Photo: US Department of Agriculture

Just how much will the tax credit mushroom thanks to the deal reached in the Senate? As the New York Times explains, it's time to take the "new" off of the credit's name:

The homebuyers’ credit ... would be extended to cover homes under contract by April 30. Also, it no longer would be limited to first-time buyers; people who have owned a home for at least five years could get a $6,500 credit on a new residence. Income limits for eligibility would be raised, making many more people qualify.

Extending and expanding the credit would cost an estimated $11 billion, on top of the $10 billion spent so far.

As Ryan pointed out earlier this week, the higher rate of home ownership in suburbs tilts the credit's benefits notably away from urban areas. But that's nothing new for the federal government, which has lavished subsidies on home buyers while paying much scanter attention to improving rental affordability.

In the fiscal year that ended October 1, Washington's support for home ownership totaled $230 billion, while parallel support for home renters was $60 billion, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported yesterday. That nearly four-fold gap is visible in the below chart:

Image: CBO

Even as federal lawmakers keep promoting home ownership as the "American dream," rental rates rose to one-third of the country in 2008, in part due to low-income and minority residents who were forced into default on risky mortgages. For many of those residents, as well as city dwellers in general, rentals tend to be the only housing option that offers access to affordable transportation -- but help from Washington has been perilously slow in coming.

And it may not come for a while yet. Legislation updating the Section 8 voucher program for rental housing was approved over the summer by the House Financial Services Committee but has yet to see floor time in the full chamber, let alone the Senate.

Meanwhile, the larger home buyers' credit is currently attached to a long-sought extension of unemployment benefits, making its approval a political fait accompli (though one much-delayed by partisan bickering).

White House Urban Affairs director Adolfo Carrion Jr. Photo: NYDN

"We're taking what he did in '79 and revisiting it," Carrion said, crediting Carter with "thinking forward" and predicting he "will be treated, after he's gone from the stage, in a much more generous way."

The urban affairs office, created in March, is promoting a nationwide tour  highlighting cities that have hit upon groundbreaking uses of economic stimulus money, such as Kansas City's Green Impact Zone. In coming months, the tour will take a look at high-tech development in Atlanta.

And Carrion's promise, as he put it today, of "shifting from a top-down culture to the federal government serving as a supporting actor to local protagonists" has caught on with advocacy groups and analysts who had become accustomed to urban priorities remaining out of the political spotlight.

But when it comes to the most pressing challenges facing cities, particularly those connected to economic recovery, Carrion's office has yet to advocate for urban priorities. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently all but ruled out two reform proposals long sought by the nation's cities -- channeling federal aid directly to municipalities and putting the federal contribution to highway and transit projects on equal footing.

Indeed, despite telling Politico in July that he soon would "explain [his office's] strategy publicly," the urban affairs chief appeared content with starting an open-ended discussion about investing in cities rather than setting a timetable for accomplishing specific goals.

The administration's "punting on the [transportation bill]," he told Streetsblog Capitol Hill today, happened because "everybody recognizes our transportation investments need to be rebalanced. We need to have more time for discussion."

On that note, Carrion made a direct appeal to the advocates and bloggers at the Open Cities conference for help in crafting an agenda for his office, which utilizes staffers from the White House Domestic Policy Council. The gesture was well-intentioned and well-received, but it may come to serve as a harbinger for slow progress on building bridges between Washington and the large cities that more than half of America call home.

She may be experiencing an intellectual reconsideration in some corners, but Jane Jacobs is still a beloved figure for the urban planners and designers of Planetizen.

Other notables singled out by Planetizen readers include Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York's Central Park (No. 4), Enrique Penalosa, Bogota's former mayor and a dedicated proponent of bus rapid transit (No. 14), and Kaid Benfield, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's smart growth program (No. 42).

Check out the complete top 100 right here. Is anyone missing, or should anyone be ranked higher than they are?

Vice President Joe Biden. Photo: PolitiFact.com

After a speech touting the $787 billion stimulus law's 200th day of activity, Biden took questions from audience members at the Brookings Institution.

Amy Liu, deputy director of Brookings' metro policy program, asked how the Obama administration could be more flexible to help cities that are trying to improve "across jurisdictional lines" using transit, broadband, and electricity modernization. Biden began by comparing the stimulus law to the COPS community-policing grants that he helped create as a senior senator:

We had a big fight when we were writing the COPS program, and I insisted that it not go to governors, it not go to the states, [that] ... at a local level, you apply for the grant. That's what we wanted to do for an awful lot of what was done in this [stimulus] legislation.

The fact is, the Congress, in its wisdom, decided that the governors should have a bigger input. I'm not -- they may be right, but I'm just telling you where I come from ...

Congress' decision to route stimulus money through governors has sparked open confrontations between urban mayors and governors over how to distribute funds to the most needy areas. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was particularly direct in urging that the stimulus provide direct aid to cities, bypassing the politicization that often dominates decision-making in state capitals. 

While expressing subtle sympathy for mayors and others who backed direct stimulus help for cities, Biden vowed that the administration would keep working on a system for distributing urban grants based on the overall health of cities -- which includes transportation, energy, and housing needs.

"We're trying to marry these things together," he said. "Now, it's imperfect, because we don't have an overall piece of legislation out there that's called, you know -- urban policy ABCD."

As Streetsblog Capitol Hill has discussed before, the lack of a coherent federal approach to urban policy is not for lack of congressional power brokers who hail from cities. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) represents San Francisco, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) represents New York City, to name just two.

But until sufficient political pressure -- or enticement -- materializes for those lawmakers, cities may continue to struggle with the recession's sting while tiny rural areas reap the benefits of the stimulus.

Miraculously, unlike Akim Saiful Alam, the unidentified driver in yesterday's crash didn't kill anyone when he lost control of his cab on Amsterdam Avenue. But it wasn't for lack of trying. Witnesses told NY1 the cabbie was speeding before he attempted to "make a turn from the far right lane of Amsterdam and turned all the way into the far left lane." The News reports what happened next:

The cab careened off the roadway and nearly cleared a 4-foot-high wrought-iron fence separating a traffic island from the intersection.

"He hit the fence, and he went flying," said Samuel Valerdi, 34, of Brooklyn.

Then the taxi smashed into a small building that houses the entrance to the 1, 2 and 3 subway trains.

"It hit like a bomb," said newspaper vendor Mohameed Raza, 22, of Brooklyn.

Pedestrians ran for their lives, but "luckily no one was coming out of the subway at the time," said David Spiers, 44, a Bronx electrician working across the street.

All told, three people -- the driver, his passenger, and a pedestrian -- were injured. The News says NYPD is still investigating, though no summonses were immediately issued.

While this incident will soon drop off the radar (just as surely as it will soon happen again), not everyone will be quick to forget. After the jump, witness Lisa Sladkus questions why all of us, every day, should suffer the consequences of dangerous driving.

What will it take to make these streets safer? A low-stress afternoon interrupted by screeching tires, a loud crash, and the terrifying thought, "Where are my kids right now?" It shouldn't be like this. Today on Broadway between 71st and 72nd Street, a cab went straight through the wrought-iron fence and landed on the sidewalk right outside the subway entrance. My sister and I rushed out to see what seemed to be the cab driver with a bloody head and at least one pedestrian with a head injury. The sadder part was hearing the first police officer to the scene of the crash say, "It's shocking there weren't more injuries or deaths."

What's more shocking to me is that this is okay with the powers that be. Why is it okay to have a person walk out of the subway and get hit by some flying metal from a car crash? Why is it okay to have 53 pedestrians and four bicyclists die on the Upper West Side between 1995 and 2005 because of car crashes? Why can cars drive through red lights and nothing happens? Why is Amsterdam Avenue more like a bustling highway than a lovely city Boulevard?

This similar shock and sadness happened to me a few weeks ago while walking home with my three kids and loads of groceries. A woman riding her bike was hit by a car in front of the popular grocery store, Fairway. She didn't move for many minutes, and my kids kept asking, "Is she dead?" Once we determined that she, in fact, didn't die, my kids switched their questioning. The question that really got me was from my four year old, "You and Daddy bike. Are you going to get rolled up by a car too?"

All I can say is that we need a serious re-thinking of our neighborhoods. How do we want them to feel? Do we want kids to feel safe while walking and biking? Do we want peaceful streets where we can meet neighbors and frolic with our children? Do we want our valuable police force, fire department and EMT doing something more beneficial than spending hours dealing with the aftermath of a totally preventable crash? If so, we need to start by lowering speed limits, we need to re-design our streets and sidewalks to accommodate the masses of people instead of motor vehicles, we need safe places to bike and walk, we need trucks off our neighborhood side streets (and, frankly, completely out of our neighborhoods unless they are absolutely necessary), and on and on.

After the death of 8-year-old Axel Pablo last week, the Post called on Mayor Bloomberg, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus to crack down on cell phone-talking cab drivers. While this would be a welcome move, a more effective approach, for starters, would be an across the board no tolerance policy to speeding on city streets, coupled with prosecution of reckless motorists who maim and kill.

We know what it takes to "help us make safer streets and sidewalks," Sladkus concludes. "The question is: do we want that as our outcome?"

As Aaron and Sarah have noted, the Congress for the New Urbanism is in the midst of its annual meeting in Denver. This spiffy short is the winner of this year's CNU 17 video contest. Created by independents John Paget of Paget Films and Drew Ward and Chris Elisara of First+Main Media, "Built to Last," in the words of the filmmakers, "explores the connection between New Urbanism and environmental issues."

Enjoy. And if you're really feelin' it, follow @naparstek and the #cnu17 feed on Twitter for to-the-minute insights from CNU speakers over the weekend.

The presence of the city's mayor, John Robert Smith, at that announcement -- and the likelihood that Meridian, a city of 40,000 people, will be a stop on a regional high-speed train -- is the product of years of effort. Smith, who has been serving as mayor since 1993 and will be leaving office this year, has been working since the beginning of his tenure to capitalize on Meridian's history as a railroad town and its role as the commercial center for some 350,000 people living in Mississippi and Alabama. USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood's recent trip to look at high-speed rail in Europe underscores the Obama administration's conviction, which Smith shares, that trains can radically change the economic prospects of small cities for the better.

Smith has long been an active booster of passenger rail at the national as well as the local level, serving on the board of Amtrak from 1997 to 2002. He worked to secure funding for a complete redesign and reconstruction of the city's railroad station as a multimodal transportation center (Greyhound buses also use it as a terminal). The new station was completed in 1997 and has lifted the fortunes of the neighborhood around it. In February, Smith delivered the keynote address at the launch of Transportation for America's platform.

Back in March, I found myself pulling into Meridian on the Amtrak Crescent. I visited with Smith in his office and we talked about what the railroad has meant to his city's past and what it could mean to Meridian's future. Then he took me for a walking tour of the downtown.

As you'll see from the slide show above, Meridian is an interesting model for of what passenger rail could mean to other small cities around the country.

True enough. And that's just part of why it's so important that the street construction paid for by the stimulus package (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, to call it by its formal name) be designed with the complete streets model in mind.

The National Complete Streets Coalition has put together some helpful resources for communities interested in identifying opportunities for building complete streets with ARRA funding:

Projects that help complete the street network for safe travel by all modes should get priority in the spending authorized under ARRA. Using stimulus funds to help cities and towns rebuild their roadways as complete streets would improve safety while reducing traffic, air pollution, energy use, and carbon emissions. …Most of the ARRA funds commonly referred to as money for ‘roads and bridges’ are being distributed through the Surface Transportation Program, which provides great flexibility to state Departments of Transportation and Metropolitan Planning Organizations for use on a variety of projects. States and MPOs should use the additional STP funds from ARRA to make a down payment on bringing their transportation systems to a good state of repair and investing in a system for the 21st Century. 

Quality road projects that help create complete streets are part of both repair and building for the future.  STP funds can also be used for transit capital improvements that would ensure safe and convenient access to bus stops and train stations. In addition, $825 million of the ARRA funds are set aside for the Transportation Enhancements program, which is often used for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. In addition to the transportation funds in the bill, Community Development Block Grant Funds ($1 billion) and Energy Efficiency Block Grant Funds ($2.8 billion) include bicycle and pedestrian improvements as eligible uses.

As the Complete Streets Coalition says, "incomplete streets are dangerous and create barriers for people to get to jobs, school, the doctor, and fully participate in civic life." Every day, we see tragic examples of how true that is. State and city governments should spend the stimulus money on infrastructure that serves all citizens safely and efficiently.

What makes the report notable are the numbers it contains. It's jam-packed with quantifiable benefits that would result from increased investment in infrastructure that encourages and supports pedestrians and cyclists.

For instance, the report's authors write:

• Increasing the bicycle and pedestrian share of trips of one mile or less from its current 31 percent, to 40 percent under a Modest Scenario, or to 70 percent under a Substantial Scenario, would result in 28 billion or 49 billion reduction in miles driven, respectively.
• Modest increases in bicycling and walking for short trips could provide enough exercise for 50 million inactive Americans to meet recommended activity levels, erasing a sizeable chunk of America’s activity deficit.
  
• For the price of a single mile of a four-lane urban highway, approximately $50 million, hundreds of miles of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure can be built, an investment that could complete an entire network of active transportation facilities for a mid-sized city.
• The financial value of improved mobility, fuel savings, greenhouse gas reductions, and health care savings amounts to more than $10 billion annually under our Modest Scenario. For the Substantial Scenario, benefits would add up to more than $65 billion every year. These benefits dwarf historic spending for bicycling and walking, which was $453 million per year for 2005–2007 under SAFETEA-LU, and a mere $4.5 billion cumulative federal investment in these modes since 1992, when bicycling and walking first received documentable federal funding.
  
  

"Canopy," a plan submitted by a team of French designers, took people's choice in the "Reinventing Grand Army Plaza" competition, sponsored by the Design Trust for Public Space. It was also selected last month by competition jurors as one of two top designs.

"Canopy" is one of few submissions that actually connects the plaza with the park. Like last year's Grand Army Plaza Coalition proposal, it at least takes a stab at dealing with area-wide traffic management issues -- a major consideration for any workable redesign.

While raising the profile of the project and drawing the attention of thousands of Brooklynites, it's unknown how much of an impact the competition will have on the eventual design. The Brooklyn Paper reports:

"The contest wasn’t intended for a design to be constructed," sniffed Scott Gastel, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, which is conducting traffic studies as a first step in its own plan to fix the plaza.

"The competition has produced some very interesting concepts, which we will bear in mind as we continue to think about the future of Grand Army Plaza," he said. "We’re still looking into the designs [to evaluate their feasibility]."

"When I was a visiting professor at Berkeley in the 1980s, I used to come to Fisherman's Wharf and walk around," Danish urban designer Jan Gehl said Wednesday night, to more than 100 San Franciscans at the Pier 39 Theater near Fisherman's Wharf. "Now it's like deja vu; it's exactly like I remember it 25 years ago."

The Wednesday event was part of the ongoing public outreach effort for the Planning Department's Fisherman's Wharf Public Realm Project, which seeks to greatly enhance the quality of the public spaces around the famous tourist destination (nearly 13 million annual visitors, or roughly one-fourth of all visitors to New York City). Having been recruited by the city to impart his internationally-renowned vision locally, Gehl urged San Franciscans to consider best practices from cities throughout the world that have transformed waterfronts from failing public spaces into the vibrant heart of the public realm. He argued that the spirit and principles that have made Oslo, Copenhagen, and Melbourne so successful could work in San Francisco.

Gehl presented the preliminary findings of his study of the area [PDF], asserting that the most interesting places in a city are "where the water and the streets come together." He said smart city leaders around the world have reversed the trend of abandoning their waterfronts to so-called "undesirable elements," and instead have developed integrated parks and promenades that appeal to the various needs of every demographic. Successful cities have recognized the changing interests of city dwellers who often congregate in public spaces not out of necessity, but out of an interest in being near other people.

He was adamant, however, that quality public space was not the same as commodified public space, or the "Rouse-fication" of waterfronts so that they resemble theme parks or festival markets (think South Street Seaport in New York or the Bayside Marketplace in Miami, projects of the Rouse Company). These, he said, are "based on getting people down to the waterfront and then skinning them in different ways... getting them to buy things they don't want."

While Fisherman's Wharf already has a number of gimmicky shops that local residents loathe, Gehl believes that much can be done to improve the quality of public space with simple amenities, such as more benches and movable furniture. He was shocked that the area didn't have more places to sit and watch people pass by.

Gehl's study notes that the volume of pedestrian traffic to Fisherman's Wharf is already higher than some other prominent walking cities, including London and Copenhagen. Much like the "ped-lock" in Times Square, in Fisherman's Wharf there are far more pedestrians than cars, though the city has made greater relative concessions to the latter. While Jefferson Street's 60-foot width is equally allotted between pedestrians and cars, during peak periods there are 15 times more pedestrians using the space.

During the sometimes contentious question-and-answer period after the presentation, the audience voiced support for preserving (and in some cases renewing) the area's historical maritime traditions. Several commenters suggested developing a fish market to attract local residents to the area, while one woman, a captain of a fishing vessel, invited Gehl to sail the harbor to better understand the perspective of those who still make a living from the sea. A large round of applause went up when one audience member recommended closing Jefferson Street entirely to private cars.

Jeffrey Pollack, Proprietor of Nick's Lighthouse restaurant and the head of the Fisherman's Wharf Restaurant Association, said his organization hoped that the city would alter zoning laws to improve the retail environment, specifically supporting local businesses as opposed to chain stores. "We're the second largest tourist draw in California behind Disneyland," he said, "but we don't want to be Disneyland."

Photo: Matthew Roth

Hoping to keep pace with the progress in New York City over the past two years, the San Francisco Planning Department has commissioned Gehl Architects to transform several prominent streets and public spaces in the city, starting with one of the busiest tourist attractions in the U.S., Fisherman's Wharf. 

On Tuesday night, in front of a standing-room audience of special guests at Pier One's Bayside Room, Gehl presented his general vision for improving San Francisco's public realm. The event, sponsored by Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR), the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Livable City, and Walk SF, was the first in the new Great Streets Campaign Speakers Series, which will bring some of the world's most remarkable urban visionaries to the Bay Area in the coming months to share their successes and offer San Francisco models for instituting its own vision for a sustainable and healthy city. 

Gehl is in town for a week of presentations to the public, to city agencies, and to merchants' associations. On Wednesday, he will present the results of his firm's Fisherman's Wharf study to the public for the first time. The Planning Department is hopeful that his work will stimulate a larger discussion of the quality of public space among the stakeholders in the area.

John Rahaim, director of the Planning Department, noted that Gehl's work around the world brings a cachet to San Francisco and helps "set the stage to implement pedestrian improvements and demonstration projects on our streets." Rahaim is optimistic that Gehl's work will "start a process to implement the principles of [San Francisco's] Better Streets Plan," the comprehensive new pedestrian and public space plan that is awaiting completion of environmental review.

Gehl was cagey when asked about what San Francisco should do to be more like Copenhagen or Paris, arguing that the study his firm has completed for the Fisherman's Wharf project is only a preliminary analysis and not a proposal. Nevertheless, he argued that if San Francisco wants to be a "lively, attractive, safe and sustainable city [it must] be sweet to its pedestrians, sweet to its cyclists."

Photo of Jan Gehl and SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf by Matthew Roth

In his storied career at New Jersey DOT, Gary Toth played an indispensable role changing the culture of the agency, promoting a place-based ethic instead of the auto-centric transportation planning dogma. Today Toth heads transportation initiatives at Project for Public Spaces, where he has written "A Citizen's Guide to Better Streets." The book, which will be published by AARP, serves as a how-to for working constructively with your local transportation and planning agencies. (It is not yet available for purchase.)

Streetsblog Editor-in-Chief Aaron Naparstek sat down with Toth last week for this interview. Anyone interested in how the American landscape has become so dominated by cars should watch. Toth's insights about the compound effects of transportation and land use policies are invaluable.

This morning officials announced the winners of the "Reinventing Grand Army Plaza" competition, a contest that drew 200+ proposals for transforming the gateway to Prospect Park into a public space worthy of its landmark status. A jury composed mainly of designers, planners and community advocates selected four designs to receive cash prizes, while winnowing the entrants to a field of 30, to be displayed on-site through October 13. Members of the public will be able to vote for their favorites via text message, with results announced on October 8.

After the exhibit, the Design Trust for Public Space and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, along with NYC DOT and the Parks Department, will participate in a series of public workshops based on the top 30 designs, with the ultimate goal of composing a new plaza master plan.

Prize-winning designs are "Canopy" and "Please Wake Me Up!" (pictured) in a tie for first, "Urban Stripes" was awarded second place, and Brooklyn's Garrison Architects took third with "A Center for Brooklyn." Unfortunately, not every finalist made a serious attempt to address GAP's complex traffic issues, which will be essential to creating a lively and inviting public space. On the other hand, the guidelines do indicate that entries "did not have to be realistic."

Planning advocates recommended doing away with parking requirements and "unbundling" the cost of parking from the price of housing. "There's no reason for parking to be paid for by people who don't own cars," said Tri-State Transportation Campaign director Kate Slevin, adding that the construction of parking should be "a choice rather than a necessity."

Minimum parking requirements are especially ill-suited to affordable housing developments, said Elena Conte of the Pratt Center for Community Development (pictured at the mic). "[A parking minimum] really makes no sense at all for communities where less than 20 percent of households own cars, because it drives up the cost of housing and takes up valuable space that otherwise could be used to create additional units or public space."

Representatives of Environmental Defense and the New York League of Conservation Voters rounded out the proceedings, calling on the city and state to take stock and head off the traffic-congested future that excessive off-street parking threatens to bring about. "We're building the infrastructure to encourage more people to drive with very little understanding of the environmental impacts," said Josh Nachowitz of NYLCV.

T.A.'s Paul Steely White tied the issue to preserving New York's streets for people on foot, noting that more off-street parking means less sidewalk integrity: "Curb cuts enable cars to drive across the sidewalk and block the sidewalk; it erodes the pedestrian environment."

Major planning groups, including the American Planning Association, the Regional Plan Association, and the Municipal Art Society, have also signed on to the report and urged Mayor Bloomberg to revise the city's ad-hoc policies governing off-street parking. According to one organizer behind the effort, this marks the first time all three organizations have lined up behind the same transportation reform.

Streetsblog will have more soon on the recommendations being advanced by this coalition.

Until recently, VMT had been rising steeply in the U.S.

In the second installment of our serialized tour through StreetsWiki, we turn to DianaD's entry on Vehicle-Miles Traveled:

Vehicle-Miles Traveled (VMT) is the total number of miles driven by all residential vehicles within a given time period and geographic area.

We're seeing more about VMT in the national media as rising gas prices cause people to drive less. Largely absent from the coverage -- so far -- is a discussion about intentionally reducing VMT through policy. Will that change soon? It should: A built environment where people don't rely on a car for every trip is also one where expensive gas won't put such a crimp in household budgets. Diana's wiki entry highlights one avenue to explore in particular:

Land use -- namely sprawl development -- is the main culprit. Americans are living farther from work, school, shopping and basic services. Even in higher density areas, where amenities may be closer to home, the road framework can be punishing for pedestrians. It is nearly impossible to walk in areas that cater to cars instead of people. Autocentric street design therefore forces even more cars onto roadways, which further impedes walkers and bicyclists. The vicious cycle continues and local governments turn to the only “quick fix” that they seem to know: build bigger highways (at enormous taxpayer expense) to accommodate the increased traffic.

Got more to add? Any member of the Livable Streets Network can edit a StreetsWiki entry. 

In a weekend speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Senator Barack Obama continued to distinguish himself on urban policy, talking up cities as vital economic centers worthy of investment. Harry Moroz of DMI Blog has the story.

Obama opened with a reference to his time as a community developer in Chicago and he joked (I paraphrase):

“You know if I’m president I’m going to talk about cities. If I don’t, you know you can just talk to [Chicago] Mayor Daley who will make sure that the pot holes in front of my house don’t get filled.”

Obama called for a new vision of cities, one that recognizes the growth of both cities and metro areas... Strong cities, Senator Obama suggested, are the backbone of regional growth and regional growth the source of national prosperity.

Finally, the Illinois Senator returned to the vision of cities he set out at the beginning of the speech: “we must stop seeing cities as problems and start seeing them as the solution.” Indeed, Obama called this the “new metropolitan reality”.

In highlighting the differences between himself and his presumptive opponent in November, Senator John McCain, Moroz writes that Obama "attacked Senator McCain’s criticism of the COPS program and Community Development Block Grant funding, both of which are major priorities for mayors." Meanwhile, a "Talk of the Town" item from this week's New Yorker posits that Obama is the real straight-talker of the two candidates for president, and suggests that staying the course on issues like energy policy will help him with voters.

Obama promises to tell voters what they need to know and not what they want to know. It’s a risky strategy, and one he doesn’t always follow, but when he put it into effect in April, by attacking McCain’s proposed summer gasoline-tax holiday, he helped his campaign more than he hurt it. Last week, he denounced McCain’s latest reversal, on offshore drilling. But he needs to go further. A year ago, he likened “the tyranny of oil” to that of Fascism and Communism, saying, “The very resource that has fueled our way of life over the last hundred years now threatens to destroy it if our generation does not act now and act boldly.” This is the kind of unequivocal message that Obama needs to develop.

Though his overtures regarding passenger rail and cycling are impressive, Obama's credibility on energy issues is far from iron-clad. His ties to the ethanol industry, in particular, have led some to question whether his policies might be swayed by the parochial interests of the corn belt. (McCain, for his part, wants to end federal ethanol subsidies.) If Obama is to reconcile his support of cities with biofuel boosterism, it's going to be a heavy rhetorical lift.

Photo: Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press via the New York Times

The World Carfree Network's Towards Carfree Cities conference is underway in Portland, Oregon this week. Now in its eight year, it's the first time the event has come to North America. Streetsblog EIC Aaron Naparstek made the trip, along with others from The Open Planning Project Livable Streets crew.

TOPP's Nick Grossman is live-blogging the conference, and if we can get Aaron off his rental bike we'll have coverage on Streetsblog as well.

Photo: Nick Grossman 

Two weeks ago Streetsblog reported on the glut of public parking garages being built in Hell's Kitchen, which threatens to worsen traffic conditions in one of New York's most congested neighborhoods. The City Planning Commission could have set a precedent last Friday by denying a developer's request to build a 400-car public garage as part of a mixed-use project at 310-328 West 38th Street. Only 232 parking spaces would have been allowed without the special permit.

Instead, the commission approved the request. Despite the objections of community representatives, the only restriction imposed was to reserve most of the spaces for monthly parking. In its report [PDF], the commission asserts that streets near the new building "will be adequate to handle the traffic" generated by the garage. The analysis fails to consider the aggregate amount of parking in Hell's Kitchen, and flies in the face of DOT's efforts to improve the neighborhood's streets for pedestrians, says Christine Berthet of the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS).

"It's particularly egregious considering what we know about 37th Street," which carries cars heading toward the outbound Lincoln Tunnel, she adds. "The mitigation proposed as monthly parking demonstrates they have no clue on the science of parking, as monthly parking attracts commuters and discourages shoppers -- the worst case scenario."

The 38th Street garage, and others like it planned for Hell's Kitchen, are "a terrific example of the 'nibbling effect' that Jane Jacobs wrote about," whereby concessions to cars gradually multiply to erode the pedestrian environment, says Nick Peterson of the planning firm Alex Garvin & Associates.

The developer, Glenwood Management, will undergo one more stage of public review, needing approval at a June 18th session of the City Council to get the green light for the garage. Since the current review process appears to conflict with the sustainability goals of PlaNYC, Berthet believes it would make more sense for developers to appeal to DOT, not City Planning, for special parking permits. For now, this looks like another case of parking politics winning out over sensible policy.

Photo of a garage in the upper 50s between First Ave and Second Ave: lewisarothkopf/Flickr

If there's one thing a neighborhood overrun by traffic doesn't need, it's more public parking garages. But that's exactly what New Yorkers who live by the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel will get if the City Planning Commission allows current development patterns to continue.

Case in point: In January, the developer Glenwood Management requested permission to build a 400-car parking garage attached to a new residential property in Hell's Kitchen. The application -- for 310-328 West 38th Street -- is the latest in a string of special permit requests to build parking in the area. It is currently pending before the City Planning Commission, which is scheduled to render a decision on June 6th. If the commission turns down the application, it could signal an important shift in the ongoing redevelopment of Hell’s Kitchen, which has seen a wave of new construction since a 2005 rezoning took effect.

The last time Streetsblog looked at the parking situation in Hell's Kitchen, local activists were fighting a provision in the new zoning that enabled substantially greater quantities of accessory parking -- spaces intended for building residents or commercial tenants. That battle is still playing out in court. The recent rash of permit requests represents another front in the effort to keep cars from overwhelming the neighborhood's streets.

A number of new buildings include plans for parking that exceed the amount allowed for residents. Glenwood Management, for instance, is only permitted to build 232 spaces for residents -- 114 under the pre-2005 zoning, according to local activists. The additional spaces will then be used by the developer as a public garage. At issue throughout Hell's Kitchen, in essence, is whether the city will allow developers to include public parking garages in new buildings without restriction.

"These regulations were put in place in 1973, more than a generation ago, and I don't think City Planning has ever denied any of those [requests]," says Christine Berthet of the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS). "As long as each public garage meets the guidelines, they approve it." What gets left out of the discussion is the total effect of those garages on traffic and air quality, she notes. "They never look at it as an aggregate."

In the case of Hell's Kitchen, that aggregate is poised to grow at a rapid clip. Already this year, developers have proposed building garages in the neighborhood totaling more than 500 parking spaces, Berthet estimates. With hundreds of new buildings planned on the West Side, she believes the trend will spiral out of control if left unchecked.

The effect on local streets could be considerable, in terms of both traffic generation and the pedestrian environment. "The Department of City Planning doesn't seem to take seriously the fact that parking generates traffic," says Nick Peterson, a vice president at planning firm Alex Garvin & Associates, "but if a new garage opens on a block that provides a net increase of 200 parking spaces, that's 200 cars that weren't there before. It's pretty obvious that new cars are on the road as a result." As for the pedestrian environment, he adds, "A parking garage is a dead space along the sidewalk -- there is no reason to go in and out of a parking garage except to park or pick up your car."

Traffic heads west on 37th Street towards the Lincoln Tunnel.

The garages in Hell’s Kitchen will be especially tempting to commuters exiting the Lincoln Tunnel. The neighborhood is already one of the most congested in the city and suffers the third highest asthma hospitalization rate among Manhattan's twelve community board districts. New parking facilities will only compound the problem by inducing more commuter traffic.

That is not the intent of the planning commission, which considers traffic volumes as well as demand for parking when it grants developers' requests, but observers say induced commuter driving will undoubtedly result. "There is often this disconnect between the planned condition and reality," says Peterson. "When you walk down a street and see a parking garage in a residential building, does the sign say, ‘Parking for Residents Only’? No. It says, simply, ‘Parking’ or ‘Public Parking.’"

When reached for comment, a Department of City Planning spokesperson referred to a commission report (PDF) on a recent parking application, which states that new garages are needed to offset the loss of parking incurred by new development, and to accommodate the influx of new residents.

Berthet takes issue with this stance because it assumes that existing parking lots were intended to serve as parking in perpetuity. In fact, she notes, the lots that are about to get displaced were supposed to serve as placeholders until developers could assemble parcels to build on. "They were not intended to be permanent fixtures," she says.

Meanwhile, DOT has committed to the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Traffic Study, evaluating measures to, among other things, improve pedestrian safety in the neighborhood. The hesitation on the part of the planning commission to deny developers' parking requests seems at odds with DOT's efforts to tame traffic as well as Mayor Bloomberg's long-term sustainability agenda, but there are signs the commission may adopt a position more consistent with the goals of other agencies.

"In the last two hearings that we went to, we could see that the City Planning Commission is moving in its position," says Berthet. The commission has been more willing to place restrictions on new parking facilities, she notes. The report mentioned above, for example, required a development on 11th Avenue to provide monthly parking instead of the usual hourly parking -- a small step, but one that may signal more significant changes to come.

Before rendering its decision on the 11th Avenue garage, "the commission took into account the concerns about traffic, the decreasing supply of parking and the proposed use of the parking," said a department spokesperson in an email message. "The traffic analysis was based on a large share of the proposed parking spaces to be used by local residents. Accordingly, the commission required the garage to provide for monthly rather than largely hourly parking. This will serve local residents and businesses but reduce transient traffic."

In addition to weighing its priorities differently, the planning department should work more closely with other city agencies, Berthet says. Specifically, she’d like to see tighter coordination between the officials making transportation decisions and the ones making land use decisions. "Where you need parking is really a transportation issue," she says, especially when that parking will be used by commuters and other non-residents.

Making these long-term changes will not be easy. Peterson notes that the planning department is subject to pressures from community boards, which tend to favor more off-street parking. And some of the most effective ways to better manage parking supply, like raising the tax on spaces, lie outside the department’s control.

But for now, the planning commission has the authority to curb the quantity of parking being added to Hell’s Kitchen, if it so chooses. Without a swift change to current practice, developments winning permits today are likely to generate traffic far into the future. Even if the city zoning text is eventually amended to put a stop to the proliferation of public parking, dozens of garages in the neighborhood will get approved in the meantime. "We may have a nice law at the end, but what are we going to do with all this parking that gets built between now and then?" Berthet asks. "We will be stuck with it for the rest of our lives."

Photos: CHEKPEDS