Parking my bicycle (or trying to)

I stopped by Bodos Bagels on Preston Street for lunch yesterday and had a hard time finding a place to lock my bike. Almost no commercial establishments in Charlottesville have bike racks, but usually I can find a fence or post to wrap my chain around. In this case, it was a struggle. Poking around the dumpster area, I found a pleasant employee who guided me to this old drive-through sign that I could use as a bike rack. I suppose it worked, but I just hoped a second bicyclist didn't show up.

In line for my (delicious) bagel sandwich, I mentioned to the employee that they ought to consider putting in a bike rack out front. There is a dirt patch protruding from the parking lot that would be perfect. He must have confused my I'm-being-polite smile for an I'm-joking-with-you smile, because his answer was, "that would be hilarious." Not exactly what I was going for.

At home, I probed through the city ordinances to see what it had to say about provisions for bicycle parking. Annotations are mine:

"Sec. 34-881. Bicycle storage facilities.

Adequate bicycle storage facilities may be required for sororities, fraternities, dormitories, boarding houses and similar uses, multi-family dwelling structures with five (5) or more units, and all nonresidential uses utilized by the public, where such facilities are deemed by the director of neighborhood development services or the planning commission to be in the public interest [not commercial, office, industrial]. No such facilities may be required in excess of the following standards [maximums no minimums]:

(1) Sororities, fraternities, dormitories, etc.: One (1) bicycle space per five hundred (500) square feet of bedroom area.
(2) Multifamily dwellings: One (1) bicycle space for every two (2) dwelling units.
(3) Nonresidential uses: One (1) bicycle space for every one thousand (1,000) square feet of public space."

The language is vague, left up to subjectivity, and not very comprehensive. The Planning Commission doesn't even see any by-right developments, except under special circumstances. Off-street automobile parking is given pages and pages of explicit attention with absolute requirements, but this is it for bicycle parking.

I contrasted this with the ordinances from my previous community of Missoula, Montana. Bicycle parking there "shall be provided" for a variety of development types with very specific proportions, definitions, and quantities laid out in the code itself. Come to think of it, I never really had a problem finding somewhere to put my bike in Missoula.

The Victoria Transport Policy Institute provides a sample bicycle parking ordinance, culled from Best Practices around North America. It offers specific minimum requirements for everything from hotels to churches (1 spot for every 50 members), along with several design guidelines to ensure the the parking will actually be useful.

One of the points:

"Bicycle racks and lockers must be well anchored to the ground to avoid vandalism and theft."

That reminds me. Right after lunch, I rode over to the Albemarle County building. They did happen to have a bike rack tucked away to the side, but it was just sitting untethered on a patch of grass. By myself, I could pick the whole thing up with a bike and carry it away if I wanted to. And I'm really not that strong. I decided to stick with my usual strategy of locking my bike to the fence.

Plum Creek does the right thing

This is pretty big news, so I just have to indulge myself with a post about Montana.

The ongoing saga between Plum Creek timber company, the United States Forest Service, and the citizens of Montana has apparently come to a (tentative?) conclusion.

Plum Creek owns vast swathes of land in Montana, originally used for logging but now sitting in possession of the holding company. For the last two years, the company has quietly been in negotiation with the U.S. Forest Service in hopes of gaining easements to allow road access for potential residential development in the otherwise undeveloped areas of the state. Local citizens imagined the potential impact of wilderness lodges scattered throughout the open lands of Montana and the inevitable strain on public services they would incur. The prospect of protecting all of these second/third homes from forest fires was daunting enough. With a clear public mandate, the Missoula County Board of Supervisors expressed their disapproval of the plan.

Until recently, the expectation was for Mark Rey, of the department of Agriculture, to push the deal through in the last days of the Bush administration. But Plum Creek unexpectedly pulled out. From a letter sent to the Missoula County Board of Supervisors (and Mark Rey):

"Although we continue to believe that the easement amendment would be beneficial to the general public, given the the lack of receptivity, we have decided not to go forward with the amendment."

At least for a while, some of the pressure to sparsely develop the wild hinterlands of Missoula has abated.

From Missoula to Charlottesville

I started this blog about a year ago as a semi-public way for me to hash out my personal thoughts about urban form and community. An intellectual journal of sorts, available for others to correct and hopefully fine-tune. But before long I realized that the most interesting posts, as well as the ones that generated the most discussion, were those based in my particular city of Missoula. I discovered what should have been obvious all along: issues like transportation and zoning are pretty boring unless they are about the particular roads and lands that real people use. That's where the action is.

I found myself involved in some fascinating local discussions at other Missoula blogs, especially 4 & 20 Blackbirds. And Carol at Missoulapolis also had some pretty reasonable things to say from a Conservative perspective, even if I found some of her regular commenters a little exasperating. New West online, the Missoulian newspaper, and occasionally the Independent did a good job pushing planning issues into the public spotlight, often with front page exposure. Missoula also hosted a myriad of non-profits and community organizations with their eyes on improving the city.

All of this is to say that moving away from Missoula has been somewhat of an identity crisis for this blog. My first impressions of Charlottesville are very positive, but it's hard to have much to add to local dialog as a sojourner. So, I'll probably sit on the sidelines for a while, and go back to posting on some general philosophy and principles of urbanism. Maybe I'll also delve into some policy issues with a national scope. We'll see what comes out.

I miss all of you in Missoula, and I've learned so much just from living there.

A last day at the markets

Today was a beautiful day to wander through the two farmers' markets and one artisans' market in downtown Missoula.


The farmers' market has to be one of the oldest urban establishments. As soon as there was enough surplus agriculture to allow some people to devote time to other pursuits, there had to be a way to trade for food in a location accessible to the whole community. For the last few decades we in the West have engaged in a concerted effort to destroy this ancient practice, in favor of the super-efficient and standardized supermarket, which plugs nicely into the industrial food sector of our global economy. Fortunately, since around 1970, a growing number of cities have made efforts to conserve the farmers' market and the more intimate food system it is based upon.

I just finished reading Bill McKibben's Deep Economy, his plea for a more satisfying and durable localized economy. From the book,

"Every new farmers' market is a small step in this direction. It requires new connections between people who came together to found it, the farmers who come in from the country to meet their suburban and urban customers, the customers who emerge from the supermarket trance to meet their neighbors. The market begins to build a different reality, one that uses less oil and is therefor less vulnerable to the end of cheap energy. But, more importantly, the new reality responds to all the parts of who we are, including the parts that crave connection. One-tenth the energy; ten times the conversations - that's an equation worth contemplating."

Reserve street claims another cyclist

The Missoulian reports that a cyclist was killed heading northbound on Reserve St. in the middle of the afternoon on a bright sunny day yesterday. Apparently, a large truck tried to merge onto the Broadway ramp along a portion of the street where the bike lane essentially no longer functions as a bike lane. This is the fourth fatality (that I can think of) in the last couple of years. That's four too many for a town this size. The others were eventually attributed to drunken driving or low visibility in the evening, but this one still seems to be a mystery.

Just yesterday evening, I watched as a white pickup truck made a hasty left-hand turn from Higgins onto 4th St. right in front of a man on a bicycle who was going straight through the green light. He had a kid in a trailer attached behind him. The cyclist, who had the right-of-way, abruptly slowed down to let the truck pass, and he seemed pretty astonished at how reckless the motorist had been. Whether this was simple inattentiveness or a really bad decision, it reveals a problem.

It may be difficult to assign blame in this most recent fatality, but the fact remains that cyclists will always be the most vulnerable road users. They should be given the benefit of the doubt in any of the hundreds of little decisions we make on the roads every day.

Small developments around Missoula

It's usually the megaprojects and large subdivisions that get all the attention, but the healthiest way for a city to grow is in small piecemeal increments. This allows old buildings to mix together with new ones, and it enables individual builders to put their own unique stamp on the projects. Many of us have been conditioned to fear and resist that proverbial "developer," but development, if its done well, can be a really good thing for the whole city.

Today, once the snowstorm subsided, I took some pictures of three new buildings around town that I think are pretty cool.

This historic building on Spruce Street, which was patterned after an A.J. Gibson design in 1920, is now being completely restored. It had been subdivided for the last several years into apartments. After these renovations, the new plan calls for two retail locations on the bottom floor and two residential units above. Going back to the original mixed-use intentions?

Cafe Dolce's new location on the residential section of Brooks street is a beautiful addition to Missoula. Once it opens in July, I'm sure it will quickly become the social hub of the slant-street neighborhood. The parking is unobtrusively tucked in the back, giving all of the prominent visual space to the outdoor patio and the classical Italian facade. This is a building that was clearly meant for human beings.

This building, dubbed "The Corner," gives shape to the prominent intersection between Brooks and Higgins on the edge of Missoula's downtown. It's location gives this building the potential to become a landmark overlooking the "hip strip" section of Higgins. The required parking is all underground, which is really cool. It is supposed to be a mix of retail and office space, and will purportedly also include an outdoor patio section. At 3-4 stories, this building is the perfect height for this section of town.

Developments like these show Missoula's potential to grow into quite a livable city.

On with the Missoula smart growth debate

After a month or so of hemming and hawing around the smart growth issue, Jeff Patterson of the Bonner-Milltown land use committee has laid his cards on the table with an editorial entitled "Smart growth" policies devastate communities. You see, cities like Portland and Boulder are not merely uncomfortable to live in, they are simply uninhabitable wastelands utterly devastated by smart growth. Alright, we can look past the hyperbole and get to the substance of his point. A solid critique of smart growth could only help Missoulians decide whether it would work for us or not.

All of his information comes from a 2006 paper written by Randal O'Toole for the American Dream Coalition, a group which, according to their website, promotes "single-family houses with yards" and "automobiles." I suppose that's what they mean by the American dream. Randal O'Toole, who calls himself the anti-planner, has staked his career on the perpetuation of automobile-centered land use patterns. The groups affiliated with this paper would all consider themselves libertarians, but they apparently have a very specific lifestyle in mind that they think Americans ought to be free to pursue.

Here's a factoid cited by Patterson,

"smart growth penalties raise the cost of a $150,000 home to $281,000"

Without any context provided, who knows what this means? We have to look at O'Toole's report. The $150,000 is referring to a particular four-bedroom home that was recently sold in Houston. Where in Houston? Who knows. Does it come with a two hour commute? The $281,000 figure is not in the report at all, but O'Toole does claim that a similar home in Portland would cost twice as much as the one in Houston. At $300,000, maybe that's what Patterson is getting at. But Houston and Portland are apples and oranges. A similar house in sprawling Orange County, CA would be off the charts, but there are so many factors other than smart growth policies to consider. These raw numbers are misleading, at best.

The effects of growth management on housing affordability have been extensively researched, but the results are very complex and not blog-size material. See this well-balanced Brookings Institute report on the topic for more. But it's worth adding that Bonner-Milltown already has land-use restrictions that mandate low densities. Smart growth policies would hardly be imposing regulation on a libertarian's paradise, but merely exchanging one vision of growth for another. And we have to ask ourselves whether paying marginally more for land may be worth the price of not turning Missoula into the Houston of Montana. Have you ever been to Houston?

A couple of other quibbles with the editorial.

"This same MPI study rates Portland, Ore., at the top of the list for unaffordable living due to smart growth penalties and similar planning."

No it doesn't. And Portland is nowhere near the most expensive city in the United States. According to 2005 government data, Portland had an average housing price of $225, 900, about the same as Minneapolis. Not bad for the West Coast, with cities like San Fransisco hitting $726,700. Geez, some perspective, please.

Also,

"This trend started in California, moved to Oregon and is now on its way to Montana."

There's nothing like the specter of the California menace to get us riled up. But it didn't start in California. The earliest cities to adopt growth management policies were Boulder, CO, and Lexington, KY, and smart growth has been employed by hundreds of locales evenly distributed across America. Smart growth was not thought up by Hollywood celebrities relaxing in their Beverly Hills' estates, I assure you. In fact, the easiest way for Missoula to look more like Los Angeles would be to do nothing about the population influx of Californians looking for their very own chunk of the "last best place."

Finally, the kicker:

"We must ask ourselves, with the price of fuel how will those who have been pushed out of town because of unaffordable housing survive the commute to work?"

Huh? The whole point of smart growth is to allow compact development so we won't have to use our cars as much. If someone really wants to live far out in the countryside and also enjoy the economic benefits of an urban area, yes, there probably will be some costs involved. But if smart growth is done well, there will be a nice house available in town when you want it, and there will be land available in countryside to ranch if you'd rather have that.

More on oil prices ...

Yikes. Crude oil shot up another $11 a barrel today.

On a local conservative blog the other day, I was labeled an "enviro-commie" for my suggestion that we need to learn how to "live within or means" by transitioning away from reliance on oil. I was pushing for a moderate form of the peak oil theory, as reported in the Wall Street Journal. I don't have a crystal ball. Nobody knows exactly when oil will reach the global peak of its production. I was merely leaning on the conservative side by assuming it could happen sooner rather than later, so that we could better prepare ourselves.

No luck.

I'm not surprised that people disagree over these technical geological questions, but I am surprised that the lines always somehow fall on those tired old liberal/conservative categories. To argue that the conservative position is to rush headlong toward a wall with increasing speed, merely because we don't exactly know where that wall is, seems completely absurd to me. And counter to everything I've ever understood conservatism to stand for. It left me wondering whether years of battling the environmentalists on all fronts have left some folks jumpy and armed with a cadre of pre-packed rejoinders should anyone bring up the prospect of living sustainably.

Anyway, it was nice to read Charles Krauthammer weigh in on oil prices this morning. He's even "pumped" that gas is $4 a gallon. At least some Conservatives are getting it:

"Want to wean us off oil? Be open and honest. The British are paying $8 a gallon for petrol. Goldman Sachs is predicting we will be paying $6 by next year. Why have the extra $2 (above the current $4) go abroad? Have it go to the U.S. Treasury as a gasoline tax and be recycled back into lower payroll taxes.

Announce a schedule of gas tax hikes of 50 cents every six months for the next two years. And put a tax floor under $4 gasoline, so that as high gas prices transform the U.S. auto fleet, change driving habits and thus hugely reduce U.S. demand - and bring down world crude oil prices - the American consumer and the American economy reap all of the benefit."

Oh, but won't the market just sort this stuff out?

Newspapers make citizens

The editorial board for the Missoulian has done a great job of encouraging public involvement in local planning. Just in the last week, they have run two prominent editorials alerting readers to planning events and ways in which we can help decide the future shape of the city. On Wednesday they announced the second Missoula downtown planning meeting, and this morning they gently chastised the Bonner Milltown Community Council for its obstructionist behavior and encouraged the residents of Bonner to be prepared for the changes on the horizon.

I jabber on about these issues pretty regularly, but it's great to see a respected and widely-read source from the community do the same. Of course, I'm far more biased and willing to share my biases about good urban design, yet everyone can agree that the process should involve as much of the public as possible.

A silver medal for cycling

Missoula has just been recognized (again) by the League of American Bicyclists as a silver level Bicycle-friendly Community. This is a genuine accomplishment, since out the 212 towns that have applied since the program began only 84 have been given a bronze or above. Missoula's commitment to alternative transportation has always been fairly obvious, but it's nice to see how we stack up to an objective nationwide benchmark. Next is gold.

I noticed that the Bicycle-friendly communities website didn't have any pictures for Missoula. We somehow managed to inherit the pictures from Milwaukee, including a random shot of some Santa Claus convention. That won't do. I decided to take a couple of pictures on my walk home from downtown this afternoon, in case the good folks at the League want some royalty-free photos.




Update: A Complete Streets bill has just been introduced in the House, which would require transportation plans to provide fair access to roads for all users. The senate received a similar piece of legislation back in March. This is a bipartisan endeavor that deserves to be passed. The Complete Streets website offers some practical ways that you can lend support to this bill.

Mark Rey, Plum Creek, and Trophy Homes

I didn't get a chance to make it the forum with Mark Rey, U.S department of Agriculture undersecretary, but New West has done some really thorough coverage of the event. Reading the article is frustrating enough, so maybe it's just as well that I missed it.

It appears as if local communities in Montana have little say in how land will be developed in the future, because Plum Creek Timber Co. holds over a million acres of land in the state, including an overwhelming proportion of Missoula county. The trouble is that "timber company" is really an anachronism; more apt would be Plum Creek "trophy home development agency." It's just the result of a simple shift in market priorities. Timber prospects don't look good, while there's plenty of demand for those secluded wilderness retreats.

These residential properties flung all over the landscape are very taxing on community services, especially fire protection, as well as natural resources such as water. This is not to mention the damage done to the environmental landscape and character of the region. How ironic is it that the "last best place" sloganeering of real estate salesmen ends up with anything but.

Based on the coverage I've heard, the only recourse is either legal or legislative. A legal case could be made that the Forest Roads and Trails Act of 1964 never intended to allow the timber industry to give easements for real estate purposes. The only other option, at least according to Rey, would be state-wide legislation similar to what Oregon passed in the 1980's.

Who pays for excessive driving?

It's Bike Walk Bus Week here in Missoula once again, and it looks like we may finally be getting enough of a break from the snow to encourage folks to get outside. As usual, I plan my week around a strategy to acquire as much free goodies from local businesses as possible. Stop by Great Harvest Bakery tomorrow morning, sans the car, and I'll give you a cinnamon roll on the house.

Sunday's Green issue of the NY Times Magazine included an eye-opening article by the writers of Freakonomics on why driving is such a socially damaging thing to do, and how the economic incentives of driving are so screwy. Here are the costs they find for three major externalities of driving (externalities are costs of a certain action that are not payed by the individuals performing the action, and thus tend to not figure into the rational market decision):

1. Congestion: $78 billion a year
2. Carbon Emissions: $20 billion a year
3. Accidents: $220 billion a year

And I would add the major externality of land use adjustments, which are quite a bit harder to quantify. Think not only of all the space needed for roads and parking, but for the setbacks we require to remove ourselves from automobiles. And there are other forms of pollution such as noise and air that do not figure in.

Anyway, their final tally,

"So, with roughly three trillion miles driven each year producing more than $300 billion in externality costs, drivers should probably be taxed at least an extra 10 cents per mile if we want them to pay the full societal cost of their driving."

Yikes! We thought gas prices we getting bad as it is. We really should be paying $2 more per gallon at the pump!

The writers highlight one economic reform that wouldn't be a political mess. Auto insurance policies currently charge, more or less, the same price regardless of how many miles you drive. That's entirely unfair. Why should someone who uses the car once a week for groceries have to pay the same amount as a person who commutes two hours a day, when she is much less of a risk to the insurance company? Not pricing for amount of vehicle miles traveled amounts to a subsidy for heavy drivers and ultimately encourages bad behavior.

It turns out that Progressive is unleashing a new policy this month that tracks your car usage and charges you accordingly. Those who feel that their time in the car should be an entirely private matter may balk at this intrusion, but those of us who would rather spend our money elsewhere could greatly benefit from being offered a fair price for driving less. I hope this works.

An optimistic future for Missoula

Yesterday's Earth Day fair in Caras park, sponsored by Missoula Urban Development Project, showcased some of the efforts that various local groups are making to encourage sustainable urban development. Missoula is certainly blessed with a groundswell of active citizens who are working hard on this, and several of the groups are just getting off the ground.

The Community Food and Agriculture Coalition has started getting involved in the complicated arena of land use planning. They have been sending a representative to the city planning commission to plead for the protection of valuable farmland in the valley against the perpetual tidal waves of sprawl. They've realized that it's tough to have a local food system if there isn't any land to grow it on.

Missoula's healthy contingent of cycling advocates were all there. Bob Giordano's Missoula Institute of Sustainable Transportation, the city's Missoula in Motion, and the new Bike Walk Alliance of Missoula had booths.

There were also some interesting development projects on display. I discovered plans for a Burns Street Square in a part of the Westside neighborhood with many lower-income households. The square will feature a large food coop and restaurant with ample public space for the neighborhood, surrounded by 17 affordable housing units. The whole site plan looks great, and its development would undoubtedly benefit this part of Missoula. The same architecture firm MMW also held an open house for their new cluster of energy efficient homes on Phillips street. We went over to take a look and were very impressed. These hybrids of condos and single-family houses represent an emerging real estate market here for people who want to live closer to town and consume less of our earth's resources.

This collection of non-profit, government, and for-profit enterprises shows that Missoulians do take seriously the prospect of living within our means environmentally.

Kudos to the Missoula Federal Credit Union

I must admit I was a little skeptical when my local bank changed the name of my checking account to "green draft" last year simply because they were going to stop sending my bank statements by mail. Sure, I appreciated the gesture, but I already opted out of paper statements when I opened the account. We've reached a time when companies and organizations are falling all over themselves to prove their environmental credentials (Just look at the marketing for all major oil companies). Was there any substance behind the "going green" marketing campaign?

It turns out that there is. This year's annual meeting was transformed into a "sustainability fair" and was used to showcase many local groups who are involved in conservation of some kind. I noticed that the meeting was moved from the Hilton conference center, which dwelleth outside of Missoula in the land of motorcars, to the Holiday Inn, which dwelleth inside Missoula in the land of people. Choosing a walkable location for such events does communicate a certain level of commitment.

But, most importantly, the new branch on Russell street is hoping to be a LEED platinum certified building, which is a big deal. I'm told it will be the first of its kind in the region. Being a trailblazer through all of the regulations involved can help other businesses in Missoula feel confident in their own LEED projects. The concrete used in the building will contain fly ash, a coal byproduct, as well as recycled glass. Missoulians will be given another rare chance to recycle glass next week in order to provide more material for the building: Caras Park, between 10 am and 3 pm on April 19 & 20.

These are the kinds of real steps in the right direction that the people of Missoula can be proud of.

A new Clark Fork river

Today is a pivotal day for the Clark Fork river. The largest EPA superfund site ever, right up the road from me, reached a point in the clean-up process when they were ready to breach the Milltown dam. At about 11:30 today the Clark Fork river ran freely for the first time in over 100 years. A couple of us went up to the bluffs overlooking the project to watch the new stream carve its way through the mud around the dam.

It may take a few years, but the cleaner and unobstructed nature of the Clark Fork could profoundly change how we view its use within the urban landscape. In the past the river was seen primarily as a vehicle for industry, either for transport or waste disposal. It's hard to imagine now, but a downtown butcher reportedly used to simply throw his leftover carcasses into the river and let them wash away. In recent years, probably through both a loss of industry in general and an enhanced environmental awareness, we are much more careful in how we use our rivers. After some restoration they could become again a wonderful place for humans to be, and they could provide that essential connection with nature even in the heart of the city.

Here's an example right near where I live: the Eastgate shopping center.

This strip mall occupies about 85,000 square feet right along the Clark Fork, about a two minute walk to the university campus and a 10 minute walk to downtown. It's essentially a gateway into downtown Missoula, coming in from I-90 through the Hellgate canyon. Instead of utilizing this amazing location, the developers opted to construct a standard strip mall facing Broadway and put an empty brick wall with dumpsters along the waterfront. What a waste? But it does give some insight into the older view of industrial rivers. They weren't exactly a community focal point.

Now imagine if the Eastgate center kept its existing retail, but also opened up another strip of shops and restaurants or cafes along the river. A small nicely landscaped walkway could be extended out from the pedestrian bridge to serve these locations, and perhaps a terrace could be built with stairs down to the river to provide public access. Instead of wasting all of this valuable land with a single-story building, two or three more stories of residential units could be put on top. They would be very desirable places to live and provide more vibrancy and safety to the riverfront life. If this were legal in a zoning sense and I had a few million to throw around, I would be all over this. The time is right for a renewed waterfront.

Parks and recreation areas are a wonderful way to use the waterfront areas, but that can't be the only goal we pursue. urban areas can also make use of the clean natural amenity with dense, mixed-use, and publicly accessible development.

A colloborative map of bike commuting routes

Inspired by BWAMs trip reports and the Boston Bike Map, I've set up a simple Google map for anyone to log their favorite bicycle commuting routes in Missoula. Since cyclists do not always use the standard feeder patterns that cars use, this could be a helpful way to share ideas about the easiest ways to get around town. Who knows? Maybe the local government would find this sort of information helpful for transportation planning.

Here's the map.

How to add your route: (10 minutes)

1. Follow the above link to the map and click on "Sign in" on the upper right of the Google page. You may have to sign out first, if you are logged on with another Google account.

2. Enter the following:

email: missoularoutes
password: routepass

Click on "sign in"

3. Once you have signed in, click on the "edit" button on the frame to the left of the map. A set of tools should pop up in the upper left-hand corner of the map.

4. Click on the line-making tool. Select the starting point of your route and click once to begin drawing. [update: the click has to be very "quick." Holding the mouse down at all drags the map]. Click once for each turn you want the line to make, and when the route is complete double-click to end the line.

5. A dialog box will appear. Now you can name the route and write some annotations if you wish. Choose a color for the route that will distinguish yours from others on the map.

6. Once you are finished, just press on the "save" button in the left frame. That's it. You're done.

Downtown Missoula on the rise

A couple of mundane financial figures speak volumes about the future of Missoula. Two pieces of land were put up for auction recently, one large 500-acre tract about 8 miles out of town and one smaller piece of real estate zoned for mixed-use near downtown. The downtown piece sold for $1.8 Million, over six times its previously assessed value. The nice big piece of potential sprawl did not even meet it's asking price of $10.4 million. It was not sold.

In the recent issue of the wonderful new magazine Missoula.com, Micheal Moore wrote a feature article about the resurgence downtown has seen in the last twenty years. (Curiously, I can't find the article online). Downtown has seen boarded-up storefronts gradually morph into boutique shops, an attractive waterfront, and new residential growth. This trend shows no sign of stopping. Change will be inevitable and quick.

The challenge for Missoulians will be to get out in front of these changes to ensure that they reflect our community's value system. Will all housing be high end? Will national franchises flush out the local businesses? Will pedestrians and cyclists be prioritized over accommodating more automobiles? What form will transit take? What sustainable practices will be utilized? Fortunately, attempts to address these issues are already underway, and not a moment too soon. The Portland-based planning firm Crandall & Arambula held their first public workshop last night to help us though this process.

I'll just list, in no particular order, a few intriguing suggestions that came up during this meeting, either from the presentation itself or through public comments:

- There should be a downtown "living room," a cultural epicenter of the city where public events can be held.
- Pedestrian and bicycle routes cannot be disconnected. Good circulation is essential, especially along the riverfront corridor.
- National chains can help anchor downtown retail, but if they comprise more than 10% local authenticity suffers.
- A convention center is not a silver bullet. It should be a top-tier center if it is built at all, and the planners do not believe we are there yet.
- Financing can come first through some exciting catalyst projects. $1 of public investment should yield $6 of private investment.
- There has to be a provision of affordable "workforce" housing along with market rate housing. Likewise, there needs to be plenty of retail that regular Montanans would use.
- Attention should be given to the gateways at the edges of downtown.
- Better street lighting, more residential units, and a downtown police department would enhance safety.
- There needs to be a streamlined process for cooperating with local government.
- Consider whether developments are senior-friendly, child-friendly, and attractive to young investors.
- Urban agriculture and rooftop gardens could become an asset in the near future.
- Historic buildings, each reflecting the style of its time period, need to be preserved.
- Install a street car system with fixed rails.

Lots of ideas! The next step will be to develop a hierarchy of priorities and work toward a plan that has a fighting chance of being implemented.

Just not heavy enough

The intersection of Broadway and Van Buren is not very friendly to cyclists, at least not in the early morning hours.

On my commute by bicycle yesterday, I waited through about three cycles of the traffic signal changes and never found my own green light. After a few minutes, the cold Hellgate winds got the best of me and I proceeded through the red light. There were no cars on the road at all, so the danger of being hit was almost nonexistent, yet I have little desire to be among those oft-mentioned reckless cyclists who are supposedly overrunning the streets of Missoula. This situation is a bit like those pedestrian walk signals that technically instruct the pedestrian to proceed to the nearest sidewalk when the red hand starts flashing, yet don't give enough time to get halfway across before the hand comes up. A stickler would never be able to cross.

Altough I could be wrong, I suspect that the light uses a dynamically-controlled sensory system. The green light is triggered by a wire on the road, which senses the large amount of conductive materials that would be in cars or trucks. The trouble is that bicycles don't count. Some cyclists have tried to trigger the systems by wearing special magnets in their shoes, although with mixed results. Local governments have also made efforts to alleviate the problem, from installing camera sensors in the lights to instructing cyclists to stand in specially marked spots. Although there may be a few more false positives, the sensitivity could just be increased or the wires could be laid in a different pattern more receptive to cyclists.

I don't want to make too much of this. My day was not ruined. Yet if Missoula wants to be a more bicycle-friendly community, these little inconsistencies should probably be addressed.

A novice's thoughts on affordable housing

The issue of providing affordable housing is attracting attention in Missoula, where the median income has been growing much more slowly than housing costs. Beyond the obvious concerns about leaving lower-income families behind, this trend could also stunt the region's economic growth. Employers will have to pay more to attract qualified workers to defray their costs of living, and some workers and business will just say "no thanks." Since I'm a newcomer to this longstanding and contentious local issue, I have to work through some of the basic premises first.

What qualifies as "affordable housing?" It seems to me that there are two sides to this definition. The "affordable" side is straightforward: the housing must account for no more than 1/3 of a household's total expenditures. But what counts as livable "housing" is more difficult to pin down. Does it have to be a single-family home on a separate lot? Do rentals count? What is an acceptable state of disrepair? How close to the center of town must it be? It has occurred to me that a major cause of the differences in opinion over this issue could be chalked up to where the definitional standard is set.

And this is why I hesitate to jump head first into being proactive about the problem. Normally, when things start getting too expensive, the sensible reaction is to build smaller and build closer together. It looks like this is happening already in Missoula. Condos, which average at $160,000 a piece, are supplementing the single-family houses, which go for $220,000. Condo prices still seem high, but they are certainly attainable for those making the median income. And the prices may go down as the nascent market becomes more established and housing prices nationwide adjust themselves downward after the bubble burst. Another striking feature of the condo market is that developers seem to be voluntarily mixing a wide range of prices together, something that is a rarity (or even restricted) in so many housing neighborhoods. The new Dearborn condos range from $133,000 to $306,000. Density and diversity are pretty important features of livable communities.

Maybe the real problem is not so much the lack of housing in Missoula but the suburban American dream itself, what we think of as a house when we close our eyes. Domestic ideals that were forged in a time when urban living meant cholera, lack of sanitation, overcrowding, and industrial pollution have branded themselves into the national consciousness when the reality of an urban lifestyle has changed dramatically. As for that hypothetical teacher who may opt to take a job in Des Moines if he can't afford a suburban house in Missoula, he needs to be balanced with consideration for the other hypothetical teacher who passes on the bigger house in Des Moines to live in a compact and vibrant Missoula that has preserved its exceptional natural beauty from sprawl.

New construction by the farmer's market?

I noticed this section of the parking lot on the corner of Alder and Pattee is fenced in. Could there be a new building coming in right next to the farmer's market site? A few weeks ago Missoulians overwhelmingly voted for a more dense and vibrant downtown. Even though the data was apparently lost, perhaps the market isn't waiting for all of the results to come in before responding to this desire.

Or maybe this is something entirely different. Anyone know what it is?