40 mm 071816

Monday Mailing

Year 23 • Issue 40 18 July 2016 1.

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Bike Parking: How Can Something so Simple Go so wrong?

A New Life for Urban Alleys Why Solar Power is Still Waiting For ‘Liftoff’ in Texas The Sharing Economy Comes to Urban Public Schools Can the “Playable City” Make Smart City Critics Smile?

Senators Introduce Bill To Halt Anticompetitive Activities Of USDA Checkoff Programs Resources for Finding and Creating Images for Promotional Materials US Cycling From a Dutch Perspective Designing an Active, Healthier City Reorienting Our Discussion of City Growth Free Webinar: Entrepreneurial Growth – After Startup

1. Bike Parking: How Can Something so Simple Go so wrong?

Every bicyclist knows the feeling of rolling up to a destination and finding a bad rack. Stranded and forced to make do with whatever’s around, you grudgingly lock to a pole, a fence, or (the worst case scenario) a young tree. It happens all the time, and especially at popular events, can make parking your bike into a chaotic free-for-all.

It’s ironic because bike parking is so cheap. While the average car parking-space costs start at around $10,000 per space and escalates quickly, good bike parking might cost about $100 and use a fraction of the real estate. So how can something so simple go so awry?

These days, things are beginning to change, especially for bicycling attractions like stadiums and breweries. In cities like Minneapolis, businesses and destinations are starting to pay attention to the basics of bike parking and seeing the benefits of well-designed racks.

Quote of the Week: “To find yourself, think for yourself” ~Socrates Oregon Fast Fact: High above the city of Portland the International Rose Test Garden features more than 500 varieties of roses cultivated continuously since 1917.

To access the full story, click here.

2. A New Life for Urban Alleys The alley is dark no longer.

In the United States, these almost-accidental spaces between buildings have existed in a sort of limbo: not quite streets, but still thoroughfares; not private, but not public enough to feel protected; backdrops to crime, or filled with trash heaps.

But as cities grow increasingly strapped for space, neglecting these narrow streets is no longer a viable option. Cities from Los Angeles to Baltimore to Seattle are rethinking their alleyways and transforming dead ends into into places of connectivity and productivity.

To access the full story, click here.

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3. Why Solar Power is Still Waiting For ‘Liftoff’ in Texas Lincoln Clean Energy swooped into Texas last year with plans to build the state’s largest solar farm, a $320 million project covering 2,400 acres in the Texas Panhandle and capable of powering 40,000 homes — even on the hottest days.

But more than six months after construction was scheduled to begin, ceremonial shovels have yet to break ground on the Nazareth Solar project about 60 miles south of Amarillo. The problem: No one wants to buy the electricity.

To access the full story, click here.

4. The Sharing Economy Comes to Urban Public Schools Uber, Airbnb, WeWork: every day, entrepreneurs find new ways to diffuse the ownership of expensive infrastructure in order to drive down prices.

But while today’s sharing economy tends to focus on individual consumers, the concept could find creative new applications in the public sector. For example, urban schools contain many different programs and functions (libraries, green outdoor space, event spaces) that are often duplicated down the block by another municipal agency. Why not just share the infrastructure?

Luis Collado, a principal at Chicago’s STL Architects, calls this approach “breaking the school”: atomizing the facility’s secondary functions and sharing them with the surrounding neighborhood in ways that benefit students and their neighbors alike.

The firm has spent the past few years exploring this idea.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Can the “Playable City” Make Smart City Critics Smile?

Imagine a city where, as you walk along the sidewalk, you can see the moving shadows of pedestrians who preceded you. A city where you can exchange text messages with lampposts, where poems appear in light on waterways, and pipes emit music.

Such urban whimsy would constitute a “playable city,” according to the UK-based organization Watershed. All of the above concepts were either winners or finalists in Watershed’s Playable City Award, now in its second year. (This year’s winner, the shadow project, was announced earlier this month.) The goal of the award is to encourage use of technology to foster an engaging and playful urban environment. According to Watershed’s website, “A Playable City is a city where people, hospitality and openness are key, enabling its residents and visitors to reconfigure and rewrite its services, places and stories.”

To access the full story, click here.

6. Senators Introduce Bill To Halt Anticompetitive Activities Of USDA Checkoff Programs Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Senator Corey Booker (D-New Jersey) this morning introduced the Commodity Checkoff Program Improvement Act of 2016 that would require a new level of transparency and oversight for United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) checkoff boards.

The bill would prohibit checkoff programs from engaging in anticompetitive activities or disparaging rival products or commodities.

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The nation’s 22 checkoff boards promote individual agricultural commodities such as lamb, peanuts, avocados, pork, potatoes and cotton, and are probably best known for creating promotional campaigns for beef (It’s What’s for Dinner), eggs (The Incredible Edible Egg) and dairy (Got Milk?).

The USDA oversees checkoff programs and collects the mandatory fees from producers.

According to Senator Lee’s statement, the bill is a “direct response” to anticompetitive activities uncovered last year at the American Egg Board, which Lee called, “a classic case of Big Government and Big Business working together to squeeze out smaller rivals and squelch innovation.” The proposed changes are “designed to improve checkoff board behavior and avoid similar conduct in the future.”

To access the full story, click here.

7. Resources for Finding and Creating Images for Promotional Materials Images help bring your story to life and you can use them on almost all your promotional materials such as fliers, websites, videos, newsletters, and social media. If your program is just getting started, you can use stock photos to spruce up your marketing materials. If you have your own, you can edit them using free tools available online.

To access this resource, click here.

8. US Cycling From a Dutch Perspective While a delegation from Portland Oregon was visiting my hometown’s-Hertogenbosch and some other places in the Netherlands to experience Dutch cycling, I was looking at cycling in the United States. Not that that was the main goal of my journey -I was in the US for a self-paid holiday and to visit friends- but I couldn’t help seeing and recording what some of the cycling and the infrastructure was like. (Video at the end of this post.)

Of course I know it is not really possible to say something in general about “cycling in the US”.

There are many different places with very different cycling cultures. But I have now visited the US so often and I have been in so many places, that I do observe some general patterns that I think may be interesting to share.

The main difference between the US and the Netherlands is that cycling is not seen as transportation in the US by the general public. Only very few people use the bicycle to go from A to B for their daily business. For the average American cycling is something kids do or when you do cycle as an adult, it is mainly for recreational purposes. And you dress up for the part: wearing hi-viz, a helmet, with a bicycle to match, one the Dutch would call a ‘race bike’.

To access the full story (and video), click here.

9. Designing an Active, Healthier City Despite a firm reputation for being walkers, New Yorkers have an obesity epidemic on their hands.

Lee Altman, a former employee of New York City’s Department of Design and Construction, explains it this way: “We did a very good job at designing physical activity out of our daily lives.”

According to the city’s health department, more than half of the city’s adult population is either overweight (34 percent) or obese (22 percent), and the convenience of their environment has contributed to this. “Everything is dependent on a car, elevator; you sit in front of a computer,” said Altman, “not moving around a lot.”

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This is not just a New York phenomenon. Mass urbanization has caused populations the world over to reduce the amount of time they spend moving their bodies. But the root of the problem runs deep in a city’s infrastructure.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Reorienting Our Discussion of City Growth Every few months, the U.S. Census releases new data on population change, chronicling the rise and fall of America’s cities, counties, and regions as they grow and shrink. The data are fascinating, bringing us useful insights about migration flows and economic shifts. They also point to fundamental changes in the places Americans live: Houston over Chicago, Phoenix over Philadelphia, and so on. And they produce breathless news reports that emphasize that the fastestgrowing places are 15 cities you’ve never heard of.

Yet as data are released and evaluated, the trends as described by the levels of information presented by the Census often fail to directly represent underlying facts about how cities are changing–or they at least do not do so adequately. Comparing the changes in population size in the Birmingham and Buffalo regions, for example, explains very little about the health of their respective center cities.

Comparing how the cities of Houston and New York have grown overall tells us little about how their in-town neighborhoods have held up over time.

To access the full story, click here.

11. Free Webinar: Entrepreneurial Growth – After Startup While we know startups are important to job creation, what about those companies that grow?

Growth entrepreneurship contributes to the economy through job creation, innovation and wealth.

And according to new research from the Kauffman Foundation, growth is happening in cities from coast to coast and in between – beyond Silicon Valley and Cambridge.

In this recorded webinar and accompanying slides, Kauffman Foundation entrepreneurship, research and policy experts share data and insights on how growth entrepreneurship is faring in your city and state and get insights on how to strengthen growth entrepreneurship in your ecosystem.

To access this webinar, click here.

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