Conversations on the future
2024-09-29 17:34:46.087447+02 by
Dan Lyke
1 comments
Over on Nextdoor, Teddy asked:
Can you articulate a positive vision for the future? Not a story about what’s wrong or who’s to blame but can you speak of a better world that you and I will leave behind after we are long gone?
And I answered:
I'd like to help my community create enough housing to meet the needs of all of its occupants. To allow for a variety of non-car solutions to mobility, so I can walk or use other modes (who knows, at some point it might be mobility scooter or wheelchair...) for most of my trips. A municipal government that's fiscally robust enough to support amenities like parks and public art and open spaces and infrastructure that help make a robust and vibrant space to visit and live in. And a community that's resilient to the challenges of climate change, and able to be a leader in policies that help mitigate the impacts of our life and lifestyle on climate change.
I'd like to foster a diverse community that exposes me to a variety of experiences and cultures. That celebrates the creative endeavors of those within it. A local economy that lets a variety of people live here in all stages of their lives. And a society that's dynamic and open to change to meet the needs of all of its people.
Continued in comments.
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#Comment Re: Conversations on the future made: 2024-09-29 17:35:54.152545+02 by:
Dan Lyke
In response to Ruth Gemignani's "Petaluma has that now, let’s keep it !" I wrote:
Ruth
I don't think it does. Homelessness is related to the direct cost of housing[1], and Sonoma County has an outsized homelessness problem. I'd argue that this is because of housing costs. We have a huge number of people commuting in and out of Petaluma every day (I remember the number 20k, though I can't source it right now), an indication that the housing here does not match up with the jobs here.
Mobility in Petaluma depends on the car. The wheelchair user in my neighborhood reports having been hit by automobiles several times. Walking and biking are suppressed because we have unsafe infrastructure (Ever tried to cross Washington? I've had people blow straight through the light at Kentucky, while I've got the walk signal) [2]. In many places in Petaluma it's a mile walk or bike to groceries, often crossing some pretty awful thoroughfares (glad D St has gotten better). Transit is the best that that department can do with the development patterns we have, but not really usable.
We have huge public resources devoted to parking[2], and yet when I asked about converting the garage in my 768 square foot cottage to an office, I was told that i needed to provide 3 off-street parking spots at my house. And we have lots of conversations around density, especially around downtown, but the response is often "what about parking?". Well, ya know, we have lots of shopping centers with plenty of parking, and, oddly, they're under-performing (*cough* East Washington Place *cough*). People like old development patterns because they were developed with people in mind, not cars, and in my humble opinion we need to go back to that.
Petaluma's municipal government is not fiscally robust. We have years of development patterns that cost way more to service than they bring in revenue to the city[4]. The city is currently doing well because of Measure U, but sales tax is a *crappy* way to fund a city, and we need to use this money as bail-out funds to invest in a revival, rather than as operating funds. We, as a city, have all sorts of things we'd *love* to do, the Trestle, rework Helen Putnam Plaza to be a better gathering place, downtown restrooms, and so on and so forth that we don't have the resources to do. The much maligned M-Group exists because a set of attitudes and plans drove the city to the edge of bankruptcy, and rather than pay city employees a fair wage with pensions, those jobs got outsourced.
There are lots of looks at why cities do this to themselves, especially cities with assets like Petaluma, but a lot of it revolves around Federal funding of infrastructure and assumptions about the economics of automobiles.[5]
All of this ties together to the biggie: We cannot base a city around cars and detached single family homes and commuter lifestyles and pretend to care about climate change. We should be aspiring to build new buildings with the scale and grandeur of the Mutual Relief building, of the Phoenix Theater, of the Hotel Petaluma, to be a model for inclusionary housing and walkable neighborhoods. We should be celebrating infill, multi-family in neighborhoods, making parking a market rate amenity rather than yet another subsidy of the already hugely subsidized automobile.
Petaluma has a lot of potential, but a lot of its planning and future have been defined by processes that have forced out those who didn't have the energy and spare resources to outlast discussions that could be drawn out for forever, that have discounted the impacts of commuting and travel, that seek easy answers rather than fixing problems in the processes, and I believe that we can do so much better than we're doing.
[1] I recommend Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern's excellent book on the topic, "Homelessness is a Housing Problem".
[2] Jessie Singer's "There Are No Accidents" is a good read on this topic.
[3] If you don't want to wade through all of Donald Shoupp's awesome textbook "The High Cost of Free Parking", I at least recommend reading the first chapter, at https://www.shoupdogg.com/publications/ , or Henry Grabar's excellent "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World ".
[4] If you're not familiar with the work of Joe Minicozzi and Urban 3, including the talk he gave a few years ago in Santa Rosa looking at the economics of the Sonoma County 101 corridor, I recommend it.
[5] I definitely have issues with some of the "Strong Towns" organization started by Charles Marohn, but there is a lot to think about in the books Chuck has written and the various publications they've put out, and he's been an engaging speaker.