Jane’s Walk Weekend is this May 4th and 5th!

The fact that Jane Jacobs’ name is so often attached to the idea of gentrification today seems a cruel irony. Jane’s writing was focused on how to create strong neighborhoods that fostered robust social networks; she was far from a “NIMBY”, and her interest in preservation was more about economics than aesthetics. Unfortunately, the complexity of her ideas is often vastly oversimplified or taken out of context today by people looking to generate a bit of controversy. Reports that ‘Jane was wrong’ are greatly exaggerated, often by people who wind up making many of the same arguments that Jane, herself, made.

So it is always wonderful to see people gathering in communities across the country for Jane’s Walk Weekend. Over the next two days (May 4th & 5th), thousands will meet their neighbors to explore, observe, and appreciate what makes their neighborhoods great. In honor of one of our very favorite Placemakers, we’ve rounded up several walks scheduled to take place this year that focus on the theme of resilience, a concern at the core of much of Jane’s work. She was a champion of complexity and flexibility in urban form because these qualities allow communities—and the people that inhabit them—to address challenges more nimbly and effectively. Or, in her own eloquent words:

“Vital cities have marvelous innate abilities for understanding, communicating, contriving, and inventing what is required to combat their difficulties … Lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.”

And now, without further ado:

1.) Levee Disaster Bike Tour, New Orleans: The Crescent City’s comeback post-Katina, while far from frictionless, has been nothing short of miraculous. This bike tour will visit the sites of several levee breaches around the city, giving participants an opportunity to discuss what happened to their city, and how far they’ve come since.

2.) Not Your Typical Regent Park Walk, Toronto: This walk, in the city where Jane moved after her time in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, will “[shine] a light on the capacity of local residents and [reframe] Toronto’s negative ‘public housing’ narrative,” focusing on the importance of generating new economic opportunities from within local communities rather than attracting them from somewhere else.

3.) The Roots of Mack Avenue, Detroit: This tour will focus on an historic neighborhood commercial corridor in the Motor City, which recently played host to the Placemaking Leadership Council’s inaugural meeting. The tour will explore Mack Avenue’s economic decline, and look forward to the bright future outlined through the “Green Thoroughfare” revitalization plan.

4.) Hometown Security, The Bronx, NYC: Led by South Bronx-based advocate Majora Carter, this tour will examine the impact of the Spofford juvenile detention facility on the neighborhood. The tour will end with a performance by a group of people whose lives were affected by Spofford, and who have worked with the Theater of the Oppressed to tell their stories. Observations from the performances will inform how the 5-acre Spofford site will be re-developed in the future.

5.) Recycle Kingdom Walk, Calcutta: This year Jane’s Walk is making its way to several cities in India. This unique walk will meander through the East Calcutta Wetlands, providing an intimate look at the vital role that the site plays in the city’s ecological resilience. The wetlands “take in all the solid and liquid waste of the city and generates fish, rice and vegetables and sends it back.”

One last thing: if you’re in New York, the Municipal Art Society will be offering a host of free tours of neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Sandy last fall. You can check out the full list of related events by clicking right here.

Meet Hatuey and Elizabeth! / Photo: Patrick Wall

Elizabeth Hamby and Hatuey Ramos Fermín are people connectors. As artists, activists, and Bronxites, their creative collaborations are all about gathering information from neighbors and presenting it in ways that allow communities to better understand themselves and the urban spaces they create. The two have worked in all kinds of public spaces, from major thoroughfares and street corners to laundromats, grocery stores, and vacant waterfronts.

Recently, they organized Boogie Down Rides: Bicycling is Art. The artists used the social act of biking as a springboard for talking with people about the creation of healthy, active urban environments. Throughout the month of May 2012, they set up many different formats for engaging the public: a temporary bike shop that simultaneously served as an education hub, group rides across the Bronx, and visioning workshops about biking and greenway initiatives in the city.

The project was organized as part of the public art exhibition, This Side of Paradise, by No Longer Empty at the Andrew Freedman Home. I recently sat down with Hatuey and Elizabeth to talk about Boogie Down Rides and the other urban projects they have in the works.

What was it about your community that inspired Boogie Down Rides? Was there a particular need that you were responding to or wanted to address?

Hatuey: Boogie Down Rides grew out of another project of mine, Transmit-Transit. It explored the idea of taxi drivers as a mode of transport in the the Bronx, and the need for cabs to move around. Public transit in the north-south direction works well but east-west not so much. No Longer Empty first approached me about that transportation project, which became a video installation at the Andrew Freedman Home that connected the gallery space to the outside world. Then we began thinking about how to physically and conceptually expand transportation within the community. Transportation was a major theme extending back to Mr. Freedman’s time, with Mr. Freedman being a major backer of the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT), New York City’s original underground subway. The IRT addressed the linking of open space from Central Park to Van Cortlandt Park. Extending the idea of Transmit-Transit beyond cabs, we wanted to look at bikes as another viable option to address mobility in the Bronx.

One of the great things about Boogie Down Rides is how it brings together many activities that people may not normally associate but which all contribute to healthy places. Your tagline, for example, is Bicycling is Art. Can you explain how biking, public art, and urban spaces are linked in your project?

Elizabeth: Instead of representing reality as a painting, we live it on a bike. The bike embodied action for this issue of transportation in the Bronx, where biking is a social act and a political act. Instead of designing a solution to a problem, we tried to figure out the questions that exist in real life through the experience of biking. We both live in the Bronx. It’s part of our day-to-day reality, and because we’re artists, we have a compulsion to make what we see public.

The project also involved community visioning sessions for the Bronx’s longer-term development. What came out of these sessions?

Elizabeth: The visioning sessions were really spearheaded by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which was just launching an interactive toolkit to gather data and address threats to active transportation and public space. They were key in leading some of the concrete visioning work happening around the Sheridan Expressway, where dangerous connections make it unsafe to bike between the parks. Rather than focusing on cause and effect, the visioning sessions were about figuring out opportunities for improvement. Safety—specifically, feeling safe in public—was an ongoing theme in the conversations we had with our neighbors.

Bronxites show some love for their bikes at a Boogie Down Rides event / Photo: Boogie Down Rides

Throughout your various interactions with the public, did you come across questions or reactions that particularly surprised you?

Elizabeth: One of the most surprising things that we learned from Boogie Down Rides was the number of adults—particularly women—who had never learned how to ride a bike, and who were very excited to find out about opportunities for biking in the Bronx. In the instance of another project, Mind the Gap/La Brecha, we talked a lot with folks in our neighborhood about their ideas for the waterfront. One of the critical components to the waterfront that came up over and over again was the basic need for clean public restrooms!

Collaboration seems integral to your work. What other community partners were vested in Boogie Down Rides?

Hatuey: Conversations and collaborations were important from the start; we worked with Transportation Alternatives, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Bronx River Alliance, Bike the Bronx, Bronx Health REACH, Partnership for Parks, Velo City…

Elizabeth: We also had a meeting with City Planning and the Mayor’s Office where we were able to show our recommendations. It was perhaps an unusual case in that the Mayor’s Office and City Planning came to us. Our collaborations really grew organically, and our project was timely in terms of how they related to conversations already happening in New York about biking, complete streets, and the South Bronx Greenway Plan.

And did people express any misconceptions that you were able to address through these collaborations?

Elizabeth: I think that artists working in public the way that we do are often confused with non-profit or other community-based organizations. We often talk to people about the role that artists play as citizens and neighbors in our communities—and the ways that we hope that our work can help make our neighborhoods more safe, lively, and liveable.

Any advice you would give to communities who are trying to build healthier places?

Elizabeth: You have to remember the factor of critical mass. If you notice a problem, someone else probably has too, so it becomes about working together in a long-term way.

Hatuey: It’s realizing there are already resources within the community, and that becomes the main point of departure. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel. You want to create space to bring stakeholders together.

Elizabeth: Also humility and willingness to listen and genuinely collaborate—those are really important, in regard to attitude. There’s a lot of work that goes into working together.

Hatuey: Listening is the biggest thing, listening with a big ear.

A dance troupe performs in the Andrew Freedman Home during No Longer Empty's "This Side of Paradise" / Photo: NLE

Since ceasing operations as a grand retirement home in the 1980s, the Andrew Freedman Home had been standing quietly inconspicuous on its spacious lot off the Bronx’s famed Grand Concourse. Just a handful of activities had been taking place on-site, mostly in the basement: a Head Start preschool program, a food bank, a thrift shop. The property owner, the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council (MBSCC), began thinking about how to more fully utilize the multi-storied mansion to bring this unique space into active community use.  That was the impetus for the phone call that MBSCC and Holly Block of the Bronx Museum of the Arts (BMA) made to No Longer Empty (NLE), a Brooklyn-based arts organization that organizes site-specific public art installations to revitalize fallow spaces.

For NLE, “site-specific” means including both the physical place and the people who live and work in the surrounding community. By using art to interpret physical space and its historical context, NLE uses its installations to re-frame vacant, forgotten spaces as places that are open for interpretation. As Executive Director Naomi Hersson-Ringskog explains, “What we do well is listening to the initiatives, challenges, and caveats the community expresses.”

No Longer Empty’s exhibition “This Side of Paradise,” served as the impetus for community groups to engage with the space and link this resource with their own plans and needs. Getting conversations flowing among existing cultural organizations, including members of the nascent Bronx Arts Alliance, inspired visions of the events and programs that the mansion could host and also led to new creative collaborations.

In addition to opening up avenues of dialogue, Naomi also says, in terms of the physical site, “The first thing we do is open the gates. It’s a sign of welcome and a way of getting the community to start associating with the site and what the site should be.” One of the groups that took advantage of the space was the Bronx Children’s Museum (BCM). With its gates open, the mansion turned into fertile ground for Museum programming, especially with the BCM’s new home still under construction.

Rolling out the red carpet to welcome the community--literally! / Photo: NLE

NLE’s Director of Programming and Outreach, Jodie Dinapoli, recalls talking with the BCM’s Executive Director, Carla Precht, who wished to develop an early childhood program that would explore the question “What is art?” The mansion, filled with the works of more than 20 artists through NLE’s exhibition, became an ideal site for realizing interactive tours and workshops. The BCM, working with three teaching artists, paired-up with local children’s organizations, two of which were literally under the mansion’s nose: Head Start, which was operating from the basement floor, and BronxWorks, which was across the street. It was an outstanding example of how people began to re-connect with a long-ignored space that was already along the route they followed in their daily routines.

The mansion became recognized as an asset in a variety of ways. For Inspirit, a Bronx-based dance company, rehearsal space is always a necessary resource. The re-activated mansion was able to provide not only physical space but inspiration and a unique performance context. Another performer, Diana Crum, expressed a “[craving for] more spaces in between: performance settings where artists and pedestrians gather to experience time-based work and in the process forge a temporary community, ripe for reflection and re-imagining.”

Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory used the mansion’s unique setting to film and document their work. For Boogie Down Rides and the Bronx Arts Alliance, the space became a convenient gathering spot for meetings. BronxNet, which produced the film of featured artist Mel Chin, began using the space to offer media courses throughout the run of the exhibition and possibly on into the future. Reflecting on the process of these successful collaborations, Jodie emphasizes, “Collaboration is beautiful, but requires diligence. To be a true success, each group must define their objectives, goals, and needs.”

The care taken to interact and engage with people throughout the programs and events helped this private space achieve the warmth and vibrancy of a true public destination. As the hosts of the space, NLE staff and volunteers remained active and engaged with the site once programs were underway. They observed that many visitors, especially non-habitual art-goers, will hesitate at the doorway to the exhibition or the event. One of the simplest methods for putting a visitor at ease and imparting a sense of belonging was to have a friendly greeter at the front desk. A smile and a hello goes a long way in cultivating a welcoming environment. “Our tone is about engagement,” Naomi says. “We want to engage people in conversation, which is the way to share knowledge and inspire more curiosity.”

Children search for Easter eggs on the Freedman Home lawn / Photo: NLE

As with bringing vibrancy to a place, the aspect of a warm human presence cannot be overestimated in creating vibrant exhibitions and programs. On the day of NLE’s Easter Egg Hunt at the mansion, volunteers were present to walk people up and down the street between multiple events also being orchestrated by the BCM and the BMA. It turned into a huge day out on the Grand Concourse for close to 800 children with the feel of festive neighborhood block party.

On the other hand, not every activity that occurred in the space was planned. With the gates unlocked, local workers would spontaneously use the front lawn and garden as a lunch spot. “This was an example of how the community began using this private space in a public manner,” Naomi says, reflecting.

Creating an open testing ground for ideas both spontaneous and planned is a great value of NLE’s Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper approach to public art. Although NLE only temporarily occupies any site, the spirit of nimble mobility is ideal for sparking communities into new awareness and playful experimentation with their everyday surroundings. The ability of any community to recognize the potential of its hidden assets is is the first step to turning a place around.

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To learn about one of PPS’s favorite projects up in the Bronx, visit our project page for the Bronx River Arts Center (BRAC) renovation and expansion!

Aphrodite interviews a New Yorker on Love TV in front of the city's iconic Flatiron Building / Photo: Love TV

Love was recently high in the air at PPS, as we were regaled with tales of a heartfelt summertime voyage around New York City’s five boroughs, where deeply-held secrets, innermost dreams, and impassioned desires were divulged by locals in the bright glare of broad daylight across public parks, plazas, streets and ferry terminals. Inside a giant pink television…to a golden-haired vixen called Aphrodite…with an Australian accent…

Nope, we’re not losing our grip on reality here in the office. In fact, we had the good fortune to be visited by artist Rebecca Macintosh and creative producer Victoria Johnstone, two Australians who had been touring their urban installation, “Love TV,” around New York City as a part of the DOT’s Summer Streets and Weekend Walks Urban Arts Program.

Describing Love TV as a “bold, fun and innovative public art adventure,” Rebecca and Victoria had been busy sharing the love across nine sites with 19 performances in some of NYC’s most diverse and far-flung neighborhoods. Through an outreach process organized jointly by Love TV and local community partners, people went online to either nominate themselves or their neighbors for an interview with Rebecca—aka the illustrious Goddess of Love, Aphrodite—in her public studio, a cheerfully fuchsia mobile theater shaped like a giant TV set. As local personalities revealed all, the interviews were aired on a screen before an inflatable lounge, allowing for prime public viewing with all of the fluffy comforts of home. Interviews were rapidly uploaded onto the Love TV website and posted to social networks, growing “a lively online Love TV community” across the world.

As happy a spectacle as Love TV is, its aim is far from superficial. As Rebecca explained, the project endeavors to activate public spaces and strengthen community spirit by creating a place for “their stories, by their people, [so that communities can share their] personal love affair with their respective neighborhood or city.” Indeed, Love TV’s five-borough journey collated interviews from a passionate public, from boy wonder drummer Marakai at the Jamaican Music and Arts Festival in Queens, who dreams of “a big pool in the park,” to soon-to-be MTV Superstar singer Ray 6 at the TAMA Summerfest in Brooklyn, who was brimming with pride in Bed-Stuy’s music-filled streets: “Tompkins is it! Brooklyn is the place to be.”

In addition to the nominated guests, Love TV also built up its own merry team of followers, from George the Greek, an Astorian poet who serenaded Love TV at multiple locations, to a group of Italian tourists who simply fell in love with the installation and reoriented their NYC itinerary to follow Aphrodite around the boroughs. So why is Love TV so loveable? What’s the secret to its success?

A crowd gathers to watch a performance at Fordham Plaza in the Bronx / Photo: Love TV

As veterans of pop-up public space activation (Love TV has been touring the world’s public places for more than five years), Rebecca and Victoria dropped by PPS HQ to share tips and tricks over a brown bag lunch with Placemaking staff. They described how, when new to a neighborhood, city, or country and working on a tight schedule, on-the-ground partnerships and a spirit of collaboration are the absolute starting point for any pop-up event. Community partners are essential for ensuring that work fits within the local context—especially when needing to tap into neighborhood knowledge to select an appropriate site, since poor site location can make or break a performance.

Yet Love TV’s charm swells from something other than good site location and thorough research. This installation creates a public meeting space (often in very limited supply, especially in poorer neighborhoods) charged with a spirit of optimism, and uses a commonly-held human value that spans cultural, social and economic differences—love—to inspire positive community conversations and visions for the future. Every participant was asked what they would do if made mayor for a day and, Rebecca told us, this became a significant moment in each interview. With community organizing so often focused on what people don’t want, it’s rare for communities to have the opportunity to come together to define common values by sharing their hopes and desires in their own local public spaces.

So Love TV’s beauty, on one hand, lies in this curation of shared community experience in public space; but that beauty also, perhaps more strategically, comes from the way the project finds avenues for these aspirations to linger. Rebecca noted that Facebook seems to have become that place where, well beyond Love TV’s departure, participants and communities continue to dwell online to share their urban dreams for the future. Victoria and Rebecca hope that the few hours of rosy fun they bring to neighborhoods will do more than simply bridge off- and online community conversations, but also seeding longer-lasting effects–perhaps as an online archive of community strengths and needs which municipal officials, planners and advocates could use.

Love TV is back home now, resting up with Rebecca and Victoria on Queensland’s Gold Coast. But if the project sparked a little something for you, or if you think your community could use a healthy dose of Australian warmth, community imagination, and/or a whole heap of fun, get in touch with these Placemaking romancers, and see what can come when you “turn on” an intimately good time in your neighborhood.

Audience participation! Dancing in the NYC DOT's Flatiron Plaza / Photo: Love TV

“Place matters, and the first place is your body. We are whole people. We bring that whole-ness to our communities.” –Maria Bauman, leading a “Physio-Expresso” exercise / Photo: @keith5chweitzer via Twitter

What do the Lower East Side’s finest scaffolding, North Brooklyn churches, a chocolate factory, and the Staten Island Ferry have in common with something called Physio-expresso? All were on the roster when artists, art administrators, community leaders, urbanists, researchers and policy makers gathered last week in Fort Greene’s South Oxford Space for the cheerfully dynamic  Spacing Out: A Forum On Innovative Cultural Uses of Urban Space. The event was coordinated by the Arts & Democracy Project, Urban Bush Women, and the Naturally Occurring Cultural District Working Group (NOCD-NY), an alliance of community-based cultural networks and leaders that aim to ‘revitalize NYC from the neighborhood up’.

The aim of the forum was to share best practices (and war stories), to help activate and enhance Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts in New York City. Councilmember Letitia James started things off by explaining why building support for NOCDs is a pressing issue right now, in light of real estate development trends where neighborhood boundaries are hastily redrawn and renamed (DUMBO, Bedford Hill, BoCoCa, anyone?) without appreciating that the community’s cultural workers will likely be priced out, victims of their own ‘success.’ As the morning’s speakers revealed, many communities lack the expertise for navigating arts and cultural resources, and are thus unable to develop the capacity to advocate for themselves and their work.

The morning’s presenters (representing each of New York City’s boroughs) described their own experience spearheading creative re-use of existing urban spaces, and how they routinely navigate issues such as partnership-building, programming and managing spaces.

“Saints of the Lower East Side” is on view through September 5, 2012 / Photo: Fourth Arts Block

Tamara Greenfield of the Fourth Arts Block on Manhattan’s Lower East Side described how art could find an unlikely but happy home within temporary, and typically unsightly structures like the scaffolding at vacant lots and construction sites. While street artists, especially those who are lesser known, relish the opportunity to create work for a new urban platform, the generally brief public life of temporary infrastructure creates huge challenges in terms of rapid project planning, having time to secure adequate funding, and brokering relationships with building owners and the ragtag team of necessary city partners like the DOT and NYPD.

Up next was Sheila Lewandowski, director of Long Island City’s The Chocolate Factory, a theater housed in a formerly-industrial home of delicious things. Sheila spoke about adaptive reuse, and her search for an experimental performance and art space which would help preserve the natural character of the neighborhood. “Space matters,” she proclaimed, explaining that many artists want to respond to old buildings in their existing state. In addition to re-use of a physical structure, the Chocolate Factory has also shown how the community surrounding a venue can inform how it adapts to new cultural tenants by partnering with 200 local businesses in an average year. “It’s very important that the community sees that you’re a part of it,” Sheila said. “You don’t do anything alone.”

Monica Salazar’s presentation about cultural use of religious spaces turned an eye toward the economics of re-use. In 2009, inspired by a New York Times article about local North Brooklyn churches renting out space for rehearsals (and with her own band needing a music-making place), Monica contacted Most Holy Trinity-St. Mary’s in East Williamsburg/Bushwick, Brooklyn with a similar suggestion. Her initiative rapidly developed into The Trinity Project, a bartering program with a membership structure that allows artists to teach classes in exchange for space, while also offering the church a ready army of caretakers. Said Monica: “I was amazed to see how valuable trade is…once the dollar is removed from the equation.’

Visitors explore The Point’s Bronx facility during the “Key to the City” project / Photo: Shelley Bernstein via Flickr

Carey Clark of The Point in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood illustrated that while some neighborhoods may not have high levels of cultural traffic or city investment, they nonetheless house communities craving the same opportunities and advantages. The Point is an organization which formed in 1994 to strengthen the South Bronx in partnership with local residents through programming, facilities, and resources, including the wildly successful Hunts Point Riverside Campus for Arts and the Environment, a permanent open public space for the arts and environment. “You need to have a vision,” she explained, “but be prepared to be flexible.”

Sometimes strategic flexibility means saying “no,” as highlighted by Prerana Reddy, Director of Public Events at the Queens Museum of Art, who spoke about the QMA’s current work supporting the Heart of Corona.  The QMA has a well-deserved reputation for working with the local community by seeing ‘the museum is a production partner’ in a community ‘full of cultural workers.’ The museum declined the DOTs invitation to take on full management responsibilities for a re-designed Corona Plaza, arguing successfully that maintenance and upkeep should be handled by another organization while the QMA focuses on what they do best: programming. “We have broad cultural networks,” she explained. “How do we use these to co-produce with the neighborhood?” The QMA is now working with several partners on a series of Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper activations of the space.

COAHSI’s “Culture Lounge” will encourage visitors to Staten Island to linger in the ferry terminal / Photo: COAHSI

Turning challenges into opportunities was a necessary philosophy, if not working method, for Melanie Cohn, director of the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island. COAHSI received a Rockefeller grant to create a new cultural space at New York City’s third most visited site – the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, where 75,000 people pass through every day. For this new space, COAHSI had to balance the needs of local artists, who are feeling the squeeze of a growing lack of cultural space as the borough booms, with the DOT and Homeland Security, organizations that prioritize moving people through the terminal as quickly as possible. The solution? “You talk a lot,” according to Melanie, and invest in outreach about how to engage with influx of population coming into the space.

With presentations over, the room broke into a series of rapid-fire discussion groups to delve further into the topic areas, share our own experiences, and explore common challenges. The room rejoined to share key take-outs. Here, a few of the questions most pertinent for Placemakers looking to bring cultural activity out into streets & public spaces:

• How can cultural workers arm themselves with ‘the right questions’ to ask?

• What is the process for acquiring space, and where can we access the technical expertise to manage and use it?

• How can cultural workers develop effective relationships with host organizations such as museums and libraries?

• How can cultural workers help expedite the sharing of a common vision with project partners?

• How can projects be made more sustainable in the short and long term?

Ideas, tactics, experiences, strategies and indeed, the entire morning, passing by with blistering speed and spirited enthusiasm. Many thanks to the organizers and The South Oxford Space for their initiative and planning, and creating the opportunity to develop some new practitioner working methods.

CNU's John Norquist

Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place keynote speaker John Norquist, who currently serves as the President and CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism, spoke with us recently about the role and responsibility of decision makers, what urbanists need to learn, and what CNU’s 2012 Transportation Summit—immediately preceding Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place on September 9-10 in Long Beach—means for the conference this year. Before joining CNU, John served as the Mayor of Milwaukee, WI, from 1988-2004; in 1998, John was named one of Governing magazine’s Public Officials of the Year.

Following the interview, we’ve put together a list of related PWPB:PP panel discussions. This year’s conference will take place in Long Beach, CA, from September 10-13. Early registration rates are available through this Thursday, July 12th—so don’t delay!

How does biking and walking contribute to, and fit into a great street?

You can’t have a prosperous neighborhood where people can engage in social interaction and converse if they have to drive everywhere. If you can accommodate biking and walking, you’re much more likely to have social interaction, social equity, and a high performing real estate market — it all comes together. If you have a walkable environment, people that aren’t wealthy and those who are, actually end up in the same proximity. They interact, and it strengthens the culture, the economy, and the outcomes that you get.

Can you tell us some of what was happening when you were Mayor of Milwaukee?

The Functional Classification System needs to be entirely reevaluated. In certain rural contexts, it makes sense, but applying it to urban contexts doesn’t. For example, Greenwich Village is rated F (lowest) based on congestion. It’s congested with people who want to be there! They’re buying stuff, and creating jobs, and creating art. It’s a completely non-context sensitive classification that rates Greenwich Village an F. And that’s what gave rise to the CNU/ITE jointly-produced Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach. It’s a recommended practice that illustrates how to implement mixed-use streets.

As mayor, John pushed for the removal of Milwaukee's Park East freeway spur, which is now being re-developed as a mixed-use neighborhood / Photo: Paul Hohmann via Flickr

How can we help the development and real estate sectors recognize the return on investing in Active Living by Design?

Mixed-use walkable communities are performing much better in the real estate market right now than communities that are auto-centric. The return on value per acre is much higher in walkable urban environments. We have a lot of land in the United States, but land that’s convenient to where the people are is a limited commodity. For developers, it’s a natural fit for them to be able to have more intense development in urban real estate. If everyone’s relying on cars, you have to accommodate all those vehicles by using up land with parking facilities, and surface lots that are not only expensive, but ugly. Developers have a lot of reasons to embrace a more walkable development pattern but it’s hard for them because many government policies obstruct them.

The Functional Classification System that is still the core of the AASHTO Green Book and DOTs all over the country encourages oversized roads and auto-centricity. Then there are Federal policies including those issued by the Federal Housing Administration that are pushing separate use zoning through their mortgage and capital programs that assign high risk to buildings that include both housing and retail. [Editor's Note:  John notes that Shaun Donovan and HUD are aware of this and are trying to make changes.] That really undermines the ability of developers to produce the kind of urban walkable environment that people increasingly want. What can be done on a small scale to shift that? Make a case to local officials that neighborhoods with both housing and amenities such as retail create a stronger tax base for local governments. Compact, well-connected neighborhoods with sidewalks are great for bikers, and even those who don’t ride bikes benefit from stronger communities.

At Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place we are aiming to broaden how people think about biking and walking by bringing together architects, urbanists, and people in transportation. Can you talk about the collaboration between these disciplines and what you hope for the future?

Whether you’re an architect, engineer or designer, you should aim for the triple bottom line where you have environmental, economic, and social benefits. Block sizes and intersection density, these are some of the issues that have a profound effect on these benefits. If you have a well-connected grid of streets, you’ve created an environment where somebody who needs a job has a much better chance of connecting socially and economically; whether they’re working a great job, or marginal job, at least they’re around money.

But when you have a disconnected, auto-centric grid like the one they’ve created in Detroit over the last 60 years…you can see the outcome. The city’s transit system is almost nonexistent.  If you look at the poorest neighborhoods in NYC, in the Bronx, because of a fabulously well-connected city grid and transit system, someone living there can be at Wall Street, the district with the highest job density per acre in North America, in just 35 minutes for a $2.25 transit fare. The money’s in the middle instead of being dispersed out in enclaves, and that gives people chances. This type of street grid and transit also fosters walking and biking.

What do you think New Urbanists need to learn?

They need to embrace and appreciate bicycling more and more. Bicycling is an important catalyst to move communities toward an urbanism that is ecologically sound and economically productive. The bicyclists are the ones who often bring pressure for change in transportation the more they take over the more the good things happen. Those interested in cities need to appreciate them more as bicycling is very compatible with everything that is urban. We ought to promote it even more than we already do.

What is a message you’d like to promote at Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place?

The Functional Classification System needs to be entirely reevaluated. In certain rural contexts, it makes sense, but applying it to urban contexts doesn’t. For example, Greenwich Village is rated F (lowest) based on congestion. It’s congested with people who want to be there! They’re buying stuff, and creating jobs, and creating art. It’s a completely non-context sensitive classification that rates Greenwich Village an F. And that’s what gave rise to the CNU/ITE jointly-produced Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach. It’s a recommended practice that illustrates how to implement mixed-use streets.

Some environmentalists blame the road lobby for selfishly seeking financial gain by supporting highway expenditures and opposing money for bicycle and transit infrastructure. Actually, all contractors have to be a little selfish, or they would go out of business. What the road lobby needs to realize is that can make money by building lots of streets, alleys and sidewalks. Did you know there are more miles of streets in metropolitan Chicagoland than the whole interstate system? The idea that somehow the road building industry should be appalled by being asked to design streets to include cyclists is strange. There’s a lot of pavement to be laid for bus and bike lanes. Pavement is ok as long as it adds value to the community where it’s placed. That’s what the road builders need to learn.

Can you tell us a little bit about the plans for CNU’s 2012 Transportation Summit this year?

We have some of the most forward thinking transportation experts who are really serious about challenging the norm in transportation. We’re not interested in talking about this stuff forever; we want to change the system now. It’s not about changing a legislature in Congress that changes a funding budget; the goal is to fundamentally change transportation so that it becomes about adding value instead of just moving vehicles.

I think the Summit being held at the same venue as PWPB:PP will lead to a really effective cross-fertilization that leads to a higher level of achievement. Our goals are to change the functional classification system, that’s too focused on creating capacity for motor vehicles. Any road built in a city should accommodate walking and biking. Period. We all need to raise our expectations, and demand more. We need to push, and we can win!  No more car right of ways in cities that don’t have accommodations for bikers and walkers!

Suggested PWPB:PP Panel Sessions:
(For the full list, click here)

Panel 1: Advocacy Campaigns for Better Bikeways

Learn how advocacy campaigns at Chicago’s Active Transportation Alliance and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition are educating and organizing residents and allies to move bikeways projects forward

Panel 4: Innovative Public Engagement for Pedestrian and Bicycle Planning: Engaging the Community Using New Technologies, and Sustaining Momentum

Learn how to engage oft-underrepresented community members in the planning process, utilize cutting-edge engagement tools and mobile workshops, and foster public dialogue about the role of walking and bicycling in a community.

Panel 18: Times Change, People Change, Needs Change

Learn how designers must continue to update their conceptual approaches and their detailed designs to reflect current values, new techniques, and the discoveries of recent research.

Panel 21: Bikeway Design Details: Small Facilities, Large Issues

In this session, a qualified panel of experts will describe some of the unique problems they faced in bikeway design, their approach to finding solutions, and will share their knowledge and procedures with others.

Panel 42: The Power of the Performance Metric–Getting your Jurisdiction Back on Track

This session describes a collaborative effort to calculate new metrics for the City of Los Angeles. The process sheds light on how complicated and multidimensional the transportation system is, and on the power of outsiders to change it.

Panel 44: Congressional Action on Transportation: What it Means for You

Learn the latest developments in Congress on the transportation bill, the impact on bicycling and walking on the ground, and lessons learned about effectively communicating the benefits of bicycling and walking.

Mobile Workshop 68: Improving Bicycle and Pedestrian Access to Transit

This session will explore ways in which improved multi-modal access to transit has helped reshape communities regardless of their size or local economic conditions.

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For those of you interested in learning more about how to foster great streets, register for Pro Walk/Pro Bike® 2012: Pro Place, North America’s premier walking and bicycling conference, taking place September 10-13th, 2012 in Long Beach, CA. Join more than 1,000 planners, engineers, elected officials, health professionals, and advocates to gain the insights of national experts in the field, learn about practical solutions to getting bike and pedestrian infrastructure built, and meet peers from across the country. Register before Thursday, July 12th, to receive the discounted earlybird rate!