Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

Local News Day is today.  

It's sponsored by various modes of community-serving media.  

There should be scads of participants--metropolitan newspapers, community newspapers, public radio and public television programs, I guess local television station news, although it tends to not be in depth, and digital only news sources.

There aren't that many member newsrooms so far.

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-- "Inside the crisis facing local TV news" (2026)
-- "Davis Kennedy, a one time force in local community newspapers, dies at 87" (2026)
-- "Washington City Paper community media project" (2026)
-- "Another media tragedy: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is shutting down" (2026)
-- "New Jersey loses largest published newspaper: Newark Star-Ledger" (2025)
-- "Newspaper acquisition as an element of a conservative agenda" (2024)
-- "The impact of local radio news in England" (2022)
-- "Newspapers as public media: WBEZ, radio, an NPR affiliate, to merge with the Chicago Sun-Times" (2022)
-- "Louisville Courier-Journal mobile newsroom initiative and Salt Lake Tribune Innovations Lab" (2022)
-- "Orange County Register coronavirus tracker graphic is a great model" (2021)
-- "Local music used to define communities: today with radio chains and national music distribution systems, not so much" (2021)
-- "Newspapers, community media, and knowledge about and engagement in civic affairs" (2020)
-- "Revisiting community radio" (2020)
-- "Thinking anew about supporting community radio" (2019)
-- "Culture planning and radio: local music, local content vs. delivery nodes for a national network" (2019)
-- "One more blow against community media: Washington Post drops Thursday "county" news special sections" (2017)
-- "The ongoing tragedy of dying print media, the latest being community newspapers in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, Maryland" (2015)
-- "Grassroots communications capability in the city" (2015)
-- "Protest as Civic Engagement and the role of the media" (2007)

Labels: broadcast television, civic engagement, community media, media and communications, newspapers, radio

Could a consolidated City and County of St. Louis be the next urban success story?

This has been suggested by the new County Executive, Sam Page ("St. Louis County executive floats city rejoining county amid budget crisis," St. Louis Business Journal).  From the article:

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page is expected Thursday to call for St. Louis to consider reentering St. Louis County as a municipality, framing the idea as part of a broader push to consolidate services and respond to mounting budget pressures in both jurisdictions.

In prepared remarks for a press event Thursday, Page said county budget cuts and rising costs have forced service reductions and opened a need for a larger public discussion about how the city and county can sustain core services without new taxes.

“Faced with the Council’s budget cuts and forced to reduce services, one path forward is to find more ways to consolidate key city and county services,” Page's prepared remarks said. “The city could even re-enter the county as a municipality.” Page said the idea has “a lot of political support,” though he also described it as a proposal meant to spur public feedback rather than an immediate policy push.

Sadly this historic building--yes, seriously damaged but repairable--near Downtown St. Louis was demolished instead of preserved. 

“These are big ideas. They won’t happen this year. They will not happen while I am county executive,” he said. “But let’s look at the challenges the county and city are facing and tackle them together.”

Like Baltimore, the City and County are separate jurisdictions, and the City is not counted as part of the County.  

Like Baltimore, St. Louis is a once industrial and financial center that continues to shrink, with a population of about 280,000.  In 1950 the population was almost 3x, 860,000.  

It was the 8th largest city in America, without the County as part of its population.  The County had about 406,000 residents.  So today

Outmigration has been great for the suburbs ("The 16 Best Suburbs in St. Louis, MO," Gateway Realty Group), while St. Louis is  --and Gateway Realty Group is based in the suburbs, and "appropriates" the "Gateway to the West" tagline not to promote the city, but the suburbs.

Anheuser-Busch when it was very successful.  The decline in sales of mass produced beer has led the company to close three production facilities.  But not in St. Louis ("Brewery Closures Hit Anheuser-Busch Facilities In Three States," CRE Daily).

Labels: building a local economy, civic engagement, creative economy, economic development, participatory democracy and empowered participation, urban design/placemaking, urban revitalization

Given the decline in the number of school aged children, and outmigration from cities, school districts such as in Washington, DC, Chicago, and Philadelphia have been closing schools for decades.

The rational planning part of me is in favor because of the need to spend money efficiently, have enough students to be able to offer a wider range of programs, etc.

But the other side of my rational planning part also acknowledges that school closures have negative impact on neighborhoods, that elementary schools in particular are building blocks for neighborhoods (along with libraries).  

And that sports programs at the high school level can engender community pride, etc.

I pointed out this contradiction starting in 2011:

-- "One way in which community planning is completely backwards," 2011
-- "Missing the most important point about Clifton School closure in Fairfax County," 2011
-- "Rethinking community planning around maintaining neighborhood civic assets and anchors," 2011
-- "The bilingual Key Elementary School in Arlington County as another example of the "upsidedownness" of community planning," 2019
-- "National Community Planning Month: Schools as neighborhood anchors," 2022
-- "School closure and consolidation planning needs to focus on integration planning at the outset as a separate process," 2023

I suggested that cities ought to consider subsidizing continued school operation in some communities as a stabilization and revitalization measure.

Philadelphia is going through another round of school closure ("City Council members grill school district officials on plan to close 20 schools — and superintendent says he could have closed 40." Philadelphia Inquirer) and an op-ed about this "It’s not just about schools. It’s about neighborhoods," makes the same point as I did, but she describes better the effects of a school within a neighborhood beyond the curriculum.  From the article:

The conflict playing out in Philadelphia isn’t only about schools. It’s about the fact that the school district and City Council have different responsibilities for the same places, and the new facilities plan brings that conflict into sharp focus./p>

The facilities plan is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The trouble is that everything it was not designed to do.

A Philadelphia neighborhood school isn’t just one institution. It’s four, sharing an address. There’s the instructional platform: courses, teachers, schedules, the district’s domain. There’s the civic anchor: the building that signals to a neighborhood that its children count, and they belong. There’s the distribution node: where meals are served, where social workers operate, and where there is, most days, someone watching. And there’s the pathway to the future: where a counselor knows a family by name, where a student learns there’s a college or a trade or a life beyond the block.

... When that school building closes, all of those other things close with it. Some of those functions were formal educational programs. Others accumulated because families had nowhere else to go for them. The school became the place where paperwork was explained, problems were addressed and solved, and someone always knew which door to knock on next.

City Council doesn’t get to vote on the facilities plan, but it funds roughly 40% of the district’s $2 billion budget.

... What closes with a school building is not limited to instruction. Council’s budget is the instrument for the functions the facilities plan does not govern: housing investment, community infrastructure, colocated services, and neighborhood anchors that exist independent of school enrollment.

The conclusion to the article is succinct.

The district’s plan answers an educational question. What replaces the neighborhood functions housed in those buildings is a civic one.

That answer does not sit with the school district.

Recommendation.  School systems need to work more closely with city planning departments, to ensure decisions are made in a manner that promotes neighborhood stabilization and improvement.  If necessary, could funds be identified that could be provided to keep certain schools open, and to improve enrollments to make it more financially efficacious for doing so.

Labels: capital planning and civic assets, civic engagement, integrated public realm framework, land use planning, neighborhood planning, public education/K-12, public finance and spending

I love how Charlie Kirk said some murders were acceptable collateral damage from having a strong Second Amendment providing for gun ownership rights (the US has gone far beyond the reading of the original meaning of this amendment in expanding gun rights to individuals rather than to militias.

The same goes for democracy more generally, and citizen oversight.  Sometimes it's messy  and fractious.  Sometimes it leads to fraud and corruption.  The solution isn't to eliminate the oversight when it's problematic but to improve it.

For example, with DC's Advisory Neighborhood Councils, to reduce financial abuse, I argue all the bank accounts should be run through the city system, with checks beyond the existing ones when an ANC has an account at a local bank branch.

Calgary.

As importantly, in response to complaints about effectiveness of neighborhood councils, my response is to say we don't provide a training and technical assistance infrastructure for them--whereas cities like Seattle and Calgary ("Community association planning committees a hidden gem?," Calgary Herald, "New life for community associations," CREB) do, very effectively ("On the Role and Future of Calgary's Community Associations," University of Calgary).

In Calgary, community associations run recreation centers, not the city, such as the Thorncliffe-Northview Community Association with 800+ members and a recreation center with community functions.  "Calgary's 151 associations include approximately 1,800 board members, along with another 18,000 volunteers who run programs, said FCC."

-- "National Community Planning Month | Civic Involvement" (2025)
-- "Setting up DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions for success" (2022)

School boards.  The same goes for school boards.  Citizen oversight has been problematic for a long time.  This was true when NYC in the 1960s created community boards to provide input.  And with school boards in inner cities and suburbs both.

My solution, unlike what is suggested in Ontario, ""Getting rid of school board trustees is the right thing to do" (Toronto Star), is a training and technical assistance infrastructure with participation tied to salaries--often school board members get paid, at least in the US.

From the Star:

Perhaps they tried to persuade you that trustees embody true grassroots governance of our schools. More probably, you have no recollection of ever seeing or hearing from your local trustee, let alone voting for him or her. Possibly you have no clue what their name is after all these years — and all those elections. The reality of local democracy today is that turnout for most trustee elections is abysmally low — typically in the range of 10 to 30 per cent of eligible voters.

Yet our freshly empowered trustees gain a free hand to meddle in massive school board budgets. And then point fingers in ideological or tangential debates about what’s taught in classrooms across the province. Trustees weren’t always so disconnected.

More than 200 years ago, school trustees were Ontario’s first elected politicians, predating by decades the MPPs and MPs who later sat at Queen’s Park and on Parliament Hill. In a province dominated by one-room schoolhouses, they played a pioneering role as “trustees.”

All these years later, trustees are no longer the leading edge of democracy, they are a lagging indicator of dysfunction and distrust. Today, trustees have been overtaken in relevance and importance by senior levels of government — municipal, provincial and federal — on measures of accountability and also accounting.  ... To date, a record seven local school boards have been taken over by outside supervisors

I know there are professional associations for school boards, plus conferences (often citizens criticize attending such meetings as a waste of money) and they do get technical assistance and training, but obviously there needs to be more and better and accountability about it. 

From the Education Week story "School Boards Are Struggling. Could a New Research Effort Help?":

... Jonathan E. Collins, an assistant professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Education research focuses more heavily on the work of teachers and administrators, and there’s a dearth of national data on how school boards form, how they function, and how their stewardship affects student learning.

Collins founded a new research lab this month to help provide solutions and paint a clearer picture of how the most local of local governing bodies operate. The School Board and Youth Engagement Lab, or S-BYE, plans to assemble a national data set on factors such as how boards are elected and how they interact with the public. It also will partner with local boards to pilot new communications tools.

An angry crowd at a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board meeting in June, 2021. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Separately, an issue in the US is fractious opponents filling school board meetings with vitriol and even threatening members to the point where they choose to no longer serve ("School boards get death threats amid rage over race, gender, mask policies," Reuters, "Mitigating Threats Against School Board Officials," Princeton, "School boards around the country are under fire. What exactly do they do?," CNN, "Culture Wars Could Be Coming to a School Board Near You," Time Magazine).  That's a different issue but one that needs to be addressed.

Constituent services funds disbursements.  Another area where I've brought this up is with constituent services funds available from Councilmembers.  I think that the decisions should be made via participatory budgeting techniques executed by citizen committees within the office ("More on ethics: discretionary funding-constituent funds," 2011).

Labels: civic engagement, organizational development, participatory budgeting, participatory democracy and empowered participation, public service/volunteering/public education/K-12

DC has what are called Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, which are grassroots community organizations empowered with the authority to "weigh in" on matters before DC government agencies, such as zoning, planning approvals etc.

Most of them don't work that well because not much is invested in them by the city government in terms of training and technical assistance.  Although some do well because they organize as committees and allow non-elected residents to participate as full members of the committees, expanding the human capital available to the Commission.

Past writings:

-- "National Community Planning Month | Civic Involvement," 2025

-- "DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions," (2012)
-- "(Even more on) ANCs (Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in DC)," (2010)
-- "Setting up DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions for success," (2022) (lots of links within)
-- ""Networked solutions" for some problems with ANCs in DC," (2011)
-- "Dumb... to fix bad practices, make them democratic instead of just eliminating them," (2012) (also discusses participatory budgeting)

-- "Building civic engagement systematically: Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods," (2022)
-- "Framingham Massachusetts creates Citizen Participation Officer position" (2018)
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Eight | Civic Engagement and Positive Promotion of Democracy," (2024)

-- "Main Street and getting schooled in politics, constituency building, and building support for your program," (2006)

Government versus self-help/DIY | top down versus ground-up solutions.  Note that Neighborhood Councils can create a couple of other problems.  First, they tend to convert every issue to one of "what government should do", reducing the willingness of people to do self-help/DIY.

Not enough engaged citizens to "staff up" multiple neighborhood organizations.  Also, they do what I call "creaming" getting the best possible community members to participate in the Councils.  I think this can come at the expense of maintaining other organizations such as community associations, friends of libraries/parks, schools and PTAs, etc.  

We need more and better participants, and a range of thriving community organizations, not fewer.  

Note that communities like Capitol Hill, Petworth, Adams-Morgan, Mount Pleasant, to some extent Georgetown, and Takoma Park (the Maryland side, which DC residents can be free riders) have a great amount of community identity, with a number of organizations, volunteers, community festivals, community foundations, various public events, etc.

Commissioners representing Single Member Districts.  Years ago I suggested some strategies and tactics for making Commissioners more accountable and active.  One was a stipend, but only if they held four meetings per year (quarterly) in their electoral district.  Later I suggested that one of the four meetings should be a public/outdoor event, like a community cleanup.

Snow clearance as a civic act.  Cities on the East Coast got zapped by the recent snow storm because snow was followed by sleet and a drop in temperature, creating what some are calling "snowcrete."  

The crust is very hard requiring sledgehammers, pickaxes and other non-plastic shovels to break through.

In DC, groups of citizens have self-organized through Reddit and other social media to go out and clear crosswalks--the city has never really taken responsibility for such even though cleared crosswalks are essential for a walking-biking-transit city ("Cities, sustainable mobility users, and snow"). 

Sidewalks and bus shelters too.

This would be a perfect activity to engage residents in the activities of their local Advisory Neighborhood Commission.  

DC Government does have a volunteer hotline for people willing to shovel snow for people in need.

Labels: car culture and automobility, civic engagement, disability planning, emergency management planning, pedestrian safety, public space management, snow removal, transportation planning, urban design/placemaking

The Washington City Paper, the area's alternative weekly, stopped publishing in print in 2022 ("Staff And Locals React To End Of Washington City Paper Print Edition," DCist), but is still active online.  

(Many alternative papers across the country have shut down post covid, because during covid they weren't able to get entertainment-related advertising because people couldn't go out, and the financial impact was too much.)

Working with Humanities DC, the WCP sponsors a Community Journalism Program, "a 14-week course that teaches D.C. residents journalistic knowledge and skills as they report a local story."  Finished stories are often run by the "paper" albeit online. Applications are due Sunday, Jan. 11.

I think this is a great program that more newspapers, "regular ones" and alternative weeklies, should do.

I never had an article run in the WCP, but I did get a few letters to the editor published, and was mentioned from time to time in articles about historic preservation and transportation.

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I consider the Washington City Paper one of my key teachers about urbanism and city governance.  When I first moved to the city in 1987, they ran a column by Mark Jenkins and Bill Rice called "Cityscapes," about urban architecture and urbanism.  I read it avidly (along with the "Shaping the City" column in the Washington Post, "Death of former Washington Post columnist Roger Lewis").

A Jenkins cover story in December 1987 was the first time I read about the concept of the "Purple Line" circumferential transit line--at the time it was proposed it was to be heavy rail--connecting all the end points of the various legs of the Metrorail lines--running through suburban Maryland and Virginia.

The current Purple Line under construction is light rail, not heavy rail, and will serve a small part of the proposed full line, from Bethesda in Montgomery County to New Carrollton in Prince George's County.

The paper ran so many cover stories that taught me so much about local politics.  I can think of stories on the schools, maintenance versus capital funding for key systems in DC buildings like heating and cooling systems, how the "Growth Machine" manipulated the zoning process, crony capitalism and using nonprofits as personal piggybanks by John Ray, a former Councilmember and his cronies, etc.

Plus the Loose Lips weekly column about the ins and outs of DC Government.

Note that much of the City Paper has been digitized and is available within the Washingtonia Collection on local history at the MLK Library in Downtown CD.

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The paper was bought a few years ago by local private equity maven Mark Ein as a community spirited venture ("Mark Ein Talks About Buying Washington City Paper," ) without a focus on profits.  

Ein, who will not have a daily role at the paper, is the paper’s fifth owner in the last decade and has taken steps to make his stewardship of the long-troubled weekly* as benevolent as possible.

... In fact, Ein counts City Paper as one of what he calls his “community investments,” not his “day job, for-profit” investments. That said, he plans to assemble a team that can help the paper solve the revenue shortfalls caused by collapses in classified and display advertising. Untethered optimism, I note to him, has been a problem with some of City Paper‘s recent owners. “We’re all going into this with our eyes wide open,” he says. All his advisers “have a lot of ideas about alternative revenue sources. We’re not expecting it to be profitable in the short term.”

The dude is rich.  So to me, rather than get all the messages on articles about donations, I wonder why he can't put a little more money in.  Although I'm glad the media outlet still exists.

Labels: civic engagement, community media, media and communications

 So reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I wrote to the Heinz Endowment, and the PBS and NPR affiliates in Pittsburgh, suggesting that the work together to acquire and continue to operate the paper.

Labels: civic engagement, community media, media and communications, philanthropy-foundations

A special section in the paper pays attention to various volunteer efforts in the county.  

One, the LibroMobile, I've actually been to one of the earlier iterations and talked with its nonprofit leader, Sarah Rafael Garcia (on another visit I talked with her husband who was filling in at the store; he wrote his masters thesis about Barrio Logan and the National Landmark Chicano Park in San Diego)

• "Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity taught me more than how to swing a hammer"
• "Volunteers at this Inland Empire food bank are helping their community fight against hunger"
• "This Santa Ana resident created LibroMobile not just to sell books but to bring people together"
• "When addiction recovery means leaving a pet behind, this Palm Springs nonprofit steps in"
• "This Palm Springs retiree traded his golden years to help Cambodians recover from a war’s awful legacy"
• "Can small museums make our world bigger? This LA author thinks so"

• "LA’s Corita Art Center honors the legacy of a pop artist who wanted to build a kinder world"
• "Force Blue: Veterans become eco-warriors in the battle for ocean conservation"
• "An avid volunteer shares the how and why of getting involved in your community"
• "Volunteers at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance get the chance to help Mother Nature"
• "How running for local office can help you connect with – and help – your community"
• "Shelley Hoss has learned a few things as California’s longest tenured community foundation leader"

Labels: civic engagement, public service/volunteering/donations, third place/social spaces

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Melanie Winter, who fought for embracing nature along the Los Angeles River, dies," that a prominent advocate for the LA River, which decades ago was converted into a concrete ditch, has died.

From the article:

Winter worked persistently for nearly three decades to spread her alternative vision for the river and its watershed, calling for “unbuilding” where feasible, removing concrete and reactivating stretches of natural floodplains where the river could spread out.

Leading her nonprofit group the River Project, she championed efforts to embrace nature along the river, saying that allowing space for a meandering waterway lined with riparian forests would help recharge groundwater, reduce flood risks and allow a green oasis to flourish in the heart of Los Angeles.

She developed ambitious plans for rewilding parts of the river channel and nearby areas, and helped spearhead new riverfront parks as well as neighborhood “urban acupuncture” projects that replaced asphalt with permeable paving, allowing rainwater to percolate underground instead of running in concrete channels to the ocean.

“I think what always drove her was the sense of, it was a river that had been contained in concrete … and that nature-based solutions could do a better job,” said Conner Everts, a friend and leader of the Southern California Watershed Alliance. “Her goal was to re-create a natural meandering river, with the ability to recharge into the [San Fernando] Valley and restore nature, as much as possible.”

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Individuals do make a difference.  And often they provide for us a way to look at things we've taken for granted in new and innovative ways, recognizing that the status quo isn't enough. 

 

Labels: civic engagement, protest and advocacy

Sometimes you lose.  It's hard today for me in terms of promoting civic involvement, since "I" lost badly on a zoning issue yesterday relating to Sugar House Park ("Plan to build to a 7-story hotel next to Sugar House Park receives key endorsement," KSL-TV).  

I am not prone to hyperbole, but the decisions in the case before ours and ours basically came out in favor of spot zoning tall buildings "for housing" regardless of land use context.  It's really a kind of Houstonization that I don't think people fully grasp ("‘No zoning’ in Houston provides flexibility, complications, experts say. Why does it matter?," Houston Landing).

I'm fine with taller buildings, but not extranormally tall buildings next to one and two story residences, small apartment buildings, and civic buildings.  The city has specific zones where that kind of density is appropriate, and the tallest buildings should be directed to those areas. 

In effect, the proposed hotel is seemingly within Sugar House Park, although technically it is a private parcel--but the only one on the site, an historic anomaly created in 1942 when the site was still a prison.  

No major urban park in the US, like Central Park, Prospect Park, Union Squares in NYC and SF, Millennium Park and Grant Park in Chicago, the urban square parks in DC like Franklin Park or Farragut Square, new city parks like Discovery Green in Houston, has a building like this "on" its property.  Such buildings are across the street.

Said the Vice Chair of the Planning Commission:

"I think to build better communities, it's actually more beneficial to have two sides of the street and the four corners of the street zoned similarly," Commissioner Brian Scott said before the vote.

My first thought when the words came out of his month is that he sure as hell never heard of Kevin Lynch and his book Image of the City, and the point about "edges" and "districts."  

I'm thinking of sending him a copy of the book.

I was so angry after the meeting.  

Only one commissioner supported our position, for what we thought were obvious reasons.  It seemed like reasonable points about context were completely ignored.  It made me wonder why I even bother.

The other commissioners in their comments equivocated, and certainly didn't seem too concerned about the impact on the park, believing that there is no other alternative to improve it.  

Granted the site now is an eyesore, but we have an alternative, it's just that the underlying property owner refused to consider it.  She overvalued the property, believing she could get an upzone and it turned out she was right.

This site actually is full of opportunity.  Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.

The final decision will be made by City Council.  Stay tuned.

Labels: civic assets, civic engagement, parks planning, urban planning, zoning

Public meeting in Denver.  "Ten Steps for a Great Community Meeting"

Community Involvement.  Can take so many forms.  

From DIY self-help, to Friends of the Library, Friends of the Parks organizations, grassroots councils like DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions or LA's Neighborhood Councils--both elect members to represent small sub-districts of the council, or to sit on various city committees, Planning and Zoning Commissions ("Few people vote in LA neighborhood council elections. And this year, turnout hit a historic low," LAist) and the like.

Outsiders tend to criticize such boards as anti-change, and against appropriate development (nimbys).

One of my criticisms of DC's ANCs is that the city doesn't invest much in the professional development of the representatives.  Theoretically there is technical assistance available, but a training infrastructure is not ("Setting up DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions for success").

Theoretically, a training infrastructure could help representatives be more objective and capable.

Unlike Seattle ("Building civic engagement systematically: Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods"), Los Angeles, or Calgary ("Community association planning committees a hidden gem?," Calgary Herald).  Even so, the LA Neighborhood Council system has issues ("L.A.’s Neighborhood Council members decry lack of City Hall support at annual Congress," LA Daily News).  

Like DC, LA's councils don't get much money ("Budget Reductions Proposed for Neighborhood Councils," Larchmont Buzz).  LA's don't get enough voter turnout because unlike DC, the elections aren't held during the normal election cycle, but specially.  That being said, DC's ANCs don't get tons of votes either.

New York City has Community Boards, but people are appointed by council members and Borough Presidents.  That has to effect their ability to be independent.   

WRT DC, and Friends of Libraries and Friends of Parks groups, I argue we should focus on the power of the network, and build out from it.  

WRT Library and Parks groups, I think there should be one formal organization with affinity groups/subcommittees devoted to each unit, rather than incorporating separate ones for each, with the parent group providing back office support, 501(c)3 status etc.

One thing about single commissioners is that they should be required to hold at least one public meeting per quarter (usually the overarching Commission meets monthly).  I argue that one of the meetings could be a community service event of some type, such as picking up litter.

Wendy Kheel from the NoHo Neighborhood Council volunteers at the Clean California community cleanup on Oct. 11 in North Hollywood at Lankershim and Sherman Way. (Photo courtesy of Clean California)

The LA Daily News article, "Thirty volunteers picked up two truckloads of litter and trash in North Hollywood," about a community cleanup mentions in passing that one of the participants is a member of the North Hollywood Neighborhood Council. 

Which gave me the idea that ANCs/Neighborhood Councils should also do at least one community service event, followed by a barbecue or block party each year as well.

Separately, the Mayor of Los Angeles has created a monthly cleanup day event ("Mayor Bass kicks off Shine LA clean up initiative with event in Hollywood," CBS-TV).

-- "Want to get connected in Denver? Joining your registered neighborhood association might be the move," Denverite
-- "Is a Better Community Meeting Possible?," Century Foundation

Washington Trust for Historic Preservation publishes a quarterly magazine.

Historic Preservation Groups.  States, cities, counties and/or neighborhoods may have historic preservation or local history associations, focused on presenting community history and maintaining historic buildings and neighborhoods.  

Often advocacy is organized on rehabilitation or new projects, as a neighborhood or city-wide committee is charged with reviewing and commenting on them.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has an annual conference.  So do many state level groups.  They can be great opportunities to learn a lot very quickly.

Main Street Commercial District Revitalization Program.  Was originally created out of a desire by residents "to save local neighborhood business district historic buildings," but the National Trust for Historic Preservation soon recognized the issue was fixing broken micro-economies, because the reasons buildings were empty was because the local downtown economy wasn't working.  

Now the organization is separate from the National Trust, called Main Street America.

-- Washington Trust for Historic Preservation Main Street resources

The program is organized into committees focused on business development, organization, business promotion, and design (technically the committees may have different names).  

The groups bring together residents, business owners, property owners, the city government and other stakeholders to work together on improvements.

I think the way Main Street groups are organized is a good model for other types of organizations.  I know some museums use the model.  I'd like to try to use it as a guide to restructuring the Sugar House Park organization.

The Main Street program has an extensive technical assistance program and some publications (sadly mostly out of print) that are very good.

Biking and walking/Sustainable Mobility.  Many communities have bicycle and/or walking advocacy groups.  Active Transportation Alliance in Chicago and Transportation Alternatives in NYC focus on biking, walking, and transit.  Many communities and/or states have bicycle groups, but few communities have walking advocacy groups.

A variant is Safe Routes to School ("Why isn't walking/biking to school programming an option in Suburban Omaha? | Inadequacies in school transportation planning") which is a way to improve a community's infrastructure for kids getting to school in ways that also support broader community improvements.

Some schools organize group walk to school programs or "bike buses" ("Make Way for the Bike Bus," New York Times).

Neighborhood Planning Guidance.  I argue that neighborhoods, especially those with "recognized community organizations" like Philadelphia or Salt Lake, and sanctioned commissions ought to have at least a thumbnail plan of what they want to be, what to focus their energies on, what consensus priorities are, etc.

-- Neighborhood Planning website

It doesn't have to be a full blown master plan requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars, it can be based on some community meetings with a facilitator, ideally with some training about best practice, and the production of a framework or action plan for the community.

While my Silver Spring series on "Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District"

- Part 1: Setting the stage (2017)
- Part 2: Program items 1- 9 (2017)
- Part 3: Program items 10-18  (2017)
- Part 4: Conclusion (2017)
- Map for the Silver Spring Sustainable Mobility District (2017)
- (Big Hairy) Projects Action Plan(s) as an element of Comprehensive/Master Plans
- Creating the Silver Spring/Montgomery County Arena and Recreation Center (2017)

or New Carrollton ("Making over New Carrollton as a transit-centric urban center and Prince George's County's "New Downtown") "plans" were developed out of my thinking and field visits, you could argue they do provide some models.  

In "real life", the University District neighborhood of Buffalo created its own infrastructure plan, leveraging its transit connections ("Better on Bailey: Infrastructure Plan").  

So did the University District Neighborhood Council in Seattle, creating the University District Station Area Mobility Plan.

The summary is two pages.  It's a great model for what I think of as "thumbnail" plans, simpler than the plans engaging consultants costing many tens of thousands

I worked with residents to create a neighborhood priorities plan in Foggy Bottom, DC 18!!!! years ago etc.  Although it was more than two pages.

The PPS workshop "How to Turn a Place Around" and related Place Game planning tool are models of how to do a more simple kind of neighborhood planning.  

I also think the workshop serves as a potential training mechanism for interested residents, community associations, and city/county staff.  The idea is to move the workshop around a city or county, annually meeting in a different place.

I participated in an "informal" one more than 20 years ago, a training for Scenic America staff in 2004, and even though I was from the area and most of the participants were not, I found the insights and ideas developed by being on the site, but also infused by the reactions of others with a fresh approach (because they didn't live there), were powerful ("Eastern Market Metro Plaza").

In the blog entry "Outline for a proposed Ward-focused (DC) Councilmember campaign platform and agenda," I suggested that Councilmembers do this for their ward, obviously with citizen involvement, with recommendations about data collection and presentation (like where traffic accidents occur) and involvement structures.  But that can be ported down to the scale of neighborhood commissions.

Urban Design neighborhood plans.  Something else I've come to recommend, which does require a formal planning process, is the creation of urban design and placemaking plans for neighborhoods concerning streets, civic assets, and public space.  Instead of focusing on "a mode" I suggest "walkability" (which was just discussed in the previous entry, "October is National Community Planning Month | Thirteen characteristics of walkable neighborhoods | Characteristics of great places").

Besides my Silver Spring writings, I did a piece on the Dupont Circle neighborhood and 17th Street NW.  (They're iterative.)

-- "Planning urban design improvements at the neighborhood scale: Dupont Circle, DC," 2018
-- "More about making 17th Street between P and R a pedestrian space on weekends," 2019
-- "Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," 2021

I also did a thumbnail plan, don't know where it is, for the greater area of L'Enfant Plaza and the now no longer new Wharf District ("The Wharf in D.C. Makes a Splash," Urban Land, "The Wharf, D.C.'s massive waterfront development, is now open," Architect's Newspaper).  

This 1990 photo shows the area.  L'Enfant Plaza is on top, next to it is I-695, the Southeast-Southwest Freeway.  On the bottom is the old "Waterfront District" dating to the urban renewal period.  It was redeveloped in the 2000s as "The Wharf".

Labels: civic engagement, organizational development, participatory democracy and empowered participation, public service/volunteering/donations, urban design/placemaking