Let Us Get On The Path To Recovery

There has been much said and written about the country's stimulus package and its recovery, but just where is the point to which we wish to recover. This is a question that has been on my mind a great deal lately. Will we return to the point that the financial institutions began to go under, or the point at which we realized that massive foreclosures were imminent, or maybe we will get to the point that we discover that life, as we currently are living it, is basically unsustainable.

That last point, for some of us, was a few years back and for a far larger number of us is still in the future. I would like to go back to the days before we began our headlong rush at the rapidly approaching drop-off of total un-sustainability. The hard part about that is understanding just when that was.

Wendell Berry's latest article in The Progressive magazine (Subscription req.) speaks of our inverted economic order where the non-necessary desires of the masses outweigh the basic necessities of life itself. A system where resources that took lifetimes to develop are used/abused and discarded in an instant, on a whim, simply because we believe that they are so abundant. To paraphrase a recent advertising slogan, "Use all you want, We'll make more". Our problem now is that our use of a resource usually leads to the abuse of or world either by acquiring, processing or disposing of the "used" resource.

For many years , man has used the resources of this earth and nature has always found a way to recycle the elements of our resources into something that is also usable. It has taken man just a few short centuries to turn our economies through complete somersaults, and all because of wanting unnecessary desires, just because we can. Along the way we have also discovered that we have limited natures ability to renew itself and that we now have to "assist" nature with very unnatural means, thereby exacerbating the downward spiral all the more.

We(Mrs Sweeper, my son and I) watched the movie Food Inc. the other evening and I came away both sad and angry at the state of American, and even worldwide, food production. There seems to be little that an ordinary citizen can do to correct the situation and it all stems from our economic decisions, which right now reflect jobs, jobs, jobs. The jobs most at stake are not the farmers or the processing plant workers, nor the fast food, drive in workers or the grocery stock guys, you can replace them any day. The jobs at the top are most at stake, those that run in the six figures(lots of 000's). These are the folks who figure out how to get the resources to the processor, to market and then discarded sooner and then move on to the next big idea.

These people are those which make up the "creative class", the thinkers and manipulators of ideas, those who will lead the world.

Above is a chart showing the five sub-groups of the "creative class". You will notice that nearly half of the class is comprised of lawyers, accountants and top level managers, those who want to get things done and those who can devise a way to do it. Aided by the 18% who can manipulate the education and training of our youth and where and how we store our information, we are now nearly three quarters to the goal of convincing the masses that this is how the economy is supposed to work. So why is the precipice of collapse always directly in front of us.

If these creative people, the lawyers and accountants, our CEO's and financiers, are the ones who got us into this mess then why are we to rely on them to get us out? What we NEED is to return to the systems that we had before the creative financing schemes and scientific advances of crop production, before stock derivatives and gene splicing of seeds. Maybe everyone does not need to own a home, since our family sizes are dropping and our house sizes are rising. An average family member does not need to have nearly 1000 sq. ft. to himself.

If we are to have a real recovery, then we will have to go back to when we taught our children that just to want something does not equate to the need for something. We will have to believe our warnings on drinking and playing the lottery, to live responsibly and sustainably.

Maybe a great fall is what will do it for us.

Begun, It Has, Building To Fail

The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming!

As I told you last week the full employment of Europeans by the stimulus package is creeping ever closer. Today I received confirmation of that fact, the State of California( as broke as they are) contracted with the Deutsche Bahn – German Railways for technology to build and run their High Speed Rail initiative.

We already have their railcar technology in our subways and regional rail systems and now this. When will the light bulb go off and we realize that we are able to do this ourselves?

Lexington's "Spatial Fix"

I finally got to read the article by Richard Florida that I printed out from the March issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine. His idea is about how the crash will reshape America. I feel that this "crash" is but a minor fender bender in what is really heading our way.

The first parts dealt with the financial markets and a brief history of earlier recessions/depressions and the shifting landscapes that their major centers endured. It is what he says about the rest of the country which concerns me. His comments on the resiliency of New York City are based on the diversity AND density of its population and he cites the argument of Jane Jacobs that jostling of many different professions and different types of people, all in a dense environment, is an essential spur to innovation—to the creation of things that are truly new. So, could that mean that for our innovative, creative young people to be sucessful, we need to increase the density of our downtown population? Just how well will that mesh with our preservation of the historic properties and districts?

He goes on to explain what will happen to the cities that used to be the manufacturing centers, how with the decline of manufacturing in the U.S. or even the relocation to the southern states, our aging "Rust Belt" cities are trying, unsuccessfully, to reinvent themselves. Then there are the "Sun Belt" cities that had little going for them save their cheap land, easy credit and service sector jobs which got caught in the housing bubble and sub-prime loan fiasco. I am not sure Lexington has dodged this bullet completely yet.

His solution for cities, is for a new "spatial fix" for after the crash. His definition of spatial fix is:

The physical character of the economy—the way land is used, the location of homes and businesses, the physical infrastructure that ties everything together—shapes consumption, production, and innovation.

And he states the suburbanization was the fix for the industrial age. Industrialization brought on mass production, which brought on prosperity and mass consumption. Prosperity and Federal policies brought on more home ownership, which when subsidized by the highway construction and Interstates, led to a suburban lifestyle. No more depression era penny pinching, this was the era of expanding credit and an ever increasing need for home ownership. With that need came the newer, riskier financing strategies and an ever expanding supply of housing choices, it was just that these choices were standardized and farther away from the city centers.

Housing and transportation costs now make up a substantial portion of all household budgets. Local governments are obligated to provide services to the farther flung residences without an adequate return in tax revenue (i.e. these places don't pay for themselves) and as people in the areas of highest foreclosure rates have found out, home ownership is not all it is cracked up to be.

Home ownership, lately has also made our populace just a little less mobile than it was. There was a day when, if the job opportunity presented itself, Dad could pack up the family and go. Now they will have to sell the house, worry about Mom finding a job, will the kids fit in to the new schools and will the new house cost more than it does here. Now that opportunity must a substantial one.

There are several things that Lexington can do and Florida has laid them out in his concluding paragraphs.

In part, we need to ensure that key cities and regions continue to circulate people, goods, and ideas quickly and efficiently.

and

Today, we need to begin making smarter use of both our urban spaces and the suburban rings that surround them—packing in more people, more affordably, while at the same time improving their quality of life. That means liberal zoning and building codes within cities to allow more residential development, more mixed-use development in suburbs and cities alike, the in-filling of suburban cores near rail links, new investment in rail, and congestion pricing for travel on our roads. Not everyone wants to live in city centers, and the suburbs are not about to disappear. But we can do a much better job of connecting suburbs to cities and to each other, and allowing regions to grow bigger and denser without losing their velocity.

A denser, more diverse, more mobile Lexington will invite more ideas and allow for more innovation through more interaction with a greater cross-section of our population in closer quarters than we now see. We will also need a greater effort to re-localize our manufacturing and food production because this is just the beginning.

So, Why Won't People Live Downtown?

I keep hearing the mantras "When there is a grocery store downtown, I will move back downtown" and "There is no grocery down there" but I don't understand the logic.

Lexington's original city limit was a circle of 1 mile in radius and centered on the Courthouse(now the Lexington History Museum). Traces of that limit are still visible today, if you know what you are looking for. One mile, straight up Upper St, will take you to Loudon Ave. And right out E. Main St. will get you to just about Walton Ave. Go along E. High St. and just past the tennis courts there is a small, white stone planted in the right of way that is just like the one on W. Main St. opposite the entry to the Catholic Cemetery. Other spots are a little harder to identify, like the point on Rose St near Washington, in front of the quadrangle or on S. Broadway at Pyke Rd. where the raised median starts( put in when the State widened the road in the '50s for the County). West High St, Newtown/Georgetown, Third St./Winchester Rd. and others have had all vestiges of the city limits removed some years ago.

This area held almost all of the population of Lexington until the early 20th century and had numerous groceries right up to the last quarter of that century. These groceries were not huge and the served the needs of the surrounding neighborhoods. The small corner stores are still there, but they are not what people call a grocery store these days. People could walk to the store (and did) for their fresh produce and goods. That appears to be what they want in a downtown of today and won't move until they get it.

But they don't have it where they live today. They seem to be perfectly happy to live better than 2 miles from a grocery and endure the weekly shopping trip for an entire weeks worth of supplies. At that point they have to drive. No one can carry that much on a bike or walking for that distance.

Today, there is not a full service grocery inside the old city limit line.

Now, take any house in the Masterson Station area, draw your 1 mile radius and show me the full service grocery there. Do likewise in the Polo Club/Blackford Pkwy subdivision or the Chilesburg area. Shoot, come all the way into the Andover area and find me a grocery of just about any kind. The lack of a grocery is not the real reason.

Nor do I think that it housing affordability, renter/owner mix or crime rates. I think that these people just don't want to have relationships with as many people as would be necessary in a real urban environment. Most people want to go home after a days work, pull their SUV into the garage and hide in their backyards or air conditioned television rooms. I am not sure that they could interact with as many people in halls or on the streets of a bustling downtown. They do that vicariously through their TV shows.

So, just what are your thoughts on why people don't want to live downtown.

Failing To Build Is Building To Fail

We in America are poised, again, to fail.

The opportunity is rearing its head and I wonder if we can jump at the chance to show our collective stupidity, again. The current rage in Washington, if not in parts of the rest of the country, is the stimulus money designated for High Speed Rail(HSR). $ 8 Billion for HSR and that is promised to be the starting level. Even more stimulus money is planned for rebuilding our other rail facilities. Yet nobody is talking about revamping our automobile industry to include the HSR vehicles. And somebody else is watching.

German engineering giant Siemens and their national railway operator Deutsche Bahn, already well ahead of America's companies, are hungrily watching to see how much they can profit from our stimulus package. Will our tax money pay for returning their workers to full employment? Both GM and Chrysler are being bailed out by the US taxpayers yet the only transportation modes being considered for these companies is automobiles and trucks. Where is the evidence of American ingenuity and expertise in the rail industry, why firmly planted in the dismantling of the passenger rail system back in the '60s.

This past month the "Cash for Clunkers" program boosted auto sales for Ford, Toyota and Honda yet did little for GM and Chrysler (see link here). And just who are the majority owners of these fine losers? The American people, of course. We need to pay ourselves first and invest in an American controlled transportation manufacturer. That will take a change in just what we manufacture.

We are going to need a quantity of light-rail vehicles, as well as a larger quantity of heavier rail vehicles and a good number of High Speed Rail trainsets. I see no reason that these vehicles cannot be produced right here in the good old USA. By the folks that built the trains that connected the East coast with the West. We can employ our own engineers to design our rail facilities(NASA probably has a few dozen capable of the job). We have people who can design and build the tracks, as well as maintain them, right in our back yard. So, how long are we going to stand in our own way of getting the job done?

There is currently only ONE producer of streetcars in America, The Oregon Iron Works, and they aren't even in the transportation business. They do dams and bridges and things. Shouldn't we have our transportation people designing these things?

The "Cash for Clunkers" program was to designed to make the individual auto more efficient, a streetcar system can make our entire city more efficient and a High Speed Rail system can make the whole country more efficient.

One last question. Does anyone know the total value of the aircraft owned by the aviation industry, both in service and those mothballed out in the desert? I would love to know the answer.

Two Chances to Enjoy Downtown

There are a number of events coming up that I wish to bring to your attention. They are (1) World PARK(ing) Day and (2) Lexington's 2nd Second Sunday.

On Saturday the 18th of September the world will celebrate PARK(ing) Day. PARK(ing) Day is the name of an annual, one-day global event during which individuals and groups transform parking spaces, parking lots (and other areas of the landscape built to store stationary motor vehicles), into places for people to congregate, socialize and play, to the exclusion of motor vehicles. The original concept is by by Rebar, a San Francisco art and design collective. This is a chance for all of you to grab you favorite parking space and make it into your little piece of recreation space.

There are a few rules to abide by, mostly just you can't use your PARK(ing) space for commercial purposes without permission, and many folks have usually made a quiet seating area with temporary landscaping(sod, potted bushes, small trees, etc...).

I have not seen that anyone in Lexington has done a PARK(ing) space before, so if our young creative class of activists(i.e. those protesting CentrePointe so much) is so creative, then maybe they can come up with a group of real interesting spaces. I hope so.

The other event comes in October, and as the name suggests is on the second Sunday of the month, this year it falls on the 11th. I posted about this last year and gave some very definite proposals about my likes and dislikes of this event. The more I think about it, the more I believe that it should be handled less like a community festival and more like a "grass roots" happening.

What began last year is a local emulation of the program that started in Bogota, Colombia. Their program has grown so large that they close approximately 70 miles of roadway EVERY Sunday, and they do it without any government run activities. They just let the people take back the streets. Lexington's successful event last year caught the eye of State officials and many other communities around the Commonwealth, so much so that they have now coordinated this years event to occur in 99 of Kentucky's 120 counties. I has now become a measurable boasting point to compare with other states. Letting people have free run of their streets and get healthy at the same time should not be a feather in some politicians cap.

The ongoing events in Colombia prove that it is not a numbers game for political gain and, although it is allowed, the government is not required to arrange activities for the participants. I am not calling for a free-for-all to take place and some sort of police presence is needed but yoga classes on the court house lawn(not in the street at all) or even focusing on activity downtown is the unnecessary part.

This year's closure (I still prefer to call it opening) of Main, Mill, Short and DeWeese is again concentrated in the downtown area. A location to which a majority of participants will have to drive for a four hour period. True there should be plenty of parking, but if the idea is to get people OUT of their cars then this project FAILS. The carbon footprint of the event negates any alleged benefits of the exercise undertaken, as it would include all of the organizers and volunteers as well as interested participants, of whom 80% or better will drive and park for the afternoon.

That brings up another point, four hours of a Sunday afternoon. Why not take all afternoon, or the full 24 hour period from 6:p.m. Saturday night to 6:p.m. Sunday? Involve the whole community for the entire time. Can you imagine an outdoor church service on the courthouse lawn in sight of the homeless of Phoenix Park? Or the morning strollers meandering by the accumulated trash of the previous nights revelers? Each segment of the city's population using the street for their own purposes, just without car and trucks.

Once again, I like the idea of Second Sunday. I like the idea of letting the people take back the streets. I don't like the sanitized version being foisted upon the people to let them feel good while being bad.

365 Days Later

I have been at this for a year now.

Tomorrow will begin my second year of writing this blog and I did not expect it to take the turns that it has. I wanted to write about some of the things that most people believe are trivial and insignificant about the streets and neighborhoods of Lexington. I wanted to stay away from all the controversial items in the news. I wanted to see if I could improve my typing and writing skills.

I don't think that I succeeded at any of them, although Mrs. Sweeper says that my writing style does show some improvement.

What I have done is write about some of the things that I do know about. Things that I have an opinion on and even some things that I question. Along the way I have accumulated a somewhat regular following. There are a few of you that stop in about once a week and some who come by EVERY day. Most of the regulars are from the Central Kentucky area but some are from a little farther away. I even have a regular who stops in every morning from Arizona.

There are some other web sites that have linked to me from their sites and a few who have re-posted some of my stuff or sent a number of their readers my way, for that I am grateful. There are also the odd visitors who are looking for real street sweeping information, to them I am sorry to disappoint but I hope that they took something away with them.

I have tried to allow every comment made to my posts, whether you agree with me or not, and will not censor anybody unless the get very nasty or vulgar. I will continue to blog about things that interest me and give my point of view. Where possible I will give the historical background on the topic and my experiences from growing up right here in Lexington. I hope I don't drive anybody away with my biases, but you keep coming back so I must be doing something that you like. If you have anything that you wish me to look into just drop me a line and give me a direction.

If you all will keep coming back then I will keep putting myself out there and we will just what the next year will bring.

Pedicabs Are Coming To Downtown

I spent this evening with an interesting group of young people. I was allowed to attend the orientation meeting of potential pedicab drivers for Sprocket Jockeys. I want to thank Lauren and James for allowing me to see their enthusiasm for what I think is a wonderful new service for downtown Lexington. It makes me wish that I was 30 years younger so that I could drive one of those things.

First off Lauren Pfannerstill, a promotions person for a local liquor outlet, and James Gonyer, who if I heard correctly, works in a local bike shop have come together to bring Lexington its first pedicab service. Both are avid cyclists and but even so they could not drive all the time, so they let it be known, they need for drivers. My oldest son expressed interest in doing so and I was just interested in seeing what it took.

They seem to be modeling this as a cross between a taxi and the horse drawn carriage rides through downtown. Each of the drivers will be an independent contractor, leasing out the pedicabs to cover shifts and are able to pick their clientele/service area. Some may serve the downtown area alone or they may wish to go between the various concentrations of activity(downtown/Distillery District, downtown/campus, campus/Chevy Chase, ...). They have even lined up some specialized promotions at set locations and will be a visible feature at UK football games.

The drivers will be fully licensed and well versed on the Lexington bicycle ordinances. Charges for the service are not set and each driver may charge as they see fit. There will be NO dispatching center, so each driver will have to coordinate with the others to get things to go smoothly. So far, Lauren and James have found that most people do tip well for this novelty.

Their projected initial hours will be Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, starting at 6 and continuing until 4:00 am. This should take care of the early "dinner/date" crowd and the later "bar-hopping" crowd. The pedicabs do come with lights (front and back), turn signals and electric assist for that extra "umph" to get up those longer hills. My one caution on this is for the safety of the drivers in carrying substantial amounts of cash at that time in the morning. These independent contractors should not put themselves unduly at risk.

From the number of potential drivers at tonight's gathering and the interest displayed, these folks will have to add more pedicabs to the two currently in the stable. Most of them appeared to be post college age although some may be in their last years at school.

I am optimistic that this will work and can't wait to see the downtown public's reaction. Lauren, James, Here is wishing you well.

Thoughts On Some Current Controversies

Several things have come to mind today that relate to some current events.

There has been a great controversy about the overhead wires either being shown(or not) in the pretty renderings of the Newtown Pike Extension. Several people have their shorts in a wad about the subject and compare a simple set of poles and wires along the new roadway to the gigantic transmission lines being placed on Euclid and Woodland. I personally have a greater disdain for the wide right of way and lack of urban businesses facing this new "urban" thoroughfare. The setbacks for any buildings along here are NOT what an urban roadway should be.

The mistakes being made on this road are the same that were made with the widening of Vine St forty years ago. Wide travel lanes, buildings set away from the street, facilities for pedestrians, but no reason for them to be there and the traffic lights timed to quickly get the autos past the things that they are not interested in. In other words, a raceway from the Interstate to UK (and I do believe that UK will begin expanding the campus to the west in the near future).

One mistake that they are making anew is the omission of the possibility of a fixed guideway transit mode, and I do mean a streetcar line. From UK to the BCTC campus, then over to Transy and on through downtown to UK again. In any case, with or without a streetcar facility, I don't feel that this project ends in a "complete street" in any sense of the concept.

The placement of the utility line overhead is said to ruin the aesthetics of the road and will ruin the streetscape. A fellow blogger, who is a transit consultant, is currently in Vienna and reports that to the Europeans the overhead wires are just part of the charm. I shall simply state that due to all the other errors in the design, the wires overhead is the least offensive.

On another note, that of growing our food locally and very close to home, I came across this bit of information from Seattle.

The Seattle City Council has relaxed its rules about requiring a permit to place anything in the parking strip. The parking strip is what we call a utility strip, that area of grass between the sidewalk and the curb. They now no longer prohibit growing food in the parking strip and many Seattlelites are jumping at the chance.

Lexington's usual utility strips are a bit narrow for something like this, most are only 5 1/2 feet wide, with the wider ones in the more affluent neighborhoods or along the newer boulevards. It also appears the Seattle does not have a street tree requirement and they are the more sunny area of the front yard. One of the photos in the linked article shows a few rows of corn growing in the strip and right at an intersection. I wonder how they keep that sight triangle clear. Low vegetables in raised beds are one thing but the more vertical or climbing stuff must be a problem.

Not only is Seattle using the streets, but portions of the city parks and creating local farmers markets in neighborhoods, thereby not only growing it locally but selling and eating it locally. I have seen, on two occasions, the kitchen staff of Natasha's walk out to the herbs that they had growing in the street tree planter bed, and cut some of the fresh stuff for the dishes being cooked. You can't get any fresher than that.

What Is Happening On Two Way Streets

Today's question is about the impending change of the one-way streets in downtown to two-way streets. There has been much said about it in the press this spring, at least to a point, then nothing. They say it has to do with the "complete streets" concept yet beyond the streetscape project currently in progress very little has been publicized.

I am aware of several meetings of a "working committee" about the first pair of one-ways to be considered, Second St and Short St. There have been visual inventories made with aerial photos and a video taken along the two streets and lots of notes. I also hope that there have been discussions with more than a few of the affected businesses and property owners.

I think that we all have heard the fall out from the South Limestone corridor owners and their claims(valid or not) of a lack of timely notice, understanding of the total concept or awareness of the late changes in the scope of work. If there is any way that these problems could be avoided in this venture, can we make sure that we do it RIGHT this time?

I read from the comments on a post on UrbanCincy, that some Cincinnati council members are also considering the elimination of some of their one-ways, and Charlotte, NC. has already started.

The controversy in Charlotte also appears to be very similar to Lexington, in that they have a number of one-ways like Vine St. No storefronts or places for pedestrians to pause for, and certainly no reason for the autos to slow down for. The wide roadway and timed lights make for a quick way to get through town but absolutely no reason to stop in town. Vine St is not a destination(Main St is little better) so it is no wonderthat during the '70s and '80s some people thought of proposing to bridge it when considering the redevelopment of some of the downtown blocks, a la the Galleria proposal.

It seems like such a simple thing to do, just make one of the lanes flow in the opposite direction, but after many decades of living with the traffic flow as it is it could be a traumatic situation for some. Some of these streets have been one-way for better than 70 years, but changing them to two-way may set the course for the next seventy.

For now, I just want to know what the progress is.