes, and even how the city took possession of small alleyways and subdivided them. The process of what he calls back-alley dwellings is described:

The back-alley dwellings represented a particularly difficult problem. They took several forms. Owners of houses fronting on main streets might simply add on buildings in the rear to the end of the lot, creating a dark, unpaved, unsewered alley. A more famous Philadelphia rear-dwelling was the band-box, or “father, son, holy ghost” house. These houses rarely fronted the streets, but instead were built in the back yards and formed little courts, which were often invisible from the street. Of three, or less frequently two, stories, they contained only one room per floor, with an unenclosed stairway leading from one floor to another. They could be suitable for one small family, but they were unfit for the poor who often crowded into them. These real courts multiplied as the city’s original large lots were subdivided. They were probably built both for speculation and for servants’ quarters. Of great significance is the fact that they were rear dwellings, often obscured from the view of passers-by.(3)

This description is accompanied in the text by a diagram from W. E. B. DuBois’s text The Philadelphia Negro. However, a simple aerial photograph of the trinities above can illustrate the ingenuity of Philadelphia’s alley developers:

Sutherland describes how these houses afford home ownership to the city’s ethnic communities and avoid the problems of high-density tenements like in New York. However, the overcrowding and substandard sanitation caused high rates of typhoid and tuberculosis. His analysis of tenant owners reveals they generally did not hold extensive properties, and often lived in the building itself or nearby.

Sam Bass Warner’s classic account of Philadelphia’s growth suggests one of the city’s most famous residents was responsible for several trinity homes.

To accommodate as many families in so little space some of the blocks for the ward had been cut by alleys so that little houses might be crowded onto the back lots of the houses facing the main streets. Strawberry Alley and Elbow Lane cut through the first block, Petty’s alley divided the third block, and Benjamin Franklin had begun the alley process with his house lot off Market Street in the second block of the ward. He had built a row of three houses on Market Street, thereby turning his home yard into an interior lot. … In the early nineteenth century Franklin’s home parcel became Franklin Court, an alley lot which opened up the interior of the block.(4)

Warner reports the tremendous density and low sanitation caused periodic epidemics of yellow fever, typhoid, small pox, and dysentery. He finds the 1774 census reported 1,401 people and 337 dwellings in the city’s middle ward, composed in turn of five developed block of “slightly less than five acres of land.” Erring on the generous side to assume the ward was composed of 25 acres of developed land would yield the density of 13.5 dwelling units per acre (more than 55 people per acre), considered a high density today, let alone in an era without modern sanitation. He reports that street railways opened up “cast tracts of cheap suburban land and thereby destroyed the market for new alley construction.” Noting many of the old alleys remained standing for years “giving discomfort to Philadelphia’s poor for many generations.”

It is no small irony that the extremely dense urban fabric that constituted an urban problem in the 18th century is precisely the antidote to 21st century ones: sprawl, housing un-affordability, and auto dependence. Now may be the right time to learn from Philadelphia’s trinities, to study their dimensions and construction, as we seek to learn how to build more humane, resource-efficient urban homes and neighborhoods.

> See also my post on “An Architectural Aesthetic of Efficiency,” about how the “forced austerity” of the third world can result in a fundamental re-evaluation of residential architecture

(1) Gerard, Shields. Flatiron. Hilliard & Harris Publishers: 2006.
(2) Fried, Stephen. Philadelphia Magazine. April 1986. “The Trinity House – Last Thing Founding Father Thought He’d Be Remembered For.”
(3) Sutherland, John F. “Housing for the Poor in the City of Homes: Philadelphia at the Turn of the Century.” Chapter 9 in The Peoples of Philadelphia: A History of Ethnic Groups and Lower-Class Life, 1790-1940. Allen F. Davis and Mark H. Haller, eds. Philadelphia: Philadelphia University Press, 1998.

Tools for e-Democracy in Urban Planning

My master’s final paper covers the history of public participation in American urban planning, participation theory, and the general approach that should guide using the Internet for urban planning, among other topics. However, it deliberately avoids the subject of what specific Internet tools could be used. This was intentional, as the technology is rapidly evolving.

Therefore I’ve put together a page on the topic of Internet Tools for e-Democracy in Urban Planning. It contains additional information about why planners should using the web, and a comparison matrix of common Internet technologies (webpages, email lists, blogs, wikis, etc). It also contains an evolving list of additional applications available to local governments that may be useful for urban planning purposes.

Public Involvement in U. of Maryland East Campus Planning

Tonight at an event at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning I met Harry Mattison, the author of a blog about the Allston Brighton Community Blog. He’s also a member of the Allston Brighton Community Planning Initiative.

The map below sums up what’s happening in the neighborhood. Clockwise from the left, the red areas illustrate the neighborhood’s institutional land owners: Boston College, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Harvard University, and at the bottom right Boston University. More than passive neighbors, most of these — especially Harvard through its Allston Initiative — have been expanding. The dots show existing and planned development projects. (For the initiated like myself, ABCPI’s old presentations provide an introduction.)

All this development activity, much of it planned by none other than Harvard has resulted in a climate of antagonism and distrust in the community. Discussing these issues with Harry, I was reminded of the procedural elements to the East Campus Redevelopment Initiative in College Park, Maryland.

When I first arrived on campus in College Park to begin my master’s program in the fall of 2006, the University of Maryland was initiating the process of selecting a private developer to redevelop over 100 acres of their land into a mixed-use project with restaurants, apartments, a hotel, stores, and offices. The site is located just up the road from downtown College Park, strategically between the university’s main campus, and the Metro Station and University research park. (Yellow and green on the map to the right)

The administration had planned a three public forums about the project, complete with large maps and a panel to discuss the projects. Despite the preparation, turnout was abysmal and University staff easily outnumbered attendees. We requested and were granted a meeting with the then-Vice President for Administrative Affairs John Porcari and two other administrators to discuss public outreach about the project. Although they listened politely, the administrators firmly insisted the process of selecting a private developer must remain closed. Once one was selected, however, they pledged a full and public process.

That fall Porcari left the University to become the state Secretary of Transportation, but the next spring we had a meeting with one of the administrators from the original group and an expanded group including student leaders and administrators. At this meeting, we presented our recommendations for what a positive public engagement plan would look like. We argued it should be consensus-based, proactive, candid, and transparent, and provided specific recommendations and a brief summary of how other universities had handled input for facilities planning. The document is no masterwork, but because of it we brought far more substantive input than any other participant.

Shortly after that meeting, former Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan was appointed to the position that would oversee the project planning, Vice President for Administrative Affairs. The veteran of a complex public-private project revitalizing Silver Spring, Maryland, Duncan was no stranger to the politics of urban development. I emailed him to congratulate him on his appointment, and asked for a position on any steering committee created.

During the summer, I received this letter from the University president:

July 20, 2007
Mr. Robert Goodspeed
AGNR-Plant Science & Landscape Architecture
2139 Plant Sciences Building
College Park, MD 20742-4452

Dear Rob:

With the recent Board of Regents approval of the team of Foulger-Pratt/Argo Investment as the developer with whom the University can negotiate a development plan for the East Campus site, I am seeking the input of a Community Review Steering Committee. The Committee will work toward achieving a consensus plan for the development of the University’s east campus site and toward promoting the revitalization of the Route 1 corridor. Planning for this project must provide for current institutional needs, future campus goals and the enhancement of the surrounding community.

The Committee will work in open session, considering issues that have been brought to it by the campus community, area neighborhoods and local businesses. Comment from the public will be solicited at public events and through members of the committee. We look forward to lively dialogue and a collegial exploration of ideas between our Committee members and the development team. Committee members will be charged to work with the Foulger-Pratt/Argo team on the development of the plan. They will be in a position to gain a high level of understanding of the project in order to provide input and to build broad support for it.

You have been recommended for membership on this Committee, and I ask for your participation. I hope that you will consider this opportunity to represent the community in this transformational planning process. I value greatly the input of our diverse community for the east campus development. I am excited by the long-term vision of a vibrant, mixed-use center that will serve the University and the College Park communities. I have attached the schedule of the meetings planned as you consider this invitation. Being optimistic, I would like to thank you in advance for agreeing to serve. Please contact [EXCERPTED] to confirm your availability and interest in helping to make the east campus a truly great contribution to our community.

Yours sincerely,

C. D. Mote, Jr.
President

The following schedule was enclosed.

East Campus Community Review Steering Committee
Tentative Meeting Schedule

Chair of Committee: Mr. Douglas M. Duncan
Vice President for Administrative Affairs
University of Maryland

The following is a tentative schedule for meetings and topics for discussion. All the meetings will be held from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in the Visitor Center Auditorium located in Turner Hall.

* August 13–Introduction; background on RFP process, developer presentation; committee goals/charge

* August 27–Market dynamics and proposed uses: retail, residential, office, and hotel

* September 12–Economic impact of development and public finance options

* September 24–Transportation planning: Route 1/Paint Branch connections/traffic calming, public transit, and pedestrian/bicycle connections

* October 8–Land use options and concepts: placemaking, street-facing retail, views, plazas, connections, and residential over retail.

* October 22—Concluding meeting

Although the precise timing and topics varied somewhat from this schedule (the meetings didn’t wrap up until January 2008, for example) it generally suggests the approach taken. After every meeting and at other times during the process I wrote detailed blog posts on Rethink College Park, sharing all the technical documentation and information discussed at the meetings. In general, these meetings were very well attended and despite tense moments were generally respectful. During the entire time period, me and the other Rethink College Park contributors wrote a staggering 366 posts about East Campus. The university posted a variety of information to their website about the project.

Chaired personally by Doug Duncan, the meetings were very good at sharing information and providing a venue for community engagement. However, they weren’t perfect. Here’s a few of my concerns:

• The composition of the committee was half university, half community, with a few others (including 3 students) thrown in. If the university is a developer, why should they have such a large representation?
• The format of the meeting was designed for one-way communication, not discussion. The group sat in a “U” facing a presenter. The only structured discussion was during Q&A.
• No designs in more detail than massing and site plans were presented. This was the biggest failure of the process: nobody saw the public plans until after the group stopped meeting.

Last summer, I made one last trip to College Park to see the unveiling of the final plans, which were submitted to the county for approval last summer also. In addition to what’s described here, the project involved dozens of other components I haven’t mentioned, ranging from talking with members of the closed-door campus architectural committee to visiting with administrators to discuss how to make the project website more user-friendly. Needless to say, the true impact of any of this on the project is impossible to say and the final chapter of this project is far from over. Nevertheless, I hope the information here about the public process may prove a useful record.

> U. of Maryland East Campus Redevelopment Initiative (Official site)
> Rethink College Park: East Campus Posts
Rethink College Park: “Engaging the Community in the East Campus Redevelopment”
> See also, “NIMBYism, Urban Development, and the Public Involvement Solution,”