Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses at Lovely Lane

It is quite unusual to have two international star architects debating each other in Baltimore and share their diametrically opposed views in a church filled almost to capacity in spite of St Patrick's Day with the audience cheering on each side as if it were a presidential debate.

But that is precisely what happened when Elizabeth Plater Zyberk (Duany Plater Zyberk, Miami) and Thom Mayne (Morphosis, LA) ended a day of touring Baltimore with a round of fiery arguments about urbanism. 

Tom Mayne, Elizabeth Plater Zyberk and Kelly Cross
(photo ArchPlan Inc.)

It wasn't the American Institute of Architects, Morgan State or the University of Maryland who brought these cult figures of architecture to Baltimore but Kelly Cross, a local layer and glamour networker who is president of the Old Goucher Community Association. His worldwide networking also brought to the Lovely Lane Church Grażyna Kulczyk, a Polish investor and art collector and one of Poland's the wealthiest businesswomen as well as Maryland's First Lady, Yumi Hogan. Kelly Cross is running for his district's city council seat. 

The evening had been billed as a panel discussion about "Baltimore's Future Growth and Development" but it was really more an argument between two old lions of architecture with Baltimore as the backdrop.

Kelly Cross had shown them the City Jail, posing the question of its future in light of Governor Hogan's demolition funding which would wipe out a large portion of the old castle style buildings. Cross would like the old jail preserved, the active jail functions relocated and the JFX lowered so that the city could weave back together where it is now separated. But the guests were not easily lured into such details of Baltimore politics, at least not before first clearing up some of their more general views on urbanism.

Prison complex. Demolition in red. (Department of Corrections)

Plater Zyberk served up the comfort food of the Congress for New Urbanism which she and her husband Andres Duany founded and branded. A perfected closed system with a canon of rules, terms and edicts almost as watertight as a catholic encyclical.

New Urbanists revolutionized how developers do new developments in the last twenty-five years to a point where almost all major new subdivisions follow at least a part of the rule set emulating old towns, villages and hamlets. Mayne used these terms at one point to state they were not relevant anymore ("We don't play stickball in the streets anymore") upon which Plater Zyberk gleefully remarked, "he knows this stuff".

Cross playing moderator asked his guests how New Urbanism applies to Baltimore. Zyberk answered "I will talk about something else" but essentially asnwered the question by saying "don't mix up new and old everywhere. Preserve historic and even rebuild, even if it is heresy for an architect to say. Be as respectful as you can with the old, that is what makes your place special." Mostly mild mannered, she allowed this fairly stark criticism: "Don't just keep muddling along as you have done in the last 30 years". 

Tom Mayne delighted even more in throwing verbal bombs like "history is dead", a statement that landed like a dud under the painted ceiling of the 1884 Romanesque church designed by famed architect Stanford White. He explained "I am not here to tell you how great your city is and how wonderful you are. The history is not the issue. Your issue is contemporary. Cities are the product of cultural, social and political will. We live in a culture that is experimenting, a confluence of many cultures. Later he added "I am a mutt. There isn't even a common idea of culture. This isn't Paris. San Gimignano [an Italian hill-town in Italy] is not the world we live in."

Lovely Lane Church, (photo Chapman)

When Zyberk allowed that Baltimore with 600,000 residents isn't comparable to Hongkong, Shanghai, Sao Paulo or these other mega cities that Mayne had posited as proof of a new complexity, Mayne responded: "600,000 people is not a village. If you think you understand this city, you are way beyond me". Mayne sees mistakes as inevitable because "these are complex problems". He kept pointing to global shifts. "If we are looking globally we [in the US] are as comfortable as can be." He left6 open why, then, these mega cities were so imprtant for Baltimore, a question that Zyberk asked repeatedly.

As an example of sustainable technology that could come to the rescue Mayne spoke about his Tesla automobile that is fully electric and faster than a Porsche. "Well maybe the $250,000 price isn't so sustainable" he admitted when he saw a lot of incredulous stares.

Zyberk insisted that one can be a small town and still be a globalist. "You are a midsize city of neighborhoods, you are still like a bunch of villages. It's not over". She mentioned New Urbanist godfather Aldo Rossi and his term of Analogous City in which he says "you can have moments of coherence". Asked about the Governor's large demolition budget for Baltimore's neighborhoods, she cautioned that "demolition should be done with place-making in mind, it needs to be done surgically, not by engineering standards". Mayne observed that we "haven't learned to deal with shrinkage".

This got Mayne going about leadership and how it takes big interventions to make a difference, that the small thinking was exactly the problem. "If you don't have broad leadership you don't need to worry about the front yard because you don't have a city."

At which point Zyberk dryly remarked: "You are Robert Moses and I am Jane Jacobs", a summation that seemed to capture the two positions quite well but also illuminated the fact that these were mostly yesterday's wars. The real Baltimore is in a different place as several members of the audience interjected at various times.

Finally speaking about the prison, both panelists got very thoughtful and quiet.

Zyberk: "The suffering that this place represents needs a [future] use that doesn't just forget about the history it represents. The granite building has a future. It reminds me of the power plant at the river Thames in London." About Baltimore's only protected bike lane: "The beautiful bike path along there is so sad because of what it runs along, the prison, the highway, but there is a river underneath and value to be uncovered".

Mayne spoke about the high US incarceration rates and ruminated about a visit with young men at risk in Bridgeport the day before as part of his role with the Presidential Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. "I don't want to see these young men in these cells". About the prospect of preserving parts of the prison he said: "The walk of the prison was difficult. We cannot separate architecture from what it represents. ...The prison as a museum.... it needs to be put into a larger context. One building doesn't change the city." Eventually he roused again to his energetic and optimistic view of things: "It would take outrageous optimism to do this [the prison]. Turning this around would be an amazing statement. If you have the will and desire anything can happen." he exclaimed echoing a very American form of idealism.

It remained unclear if Polish investor and art lover Grażyna Kulczyk shared the optimism and would consider investing in Baltimore or the jail re-use as an art museum, one of Kelly Cross' motives of bringing her here.

Mayne after the talk with Morgan students
(photo ArchPlan Inc.)

After the talk a whole class of Morgan architecture students mobbed Thom Mayne and hung on his lips. Now the two speakers were more like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The old men of the fights of the seventies seem to become popular again.

"It's not the biggest or the strongest but the most able to adapt" he quoted Darwin and obviously invigorated by the young people around him veered back to his favorite topic of our multi-cultural world. "If my students mention God," he said emphatically, "I always ask back, whose god? Whatever god they believe in, there are bound to be many others who believe in another god, if they believe in one at all". Rebel-rouser in a church.

I had spent the morning of the same day at the SEAM conference jointly organized by MICA and Hopkins students as part of their joint program teaching "human centered design". I felt that what I had learned there was more relevant than this evening duel of the legends.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Poverty in Baltimore County and how to address it with housing

Judging from the online comments under an article on the SUN website about the HUD settlement agreement with Baltimore County one would think that all of the County's poverty and problems come from the City. But that is as false as the idea that all of the nation's problems come from Mexico. Building a wall won't help in either case.

Baltimore County will now start to lose its middle class blacks, other minorities and whites who will be moving out to avoid the troubles of the city which caused them to move away from originally! 
Because they will fear real estate values plummeting, schools lowering standards, drugs and crime activity increasing, they will move to other counties or even out of Maryland. This is the Federal government's renewed focus on forcing housing integration as they did busing back in the 60s and... (Mimi Barron)

The commenters overlook that the County has its own poverty, pretty much like any jurisdiction in America and it is a growing segment of the population that falls into that category. The County is also growing more diverse, just like the rest of America. Which gets to the matter of race which lies at the root of the complaint against the County. 

Blue: Baltimore County: Rising poverty levels

As the SUN has pointed out in its editorial and Dan Rodrick's commentary, the settlement aims to curb longstanding   race discrimination against black families in Baltimore County's housing policies. The County administration isn't coming to this settlement with enthusiasm and it remains to be seen, how well the elements of the agreement will be implemented.

No matter on where one stands on HUD's current housing policies, affirmative action or race integration, it is important to understand that the problem of housing for the poor or for minorities doesn't go away by simply not providing public housing or affordable housing or continue to discriminate. Ignoring to supply decent affordable housing for all will result in slumlords taking up the demand, further racial segregation, and decrepit conditions creeping into previously healthy communities. By contrast, well managed affordable, diverse housing provides a stepping stone for residents and can be an asset to any community as Montgomery County's inclusionary zoning and integrated affordable housing demonstrates.

I have asked my friend and legal expert Ben Groff who edits my weekly blogs to summarize the facts of the settlement. Here his synopsis:

The settlement with Baltimore Neighborhoods and the specific complainants has general and specific provisions.  The general provisions include an acknowledgement by the County that it has an affirmative duty not to discriminate or to retaliate against a person filing a complaint.

The specific provisions include causing

• development of 1000 new "Hard Units" over 12 years,

•  a concerted effort over multiple years and administrations if necessary to pass a county law banning source of income discrimination,

• the setting up of a Mobility Counseling Program to market and provide to families in need of housing units resulting in 2000 new families finding housing via housing choice vouchers (HCV) or other similar program,

• the creation of a Modification Fund for accessibility improvements budgeting $300,000 per year,

• creation of a new position in the Office of Housing called the Reasonable Accommodations coordinator, and other updates and reforms to county policies.

Both the new Hard Units and vouchers are to be geographically distributed among a number of higher income census tracts identified in two tables attached to the agreement as Exhibit F.  Exhibit F, Table A census tracts are the most desirable, and a cap of 142 of the total new Hard Units can be placed in a secondary set of census tracts in Exhibit F, Table B.  

All of the 2000 families utilizing the Mobility Counseling program should find housing in the Exhibit F, Table A census tracts.  To incentivize creation of Hard Units, the county will budget $3 million of its own funds (not from state, federal, or philanthropic source) per year for 10 years to entice private development. 

The Hard Units can be new construction, substantial rehabilitation, acquisition, or existing housing stock, so long as the County makes a good faith effort at even geographic distribution.  

opportunity map 

• 650 of the units should be new construction or substantial rehabilitation for families with household income less than 60% of area median income (AMI) and

• 150 of the units should be new construction or substantial rehabilitation for families at less than 30% AMI.  

• Overall, a total of 30% of the units should be affordable for 30% AMI families and the remainder affordable to 60% AMI families.

• 100 Hard Units must be accessible units, and no more than 10 accessible units may be located in a given census tract.  

• 500 Hard Units must be three or more bedrooms, and no Hard Units can be zero bedroom, efficiency, or single resident occupant (SRO).

Requirements for marketing of both the new Hard Units and the new HCVs under the Mobility Counseling program exist to ensure that the programs are marketing to those with housing need based on income or disability.  

The County must require from developers the preparation of a Conciliation Agreement Marketing Plan ensuring marketing of new units to African-American families using HCVs, African-American families at less than 60% AMI and no HCV, or those families with at least one member who requires a housing unit due to a disability.

Exhibit E lists 9 existing public housing properties that must be preserved by the County and cannot count as Hard Units, however, public housing constructed prior to 1988 or 1991 may be repurposed to meet the requirements.  

After 120 days of signing the Agreement, the County must submit to HUD its strategies to ensure geographic dispersal of units among the identified census tracts and to avoid "undu[e] concentrat[ion]." (Ben Groff, JD)

The referenced exhibit F shows the census tract numbers where the required affordable units can be located. Since a translation of those numbers into a map exceeds the possibilities of this blog, I include an opportunity map of the region that show the areas of higher and lower opportunity in City and County which are a relatively good approximation to where the settlement  allows locating affordable units (in areas of opportunity).

I will prepare a more comprehensive discussion about "poverty and race in the suburbs" for an upcoming weekly blog.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Updated for a better understanding of the race component in the complaint 

Graphics taken from a presentation prepared by Barbara Hopkins, JD, Executive Director of NeighborSpace Baltimore County

 Magnitude of the Public Policy Challenges in Baltimore County

Finally Movement in Baltimore's Bikeshare

Baltimore is poised to select today the  company Bewegen as its bikeshare operator. Bewegen is German (and Dutch) for to move. After six years of false starts (for details read the SUN article) there is now finally movement (Bewegung) in Baltimore's bikeshare program.

Who has ever undocked one of those Capital Bikeshare bikes in Washington DC (or any of the many other programs around the country) knows, that those bikeshare bicycle models are sturdy, clunky and heavy and can get a rider who isn't all that fit easily into a sweat. In spite of the general popularity of bike-share, that may turn many potential users many off.

Bewegen Bike

This is where Baltimore's favored system may come with a special twist: Bewgen is a specialist for for the e-bike. The e-bike, a bicycle with electric assist, are all the rage in Europe but haven't caught on here yet. E-bike bring those to bicycling who are afraid of sweat, hills and looking ridiculous when they have to pedal too quick or too hard. With the electric assist they still pedal like others, but the harder the push into the pedal the more electric power is added, in other words, one never has to pedal too hard, never beyond a certain force, not even uphill. Coll, huh?

The reason why adding e-bikes to the menu of mobility options is that it could be a great way to get additional demographics to use bikes that would otherwise show the velocipede the cold shoulder. The more comfortable e-bike also has great potential for covering "the last mile" between the last transit stop and the final destination. MTA is currently studying how it can best augment the City bike-share launch with stations at important transit stops.

Bewegen North America is headquartered in Quebec, Canada. The electric bike is a development of Miele (known for its washing machines).

 We wanted to pay tribute to the Netherlands as the pioneers of bike-sharing and of bicycle commuting. We decided on this unique name: Bewegen. Bewegen is simply the verb “to move’’ in Dutch and German. We integrated a lightning bolt into the word to make our logo and to link it with our product. (Bewegen partner Ayotte)

Bike-share is part of the so called "sharing economy" in which individuals avoid burdensome large investments in self owned  software, or consumer objects such as bikes, cars or even houses in favor of leasing, renting or "sharing". Bikeshare allows the user to either not own a bike and still use one, or avoids the schlep of the own bike to work or the errands in the urban core and avoiding the risk of theft of a potentially valuable item. (Bike prices have gone nothing but up). Bewegen and its product were first presented at the Pro Walk-Pro Bike-Pro Place conference in Pittsburgh in 2013. Since then the company has landed a few contracts in US cities including Richmond, VA and Birmingham, AL.

The docking station of Bewegen, touted to be very mobile

Another twist to the car share systems proliferating around the world is the newly announced Lyft and GM collaboration. In the traditional Lyft and Uber model, a car owner "shares" his vehicle by using it parts of the week as a taxi. In the new Lyft/GM model, the car isn't owned at all anymore but offered by GM for a fee or even free to those who want to use it as a driver for Lyft. Obviously, car companies around the world are worried about who will by their products in a time of sharing. Daimler Benz' Car-To-Go and GM's Lyft adventure are attempts to position the companies in the new economy and also prepare for the self driving car.


Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Link: Bewegen
BBJ article
SUN article

Capital Bikeshare in DC

Two-way on St Paul and Calvert Streets?

The public comments period for this one way to two way street conversion study will end on March 18. Then BC-DOT chief William Johnson will have to decide the matter and regardless on which side he will come down on the two-way versus one-way issue, he will make many enemies.

Not that the City DOT needs any extra enemies. The department is perceived as out of control, rudderless, understaffed and not delivering on all kinds of policies that are somewhere on the books but not realized such as "complete streets" or "bike corridors". Bike-share apparently moving off this list soon. But I am digressing.

From the study appendix (Sabra Wang)

So in the vague hope of becoming more pedestrian friendly and doing residents along the arteries of St. Paul and Calvert Streets a favor, DOT engaged Sabra Wang, the City's favorite traffic engineers and transportation consultants, (they seem to currently study everything from the closure of the dogleg at McKeldin Plaza to bus-only lanes) to look into what would happen if those two streets were converted from being a pair of one-ways to being a pair of two-ways.

The nays have it

Of course, there was plenty of outreach, a special working group was created and everything under the sun was studied, whether it made sense or not, including elimination of parking on those streets where residents had fought for decades to get it (unrestricted and even during rush hour) in the first place, turn lanes and other suburban interventions. What wasn't studied, was the rather obvious matter of looking at the entire transportation corridor with adjacent Charles Street (a one way street) and the other one-way pair of streets dealing also with north-south traffic, Park Avenue and Cathedral Streets. All these streets and also Howard Street share the task of digesting north-south traffic and none of them should be looked at in isolation.

Opinions on the Steering Committee and in the communities were starkly divided from the beginning. Some say this is a solution looking for a problem in Midtown and Mount Vernon, areas with a high quality of life which are thriving by all accounts with the Barclay and Charles Village communities to the north being on an uptick. Some others, especially Charlie Duff of the Central Baltimore Partnership, considers the existing streets as "traffic raceways" and, with an eye on Barclay and Charles Village, says that "residents have been discriminated against in favor of commuters". He is strongly in favor of traffic calming and two-way traffic. From the poll published in the latest DOT Newsletter, proponents of the conversion seem to be in the minority, though.

The majority of users are not out of town commuters

The 530 page final report is online and can be found here. A form for last minute comments are here. As these polls go, they are subject to who feels most compelled to respond, so here is a chance to tip the scales.

The report shows that the matter is complicated and that it can be made even more complicated if a study is not guided by very clear principles and goals and is controlled by traffic engineers and not planners. As it is, the study says that two-way conversion will increase both trip times and the number of "failing intersections". Both of these are classic traffic engineering metrics which are pretty meaningless when it comes to the goal of making a residential neighborhood more livable. But as the polling results show, the clamor for additional livability isn't very strong and there appears to be a pretty strong segment of even residents that oppose the conversion, possibly because residents are drivers, too. Of course, bicyclists, pedestrians and transit users would be affected, too, although how is not summarized in quite the same neat manner as grade F intersections or car driver travel time in the corridor.

I think my daughter (who lives on St Paul Street) may have it right, the money should have been invested in one of the neighborhoods in distress, and there not on a study but actual improvements. As far as traffic calming and complete streets, I believe that money used on experiments and temporary experimental installations would be better spent than on 18 months of data collection which is now in the hands of a director who may not even be in office anymore by the time it is time for implementation. I don't think the report contains ideas for the case that the two-way conversion is rejected.

Trip time: Not necessarily the most telling metric

My suggestion for that case: Keep it one-way but take down almost all signals in favor of 4 way stops. That will slow traffic, avoid unnecessary delays at red lights when nobody comes from the other direction and gives pedestrians a better chance to cross.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

To TIF or not to TIF?

For years it was sad to see the City's beggar mentality and the delight of getting just any development at all, no matter how inferior.

For years communities have complained that developers get incentives and subsidies shoved up their rear ends while neighborhoods go to the dogs. Lately the difference between what the City ought to collect in taxes and what it actually did collect resulted in a State funding reduction for schools. (HB 285 by Delegate Maggie Mackintosh seeks to change that).

For years disparities in the performance of rich and poor neighborhoods in health, education, crime, trash, transportation and any number of metrics have grown not shrunk.

So here comes billionaire Kevin Plank and wants over half a billion dollars in tax breaks from the City for a shiny new town in South Baltimore. The answer should be clear, shouldn't it?

Park overlay for the proposed masterplan

But the matter isn't suitable for easy bi-polar discussions such as downtown versus neighborhoods, rich versus poor, white versus black or high profits versus excellence.

Under Amour's development arm, Sagamore, has proposed a project that is without precedent in Baltimore in scope, scale and the size of the tax increment financing they propose. Even the Charles Center, Inner Harbor re-development, although similar in size, doesn't quite work as a comparison. Too much have the role of the City and the funding sources changed. Gone are the days of big community block grants and other federal largess meant to prop up ailing US cities suffering from the still prevailing lopsided policies favoring single family homes in the suburbs and single occupant gasoline powered cars.

As the Baltimore SUN reports, the Sagamore TIF request has squarely landed in the final stage of the mayoral primaries contest with candidates of all stripes trying to be tough on Plank. Workforce development, local hiring, minority participation, community benefits are the most popular requirements candidates suggest as condition for any TIF. The economists quoted by the SUN seem to agree that it is time that the City asserts itself and put tough standards in place.

Certainly, no City should forgo half a billion of possible taxes if it could collect those just the same without credits and incentives. The problem is that in order to know if a project could and would be realized without incentives, requires an insight into the developer's books that the public usually doesn't have and it requires knowledge about the future that neither the City nor the developer have.

Proposed view across the Middle Branch

Another issue is the quality of a project. As I reported here before, Sagamore's proposal for "Plank-Town" a 266 acres 9-13 million squarefoot mixed use "new-town" on mostly industrial land at the Baltimore Port Covington Middle Branch area uses top-notch consultants and seems to do everything according to the best currently available industry standards. "Complete streets, bikeways, pedestrian pathways, eco-zones, parks, stormwater cleaning and filtering, protective habitats and pleasant public overlooks over the water, it is all there. The development even proposes a light rail spur, water taxi piers and turning Hanover Street into an urban boulevard (the latter, so far, the least convincing part of the design proposal).

"It's a $300 billion company. It can build its own [infrastructure]. It doesn’t need us. If Sandtown, Penn North, Oliver and Broadway East get rebuilt first, then we’ll consider it." (Councilman Stokes).

Clearly, a lot of what the masterplan concepts proposes in the public roam is more than just "infrastructure" and belongs into the arena of things that traditionally were funded and constructed by the City: Streets, parks, public transit. Many of the noted items that are not needed to support the intended "global headquarters" of Under Armour, at least, not in the strict sense of pure functionality. In that sense Stokes" assertion that "The project meets none of the criteria" for tax-increment-financing is incorrect. Using future taxes to fund general  infrastructure improvements is certainly part of the original intent of  TIF legislation, especially since the planning area includes parcels not owned by Sagamore. Sagamore representatives, on the other hand, admitted that in order to attract the brightest and best qualified talent to Baltimore, they need to offer extraordinary amenities.

Mayoral candidate David Warnock is right that "We have been out-negotiated by these developers for years," and so is Catherine Pugh when she observes the proximity of severely distressed Cherry Hill just across the water from Port Covington.

Part of the Sagamore design team at UDARP review

While Baltimore could hardly wish for a more attractive way to expand, capitalize on more of its waterfront, and create jobs and economic development at the same time, the larger national picture of the rich getting richer, while the poor are stuck in ever more isolated neighborhoods of distress and innumerable pathologies, cannot be left out of the consideration. Especially not in Baltimore.

A Local Hire Law has been in effect since 2013, so are laws to include affordable housing (Inclusionary Zoning) and laws for minority participation.

Local Hire Law - The Council President's historic Local Hire law requires that 51 percent of new jobs created as a result of a contract awarded over $300,000 and public subsidies approved of $5 million or more be filled by Baltimore City residents. The bill was approved by the City Council on June 3, 2013 and became law on December 23, 2013 (Source)

What is in order is a meticulous analysis of the proposed project, the estimated cost and the benefits that the project promises. The TIF should be broken up into the phases with later TIF bonds being conditional on fulfilling the promises of the earlier ones. Public benefits and the quality of each element of the project need to be carefully codified. Pay-back rates for the municipal bonds should be shortened as much as possible so that tax benefits can be accrued to the City's budget earlier. These steps will take time, but they should be dealt with in urgency. It is in Baltimore's vital interest that Under Armour can grow and realize its campus.

Proposed perimeter park and look-out "perches"

It is unlikely that the City Council will wave a TIF bill right through before the elections. Sagamore probably knew that they will become a ball in the mayoral campaign and that it will be more likely than not, that a new Mayor will bring the matter to a close.

Voters better put a person into office that is up to that task.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

How to add 3000 households into previously dis-invested communities

Many residents of Baltimore know there is a Remington, Old Goucher, Charles Village, Barclay or Greenmount West. Only insiders and a few millennials would put any of those neighborhoods on their must-visit list, even though Remington has hit a certain notoriety as "up and coming" by now.

Even fewer people know that ten neighborhoods did the smart thing: They banded together, added Johns Hopkins University, MICA and the University of Baltimore to the array, rounded their board off with Baltimore City agency representation and significant non-profits such as the Goldsecker and Deutsch Foundations and set off to improve the entire area between Penn Station and Johns Hopkins University, long considered a weak link when it came to the health of neighborhoods along Baltimore's major north south arteries of Charles, St Paul and Calvert Streets, gaining new partners along the way. I am talking about the Central Baltimore Partnership, headed by Executive Director Ellen Janes, founded in 2006 and slowly having grown to be a model of successful neighborhood revitalization.

The ten neighborhoods in the Partnership

Wednesday evening was proof that the approach works. The presence of Housing Commissioner Graziano, Deputy Housing Commissioner Julia Day, Deputy Planning Director Theo Ngongang, representatives from the major area developers and even college teachers from as far as Luneburg, Germany who came to study art and urban development was one part of the proof.

The other part of the proff was what Steering Committee member Charlie Duff had to report about the current state and the future of housing in the area. Charlie Duff of Jubilee Baltimore is a significant stakeholder in the area (City Arts, The Center Theater) and always a good choice when it comes to eloquently presenting a case.

The starting point of Duff's talk was the Homewood Community Partners Initiative, a Call to Action: Findings and Recommendations, a ten year action plan with a very specific inventory and a clear set of goals, including the goal of adding 3000 new households to the area, eliminating all vacant houses and vacant lots while preserving and adding affordable housing and racial and economic diversity. To make these goals sound even more elusive, the strategy had been estimated to need $17.5 million of gap financing alone.

"In ten years, no matter where you are within these ten neighborhoods, you will be glad you are there" is how Duff described the desired outcome, adding that folks would see value of their homes stabilized, services available. So far this sounds like plenty other plans in Baltimore.

The title of the report

Now three years into the ten year duration of the plan, Duff reported astounding results: 265 houses had been rehabbed, 500 new housing units were constructed or are currently under construction and every one of the 10 communities in the partnership had seen a share of improvement. 151 units are designated as affordable. Especially Barclay and Remington have turned the corner with strong anchor developers such as TRF and Telesis in Barclay and Seawall in Remington. The Housing Department (HABC) has used RAD money to privatize and upgrade two public housing highrises and commercial and institutional investment on North Avenue has created at three vital hubs, MICA's Lazarus Center, The Motor House and Jubilee's Center Theater with the Impact Hub. Construction on the renovation of the Parkway Theater has begun.

Duff emphasized how much more has to be done: He mentioned 1,385 new construction units that need to be fitted into the community. He suggested that especially Remington, the Tony Cheng sites, Old Goucher parking lots and the Amtrak parcels would represent  excellent opportunities for development. $6.2 million of gap funding still need to be found, Duff reported. Remington is currently exploring the creation of an urban land trust on Miles Avenue, another tool of maintaining affordability.

Duff didn't tire to emphasize, supporting investments need to be done on the Waverly "main street" and especially on traffic calming. Duff and many on his task force are strong supporters of turning St Paul and Calvert Streets into two-way streets "so that these streets are no longer traffic raceways" as he put it, where "commuters have preference" and our residents along those streets "are discriminated against".  There were no representatives from B-DOT who would have said that the two-way study is completed, the matter is in the hands of Director Johnson and no decision has been made (Valerie Lecoeur, BDOT).

Everybody in the room agreed that the task of adding 3000 household in these 10 neighborhoods alone was eminently doable and that it was desirable to add new people and new structures into the old neighborhoods. A truly remarkable consensus made credible by the fact that so much of the plan had been achieved already. A walk through the neighborhoods shows what such consensus can create: Rehabilitation, gleaming new buildings of all kinds of scales (the biggest ones near JHU) and optimism. Greenmount West and Barclay are Housing's best examples for how Vacants to Value is supposed to work. Station North is an Arts District attracting national attention.

Those who put this all into the pejorative category of "gentrification" don't really know what they are talking about and should meet one day with the community leaders that together orchestrated this progress. And for the new Mayor: If this small area of Baltimore with about 20,000 residents can add 3000 new households, the overall city should be certainly able to do 10,000.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Design for America

A group of students who make it their goal to "apply design thinking to a business proposition", students pursue a dual degree in art and business at two top universities which collaborate to this effect (Johns Hopkins and MICA) proves that there millennials in Baltimore that are at the cutting edge of creative and entrepreneurial innovation.  That group then searching out a Baltimore advocacy group (Transit Choices), taking on a real world Baltimore problem (transit signs), running a "design sprint" and then going with the result to the MTA proves that millennials in Baltimore are starting to make an actual difference. Not only di they not just complain about the transit they found in their new home-city, they decied to do something about it and, most importantly, they found an enthusiastic reception for this outside the box approach. All noteworthy enough to mention it here.

Design at the intersection of various disciplines
(Graphic: Hopkins/MICA DFA studio)

Design for America (DFA) is a national movement of interdisciplinary college collaboration that started in 2009 at Northwestern University by a professor and just two students who translated "design thinking" as solving  "wicked problems" this way:

Design for America’s vision is a world where people believe in their ability to innovate and tackle the most ill-structured challenges of our time. Our mission is to develop a pipeline of leaders of innovation and create impact through the implementation of DFA projects.

The Hopkins and MICA collaboration is another indicator that Baltimore, long a leader in medical research and life science, is no longer left out when it comes to innovation in design, interdisciplinary collaboration and applying design to equity and social justice issues. MICA with its very successful program for social design has already created credibility for some time. The partners now plan to cast the net even wider across many other other schools and colleges in town.

We plan to use our unique, city-wide DFA studio to engage students across educational levels, disciplines, and backgrounds. Together we will break down the boundaries that divide us, encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, and create social impact. (website)

Strong pictograms illustrate the points
(Graphic: Hopkins/MICA DFA studio)

Another expression of Baltimore's new stature in the world of design and innovation is the SEAM Conference to be held next week in this city. SEAM describes its origin this way:

SEAM is the brainchild of students from the MBA/MA in Design Leadership program. The program offers two degrees: an MBA from Johns Hopkins University's (JHU) Carey Business School and an MA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). The program is focused on building the management capacity of individuals from a range of disciplines that include design and art, science and technology, and business. Our students aspire to become transformative leaders who engage organizations through creative processes that result in innovative solutions to real-world challenges.

Four women of the Hopkins/MICA DFA studio presented Wednesday morning to a wider audience at Transit Choices what they think about Baltimore's transit and its current signage and some initial concepts what they would do differently.

They are not done yet. Based on the initial positive reception, there is a real chance that their actual "design thinking" will make it all the way through the current process of MTA redefining their transit delivery  (Baltimore Link) to the more than 6000 new bus stop signs that will be unveiled with an all new bus system next year.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

The design process
(Graphic: Hopkins/MICA DFA studio)

Findings on current bus stops
(Graphic: Hopkins/MICA DFA studio)

Rochester NY bus stop graphics were considered a good example

London bus stop signs are widely seen as setting the standard

Very first ideas on how to organize information
(Graphic: Hopkins/MICA DFA studio)

All graphics from the Hopkins/MICA DFA studio are copyrighted

Do buses have to be slow?

There are many reasons why buses are frequently regarded as the last resort when it comes to mobility options and choices. Speed or the lack thereof is one of them. There are as many reasons why city buses have a hard time breaking the speed barrier of, say, 12mph. Chief among them is that buses stop a lot to take on passengers or to let them off.

A bus system without riders would clearly be faster. Well, silly as it sounds, that gets to the crux of the matter: what is the optimal intersection between convenience (the bus stops right where you live, work or otherwise want to go) and expediency (once you are on the bus, you want it to go without stopping until it arrives at your destination).

Riders slow down the bus

Clearly, anything that makes the bus quicker without taking away convenience would take the cake. 

What are the chief slow downs for buses that are not related to the convenience of riders?

Or,  to put it more appropriately, what is slowing the trip without adding any benefit to the rider? Bus speed isn't everything. A long walk to and from the bus stop, a transfer without a prompt connection, buses that pass by because they are full, those things don't relate to the speed of the bus but they are equally annoying and slow the overall trip.
So for a shorter overall trip one has to look at bus speed and everything else on the trip that doesn't take place on the bus.

The main impediments to bus speed:

- Being stuck in traffic. If the bus sits in a platoon of cars transit riders and cars drivers are equally slowed but transit riders don't have the convenience of the car drivers to eat, listen to music, have privacy and plenty of space to stretch out, instead they may hang on a strap squeezed into a tight spot but don't get any privilege for doing the environmentally friendly thing. Urban transportation policy should change that

Stuck in traffic or at red lights, a common occurrence

- Being stuck at a stop for a long time because a dozen people crowd the front door sorting through fare-cards and cash or because the bus is crowded and nobody wants to make room for those who still want to board 

- Sitting at a red light that doesn't change, especially annoying if hardly anyone gets to use the green cycle but an obstacle for fast transit even if there is a lot of cross traffic.

- a faster bus being trapped behind a slower bus which is loading a wheelchair rider or otherwise slowed down but there is no way to move around because the bus stop is too short or too crowded with buses

The main reasons for long trip times:

- The bus is late (worse: It doesn't show up at all)
- The bus doesn't stop because it is already full.
- To complete the trip one has to wait for a connecting bus which is late, or full
- The stop is far from the origin or the destination

Time , as we all know, doesn't flow evenly. Nothing makes it pass slower than standing still while waiting for a bus while the clock is ticking away, no matter what the reason.

The best solutions to these impediments  vary from case to case, and sometimes are even at odds with each other as already noted. It requires real data to find out which one of these factors contributes to the overall trip time the most. Without exact data it is easy to throw resources at the wrong solution. Still, but a number of candidates for potentially being good solutions come to mind:

Dedicated bus lane on Lombard Street

The best way of combating as bus being stuck in traffic are exclusive bus lanes that allow the bus to proceed no matter how congested the other lanes are. This is cool where there is extra space to mark such a lane off but not feasible if there is only one lane to begin with or two which are already crowded or if much cherished parking has to be taken away, or a bike lane. 

To give lanes to buses requires courage by those who control the road space. In Baltimore that's the City, not MTA. And even after those lanes are created (like on Lombard Street) they are not very effective without enforcement. Related to bus lanes is another tool of getting buses moving on congested roadways is signal priority (TSP). It could mean giving a bus arriving at a signal on its own lane a green light sooner or keeping it green longer, but it can also work when there is no extra lane: As soon as a signal detects a bus in the waiting queue the signal starts waiving everybody through until the bus passed the light. For this to work well, stops must be placed right after a signal not before, otherwise the extra green time would be wasted. For TSP to work signals and buses need hardware and software that can speak to each other, in other words, it costs a lot of money to do this on the large amount of signals a city has on the major bus routes.

Both solutions so far are depending on collaboration between transit the agency and street space administrators (in a region that would be several agencies). 

The obvious way to combat full buses is to run more of them (expensive) or bigger ones (articulated buses, for example), but there are other solutions that are more complicated, such as making sure the buses follow the schedule because nothing crowds a bus more than a long gap in service because a bus is late. It doesn't help then, if two more follow right behind.

A solution that a transit agency can pull off on its own is to accelerate the bus boarding by allowing only prepaid boarding like on the light rail trains. Since those ticket machines are too expensive to be placed on all bus stops, those Charm Cards or other pre-paid tickets would need to be sold or re-charged in stores all over the transit service area. The amounts to be pre-paid need to be small since many people can't afford to load a card up with $20 in one setting as it is done with the EZ passes. Once a transit system would only allow prepayment (as is the case already in many cities), passengers could board through the front and the rear doors. Some transit agencies even bought standard length buses with more than two doors. Of course, a free system like the Circulator also has pretty quick boarding except when the driver is asked for directions. 

For a long time it was a credo among transit operators that a "one seat bus trip" is preferable over one with transfers because it obviously avoids the wait between buses. But here, too, the devil is in the detail. One seat trips tend to entail long routes and that in turn makes delays more likely or schedule adherence more difficult. Buses start to bunch and one gets a cascading negative feedback loop resulting in a longer trip instead of a shorter one.

transit first 

the science of bus bunching

Another expediter is the unbundling of buses vying for the same curb space. If a stop is served by just one or two lines, it won't happen as much that riders wait in the wrong spot, that a bus is trapped behind another that can't pull out or that stops are so crowded that it takes a while before would-be riders show up at the bus door. 

Finally, the biggest expediter of trips may be frequent buses. A schedule with buses coming every 10 minutes or less (headway) allows riders to leave work or the home when they actually want to and not when the bus schedule requires them to, provided the buses adhere to the headway spacing and are not all coming bunched in one heap. The wait at the stop will be shorter and a missed bus doesn't mean immediately that the whole day has to be reconfigured. So even if a bus still travels with only 12 miles an hour, it likely shortens the trip on the front end. And even if doesn't shave off actual minutes, it creates a perception of being faster and certainly more convenient because riders count time differently, depending on whether they are on the bus or off the bus. As already noted, time waiting for a bus counts double! 

High frequency network

This is why the idea high-frequency bus service has become recently popular. A frequent bus is less likely to be late because it will be less likely to be crowded, it reduces the anxiety of missing one and is much more likely to considered a viable travel option.

Watch high-frequency bus systems being implemented in cities across North America. The Baltimore region in a collaboration between City, MTA and the regional BMC is working on it.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
  

Three door bus (VanHool)

all door boarding test in LA

B'smart Baltimore, the City's application for a federal grant

As reported in February, Baltimore applied for the US-DOT Smart Cities challenge grant. The application has finally been made public a few days before the City will hear back whether it will be one of the five cities invited for round two.

Below a few central points from the application which show how the City would like to define its role under the current Mayor. The question of smart city should become a topic in the mayoral race as well:

Previously disconnected rural and suburban communities, urban
areas suffered the consequences. Highways were constructed through previously vibrant urban communities, displacing families and destroying property along the way. Those with the necessary means relocated to the suburbs. Those remaining were left disconnected from economic opportunity
and upward mobility, and were forced to depend increasingly on limited public transit options.

This  vicious cycle continued to accelerate over time, concentrating poverty in neighborhoods with poor transportation connections, fewer jobs, higher crime, and inadequate access to important services including healthcare, food, and more recently, broadband Internet access.
Though much promise exists for smart city technologies to lead a revitalization of urban communities across the nation, issues in making this vision a reality remain. The Baltimore Vision for Smart City (B’Smart) is a bold step forward that connects communities to opportunities, starting with historically underserved neighborhoods in West Baltimore that bore the brunt of displacement and disconnection through the construction of the “highway to nowhere” in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

To transform Baltimore into a city of greater economic prosperity and social equity, it is vital to successfully demonstrate how smart city technologies can better connect low-income communities, often with limited access to Internet and smartphones, to economic opportunities, and how these technologies integrate with the existing infrastructure and create new prospects within these communities.

From Baltimore's application: Hub elements

The central suggestion in the proposal deals with "Smart Community Hubs described this way:

At its core are the Smart Community Hubs, where traditional transit services meet smart mobility services, enabled by connected/automated/electric vehicles and the sharing economy, to provide low-cost options to connect users to transit hubs and final destinations. These hubs will also house electric vehicle and
smart grid infrastructure, public Internet/Wi-Fi/Smart phone portals, next-generation city logistics operations, on-site job training opportunities and additional features that will attract new businesses and spur economic development.

The application does not mention the State taking $2.9 billion transportation money off the table (including $900 that US-DOT had recommended as federal support) and instead emphasizes State commitments in the wake of the unrest, including the $700 million community investments that really were pre-existing programs and the $138 million designated for the revamping of the ailing Baltimore bus transit system. It is hard to imagine that US_DOT already forgot that the $900 million went unused, but if they paid attention they won't blame the City.

The City seems to have learned a lesson from the Red Line, namely that one needs support from a whole team and submitted the proposal as a team with wide ranging partnerships.

Baltimore is the ideal candidate for the USDOT Smart City Challenge. Following the civil unrest that took place in West Baltimore this past spring, city, regional, state, federal and private-sector leaders have publicly stated their commitment to revitalizing underserved communities in Baltimore. In 2015 alone, USDOT chose West Baltimore as one of the seven cities to receive technical assistance for economic development related to transportation projects through its LadderStep pilot. The State announced a $700 million plan to eliminate blight in West Baltimore and a $135 million plan to improve transit service.

At the heart of the Baltimore team are more than 50 committed city, regional and state agencies, leading universities, locally invested non-profits, and Fortune 500 corporate partners. The assets, expertise and commitment these partners bring, coupled with the B’Smart vision and the USDOT Smart City challenge investment, will generate the biggest, most progressive, and most transferable impact with the highest chance of truly transformative success.

From Baltimore's application: Hub locations

 The application is graphically pleasing and comprehensive. Word is that Baltimore has a good chance to be one of the shortlisted five cities that will received $200,000 each to refine that application in order to receive the full grant of $40 million. US DOT had described the task this way:

The vision of the Smart City Challenge is to demonstrate and evaluate a holistic, integrated approach to improving surface transportation performance within a city and integrating this approach with other smart city domains such as public safety, public services, and energy. The USDOT intends for this challenge to address how emerging transportation data, technologies, and applications can be integrated with existing systems in a city to address transportation challenges. The USDOT seeks bold and innovative ideas for proposed demonstrations to effectively test, evaluate, and demonstrate the significant benefits of smart city concepts. 

The USDOT will make an award of up to $40 Million award for one mid-sized city that can demonstrate how advanced data and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies and applications can be used to reduce congestion, keep travelers safe, protect the environment, respond to climate change, connect underserved communities, and support economic vitality. 

From looking through the application I can see it is heavy on equity issues, electric vehicle technology, WIFI and integrating the internet with vehicles but not especially strong in addressing the challenges of the automated vehicle (AV), in other words the self driving car.
As I noted in many previous blogs, the AV can represent and enormous challenge to cities by promoting sprawl through an automated commute or it can be a game changer in a positive way by freeing up lots of space currently devoted to cars. The latter positive effect would not come by itself. It would require urban policies that would encourage car sharing (instead of owning) and prudent plans for accommodating this new share mobility in terms of staging share vehicles, accessing them and allowing facilities for overnight parking and maintenance.

It is my hunch that USDOT wants to see what cities suggest about the AV and how it could be managed. Innovation districts in which only share AV's can circulate would be one of the ideas I would expect in a Smart City applications.

Not long ago the now ailing CitiStat was one of Baltimore's claims to fame. CitiStat was a tool towards a smart city that brought interested mayors from around the world to Baltimore. Baltimore's application does not make CityStat front and center as the hard earned base from which to move forward towards a smart(er) city. I hope that USDOT will select Baltimore as one of the finalists so we can finally begin to put something in place that makes Baltimore truly different than it was before the unrest.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

CityLab about the challenge grant and the use of smart city illustrations such as Autodesk Infraworks 360

From Coppin University President Dr. Maria Thompson's support letter:

The above list is an impressive assembly of efforts that seek to make Baltimore smarter and the westside communities
stronger. However, implementation, funding and actual impact are lagging on many of these initiatives.  

Priorities per US-DOT