What I Like in a City

Originally published in the Northland Reader now the Reader Weekly, March 16, 2000

As a newcomer to Duluth, I’m not quite familiar with all the plans for changes to Duluth, for example Vision 2001, but I appreciate many of the things Duluth offers and hope to see these features improved.

Duluth offers some transportation choices that makes a city great and to human scale.  Namely, if one is so inclined, one can easily choose to go by foot, bus, or car, in that order.

These choices are not easy everywhere in Duluth, but in Chester Park where I live, I have used all three choices to reach UMD, Mt. Royal, Kenwood, the lake, and even downtown.  I much prefer to walk unless time is a factor.

Walking not only provides exercise and fresh air, but it gives me time to observe and experience an area.  Walking by parks, houses, and shops, there is much to see that is only a blur when seen from a vehicle.

Taking the bus is a second choice if time is short or the weather is bad.  Walking downtown is good exercise but only if I want to spend an hour or more doing so.  With a bus, I can be downtown in one-quarter that time.  Taking the bus provides conveniences that many don’t consider.  First of all, I don’t need to worry about parking.  Secondly, even if parking is easily available, a bus may get me closer to the door.

Taking a car is a third choice if time is important, if I have a lot to carry, or if the bus doesn’t go to my destination.  Time can be important in two ways.  It can take longer to do an errand or the buses aren’t running at that time of day.  I often drive downtown for evening events because they might run past the last bus or because I might just miss an hourly bus.  I take a bus to church downtown but my wife has to drive; choir practice starts before the buses do.

I do have a historical bias for this opinion.  I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio (not one of its suburbs).  I walked to school until I was in high school, then I took three buses.  The buses were frequent enough that I never had to worry about how late practice lasted.  Even when I started college I took a bus and a rapid transit train.  We did most of our shopping in walking distance of our home; otherwise we hopped a streetcar to go downtown.

Since then I have lived in Minneapolis, Rome, Stockholm, exurban Philadelphia, and exurban Minneapolis, I have had extended stays in New York, London, Paris, Helsinki, and Basel, and I have visited many other cities from Leningrad to Los Angeles to Osaka.  (What’s “exurban”?  So far out from the center that there are no sidewalks.)  Many of them offered both walking and public transportation opportunities.  In fact, those I enjoyed the most were those that had vibrant centers where people walked, shopped, wined, and dined until late in the evening.  New York, Rome, Paris, Stockholm, Osaka, and Tokyo are full of lights and activity well past a Midwesterner’s bedtime.  Their centers are accessible until midnight or beyond.  But my favorite was Basel, Switzerland.

Most of the time that I was in Basel I worked evenings.  I could either walk or take a streetcar from my hotel to the customer site and back.  Streetcars ran until one in the morning.  If I walked, it was not past monolithic buildings and parking lots but past parks and shops with interesting displays in their windows.  Within walking distance of the hotel were dozens of restaurants, a couple of grocery stores, many, many shops, an outdoor swimming pool, several parks, and the zoo.

I don’t think Basel was designed; too many of the streets intersect at other than a right angle.  I think Swiss efficiency made the best of the situation over the centuries.

Duluth will never be like Basel for a variety of reasons and many of us would not want that.  But in our vision for Duluth, we can adapt some of the elements that made Basel interesting.

First, we should make existing sidewalks more user friendly.  We could encourage homeowners to cut back overhanging branches and keep sidewalks clear of snow and ice.  We could ticket cars that are parked across crosswalks or even in drives but over the sidewalk.

Second, we should have a more aggressive program for sidewalk replacement or repair.  We should also examine funding; is it fair to make a homeowner pay for a sidewalk?

Third, we should keep streets drier by repairing potholes and low spots.  Why should a pedestrian have to run past a puddle, like on Woodland south of Mt. Royal?

Fourth, we should have more frequent buses and more coverage.  Should our only ways to get to the DECC be by driving, walking over a freeway bridge, or walking a long, monochromatic skyway?  We should have shuttle buses from DECC to downtown at event times, including Omnimax.  We have no skyway to Canal Park but bus service is limited to daylight hours.  We should be able to go by bus on a Saturday night to a downtown restaurant or theater.

Fifth, we should plan new development based on how people will get there.  Should people have to walk across a windy, dusty parking lot dodging drivers more concerned about looking for a parking space?  Should buses have to go in and out of parking lots so that passengers need not walk across said parking lots?

Sixth, we should consider more mixed use like that which some people would like to see on Fourth St. E. between Fifth and Sixth Avenues;  that is, shops at street level, residences and professional offices above.

In other words, let’s remember that cars are only a means, not an end.  Let’s design for people, not just one of their means.

Quote of the Day: Hardworking?

Over 2,100 comments were posted to "Why Rural America Voted for Trump", Robert Leonard, New York Times, 2017-01-05.

One of my favorites was submitted by Cam Chapel Hill, NC

"I'm sick of the expression "hardworking". Who doesn't consider themselves "hardworking"? I suspect being homeless and unemployed requires a great deal of 'hard work'.

"Be all this as it may: voting for Trump is like trying to lose weight on a diet of ice cream and cookies-you may enjoy the experience but you won't reach your goals."

Other commenters pointed out that agri-business has reduced the number of family farms, that Trump's billionaires are only posturing about their wanting to help rural America, and that one relative was working 60-hour weeks in New York City.

A simple arithmetic proof of global warming

Too many people deny that our atmosphere is warming.  Many of these do so because they are making lots of money contributing to global warming.  They also spend lots of money convincing people of a certain political view that the promotion of the idea of global warming is the plot of people of a certain other political view.

It is relatively simple to prove that there is global warming with one simple assumption: increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause the globe to be warmer.

For centuries there has been a certain balance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  People have used plants for food and fuel for eons.  As people use the plant carbon as food, they breathe out carbon dioxide.  As they use plant carbon as fuel, their fires give off carbon dioxide.  Plants, in turn, use the atmospheric carbon dioxide as food to grow.  The balance is such, that even with huge forest fires and volcanoes, the excess carbon dioxide is used up over a few years or decades with the new growth of plants.

We could express this as

CB-CU=0

That is, carbon burned minus carbon used by plants equals zero.  That is, we have a long term balance.

Then people took coal, oil, and gas from under the ground.  Now are equation is

CB-CU=CG

where CG is carbon from underground: coal, oil and gas.  That is, the carbon from coal, oil, and gas is not used up by the existing plants.

To make matters worse, human activity doesn't increase the amount of plant life to absorb the extra carbon.  To the contrary, human activity reduces the volume of plant life.  Humans cut down huge forests without replacing them with plants of equal volume.  Sometimes they replace the huge forests with sugar cane, coffee plants, or corn.  Sometimes they don't even replace the plants but cover the same ground with highways, parking lots, and mammoth buildings.  Now our equation becomes

CB-CU=CG+CL

where CL is carbon uptake lost.  CB, CG, and CL keep getting bigger, and CU keeps getting smaller. 

If you assume the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide doesn't cause global warming, consider that  residents of many cities are having breathing problems because of all the pollutants, including carbon dioxide, that are in the air because of the cities' dependence on fossil fuels.

Free markets and governments

"Alex Marshall, a journalist and senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association, has written two books on the topic of cities: "How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and The Roads Not Taken" and "Beneath the Metropolis: The Secret Lives of Cities." He also lectures on urbanism and teaches courses on infrastructure.

"His newest book, released this fall, is a departure—but not as radical of one as it might first appear. "The Surprising Design of Market Economies" debunks the notion that free markets are 'natural.'"

From "What Jane Jacobs Got Wrong About Urban Economies", Allison Arieff, TheAtlanticCities, 2012-12-05.

Marshall's final comment is "We are a democracy and we ought to act like it."

Politics done right

This evening we attended the State of the City address by Duluth Mayor Don Ness.  It was a really upbeat address on all the obstacles the city has overcome – unfunded pension liabilities, sewer overflow problems, street repair backlog, and others.  But Don did not take all the credit.  He praised the City Council for all the work they've done to come up with solutions.  He praised the city employees for all the efforts they have made.  And he praised businesses and citizens for the contributions they have made.

Now the process was not all sweetness and light; there were many disagreements.  But the council and the city administration worked to arrive at solutions rather than gain political points.  If we could only have pragmatic governance at the state and federal levels.

Disclaimer: Don Ness and I are long-time acquaintances.  When he was a city councilor and ran Rep. Jim Oberstar's Duluth office, I would drop in at Oberstar's office about once a month for a chat with Don.  I also had a bit of "clout" because I often wrote for the "Reader Weekly", a local, widely-read newspaper.  I contributed to Don's campaigns, and  I sent him lots of emails with suggestions or comments about city government.  However, I now send him few emails; I figure he has enough feedback and suggestions from hundreds of others.

I think this is how the writers of the Constitution envisioned government.  Most of the towns were smaller than Duluth is now, and even the big cities weren't that much bigger.  Now we have cities bigger than the United States was in 1787.  Some of these are very difficult to manage and are overburdened with competing interests.