Category: Up To Speed

Links to keep you up to speed on what’s happening in Cincinnati and what we can learn from other cities.

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Mixed record for new Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx

Mixed record for new Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx

Last month President Obama choose outgoing Transpiration Secretary Ray LaHood’s (R) successor, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx (D). While Foxx has overseen the expansion of the city’s light rail line and championed its streetcar project he has also supported extensions for the regions highways. What does his eventual appointment mean for American cities looking to mitigate sprawl and increase transportation alternatives?  More from NextCity:

When the news broke in January that LaHood would not serve a second term, a number of transit advocates fantasized that his position would go to a superstar like Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. Instead, as our friends at Streetsblog have already pointed out, LaHood’s successor comes from a background indicating that he’ll support “giving people more transportation options without making much of an effort to rein in sprawl infrastructure.”

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One Transit App to Rule Them All

One Transit App to Rule Them All

As more people are turning to smartphones to help guide them around cities, app makers are looking into ways to create a transit app that not only provides mass transit directions but also information about the nearest car sharing service and taxi services. This kind of app would serve as a “one-stop shop” for urbanites looking to ditch the expense of owning an automobile and rely entirely on transportation alternatives. More from the Atlantic Cities:

What all of these apps, including taxis, are essentially trying to convince users that they can get to and from work, run errands, meet people for lunch, get to appointments, and do all their other daily tasks without having their own car. RideScout is betting that aggregating all these new transportation options in one place is the best way to make that case to users — which is a win for all transportation disrupters. “If people aren’t pumping $50 into a tank when they fill up, they can transfer that money to taxis, public transportation, and these other options,” Kopser says. “When people make the decision to leave their car at home, we all win — the roads are less clogged, there is less smog, and money is staying in the local economy.”

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The Myth of the Suburban Revival

The Myth of the Suburban Revival

Recent economics data released from the Brookings Institute have shown that job sprawl has spread outside of metro downtowns, including Cincinnati. Planning theorists however are at odds as to what this means with New Geography’s Joel Kotkin claiming the “triumph of suburbia” over the center city. However; his assertions seem to be based on several false assumptions in the market and does not take into account the millenial generations preference for walkable neighborhoods. Is this a City vs. Suburb debate or as Robert Steuteville claims a walkable vs. auto-dominated debate? More from Better Cities & Towns:

In his analysis, Kotlin ignores many inconvenient facts and trends that don’t fit his narrative of an inexorable, historical march to lower density in generation after generation. Real estate values have declined in the automobile-oriented suburbs relative to compact, mixed-use neighborhoods. There’s a growing preference for rental housing, and multifamily development has recovered far more quickly than single-family development. Multifamily development has taken on a new character in recent years. In the 1990s it was garden apartments in the suburbs. Now it is being built in urban, transit-served neighborhoods.

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Parking Demand Map Aids Planners

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/04/mapping-subtle-science-parking-demand/5402/

As Cincinnati planners continue to study and move forward on eliminating parking requirements in the urban core, planners in the Seattle area have devised a way to track the supply of parking in parts of the Seattle region. Seattle planners conducted the study by doing parking counts in the middle of the night and matching them up with rental rates and unit affordability. Could a similar map for Cincinnati shed more light on whether the region is providing for more parking than it needs? More from the Atlantic Cities:

On average, these buildings were supplying about 1.4 parking stalls per housing unit; residents were only using about 1 stall per unit. And that oversupply extended across the region, from the central business district to urban neighborhoods to the suburbs. The project also collected information from each of these buildings on how the parking was priced, how the rental units were priced, and whether those two costs were bundled together. All of that information from this building survey was then used, alongside data on land use, demographics, job locations, and transit to hone a model capable of estimating the parking demand on a given property, accounting for factors like its proximity to transit and the price of parking relative to rent.

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Atlanta aims to capitalize on shifting global trade patterns with new export plan

Atlanta aims to capitalize on shifting global trade patterns with new export plan.

The City of Atlanta has launched a new regional plan for growing exports. The plan is seen as a critical step to help continue growth in the nation’s 13th largest metropolitan region, and aims to capitalize on shifting global trade patterns. More from Brookings:

By 2012, a majority of the 50 top performing metropolitan economies worldwide were in developing Asia-Pacific countries. U.S. metros must take advantage of growing demand abroad by developing export and engagement strategies that build on their special assets in the global economy.

The region has already taken the first step. Two weeks ago, Mayor Kasim Reed announced the launch of an Atlanta Metropolitan Export Plan that will be developed in collaboration with some of the region’s key business, political, university and non-profit leaders. The next step will be to conduct a market assessment of regional industries, identify the metro’s strengths and weaknesses, and determine what policies and investments are necessary to grow exports.