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A
How do you get from this mission statement?
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Our mission is simple. Affordable homes for America to tenants like.
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A
They are attempting to charge me $1,600.
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There was no stove in the house. Have been bullying, harassing, and potentially scamming me. I actually felt safer in Bagram and Kandahar than I do in my own home.
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Now, was it just incompetence? Was this mismanagement? Or were these companies operating according to a set of incentives that made dysfunction not just common, but inevitable? Check out Stacked Against Us, a new podcast by Strong Towns now available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Got my bus pass.
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B
Finer downtown with a fine ladies in the peeps. All right, folks, welcome to upzoned. This is Norm with Strong Towns and I'm excited to take this opportunity as part of our Upzone podcast where we talk about an article that's current or fresh in the news and we talk about it from a Strong Towns perspective. With me today is our chief of staff at Strong Towns, Carly OM Carly, welcome.
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A
Thank you, Norm. I'm really excited to be with you on Upzone today. Thanks for including me.
- [01:25]
B
Yeah, likewise. And I think it's what you've been on just a couple weeks ago or I think I was listening to you, I think yesterday and now, now you're back. So I love it. I'm excited to have you take on this discussion about an article in the Washington Post that was published just recently by Tim Carmen and Rachel Viner regarding the changes that the District Department of Transportation have introduced with respect to streeteries. So these are the little plazas that pop up in park, what were parking spaces. And they are useful, you know, for restaurants to be able to provide additional seating. They were very useful during the pandemic when outdoors dining was more of a requirement. But actually it's also an opportunity throughout the year to provide for outdoor dining in spaces where often the streets allow for that. And so new structure requirements have been established of better. I, I think the, the goal or the idea of it is they want better structures that are better maintained. But another key part of it is they've introduced rates of fees for these sites to be used. And so on a $20 per square foot basis, restaurants are basically able to rent it for a year as well as paying some fees related to the construction of their space. They are obviously creating these challenges or creating these rules. Rather, in response to some complaints and observations that others have had that the amount of car spaces taken up by these street side eateries are definitely a factor. When you think about parking Requirements and things like that within the community. But also that some of these sites have started to become run down in the perception of some, while at the same time restaurants have made good use of them in a lot of places. And so really grappling with, hey, if we require 130 or $20 per square foot to be provided, what is the cost of that going to be for each business? If you have to pay $260 for your annual permit, okay, that's, that's reasonable. But then they also have to provide Jersey barriers to provide safety at each site. The city said you can rent them from the city or get them from the city for $250 per barrier. So start to calculate. Okay, we're up to several thousand dollars at that point. Then they also have to submit fees whenever they bring in a different documents. So that includes architectural designs, which feels like a big stretch. If you know a good carpenter, you know that they can whip up really good structures quite quickly without necessarily needing stamps or approvals or things like this. And so along along all of those things, one of the challenges is that the temporary program didn't require, which has been in place since June of 2020, didn't require restaurants to pay for the use of public spaces, just to register that they were planning to use it and to basically make something of those spaces. But now they're going to have to pay significantly more and sort of be much following more standards. Carly, you've had involvement in this within Lafayette, and I would imagine you've also enjoyed eating in some over the years. What, what are your thoughts on this as we review this article together?
- [04:39]
A
You know, I think, to be honest, I have sympathy in a lot of directions. It, it feels to me like, you know, if you think about where we were when these were enabled, you know, I wasn't in Washington D.C. at the time, but, you know, I think some of what we saw during COVID was, you know, things that strong towns would advocate for rapid responses and what's the next smallest thing we can do? And you know, these, these restaurants were struggling and this was a way to get people outside, keep our businesses alive. And those, you know, those types of responses are things that we love to see and we, we encourage. And you know, I'm sure most of the folks listening today have enjoyed themselves and in an outdoor dining establishment that may have been allowed by, by street parking. So, you know, I guess I start with, with that now. You know, I have also worn the hat of a city official. And when you start to get the complaints about something, you, you start to feel like something needs to be done. And you know, they are using, they are using public space and so the, you know, and other people might not be able to use that same public space for free. And so what are, does this thing that we did as a, as a quick response, a next small step to a problem during 2020, does it make sense as a long term solution and are we still facing the same challenge today or does it make sense to adjust? So I'm very sympathetic to the idea that, you know, over the years there have been some maybe unintended consequences and developments to these streeteries in, in D.C. but you know, in reading the article like you did, I certainly had some feelings that, you know, maybe we're going too far too fast, you know, that maybe this, the rapid response type behavior, I guess, that was so necessary in 2020, maybe it isn't quite as necessary necessary to rapidly put these new regulations in and what goals are we trying to achieve and does this solve them? I know, you know, we, we chatted about this internally as a team and I thought our colleague Edward's response was, you know, really smart. Like, is this zoning a zoning solution to, to address a code enforcement challenge? You know, and so it feels like you've, you maybe have some city officials who are taking the tools that they know how to use best to try and solve and address some of the complaints that they've been having. So, you know, as a city official, I think I'd meet, I'd be tempted and certainly you have to work with your elected folks to say like, well, what are the values that we, that we have as a city? And you know, do we value these, these streeteries? And in our, in our community in Lafayette, Louisiana, we call them parklets, but do we value these and do we want to keep them? And then are these the right policies that, that then allow that or enable that? So I know we'll get into conversations later about safety and things like that, but that's kind of my, my starting point is, you know, I'm thinking like, my goodness, this seems like something that's been a really great asset for parts of D.C. and gosh, there might be some unintended consequences here.
- [08:04]
B
Yeah, because I think a big important part of this is what are our higher order priorities? And so if ample parking that is widely available is your highest order priority, then this is just like so frustrating. And the relief is, is within view because the idea is, hey, pretty soon we're going to have less of These and we'll get our parking spaces back. Uh, one of the restaurants took up 12 and a half parking spaces. I'm not sure what they did with that half of a parking space or what it used to be. Maybe it was for motorcycles or something. Um, but the consequence of this was that this, the restaurant was generating, according to the. The restaurant owner, $4 million in gross sales, which was a doubling of amount, the amount of productivity of for that restaurant, which turned into $438,000 in sales and use taxes for the district. Now, I've seen you start to ask the question, if that's $35,000 per parking space that is going into community coffers to be able to provide for core public services, what is the corresponding benefit of paid parking? Well, we know that that is $138 per square foot was the calculations. And so I need to do the quick math of how much that is on a per parking space basis. But it's interesting to then say, all right, if one is offering significantly more revenue to the city, which we can use to care for the commonwealth, and we have other resources available to meet parking demands, namely transit options in D.C. as well as parking garages and things like that, that maybe have a slightly higher cost to the user, but certainly allow for a greater diversity of uses on the street, that looks a lot like what we're talking about in terms of allowing for productive land use. I would also say that it's good to recognize that the use of the public realm involves costs. In fact, I wish that we had this conversation more clearly and more openly on a regular basis that when you use a space that there is a cost to that we take this really dim view of never really seeing the cost when it comes to vehicles. But every other type of use, if people were to store their goods on the street, they would say like, no, no, no, you need to put that in a private storage locker. You can't just do that out there. And so it's interesting that this, these streeteries have really sort of moved the needle in terms of reassessing what do we do with the public realm and what more can we do with the public realm? And that's what I'm drawn to. One of the concerns that around safety, visibility, and all of those things to me feel like secondary issues. They're very solvable problems Once we've gotten through that first level, which is what do we want to do with the public realm? And when we begin to innovate on this like they did in 2020, um, you begin to see how this can be so valuable. It's sort of upending assumptions. I wrote an article in my community in Delta in 2020 when they introduced their patio program for using reusing parking spaces as patios. And I said, this actually does way more than we think it does. Yes, it's immediately about, like, helping restaurants to stay afloat, and it's about, like, creating spaces that previously didn't exist and being like, oh, this ain't bad. I like this. But it actually also signaled a rather interesting sort of robustness or nimbleness. Our rules in Delta were rolled out, I think, within three weeks. They worked with local restaurants that said, what do you need? And they basically said, let's roll with that. And the consequences there are. They became very popular. And it's interesting that this is an opportunity here in D.C. to also assassinate, like, yep, we probably can continue down this path. We can adjust the guidelines, the standards, but let's do so with the thought towards, like, really building value. How did you handle any of the pushback? Or did you find that there wasn't much pushback in Lafayette when it was proposed? Or were there safeguards or guardrails that helped you to be quite purposeful? But how do you brought that in?
- [11:52]
A
Interestingly, because we've. We've talked about this internally as well, but we actually used our parklet program and therefore our streetery program, because ours are essentially the same thing came into play before COVID So our policy was active before COVID and we had a couple of outdoor dining places up and running when. When Covid hit, we did it all as. So we did that policy and program all as part of one thing together. And we worked with our downtown association. We actually did it in the downtown area. And, you know, I think that the one of the things that I was struck by in this article is that it feels like because they are operating at the full city scale, you know, they're struggling to localize the response maybe in the way that could make this program, make the program changes more acceptable to different parts of the community. You know, not. Not being a frequent D.C. visitor, you know, I'm not familiar with all the places that these streeteries are, but, you know, a Jersey barrier may be a perfectly reasonable thing on one street, and it may feel like a perfectly ridiculous thing on another street, depending on the street design and how the street is used. The other thing that. That we did in Lafayette when we rolled out our policy is we did it after several years of participating in parking day so we had given, we had given people for several years in a row the opportunity to experience the temporary installations, to get excited about them, to understand how they could work and not be that disruptive to the regular course of business. And so people got really that we use that temporary installation to kind of share with people what was possible. So that by the time we came with the policy it was. People were excited about it. They had enjoyed the temporary installations and thought we could do something like this more permanently. We also had worked with our downtown association to do a demonstration demonstration long term parklet. It wasn't actually a streetery. It was just a location of a small little park in a parking spot. And that had been popular. It had been across the street from a couple of fun eateries themselves so people, customers could walk over. You know. So it is, it can be really difficult. I'm sure that many of the folks, many of the folks on the DC staff have probably been you know, fielding complaints from some of the folks who don't like it or who are. Are thinking that it's. That it's unfair. And so you know, sounds like these, these proposed policies where their responses to that. It just feels like based on the article that perhaps the responses weren't always well calibrated to the situation of each particular eatery.
- [14:52]
B
I think one of the things that I wanted to grapple with too is the Citizens association of Georgetown. There's a piece that's linked in there. They say this program has caused an undue burden on public safety, proper traffic management and Georgetown's historic character. What are some of those? And they cite for example, there's rodents are increasingly there in some instances the patios are not actually being used. They're being used for storage of goods. So chairs are being set out there, but also like extra weight tables and things like that. With the idea that only in exceptional times when there's an influx of visitors are people actually ending up seated on the patio most of the rest of the time. It's sort of like a no man's land. There are popular ones, but then the unpopular ones maybe are the ones that are in the squarely in view of the concerned citizens and the popular ones are the ones that are in view of the proponents. How do we grapple with that from a strong towns perspective where clearly we have competing interests. But also people's perception of what the big issue is is often very clouded by their particular instance of what they, you know, if you see only bad design, you're. You're convinced that the whole thing needs to get. Be getting rid of. If you see only sort of improved productivity and restaurants that are able to stay afloat and know, isn't this wonderful? And I, I got to like, experience a street festival nearby as I got to enjoy, you know, a fine meal in that context. Your experiences are so varied. How do we sort of grapple with some of those competing dynamics here?
- [16:22]
A
I think it's, it can often be really hard, especially when you have people that are, like you said, experiencing one side of this or the other side of this. You know, I think that the thing that, let's say you're talking to someone who is experiencing the streetery that's being used as a storage unit that's not attractive to their business, that they feel is maybe deterring businesses from their customers. Looking at the policies, proposals and suggestions in the context of, like you said, I think the way you kicked off the entire episode was like, well, what are our first principles? What are our priorities here as a community? And, and it can. Once someone is angry or upset or feels that their life or livelihood has been impacted by poor policy or poor management of those policies, it can be very difficult to kind of, you know, assist them in taking another perspective. Right? It is. And so that's why it's so important to, I think, foster a kind of a continuous improvement, small steps kind of philosophy like we're always talking about here is, you know, you never want to have a policy that you throw out there and then it freezes in place. And it seems to me like in this case, you know, the, the. They allowed these in 2020 and then they really haven't done the ongoing management to now prevent where they are in this, in this more crisis state where they're really getting, getting the sides on both sides really inflamed. You know, I mean, when I was reading the article, my, you know, I was stressed out, frankly, for some of the businesses who are, you know, putting their revenue numbers and like, you know, their entire business model now depends on, depends on being able to operate that streetery and it shifts entirely if the, if these policies go into effect. Um, you know, and I, I think that, you know, when I worked at the city in our planning department, one of the things that we would say internally is that we were trying to create a place that was predictable for people to do business, that, you know, it's ideally not the local government's role to be kind of changing the rules on, on businesses in such a way that they can't plan and they can't adapt. And, you know, it feels like this is probably coming at quite abrupt for many of these businesses that have hired staff and built business models around being able to do this sort of thing seems like it could use for more time and more discussion.
- [19:06]
B
Yeah, and providing off ramps, I think, is important here. And that's where one of the recommendations, I think, that's now been established is that they need to be seasonal so you can no longer enclose them, or they're largely being made seasonal because you can enclose them and put heaters and things like that in there. And I was reflecting on that because the notion of outdoor dining in sort of, you know, fairly rudimentary structures seems to really present kind of a challenge of like, all right, are you just blasting, you know, heaters and things like this in order to keep enough people in those spaces? Is this actually in the strong tens lexicon, sort of the first version of, like, those simple shacks? And what does like that gradual development of those shacks to the next increment actually look like in the context of a streetery like this? And I'm actually kind of grappling with that because I don't know if you could go and use, you know, brick and mortar and create more, you know, elaborate structures, in part because you're still perched on the side of the street that you haven't given up using, with its primary purpose being to move a lot of vehicles. And so those are the ones that are in the crosshairs. And I, you know, see this in Vancouver, where you have buses and cement trucks running right past points where, you know, people are enjoying foie gras, and you're like, all right, there's. There's something of a mismatch here. But then a lot of our side streets are the places that through our zoning regulations, we say you can't have any retail there. You can't have restaurants on a side street. It has to be on the, on the main drag. Well, that's going to present a lot of challenges that you couldn't even say, hey, we're going to do like a side entrance on. On the corner lot and, and create something really great in that side area, because those are the ones that nobody's objecting to. Those are the ones that work really well. But then the idea too, maybe. And then we can go into the down zone in a moment here. But is the idea of, like, is this a land grab? So that was one of the complaints that was raised by the Georgetown Coalition is, hey, this is an unsanctioned land grab which is public realm suddenly just being made available over an extended period of time for private restaurateurs who are, you know, if this person has made $4 million, that's not all profit. Obviously there, there would be a portion of that that would be profit. But like that is a good opportunity in the way that even if someone wants to use the park to film a movie or to host a festival, you're going to have to pay a park booking fee. Is that maybe more suitable that you should be able to have to factor in the cost per square foot in order to do that. The trouble for me, the way that I always grapple with it is the, but what about. Because I my mind immediately goes but what about cars? They are the ones that, you know, if there is paid parking, even then that paid parking is more for parking management than a true calculation of the cost of having them use the space in that way. And so the movement and storage of automobiles, we discount it so heavily that everything else we're asking to give an account for. And yet when it comes to these devices, we've just sort of turned a blind eye to it. But I also want to just touch on the fact that like I do think there does have to be a real accounting for the cost of what we do with the, with the private realm, but also the public realm. And the idea that like every street should earn its keep or a street is a terrible thing to waste, I feel is a good step in the right direction to what, what we talk about as strong towns, that transportation systems are a means of creating prosperity, not an end unto themselves. And therefore every investment that we make in a street is actually with a view of making it more productive. And I love asking that question, how do we make a street productive? It's like having ever better buildings adjacent to the street, having ever better access provided by that street for a greater number of participants, ideally those that don't require a lot of space to store an automobile, but, but instead are nimbler, are able to walk in, you know, making sure that smaller things like bike parking, bike parking can have a significant impact on providing a great resting place, creating the conditions for more people to be able to use that space in sort of an anonymous way. And the group in Ottawa, this stands out to me. The, the Strong towns Ottawa group, they actually hosted a pop up table on one of their streets that there was a lot of contention about parking. And the business owners in particular said we need way more parking right now. It's being restricted. Go away with all your bike lanes. We don of this. And so they asked people walking by, hey, what? You're a customer. These businesses have said they want parking, but actually what they want is customers. So if we can just get it past the abstraction that parking equals customers, they might equal a few. But like, surely a business has more customers. So they asked people who are walking by, what do you want? And they said, we want more shops. We want a greater variety of shops. And we would spend a lot more time here. We want better street lights. We kind of want that garbage over there to be dealt with. We want there to be, you know, fun things here, maybe even street performers, that sort of stuff. And it began to like tick off all of these things. And maybe there was a. I think in their survey there was a handful of people that said, oh man, I wish there was more parking. But the vast majority said, no, no, no, I want other stuff. I want things that from the perspective of Strongtown, so we say would make your street far more productive and, and help to generate lasting prosperity. And that to me is missing in these pieces. There's a little bit of it of like, well, I guess that we can have restaurants, but like, it shouldn't come at such a cost. I'm like, okay, then let's account for that through standards that actually are going to require, you know, good construction and good upkeep. And I do think, much like if you've ever like camped your stuff on a chair in an airport, cause you're like saving it. And then somebody just comes along eventually and like moves it. Cause you haven't been there. I guess airport's a bad example because they'll throw it in a bomb destruction device. But in other spaces where you're like camping out, you're trying to hold it, and then somebody just comes along and says, you're not using this actually anymore. We're just going to move your stuff. And now I'm seated there in that context, like that shouldn't be a declaration of war. That's just acknowledging you've kind of lost your ability to lay claim to this if you're not really using it for its intended purpose. And I think that can be one of the. The steps forward for this. But before we go to the downtown, last thoughts on on street reason and everything that makes them great or not so great.
- [25:22]
A
Oh, well, I love them. I think they're great. And I guess my hope for. My hope for D.C. is that they. They'll be able to kind of maybe take a more zoomed in look at the problem and to see, you know, what maybe is an ongoing management issue versus, you know, it seems like since the pandemic, they've created a lot of great local businesses and there's probably a way that they can support that local business infrastructure in a way that is maybe perceived as more fair than it is today. But it seems like their response is. Is maybe a little too. A little too dramatic for where the community has been the last five years.
- [26:03]
B
Yeah, totally. And the idea of our city needs to get to the point where everything is built out to a finished state and then leave it as is. That's a little bit of, you know, the historic sort of layers of, hey, things were perfect the way that they are. Don't mess with it, especially not with, like, timber structures, because we are a brick and mortar sort of place that really betrays that sense. Like, we've created the neighborhood that we need, that works for us. And now we're lifting up the drawbridge and making it impossible for any new entrance to emerge. And we saw some of the same pushback with street street food, with food trucks and things like that. People saying like, oh, they're, they're noisy, they're loud. So you didn't do anything to help with, like, being able to run cables from nearby businesses instead? No, now that's a tripping hazard. So it was like, on the one hand, it's a bad thing. It's really bad for everybody. And yet we're not going to do anything to address some of the, like, secondary complaints because we just want it gone. And I think that can be part of the challenge here. So with that, let's transition into the down zone. And as we wrap up member week, what has been something that has been lifting you and giving you some added interest?
- [27:13]
A
Oh, well, luckily for me, we're in. As you know, Norm, I'm in Lafayette, Louisiana. I've said it at least once on this episode. And Monty and Bernice and the folks from Neighborhood Evolution are in town this week. So I'm going to get to see them this evening, which will be great. It's always great to have people like them with their amazing expertise and incremental development here in my hometown. So I'm excited to, you know, hear what they've been up to today while I've been with you. And then they brought from Brian, Texas, Katie Develops, who is apparently, that's not her last name, that's her Instagram handle. Follow her on Instagram.
- [27:52]
B
Cool.
- [27:52]
A
Yeah. She's Instagram famous, I'm assured. So I'm going to get to see what she thinks of Lafayette this evening. So that, that's excited to see. See what they experienced today and to, you know, get an outside perspective on my hometown.
- [28:07]
B
Yeah. So you'll have good friends and new friends. I love that. That's awesome.
- [28:10]
A
Exactly.
- [28:11]
B
How about you? Yeah, I'm going to stick to the original version of this, which is what are you consuming? And for me, it's. I've been working my way through Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series for a long time. I'm actually circling back and rewrote, re started that book one. And it just is this, like, mythical worlds, magic is present in it, but it's also like you've got battles and all sorts of like, portholes and things like that. People are like, gallivanting around the countryside, but then simultaneously like going through a wormhole and like, appearing in other parts of the world. And so it's the best type of, like, fiction writing where I get to immerse myself in it. And it kind of reminds me when I was tree planting where I was reading Homer's Odyssey and the other Les Miserables and. And in both cases, I would be like, so immersed in these worlds that these authors were creating, and then it'd be like the truck would get to the block and it'd be like, all right, everybody out. And I'd be like, no, it's raining. I have to plant trees. Let me go back to ancient Greece or let me go back to the streets of Paris. And so I feel a little bit of that, except that this is a fictional world, but I do get to experience that. So that's the delight of reading. If anybody out there is, is also reading Robert Jordan or has read them, definitely get in touch because I want to find my people who have that Robert Jordan connection. So the Wheel of Time series definitely recommended. It's hefty, but hey, so is everything good in this world? So with that, I think we're at the bottom of the hour here. Thank you, Carly, for jumping in at last minute for our session together. And yeah, I think in your honor and in honor of this discussion, I'm going to go use a gift card that I've got here for our restaurant in town that has a streetery. And so there we go.
- [30:01]
A
Sounds like a perfect, perfect end.
- [30:03]
B
That's right. Have a great rest of the day. Take care and thanks everybody for listening into this episode of Upzone. We're so glad to have you along for the ride and keep doing what you can to build strong towns in your communities as well. Take care.
- [30:15]
A
Let me show you what I'm about to do.
- [30:19]
B
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a non profit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong towns member@strongtowns.org membership.