Toellner Tells it

Fareed Zakaria at the Folly Theater

Tonight we got the opportunity to listen to Fareed Zakaria present at the Folly Theater.

Zakaria is a writer for Newsweek, author, and talkshow host on CNN.

Zakaria was there on a sorta-book tour for his book the Post-American World. The book, and the presentation, were a nice historical rundown of how -- starting with several events in 1979 -- the entire world started to globalize. And that, the United States, has had an interesting roll in helping many other countries develop -- but as a country, has to learn how to live in a world where we are just one of many economic superpowers.

His opinion was that the best way to solve our current economic situation is to look at how we got here in the first place.

Zakaria took an educated (and surprisingly humorous) look at globalization, our struggling economy, US over-consumption, immigration, health care, investing, and even the current war on the drug cartel in Mexico and how it affects us.

It was a great presentation -- and Kansas City was really lucky to have him come to town. The presentation was brought in by Park University (and XEROX!). Kudos to Park University for bringing such a great, nationally recognized speaker. The event was sold out (even though I don't feel like it was terribly well promoted).  Sadly, I don't think that any of the local media outlets covered his speech - we're not very good at covering the good events in this city.

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Footnote: If you are a corporate executive, that pays to be the sponsor of a speaking event, do the guest the common courtesy and be sure to learn how to pronouce the speaker's name. That was bad. Not to mention the guy's title was the Sr. VP of Commincations and Business Process Outsourcing.  Ouch.

Virginia declares war on Cul-de-sacs

Since Friday's post was about neighborhood walkability, I thought maybe today, I'd talk about just the opposite.

The Virginia Transportation Board is creating new rules regarding Cul-de sacs. Like many suburban neighborhoods, many of Washington DC's suburban neighborhoods in Vriginia rely heavily on cul-de-sacs in their design. People in neighborhoods say they love the, because the lack of through traffic makes them save kids to play, and also help deter crime.

However, the flip side of cul-de-sacs is that it puts a lot of pressure on through streets because they become heavily travelled because all of the cul-de-sac streets feed into them. Because every trip that anyone takes from these neighborhoods requires entering out on the main road (work commutes, picking up kids from school, short grocery store trips), these roads become quickly congested and often require widening.

Because of this, recently, the US Census Bureau reported that the longest average commute in the country was in suburban Washington -- largely due to the overcrowding on jammed streets all fed by cul-de-sacs.  This has also affected public safety as fire trucks and ambulances are getting caught in the congestion and have no back roads to turn to to get to their destinations earlier.

"When interstates got built and we all started driving cars, our development patern scattered. Rather than building grid streets, we built a main spine and everything came off of it," said Suffolk County City Council Member E. Dana Dickens. "Offices, houses, stores were separated. You put all your traffic on one main road and you choke everything off."

So the state is stressing that future developments that are more open, more walkable, and more pedestrian and bike-friendly. Where people can make a trip to their local grocery stores, schools and parks, without getting onto the main road.  They are making these roads narrower to slow down traffic and to reduce storm water runoff -- and to save on maintenance costs.  The idea is that long-term, they can reduce traffic, reduce pollution, and save money devoted to paving and plowing the roads.

"When you have 350 to 400 miles of new roads you have to maintain forever, it's a budgetary problem," said Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kain.

When it comes to development of newer neighborhoods, are we using the best in current thinking for land use and designing neighborhoods? Or are we still using 1960s ways of thinking about how we move people in our cities?

From the Washington Post. Page 1 and Page 2.

Kansas City Walkability

I stumbled across this this week. It's a website called "Walk Score" that approximates the walkability of cities and neighborhoods in the 40 largest cities in the US. A neighborhood's walkability is based on the distance to major amenities like grocery stores, restaurants, schools and parks.  The walkability score is determined based on how close one is to these amenities.

Kansas City, as a whole, finished 34th out of the 40 cities that are covered in overall walkability with a score of 44 out of 100 -- besting Memphis, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Nashville and Jacksonville.

However, many of Kansas City's older neighborhoods scored extremely well.  Here are the top 13 neighborhoods in Kansas City -- with their score (maximum is 100)

Old Westport: 99

Plaza: 95

Plaza/Westport: 93

Hanover Place: 91

Volker: 89

Valentine: 89

Southmoreland: 87

South Plaza: 86

West Plaza: 86

North Hyde Park: 84

Union Hill: 84

Broadway/Gillham: 83

I would imagine downtown (which is next on the list at 79) will improve once they get the new downtown grocery store on the list.  In total, 24 of Kansas City's 138 neighborhoods scored as VERY Walkable ar as a Walker's paradise.

While Kansas City's overall score is quite low -- largely because of many large areas in the Northland, down south and in the far East -- it is nice to know that Kansas City does have some very walkable neighborhoods -- which are being sought more and more by young professionals and young families. 

It also has more than its fair share of suburban style neighborhoods for people who prefer those.

The US's most walkable city?  San Francisco.

Hat tip: PSFK.

This is what happens when you consolidate project-based section 8 housing

I wrote about this almost exactly 2 months ago, but it is increasingly evident that project-based section 8 housing is not a preferred way of handling low-income housing. I also specifically mentioned the specific problem on the 800 block of Armour that is the Bainbridge. On top of the Bainbridge, there is a second, smaller, Section 8 project based building across the street. 

At about 12:30 this morning, a man was found in the building dead from a gunshot wound.  A witness said he heard several gunshots and saw a man flea the building.

We need to look at low-income housing not as just a way to provide housing -- but as a way to provide people who need assistence with opportunities to get back on their feet and have a viable lifestyle. I've met a lot of nice people that live in the Homesteader - who are prisoners in their own homes. That shouldn't be the point of Section 8 housing.

This is NOT leading to success. It's leading to violence.

Phoenix Light Rail

Sorry for the void in posting, but I took a couple of weeks off - one of which was spent visiting some old friends who now live in the Phoenix area. I had never been to Phoenix before, so it was a great combination of seeing old friends, and visiting somewhere new.  I was also interested to check out Phoenix's new light rail line.

According to at least one report, the light rail line is exceeding ridership projections. While it was originally built primarily for commuter traffic, it has also provided transport to sporting events, art gallery openings and Arizona State University.  On our day downtown, we saw many riders coming in for the local farmer's market (which is right on the rail line) and several new restaurants and bars that had opened up along the line.

The light rail line has also sparked a new website - -lightrailbeer.com -- that encourages people to find bars near the Phoenix rail and get home safely. Genious.

Many in Kansas City insist that light rail can't work here because we don't have the urban density, or that Kansas Citians are too reliant on the automobile to use mass transit.

It would be arguably very difficult to find a city more reliant on the automobile than Phoenix -- a city that has basically gone from a small town to a large since the 1950s, when cities were designed around the automobile and not public transit. Interestingly, Phoenix's population was only 106,000 in 1950 -- but soared to 440,000 in 1960 and on up to 1.5 million now. Because of all of that, Phoenix has a very small downtown, with little going on. Kansas City, even though it is a significantly larger city, has a LOT more going on downtown than Phoenix.  However, that is beginning to change as even the light rail line is starting to spur growth along the line. Kind of cool. Maybe you don't need density to build light rail -- but the light rail builds density.

Meanwhile, I think it is also important to note that light rail -- while costing much more to get up and going -- is significantly less costly for cities to operate after it is established -- making it less succeptable to budget shortages that are threatening to cripple our current bus-based system.

Our city has a lot of issues. Like most cities during the 70s, 80s and 90s, the city's affluent fled from our urban core (not just white flight, it was black flight as well -- anyone with the means to move out did so). Due to this, a large number of our city's jobs exist outside of the urban core. Unfortunately, without a solid (and sustainable) public transit system in place, these jobs will continue to be unreachable for the folks who live in the urban core. A good public transit system will help us to overcome this discrepency.