Venice Calling

The Traverse City Commission will consider the Bayfront Plan tonight and what to do about the Spirit Of Traverse City.

I will be telling them I support moving forward with redeveloping Clinch Park without the train even though I have a child who cried when told this might be the last year for the train. (She stopped crying when told there could be a splash park instead and she said that sounded more fun and wouldn't be smelly).

Nostalgia can wound a city.

Venice, Italy was once the center of an ocean-going empire and a key city-state during the Renaissance. But today it has become obsessed with nostalgia and the residents who remain do not let it change. In response the city is literally fading away. It is drowning under a rising ocean and losing population because no one there actually does anything. Or as The Guardian said in 2006: Population decline set to turn Venice into Italy's Disneyland

For comparison, in 1929 New York City tore down the historic Waldorf Astoria hotel to build the Empire State building. A new Waldorf Astoria was built and the Empire State Building became the city's iconic structure.

Let's be less like Venice and more like New York. I want Traverse City to be more than an amusement park in city form that people come to visit. I want it to be a city full of people who do things.

The new Bayfront Park will likely bring more stature to TC than the Spirit of Traverse City has. It is a design that encourages people to do things. This doesn't mean the train cannot be kept and moved elsewhere, but a train at Clinch Park is incompatible with the vision that was developed.

On a final note, please don't take this to mean that in every case we should move out with the old in with the new. Like everything else, a city needs to find a balance between what it keeps and what it replaces with something better. Like how I choose to live in a 19th Century house full of 21st Century technology.

From Omaha to Old Town

After college a friend of mine moved to Omaha for a job in train logistics. That made sense to me. Rail yards and cows are what came to mind when I thought of Omaha. But that was as shortsighted as only thinking cherries when talking about Traverse City.

NPR and Wired have both recently covered the rise of Omaha.

NPR details how an arts destination can anchor professionals to the downtown: The Indie-Rock Club Behind Omaha's $100 Million Creative Boom

This sounds a lot like the plans for Old Town between Blue Tractor and the new Good Works Collective (See Northern Express: Room for a thousand and TheTicker:
New Performance Venue Coming to Old Town TC)

Wired details the phases of Omaha becoming a cultural mecca - focusing on food then arts then youth then parents: Case Study: Omaha, Nebraska (h/t glhjr)

If Omaha can do it we can too.

Paying For Pensions

Mayor Bzdock highlighted Commissioner Gillman's concern over upcoming pension obligations and kudos to Mr. Gillman for making everyone aware of this looming issue.

Commissioner Gillman had a forum piece in the Record-Eagle: Pension time bomb is about to explode

The CEO of the Municipal Employees' Retirement System of Michigan had a rebuttal piece: The answer to pension problem

I really like Mayor Bzdock's 'Our Options' section of his post. It is easier to edit than create and by him listing some options it gives everyone else a point to start discussions.

Here are my thoughts...

We can't make it rain money


(So how is the City going to embark on a $10 million development project on West Boardman Lake?)

What do we do?

First have to ensure this is a one time thing and the City appears to be working on that goal already.

Next we need a list of cant's and wont's.

Can't increase the tax rate; can't break contracts with employee's unions.

Then what are known unknowns?

-Will the Unions be open to renegotiations?
-Are there any employees who want a buy-out?
-What will be the anticipated tax revenues from The Commons when the Renaissance Zone expires after 2017 and what about future revenues from the TIF districts when they expire?

Answering these questions can hopefully lower the amount the city needs to find to fund these pensions.

Once some numbers are in place to make some estimates how about crowd sourcing the problem? Make it an exercise for the high school government classes? Whichever class finds the best solution wins. There are many smart people in Traverse City. Give them the numbers in a spreadsheet at Google Docs and let them see what they can come up with similar to how the New York Times has an interactive tool for people to try their hand at fixing the budget deficit.

My first solution is find more tax revenue without raising taxes to fix this one time problem. This is done with more in-fill development and growing up. Meaning let buildings downtown have more stories. Larger building are worth more money. A higher value leads to increased tax revenues.

And then if we're really desperate there's the crazy idea department:

-Offer gas drilling leases in City park land
-Sell bay front property like the Senior Center
-Sell municipal bonds backed by Hickory Hills or other valuable parcels

I have no doubt that this crisis can be averted by intelligent people working together to find a solution that benefits everyone.

Now this seems like a worthy topic for a community Visioning session.

Density And Economy

It has been known for many years that dense urbanism creates more economic prosperity and wealth. The thinking was more people -> more ideas -> more businesses -> more employees -> more shoppers -> more people -> etc.

A recent study in London demonstrates concretely that a mode diverse social network correlates to greater wealth for an area. See SciAm: Diverse Personal Networks Linked to Strong Local Economy

What this tells me is that if a city wants to innovate, prosper, and thrive then it needs to encourage in-fill development and dense downtowns.

Carmel, IN is doing this. A suburb. Instead of building an industrial park or designating a "green zone"; it built trails, multi-use buildings and condominiums in the core, and replaced traffic lights with roundabouts.

If a suburb in Indiana can make these changes then surely Traverse City can.

See Urbanophile: Next American Suburb: Carmel, Indiana

If Traverse City Is To Be An Economic Innovator It Needs More Population Density

Keep the wilderness wild and build up the cities.

Humans have evolved to be innovative. And we are innovative when surrounded by a lot of other people. You can't argue against human nature...

See PhysOrg: High population density triggers cultural explosions

Increasing population density, rather than boosts in human brain power, appears to have catalysed the emergence of modern human behaviour, according to a new study by UCL (University College London) scientists published in the journal Science. High population density leads to greater exchange of ideas and skills and prevents the loss of new innovations. It is this skill maintenance, combined with a greater probability of useful innovations, that led to modern human behaviour appearing at different times in different parts of the world.

Cities Are For People

Yet another argument for why Traverse City does not need more roads.

Wired: It's Time for Cities to Favor People, Not Cars

"There's this cycle of automobile dependency," he said. "You have to have a place to park at home, a place to park at work, and a place to park at retail establishments." In an absurd "market distortion," cities have become places where "cars have a right to housing and people don't."

The Best Cities - Smart People And Lots Of Fun Things To Do

Update 1/16/2009
And let's not forget great places to live need great places to relax.
Boston.com: How the city hurts your brain ...And what you can do about it

Traverse City has a good start in being a great small town. But it is not all the way there yet. Living here "feels" as though we're on the verge of either becoming a great place to live and an economic engine or a touristy follower-town.

What makes a place a nice place to visit usually makes it a nice place to live.

There have been some recent articles regarding what makes some cities always attractive and what a place needs to do to be more than a nice place to visit. What is comes down to is put together a lot of smart people and give them fun things to do.

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released a research paper titled City Beautiful (PDF).

...past studies have provided only indirect evidence of the importance of leisure amenities for urban development. In this paper we propose and validate the number of leisure trips to metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) as a measure of consumers' revealed preferences for local leisure-oriented amenities. Population and employment growth in the 1990s was about 2 percent higher in an MSA with twice as many leisure visits: the third most important predictor of recent population growth in standardized terms. Moreover, this variable does a good job of forecasting out-of-sample growth for the period 2000-2006. “Beautiful cities” disproportionally attracted highly educated individuals and experienced faster housing price appreciation, especially in supply-inelastic markets. Investment by local government in new public recreational areas within an MSA was positively associated with higher subsequent city attractiveness. In contrast to the generally declining trends in the American central city, neighborhoods that were close to “central recreational districts” have experienced economic growth, albeit at the cost of minority displacement.

The researchers studied 15 variables to come to their conclusions:

Log Total

Employment in Tourism-Related Activities(1990)

Log Population

Log Number of Colleges

Poverty Rate

Log January Average Temperature (Average 1941-1970)

Log Average Annual Precipitation (1961-1990)

Share with Bachelors Degree

Share Workers in Manufacturing

Share Workers in Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate

Average Block-Group Distance to Park

Average Block-Group Distance to Recreation Sites

Log Historic Places per Capita

Coastal Share within a 10 km Radius

Mountain Land Share within a 10 km Radius

Boston.com has more on this research: Urban playground: As politicians weigh economic stimulus for cities, research suggests a surprising way to succeed: make it fun

In their paper, Carlino and Saiz found a statistical correlation between the number of leisure visits to a metropolitan area and the growth of factors like population and housing values. They controlled to determine that the tourism itself wasn't causing the growth, and argue in their paper that people move to the cities for the same reason they visit as tourists. They also demonstrate that investment by local governments in such "recreational capital" - spending on parks, cultural institutions, sports facilities, and other public-private spaces - has succeeded in making cities like Charlotte and San Antonio more attractive to tourists. They compute that a 10 percent boost in such spending yields a 2.3 percent increase in leisure visits, and, if the correlation holds, will also increase growth.
"If you have things that attract high-skilled, high-income individuals, they are more productive," said Carlino, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. "They are the ones who are likely to start up new companies."

And in the NYT Exonmix blog an entry on why NYC continues to thrive: New York, New York: America’s Resilient City

Homo sapiens are a social species; almost all of what we know we learn from each other. Dense cities, like New York, succeed when they take advantage of this fundamental aspect of our humanity. They thrive by enabling us to connect with each other, which then promotes learning and innovation. The current downturn will only increase the returns to being smart, and you get smart by hanging around smart people.

The formula for a great city seems clear: create a city with a temperate climate near a coastline and with museums, colleges, parks, and downtown magnets -> create dense housing in an urban core -> smart people will come to the city -> human capital will make the city great.

Traverse City Make Some More 'Best Places' Lists

See the RE: Traverse City makes list of 'Adventure Towns'

These are the latest lists:
National Geographic's 50 Best Places to Live: The Next Great Adventure Towns

So this year we selected 50 innovative towns that aren’t just prime relocation spots right now, but smart choices for the future. Not only do they have the action. They’ve got a plan. Now we’re giving you a plan too. Inside, you’ll find hometown picks that range from adventure 24/7 hubs loaded with outdoor options to urban players that offer a variety of jobs and cultural activities without sacrificing green space.

Mother Earth News' 9 Great Places You’ve Never Heard Of, 2008 Edition
[this is the first list I've ever seen where I agree with all the cities listed, based on my limited experience]

A great town or city is like a bowl of savory minestrone soup, served at a fine, family-owned restaurant. Though it may be difficult to identify the exact ingredients, the bottom line is flavor: Remarkable communities combine classic elements such as climate, architecture, natural assets and civic energy in a way that makes places healthy, safe and lively. By investing in the local economy, communities build self-reliance to handle sudden challenges such as surging energy prices or natural disasters.

The under-the-radar towns on the third Mother Earth News Great Places list blend qualities like these into rich, energetic cultures. We invite you to get to know these great places with us, and apply some of their innovative approaches and lessons-learned in your own towns and cities.

* Ames, Iowa
* Bethel, Maine
* Bisbee, Arizona
* Berea, Kentucky
* Viroqua, Wisconsin
* Moscow, Idaho
* Greenbelt, Maryland
* San Luis Obispo, California
* Traverse City, Michigan

Making A Cool City

Via CoolTools - TechShop

Wouldn't it be great to have a full machine shop at your disposal, with dozens of industrial tools also at your disposal, and all you have to do is contribute to the upkeep?

I think much of what makes a Cool City is what you can do there with others who are like minded. Traverse City has the Broke Spoke bicycle repair cooperative which is an amazing idea.

I imagine having an industrial machine toy shop would further encourage the movement of the creative class to Traverse City.

The Path To Victory

Urban gardens in the news via The Oil Drum:

NYT - Out of the Yard and Onto the Fork

GroovyGreen - Feeding The Suburbs