An Email

I know posting has been sparse recently as I have been busy with a new job and overwhelmed by selling my suburban house while preparing for a series of temporary work-related relocations. But recently I received an email regarding municipal land use policy that I wanted to open up to a wider debate. Please leave any constructive comments you might have regarding the issue.

S 

do you think it is a good idea, bad idea, or value neutral idea for a small town to amend their ordinance protecting "open spaces" in order to allow for the refurbishing of an existing building to be transformed to affordable senior housing.
(I don't know if "open spaces" is a standard term, but in this case it means land zoned for institutional use and includes areas that have a lot of property such as schools, churches, library etc)

I watched a LONG debate/discussion at a city council meeting and found I'm kind of in the minority in my opinion and wondered what a less biased person with actual knowledge of city plan would have to say.

-s

Dave Murphy 

"Open space" is a very sketchy term. Gigantic empty lawns that nobody uses for anything are often considered "open space". On the one hand, if they can be used for something more meaningful, I'm all for it. If a building or set of buildings reinvigorates the town, absolutely it is a better use of the land, regardless of its use.

A great example in my opinion would be Four Corners, an area we both know and love... When they tore down the Kay Tract to build Blair High School, they demolished acres and acres of "green space". That area was a haven for homeless people and drug activity. It was unpatrolled, unregulated, secluded, and crime-ridden.

But when they tore out all those trees, what arose was a school already too small for its student body despite the fact that it was spread out over twice the real estate of the old school. The main feature that interacted with the rest of the "town" (if one were to consider Four Corners its own town) was not the main facade of the school, not the grand entrance, walkways, side buildings, or even athletic fields; it is the driveways and parking lots that front the school.

It secluded the student body, who for the most parts are residents of Four Corners and downtown Silver Spring, from the rest of the town. Was it a better municipal use of land than a bunch of trees with trash and homeless people? Absolutely. But does it contribute more to the townliness of Four Corners? Barely.

A good side effect was the pedestrian improvements that came along with a 3,200 student school, and Four Corners desperately needed those pedestrian improvements. But despite the fact that it is the most heavily traveled intersection in Eastern Montgomery County (for PEOPLE, not cars... more people move through that intersection than even Georgia and Colesville) no major mass transit improvements came with the school save for maybe a bus shelter or two.

Now consider the lawns providing the setback for St. Bernadette's. That is open space. It is green space. Is it serving the people of Four Corners? Does it serve St. Bernadette's other than to isolate it from the high speed traffic of University Boulevard or the "public school kids" that as a universal community of faith we ought to be reaching out to and embracing? The only thing I've ever used those fields for is stretching out a football team before a game at St. Bernadette's. And in 5 years of coaching and two years of playing, I can count the number of times I've done that on two hands.

Now consider something like this:
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=3922

Erik Bootsma, the architect that authored this article, is a Beaux Arts architect and a Catholic. He writes about religious structures often. Here's his website, it's great:

http://beatusest.blogspot.com/

But back to the suburban church being retrofitted... American churches are often gigantic, isolated structures that are monuments to themselves. Whereas in Europe, Cathedrals are the centerpieces of the towns, in America you have junk like the Mormon tabernacle, which only interacts with people driving down the Beltway and in no other way serves as a structural outreach to the community. For all their questionable doctrine, this is actually my number 1 gripe with the Mormon church. They structurally isolate themselves from their surroundings, even in Salt Lake City. But nowadays, every church does that. They move from central locations to wherever they can have the biggest parking lot, assuring that few will walk to their services and ostensibly turning away anyone that does not drive a car.

If St. Bernadette's was to take the lawns in front of the parish and do something useful such as what Bootsma proposed there in Arlington, it would create a community directly affected by the parish rather than isolated from it. And for a religious institution, what better way to attract members than to make the primary structure (the church) the focal point of a community? And as far as traffic on University Boulevard goes, building frontage could slow traffic down, and a more permeable street network could actually relieve congestion there. A train line running up Columbia Pike would be nice also.

As for your case, affordable senior housing is never a bad thing in theory. But what are they building? Garden style apartments with ample parking that will eventually mock seniors who lose the ability to drive? Or a community of well designed buildings that will allow seniors to partake in society without forcing them to drive? In my opinion, the latter serves more use than an open lawn that nobody uses.

Imagine a streetcar on Alabama Avenue

When DDOT unveiled its Streetcar vision in October, I was little disappointed by the amount of service in River East. Indeed, the area's reputation has been mired in negativity for quite some time, which has lead to, for better or worse, a very different kind of land and economic development in Wards 7 and 8. This is evident in the distribution of services proposed by DDOT.

River East has experienced a great deal of suburban style development. Wickedly suburban. Affordable housing is often not accessible to the six Metro stations that serve this third of the city. Isolated affordable housing can often turn out to be frighteningly similar to ill-fated housing projects. Requiring people of lower income to rely on automobile transport greatly increases their cost of living, further exacerbating the poverty. But shiny new developments in River East, for all their efforts at civic improvement, are still focused around the automobile.

What really disappointed me about DDOT's plan is that all the streetcar lines appear to run THROUGH River East. Along the Anacostia River, perhaps, but they fail to connect many of the neighborhoods to the system, including several that are not very accessible to Metro. This plan would lead me to infer that Congress Heights and Fairlawn are and will be for the foreseeable future dependent on the rest of the city to be a viable place to live. The lines connect River East to the rest of the city, but they don't connect River East to River East. Not as much as it could, at least.

With DC's population rocketing past 600,000 and developers running out of "River West" real estate to develop, Benning, Deanwood, Anacostia, Washington Highlands, Hillcrest, Fort Dupont, and the rest of River East's many neighborhoods will becoming increasingly attractive for development. But the same type of dense, walkable, transit-oriented, traditional neighborhood design is not possible if River East goes as underserved by streetcar as it is by Metro (6 stations versus 31 in the rest of DC and not transfer stations). So I conceived a line that would make it feasible to live in Congress Heights and work in Capitol Heights without taking Metro all the way to L'Enfant Plaza first. I give you a proposal for a ninth streetcar line, the Alabama Avenue line:


View River East Streetcars in a larger map

Blue indicates lines laid out in the DDOT plan, purple indicates possible future streetcar extension laid out in the plan, and red is the Alabama Avenue line. Obviously, significant portions of the line also run along Southern Avenue and Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue. It connects prominent neighborhoods to Metro stations and other streetcar lines. It puts more of the rail transit infrastructure within walking distance for District residents who will benefit most from its service and economic development. It is intended to interact with the neighborhoods as places where a significant portion of the District now lives and could potentially work in the future.

Where the city will ultimately have a streetcar network, River East will only have lines. The Alabama Avenue line would create a network that would compliment the existing Metro stations and the already-planned streetcar lines. It may not generate enormous ridership projections right now, but it would certainly draw more walkable urban development to Alabama Avenue and the other proposed corridors. We plan roads in anticipation of future development. Why can't we make that same investment with our streetcar network?

Cross-posted on Imagine, DC

Gentrification

I love watching areas go from urban blight to prime real estate. 14th and U is a great example; when I was in high school, the very names of the streets carried horrible stigmas, but nowadays that corner is perhaps one of the most famous non-government areas of DC. Okay, maybe after Georgetown... but even parts Georgetown were very neglected while I was growing up.

Yes, in a perfect world, we'll all have our four story house in Kalorama right near a Metro station and some nice shops. But the fact of the matter is that the meat and potatoes of a city's population can't afford to live in such fancy digs, and it is unwise to over-gentrify a city for this reason. Plumbers, teachers, fire fighters, custodians, and other working class professionals demand more moderately priced housing.

Gentrification can be a good thing for some parts of a city. But recently I came across one very controversial blogger (warning: coarse language) from Brooklyn who is an extreme case of just howout of control gentrification can get. Gentrification causes tension between socio-economic classes, which often translates into racial tension. Even when it doesn't, it prices out workers who are vital to the day-to-day function of a city... the EMTs, bus drivers, carpenters, police officers, and mechanics. These (and countless others) are all noble professions vital to any community. It sends the very wrong kind of message when a city forces out its lower-wage residents.

But this is no reason to stop progress in working-class neighborhoods. There is a right way to fix these areas. It can be cost effective and productive for the city, and it doesn't have to include wholesale outpricing of the neighborhood's residents. One such project in Southeast (tip: River East Idealist) has shown that an area can be rehabilitated while keeping the people who brought the sense of community there. The investment in the Wheeler Terrace development was largely the product of the residents, who, faced with losing their homes to gentrification, fought to have their development refurbished instead of razed in favor of luxury condos.

Though this level of community activism is admirable, it shouldn't take this much effort for a struggling community (particularly one neglected by the city for so long) to keep their homes while the neighborhood recieves a makeover. Mixed use and mixed income ought to come with new developments, but older working-class residential developments should not be stomped out when a city gets refurbished. They ought to recieve the type of elbow grease that encourages their working class residents to want to live there, a sign that their city recognizes its need for a blue collar workforce

Car Oriented

I chose to live close to my work at Fort Meade thinking I would drive less. I live close to the base on which I work, and since there's bubkes for transit options to the base, I figure it is best to shorten my commute. It will save money. I'll drive less.

But instead I drive more, since I can't go anywhere from my Laurel neighborhood without driving... not even the grocery store two blocks away, as no sane person would attempt to cross Route 1 while carrying something. And considering that I'm a single 29 year old with an active social life, I like to venture out of Laurel as often as possible. I have a part-time night job in Bethesda, volunteer with a youth program in Silver Spring, I have a ton of friends that live in places like Capitol Hill, Rosslyn, and Dupont, my familiy lives mostly in Silver Spring, and I like to attend sporting events in DC and Landover. All of those locations have one distinct advantage over Laurel: Metro stations.

The buses on Route 1 is painfully slow even during off-peak hours. It doesn't run past 8pm, which is generally when I get off work, and is less reliable on the weekends. Greenbelt and Cheverly Metro stations are where I usually hop on the Metro if I'm going into DC or Virginia, but even those are 15 minute drives in light traffic.

I won't shy away from the fact that I enjoy a good glass of scotch or two from time to time, but I have to plan carefully if I want to go meet friends in Bethesda, Old Town, or H Street for a couple of drinks. Fact is, 100% of drunk drivers are driving at the time. I wonder how many DUI's Metro has prevented over the years.

I try to combine trips as often as possible, but walking anywhere from my house is laborious. There are no sidewalks in my neighborhood. Route 1, where every road in my neighborhood empties, has few sidewalks on my stretch and even fewer crosswalks. Most retail near me is hidden behind a sea of paking lots, including the moribund Laurel Mall, where I only shop when I am absolutely desperate (although here's a great secret: the Macy's there is always fully stocked because no one shops there).

For someone who hates paperwork as much as I do, driving is a nightmare. There is insurance, an expensive necessary evil to legally drive in most of the US. If you live anywhere near a city, the price goes up significantly. MVA (which is Marylandese for DMV) registration, tags, and drivers license are relatively cheap, but minor oversights are costly. Should insurance, tags, license, or registration lapse, there are heavy penalties. Then there is the occaisional parking ticket (I have had plenty at work when parking was particularly bad and I chanced it in a reserve space) and if you're really not paying attention, speed camera ($50 for 36 mph on Minnesota Avenue at 3 a.m. last month... I'm not complaining about speed cameras, but ouch).

The real cost of my car oriented lifestyle is huge. I make a decent living on a federal salary. I'm certainly not loaded, but I make a decent wage by most standards. My car is a modest American sedan that gets 30 mpg that I purchased used on a 5 year loan. My car payment, insurance, scheduled maintenance, and gas (to and from work ONLY, assuming $2/gal) eats up over 20% of my take home salary, which includes my federal salary, my VA disability, and my night job. I don't care how much anyone makes. 20% of any living wage is ludicrous. And that 20% doesn't include emergency repairs (like a new set of tires that wasn't covered by my insurance, $600), tickets, MVA fees, or gas to get anywhere besides work. And to add insult to injury, my tax dollars are now going to bail out the automakers. I already gave them my money when I purchased my car. Rest assured that when I purchase another one, it will not be a GM, Ford, or Chrysler.

That's 20% I can't spend on improving my house. If it comes down to it, an emergency repair on my car takes precedence over one for my house, because I can't get to work without my car. The irrational prioritization I am forced to uphold for my automobile is absurd, but it is a simple fact that most Americans take in stride. Supposedly offering the freedom of mobility, many Americans are in my position, and I consider myself a slave to my car.

Why did I take this in stride most of my life? I was raised in a car-oriented suburb in Silver Spring, a quarter mile from a Beltway exit. The only thing I could walk to from my house without a very long trek involving significant distance along a six lane highway was the community swimming pool, which of course was only open three months a year. I attended high school four miles from my house at a private school with no bus service. I would take Metrobus home from school often, however the school has since relocated far away from the a Metro station and I would not have that option today.

Furthermore, as Rob at Extraordinary Observations points out, previous generations (i.e., the parents who raised us) venerate automobiles. Cars were status symbols and not necessary evils. Where our parents dreamt of moving out to the suburbs, today's young adults are flocking back to the cities. To the Cold War generation, riding transit could be compared to people today who use Walkmans instead of iPods... it spurned progress while at the same time it was a sign of weakness. He also points out that young adults enter the work force from college with enormous debt, which most of our parents did not face. Six figure debt at age 23 is not uncommon in our society, as medical costs and especially college tuition increase have greatly outpaced income increases.

After high school I attended Montgomery College in Rockville, to which I drove, and worked at a store in Cleveland Park, to which I took Metro when feasible. After college, I joined the Army. I have repeatedly stated that it is nearly impossible to get by in the US Army without an automobile, an overpowering irony for the service that prides itself on "beating feet". So when I purchased my house five years ago, I thought I was doing the responsible thing living close to work. And perhaps, to a degree, I was. But living far from transit has cost me a great deal, even if I can't take transit to work.

Don't get me wrong, I love driving. I find it cathartic to be on an open road. For liesure, I used to drive out to northwestern Montgomery County and take in the sights. I always offer to drive on road trips. I love that I can hop in the car on a whim and go just about anywhere in America I choose. But there is a distinct difference between chosing to drive and being wholly dependent on an automobile. There is a difference between driving for leisure and driving because you are forced to drive.

Currently, the extra money that goes into driving is ironically prohibiting me from improving my location by moving somewhere more transit accessible. I probably will never give up driving, but I am committed to driving less. More importantly, I will continue to remind myself and those around me how expensive it can be when you lead a car-oriented lifestyle.

Home Sweet Home...

Laurel, MD 20707
Originally uploaded by rwilso_laurel

I bought my home in November 2003, at the very beginning of the housing bubble. I consider myself lucky. I had considered moving out and renting for a little while when I got out of the Army in 2005, and I wish I had. My house today is worth less than half what it was worth in when I got out of the Army. Thankfully, still slightly more than I paid for it.

I count my blessings that I wasn't one of the poor souls who got wrangled into a sub-prime mortgage. Considering that I was a naive 23 year old Army specialist when I purchased my house, I very well could have fallen for that. So I'm not on the streets, and I am not totally broke. I count my lucky stars for that.

But now I find myself in a different type of bad situation: one where I want to relocate, but I can't. Sure, it's an excellent time to buy. But even the most motivated seller would have a difficult time selling an old starter home behind the strip malls of Route 1. Tonight I realized just how stuck I really am, and I've all but abandoned my goal of moving by next summer, unless I hit the Powerball or find a much, much more lucrative career field.

I bought this house because of my job on Fort Meade (I'm a civilian now, I was in the Army then). I wasn't thinking that I would be here for a particularly long time, and I was hoping to relocate somewhere more convenient to Metro once I got established in my civilian position. Of course, with the minimal transit capacity on Fort Meade, living near Metro would do me little good, though I might be able to take MARC to work once in a while if I'm in a pinch. The 3 mile shuttle ride from the MARC station to my building is long, infrequent, and inconvenient, and doesn't mesh with my later work schedule, but there are days where anything is better than spending half an hour looking for parking in a lot comparable in size to the lot at FedEx Field for a space that is likely to be virtually inaccessible when I get out of work at 9pm and several of the access gates are long closed.

The parking situation alone leaves me bewildered at people who oppose having Metro come out to Fort Meade, where there are 50,000 jobs plus several thousand more across the B-W Parkway (mostly government contractors, not unlike parts of Tyson's Corner). This massive job center has virtually zero direct transit access (very few shuttles from Savage and Odenton MARC stations), and literally thousands of acres of Fort Meade have been converted to parking lots in order to maintain growth.

Alas, I'm a slave to my car, which soaks up so much of my income that I can't afford to invest the money into the house that I would like in order to sell. Not the worst problem in the world, but just another way the bad economy is hurting an average joe.

Imagine River Terrace

GreaterGreaterWashington thinks there should be a Metro station there. So does BeyondDC. Track Twenty-Nine envisions four Metro lines going right through that area. It's a little over two miles from the Capitol, on top of a freeway and an existing Metro station, scenically located next to the Anacostia River and the Arboretum, and a walk across the bridge to RFK Stadium. River Terrace a prime piece of real estate in the world's most powerful city. Why then, is it so blighted?

How about a coal power plant? And not one of the new, waste-recovery coal power plants. This one dates back to 1906. Though it only runs on the hottest and coldest of days when the city burns more energy, it blankets the surrounding communities with an average of 1,000 pounds of carbon smog a day, causing neighborhood residents to be 3 to 5 times more likely to have cancer, asthma or bronchitis than any other group of people in the city.

Maybe it's the housing projects. The Great Society-era Mayfair projects were home to Marvin Gaye, but I submit that their location and orientation do little to empower low income residents on the eastern bank of the Anacostia. At the very least, they do less than they could. Though close to Minnesota Avenue Metro Station, they are isolated from amenities and their surrounding communities. Affordable housing in this case is a sentence to a blighted campus of garden apartments disconnected from the rest of the city.

What if Goerge Gurley and the African American Environmental Association succeeded in having this plant shut down? What if the housing projects were redeveloped into a walkable neighborhood with ample connections to the surrounding neighborhoods? What if mixed-income and mixed-use came together on top of a new Metro station? Construct a marina and other local amenities, offer modest leases for local businesses, and tax breaks for minority and veteran business owners, and then you have my vision of a new River Terrace and Mayfair:

Red - Residential
Blue - Commercial
Yellow - Civic
Green - Parkland
Orange - Transit

As always, the disclaimer

The orange on the left would be the River Terrace Metro Station, Blue and Orange Lines, perhaps a street car or two. A station with multiple lines on the east side of the Anacostia River, what a novel idea. To the north of it, a classical transit-oriented development with office over retail inside of residential units of gradually decreasing density.

Mayfair would (almost) completely torn down and redeveloped into an actual community rather than a dumping ground of cheap housing. I'm picturing townhouses and walk-up apartments, perhaps some street level retail. Yes, we should actually put jobs near cheap housing. Mayfair would be more oriented towards the Minnesota Avenue station, however good street connectivity would allow a variety of transit options.

The bit of commercial along the riverfront would include a marina and perhaps a fishing pier. This could be the primary attraction/amenity for the development. It would certainly be a lot more eco-friendly than a coal burning power plant.

Most importantly, if something like this is to happen to a neighborhood, it has to happen without displacing the current residents. Give the folks in Mayfair first crack at the moderatly priced River Terrace development, then redevelop Mayfair, keeping the area available to nearby residents of DC. Businesses should be heavily favored toward River Terrace, Mayfair, and Deanwood residents.

Now, what about the displaced power supply? Perhaps this could be supplemented by new nuclear plants in more remote Maryland and Virginia locations. Perhaps throw some windmills down at the Blue Plains Water Treatment Plant further down the river. But whether or not this part of town is developed, that power plant has to go. I'm all for coal power over other fossil fuels, but certainly not in the middle of the Capital City, and definitely not in a neighborhood where its presence purports a sense of inequality for the predominantly black neighborhoods east of the Anacostia.

Possible? Likely? Does anyone know of any plans to develop this power plant? Or to replace it? I'd love to see more info on it.

Affordable Housing

Just Up The Pike, who often writes about Moderately Priced Dwelling Units (MPDU's, a county initiative to provide more affordable housing) in eastern Montgomery County, recently wrote a post where he referred to eastern MoCo as a "dumping ground" for cheap housing. There's much controversy over MDPU's as the county struggles to walk the line of providing affordable housing while catering to the affluent populace of the county. Often it becomes a heated argument.

I work with a lot of families from MDPU's along US 29. I don't think the issue is with smaller, affordable housing bringing lower income residents, but with how the housing is laid out. Clearly there is not enough affordable housing in the county, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing things like this. JUTP provides a great take on ancillary dwelling units in traditional suburban neighborhoods, which in my opinion are a very good thing. But they will not satisfy the need for afforable housing in the region.

Briggs Chaney is a great example of how poorly MDPU's and other "affordable housing" can be thrown down into the suburban landscape. It is somewhat dense, but car oriented. It is an area that is seriously lacking in amenities. But thousands of people cram into garden apartments that isolate the lower middle class in a bubble of "lower class-ness", disconnected from their neighbors. If these MDPU's are for lower income residents, why do virtually all of them assume the occupants will own a car? None of them in East MoCo are near Metro stations. Often it is cumbersome to leave the apartment complex by foot. They absolutely discourage walking and transit.

This causes a number of problems from an urbanist standpoint. It creates traffic, wastes land, and is overall inefficient. But from a socio-economic standpoint, it lowers the quality of life of the occupants. Forcing car ownership (and more importantly, more car trips) creates a financial strain on people living in these complexes. Their concentration and isolation effectively make them watered down housing projects. And they're all over the region. Areas like this leave people to fester without mobility or cultural enrichment, and it's a given that there will be a subsequent rise in crime.

Why not try an experiment with MDPU's in a dense grid layout near a major bus route? Throw a discount grocery store and some essential commerce within walking distance and see if we don't create a neighborhood where lower income residents don't seem quite so scary to the folks in the McMansions on the other side of the highway. Scaled, walkable communities for lower income residents increase the residents' economic power, thereby allowing them to contribute more economically to the community around them, raising the quality of life, making their communities fit better into the fabric of the region.

Sequestering lower income residents to a concentrated homogeneous development that is isolated from the rest of the community and near few jobs has been done before. In the old days they called these developments "housing projects" and they were colossal failures. Cabrini Green in Chicago proved that mixed income housing is the best way to go. But we must remember that dropping a couple of isolated garden apartments in the middle of a bunch of McMansions is not mixed-income housing.

Good places to start, perhaps:
-The mall in Wheaton would be a great place to transform into a mixed-use live-work-shop area, with MDPU's to cater to the sizable Central American and Southeast Asian populations there. It's also right on top of transit.
-The empty space across the train tracks from Montgomery College in Rockville would be great. It's close to Derwood Industrial Park, and a Metro station could be placed right there.
-In PG, Brentwood and North Brentwood along Route 1 are full of empty industrial buildings. This is a major bus route with good access into the city. Couldn't there be some affordable apartments placed fronting the street, perhaps with some ground floor retail?
-In the District, the layout is there in most of the city. But Ward 8 looks more like a suburb than anything else. I don't believe this area needs gentrification so much as a better urban design. Keep placing affordable housing down there. Just make more efficient use of the land.
-Alexandria should include affordable housing in the Potomac Yards development. This might be in the works, I don't know. The same is true for Konterra.
-Fairfax County ought to look into the placement of affordable housing in Tysons Corner after the Silver Line is built.
-Have ideas? Share them.

Mixed use transit oriented development is a good thing. It works all over the region, and it creates a much more efficient cost of living. Sprinkling garden apartments in spread out areas far from decent transit, commerce, jobs, and amenities will only perpetuate a cycle of poor for the lower income residents of Montgomery County and the DC Metropolitan area.