Tag Archives | fortwayne

Former Honolulu mayor to speak on cities of the future

By on March 6, 2008 in Culture, Events, Philosophy, Urbanism

Andy Mitchell of Martin Riley Architects and AB417 brings news of what sounds like a fascinating lecture coming to town in a couple of weeks:

“(It) will occur in Fort Wayne on March 17th from 4:30-6:00 pm. Jeremy Harris, recent Mayor of the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii will be at the auditorium at the main branch of the Allen County Public Library discussing sustainable development and the cities of the future. He is visiting with Ball State University’s College of Architecture and Planning and then, through some generous donations from local organizations, will be available to come up to Fort Wayne to give a presentation. He is an excellent speaker and has a vast knowledge to share with us all. I hope you can attend.”

According to his bio:

“During his three terms as Mayor, Honolulu was recognized as one of the best managed cities in the United States.”

After he left office, among other things:

“(H)e served as a national director on the board of the American Institute of Architects, and helped create a new AIA program focused on helping American cities become more sustainable. He was also appointed as a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council. Mayor Harris is currently a member of the Sustainability Roundtable of the National Academy of Science and also serves on the National Academy’s Committee to advise Congress on the future policy and research direction of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.”

It is unknown whether the lecture will be recorded. You can read more biographic tidbits about Harris after the jump below.

photo of Honolulu by shchukin on Flickr

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Pedestrians and one-way streets

By on February 23, 2008 in Downtown, Urbanism

(Jon) A recent letter to the editor in The News-Sentinel:

Traffic much better

Traffic flows much better now with Wayne and Berry being one-way streets than it will if changed to two-way traffic. It’s true, a lack of foresight in closing off the important north-south through street of Harrison was a mistake, but don’t try to correct that with another.

Making Wayne and Berry into two-way streets will impede traffic flow as cars will be making lefthand turns against and across oncoming traffic, clogging lanes that now flow east and west fairly well.

This also is not in the interest of public safety as this makes it more dangerous for motorists and pedestrians — $800,000 for counterproductivity and less-safe conditions?

– Roger Lindley

I’m glad to read local opinions by people like Mr. Lindley who care about the ramifications of changes to the urban landscape and I appreciate that Mr. Lindley mentions pedestrians in his analysis.

But studies bear out the simple fact that one-way streets are more dangerous for pedestrians than two-ways.

I’m going to quote from a long post on Streetsblog that discusses the safety of one-way streets:

One-way street networks can result in more pedestrian accidents, particularly among children. This effect has been noted in a number of transportation studies published in respected academic journals. I’ll cite and quote certain relevant reports and articles for your consideration:

First, from a 2003 study published in the American Journal of Public Health:

“Children 5-9 have the highest population-based injury rate in pedestrian-motor vehicle accidents.” Why? As the report goes on, “because in many pedestrian crashes the driver reportedly does not see the pedestrian before the accident. Higher vehicle speeds are strongly associated with a greater likelihood of crashes involving pedestrians as well as more serious pedestrian injuries…. In residential settings with large numbers of children, speed management appears to offer the greatest potential for injury prevention.”

By way of explaining this effect, I’ll refer to two other reports. First from a 2004 report published in the Journal of the Institute of Engineers regarding one-way streets:

“Superficially, it would seem that crossing traffic on a one-way street is preferable to crossing a two-way street. As is often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong. In fact, crossing a one-way street presents greater difficulties to the pedestrian than crossing two-way streets…. One of the inherent disadvantages with one-way streets is that they force additional turning movements at the intersections…[and] increase the occurrences of vehicle-pedestrian conflicts at any given intersection.”

Second, from a paper presented at the federal Transportation Research Board’s 1999 Urban Streets Symposium:

“In traffic engineering circles, the operational disadvantages associated with one-way streets are becoming increasingly recognized. The system…[causes] an increase in the number of turning movements and total miles of travel. One-way streets present challenges to the pedestrian due to speed and pedestrian expectations at intersections… there are simply more (typically 30-40 percent) more vehicle/pedestrian conflicts within a one-way street network than in a comparable two-way system.”

Conversion to one-way avenues may well result in more traffic volume, higher speeds, more turning movements on Sixth and Seventh avenues. Where does this all lead?

Well, from the Canadian Journal of Public Health, a 2000 study conducted in Hamilton, Ontario, found that:

“Children’s injury rate was 2.5 times higher on one-way streets than on two-way streets” in Hamilton. Conclusion: “One-way streets have higher rates of child pedestrian injuries than two-way streets in this community.”

Certainly other studies may exist that disagree with the above, but one-way streets cannot be said to be automatically safer for pedestrians. Fort Wayne should pursue two-way streets as a way to slow down vehicular traffic and support pedestrian traffic.

– Photo by Fetchy on Flickr

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Downtown design guidelines: Never implemented?

By on February 11, 2008 in Architecture, Urbanism

(Jon) While looking for information to bolster my previous post about the new downtown Subway restaurant, I came across the Fort Wayne Downtown Design Guidelines (PDF).

At the bottom of the cover, it says, “Proposed Effective Date: Jan. 5, 2004.” But it doesn’t seem it was ever implemented. Can anyone point me to a short history and status report about this document?

I haven’t read it through, but I did find the following that could have applied to the site plan of the downtown Subway:

Building location, height, form and scale

In order to protect the unique character of the central downtown, new buildings and façade renovations of existing buildings should relate in similarity of scale, height, and configuration to nearby buildings. Adopted development standards for setbacks, building height, form and scale should provide for flexibility in order to accomplish this goal.

1. Location requirements.

In order to develop and maintain a pedestrian-friendly environment, the following standards should be applied to development within the central downtown area:

a. Buildings should be built at the edge of the public right of way to the greatest extent possible. However, in areas where a setback has been established new buildings should conform to the established setback for the area.

b. In infill situations, buildings should occupy the entire lot frontage.

If these design guidelines had been in place, maybe everyone could have been happier about this restaurant.

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Harrison Square news

By on November 28, 2007 in Downtown, Harrison Square

I don’t know what reader of The Good City wouldn’t also be a reader of the Downtown Fort Wayne Baseball blog, but just in case …

The guys at DFWB are all over the developments surrounding Harrison Square. I’m just going to point you to their blog and say, read up about

  • the Harrison Square groundbreaking
  • the condos going on sale Friday
  • the bridge across Harrison Street getting approved
  • the construction webcam going live

and lots of other news.

And although I previously stated a strong opinion against the sky bridge, I at least appreciate some of the steps the planners are taking to not damage the Indiana Hotel beyond repair.

– Jon Swerens

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Proposal: Open-source government

By on November 10, 2007 in Philosophy

Transparency. Conversation. Collaboration.

In a post below entitled “How not to fix your city,” I ended with an off-hand remark:

But the way to retain young business people can be as simple as making it easy to start a small business.

Kevin Knuth, chairman of the Allen County Democratic Party, rightly thinks I’ve left a few things unsaid:

I would appreciate you explaining how the city can make it easy to start a business. Are you referring to financing? incentives? I am not wanting to sound snarky, I really do want to hear your viewpoint on this.

I’m not talking about incentives. I’m no expert in that area. My area of expertise is communication. And it’s my belief that any city that successfully talks with clarity to its own citizens will shine like a beacon among U.S. cities.

I propose something I’m calling open-source government.

Maybe that’s not the best term, because many advocates of what’s called open source governance go too far with applying software terminology to government, replacing one kind of jargon with another. No thanks to that.

What I mean by open-source government is the application of some of the philosophy of the open-source software movement to government, not necessarily the technology. This idea is not too far-fetched — open-source software got much of its inspiration from the workings of democracy.

The three core principles of open-source government as I see them are:

  • Transparency: All details of any of the workings of government are open and understandable.
  • Conversation: The government speaks and listens to its citizens as though they are intelligent, but not as though they are already savvy insiders.
  • Collaboration: With transparency and conversation in place, the citizens are invited to have intelligent involvement with their government.

This sounds easy, but consistently putting it into practice takes a lot of dedication. If it were easy, why was there no information about the city of Fort Wayne’s election on the city of Fort Wayne’s Web site? A claim such as, “Oh, that’s the county’s job,” goes against everything I’m proposing. Citizens have every right to expect the city government to have information about its own elections, or at least be able to point to the information elsewhere. Not having election information on the city Web site is embarrassing.

In fact, although “conversation” may sounds like the easiest component of my proposal, it may be the hardest to do well. The typical city is divided into many separate departments, organized not for the understanding of the citizenry, but for the understanding of the people inside the government. So a citizen with an opened-ended question — such as, “What do I need to know to open a small business in Fort Wayne?” — has to file through department after department, looking for all the bits and pieces of information that may or may not be applicable.

Why is such communication difficult? Those of us in journalism know that the more you understand a concept, the harder it becomes to remember what it’s like to not understand a concept. So for a communicator, it’s not enough to understand the complex. You must also understand how to make the complex understandable.

That should be a function of a good city government: Making the complex understandable. Without transparency, conversation and collaboration, government remains distant to most of its citizens.

More can be said about the topic, but that’s enough from me for now. What do you think?

– Jon Swerens

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Pickin’ on government web sites again

By on November 6, 2007 in Elections, Fort Wayne

Shouldn’t the city of Fort Wayne’s web site at least acknowledge that there is an election today?

A link to a slate of candidates would be nice, too.

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Vote! Polls close at 6 p.m.

By on November 6, 2007 in Elections

Go to the indianavoters.com web site if you need to find your polling place. Don’t assume it’s the closest polling place you know of. (There are two other polling places between my house and my polling place.)

And you don’t have to vote in all of the races. If you just want to vote for mayor, that’s perfectly all right. Just leave the other races blank.

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A maddening map of the precincts

By on November 6, 2007 in Elections, Neighborhoods

countygis.jpgHas anyone ever successfully used the Allen County GIS system to determine his own precinct or polling place?

I appreciate the effort that went into gathering all the information and pulling it into one system. But the county system is a classic example of enterprise software being written for programmers rather than for end users.

If you’re like me, you just jump into a site like the county’s, thinking that you’ll figure it out as you go along. But see all those folders down the sidebar in the picture? Some things in there are already selected, which is why you see so many colored lines in your map.

Good luck finding all the checkboxes that go with the renegade lines.

Next, you may try the instructions for finding your election information. This actually works, as far as it goes, although it does take nine steps.

But the big problem is that you get the address of your polling place, but all of the polls remain marked on the map. So, if you’re like me, and you’re unfamiliar with many Fort Wayne streets and buildings, you could end up at a closer, but incorrect, polling place.

vfwpolling.jpg

My polling place is not the VFW, a polling place actually located inside my precinct. The VFW is a polling place for a different precinct. My polling place is located two precincts to the north at the Eagles Club — meaning that if you don’t have a car, you have to either get a ride or take public transportation.

Why so far away? I believe it’s because of Americans with Disabilities Act concerns, which are valid as long as everyone has equal access to transportation — and that’s an unlikely prospect in my neighborhood.

A good city features polling places that are easy to find and, at least in the urban core, easy to get to by foot. Let’s hope better polling places — and maps — arrive before the next election.

– Jon Swerens

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