PLC - Newsletter

Phoenix downtown vintage buildings dodge wrecking ball
“These days, it's either move it or lose it, downtown Phoenix preservationists say,” writes Jahna Berry in the July 24, 2007, issue of The Arizona Republic. “It's becoming more common for residents, with the city's help, to pluck vintage buildings out of the path of development and put them in new neighborhoods.” Read the entire article, plus the steps being taken to move the historic Moran home to the Roosevelt District: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0724historic0721.html

Boise’s Treasure Valley looks at rail transit, Salt Lake City style
With rail transit on the near horizon for the Valley of the Sun, it’s enlightening to know what other valley-oriented metropolitan areas are doing. For example, the city of Boise, Idaho, which is surrounded by the Treasure Valley, has its eye on rail transit, specifically using Salt Lake City as a model. Check out the details in a July 26, 2007, article in the Boise Weekly:
http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A245689

Portland’s bicycle master plan gets an update
One of the country’s most bike-friendly cities, Portland, Oregon, is updating its bicycle master plan to make cycling even more attractive in the city. “We want to make Portland a world-class cycling city,” says the city’s bicycle coordinator, Roger Geller, who’s leading the effort to update Portland’s 11-year-old Bicycle Master Plan. “If you look at what other cities have done – the investments they’ve made, the quality of their facilities and way they’ve integrated it into all forms of transportation and land-use planning – we still have a pretty good ways to go.” Read all about it in the July 23, 2007, issue of The Portland Tribune:
http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=118488987395788100

Britain’s The Economist takes a harsh view of Phoenix
Here is a less than flattering view of Phoenix. An article in the July 27, 2007, of The Economist describes Phoenix as “The once ‘model city’ that promised good jobs and inexpensive housing now offers clogged roads, poor schools and rising crime.” Read the entire article: http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9546749

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Different generations to live together at Washington Park Coppin House
Chicago Tribune staff reporter Lindsay Kishter writes of Illinois’ first intergenerational housing complex that developers hope will help two groups at risk of being homeless. Young people in the city who are growing too old for foster care will become neighbors of low-income families raising the children of relatives, known as kinship families. Read the July 30, 2007, article at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-housing30jul30,0,4713101.story.

A new model for urban infill is a grassroots effort
When residents of Denver's Curtis Park neighborhood learned of a plan to build an apartment complex on a small lot, they formed the Curtis Park Investors Group (CPIG) to purchase the land. Then they built something else. Recognizing that only those people affected by an environment have any right to its determination, this group of more than 20 residents set out to design and construct an infill project they felt to be more congruent with the scale and character of their neighborhood. Read all about it at
http://www.terrain.org/articles/20/colistra.htm, the Website of Terrain org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments.

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TV show and Website dedicated to planet friendly choices
Smart Spaces: Inside & Out uses two mediums to reach and activate its target audience: a weekly TV show that illustrates affordable projects that make a home more sustainable, and a Website that offers green products and builds community through educational white papers, tips and blogs. The target audience is mainstream consumers, age 20-55 with middle to upper incomes, who if educated on the benefits to themselves and the environment would make a different choice with their dollars. Check out Smart Spaces: Inside & Out at: http://www.yourguidetogreen.com/.

Planning and development cross-country reports available
Wayne Senville, editor of the Planning Commissioners Journal, recently completed a six-week long, 3,073 mile cross-country trip on U.S. Route 50 – speaking with more than a hundred planners, planning commissioners, local officials, and citizens in dozens of cities and towns from Maryland to California. His series of reports are available by at http://www.plannersweb.com. What did he learn during his travels? "One of the things that most struck me," Wayne notes, "is how what's most important about our communities is usually obscured behind the look-alike strip development we're all so familiar with. But when you get behind this 'curtain' you often find remarkable local efforts taking place, such as the dedication of hundreds of Emporia, Kansas, residents to restore their historic downtown theater ... or the work being done in places like Moab, Utah, and Lenexa, Kansas, to ensure that all city neighborhoods are linked by non-motorized pathways and trails."

What Is Placemaking?
As Placemaking continues to grow as a mainstream idea, Project for Public Spaces (PPS) warns against its transformation into a fashionable “brand,” which would narrow and diminish its fundamental importance for communities everywhere. A recent PPS commentary in its Making Places Bulletin, takes on the substantive versus the trendiness of the term Placemaking. “Project for Public Spaces has been using the term Placemaking for years to describe our place-centered approach to helping citizens improve public spaces and make great communities. Recently we’ve noticed the phrase popping up more and more, everywhere from student blogs to real estate ads. So, we decided to conduct a survey on our web site asking people to give us their definitions of “Placemaking.” We hoped to better understand the scope and influence of the term and gain insight about our own practices as Placemakers. The wave of responses we received was uplifting, as hundreds of people eagerly offered their own vision of what the word means. In this representative list, see what visitors to PPS.org said "Placemaking" means to them. The common threads in these submissions were inspiring: over and over, people identified the elements of emotion, a sense of belonging, and a spiritual connection that are part of any successful Placemaking process.” Read the entire commentary and join in the discussion at http://www.pps.org/info/bulletin/what_is_placemaking.

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Valley Metro Transit receives an EPA Smart Growth grant
Valley Metro Transit, Arizona, with the cities of Phoenix and Mesa, is one of six recipients of the 2007 Smart Growth Implementation Assistance (SGIA) grants for work with multi-disciplinary teams of private experts, pointing out that compact neighborhoods make it easy to walk everywhere, reduce car use and tailpipe emissions, and limit the need for costly infrastructure extension. A total of 66 communities from 30 states sought the six 2007 SGIA grants. Other winners of the EPA's 2007 smart-growth assistance awards include the Atlanta Regional Commission; the California Department of Transportation; the city of Denver, the city of Greensboro, North Carolina; and Sanitation District No. 1 in northern Kentucky. Valley Metro requested SGIA assistance for policy analysis to provide options for establishing local transit-oriented developed land use regulations under Arizona law. For details: http://www.epa.gov/dced/sgia2007.htm.

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Editor: M.H. Brennan
e-mail: projectforlivablecommunities@cox.net
Phone: 480-926-6598
Address: PO Box 8141, Chandler, AZ 85246
Website: http://www.projectforlivablecommunities.org

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The Project for Livable Communities (PLC) is a nonprofit organization headquartered in metropolitan Phoenix; membership includes professionals in urban design, public health, education and journalism. Founded in 2005, PLC, which includes the Alliance for Healthy Community Design (AHCD), fosters livable communities by addressing three major community components of the environments in which we live and work – Healthy Design, Safe Design and Sustainable Design – and focusing on the best practices of each.

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