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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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They are attempting to charge me 1,600. There was no stove in the house.
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Have been bullying, harassing, and potentially scamming me.
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I actually felt safer in Bagram and Kandahar than I do in my own home. 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. This is Abby and you are listening to Upzoned. Got my bus pass. Finer downtown with a fine ladies in the peeps. Hey everyone, thanks for listening to another episode of Upzone, a show where we take a big story from the news each week that touches the Strong Towns conversation. And we upzone it, we talk about it in depth. My name is Abby Newsham. I'm in Kansas City and I am here today with Edward Erfert, who is the chief technical advisor with Strong Towns, to talk with us today. Hello, Edward, welcome.
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B
Hey Abby, thanks for having me.
- [01:28]
A
Yeah, it's always great to have you on. You brought a great article that I'm really excited to talk about with you today that is on the topic of streeteries. So for anybody who doesn't know what a streetery is, they're also sometimes called parklets. And these are basically, these are areas that restaurants have utilized, particularly after the pandemic, that used to be on street parking that have now been kind of converted into outside dining space. So Washington, D.C. like many cities, have initiated a program like this so that restaurants can can allow people to eat outside, especially during the pandemic. And it's now been five years since the beginning of the pandemic, since, if you can believe that. And D.C. is now transitioning to a pilot program or from a pilot program into a permanent one with new rules and fees. The rules are really intended to address concerns around safety and aesthetics. And the fees are really intended to address private use of public space and application review costs, as well as the potential to rent some supplies like Jersey barriers from the city if. If the restaurant can supply their own. So there's a lot of new fees associated with this program. And some restaurants are really concerned about these new costs and standards, saying that they may overshadow the benefit of participation. And some restaurants are even warning that the new plan could not just hurt their business, but actually eliminate jobs and lead to the closure of restaurants that rely on streeteries for survival, even though the pandemic has ended. So this is really interesting. If you want to read more about this, this particular article is in the Washington Post. It's titled, After 5 Years, DC Streeteries Hit with higher costs and more rules. I actually have some. Some experience working with a. What we call a parklet program in my neck of the woods and working with restaurants and standards on this. So I'm excited to talk about this one because there's a lot of nuance in. In these parklet or streetery programs and how you actually get them from a pilot to a program that I'd love to dive into. But I think I'll leave it there because I'd love to hear your initial reaction, Edward, to this article. How are you thinking about it?
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B
Yeah, when I saw this article, I just thought about how top down this is and how wrongheaded it is for the city. And I would expect this out of any big city. I should not be surprised this is coming out of Washington D.C. but when I think about the lowest bar of entry that we could have in our cities to increase floor space, eyes on the street, activation of public space, doing something as simple as a cafe table with two chairs, like is the lowest bar that we should be able to do. But when I looked at this and I saw like, I get the city, I get what the District is struggling with. They're in a budget crunch. They have put in such a complicated system with so many steps in it and so many hands involved on it that they've got to recoup those costs because they have not just staff time, but they have hard costs. And I just. It just spirals out of control. And I really feel for these small businesses because this is a. The, the amount of turnover on these tables is an enormous amount of revenue for the restaurant and ultimately revenue for Washington D. But the barriers they're putting from it, from the city level really make this not just a wash, but a loss for anybody that wants to participate.
- [05:41]
A
So I very much agree with that perspective of why parklet programs or streetery programs are incredibly valuable, not just for individual business owners, but also just enhancing the public realm and giving up space, space that were dedicated to cars and making them spaces for people. I do want to talk a little bit about the flip side of why I think it still makes sense to have some kind of guidance for implementing parklet programs.
- [06:20]
B
I hear the planner coming out of you.
- [06:22]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the reason I want to get into this though is because like I worked I won't say what city, but I did work with a downtown community that they did a pilot program for. For they call them parklets and they have an amazing small business community. They, because it was Covid, they basically didn't have any standards. Like they said, do whatever you want and we'll put up a bunch of orange jersey barriers from public works and you know, what's the worst that can happen? So there's a lot of cool stuff that came out of that. And I think that there's value to doing a pilot program that way and just like letting people do things. Because I think when they eventually developed their long term program, there were things that they allowed that I think if they were to talk about it conceptually, they would have been too afraid to allow. Like one restaurant did. They took a bunch of reclaimed brick pavers and made that the base of their parklet. And it was super cool. And I think if a bunch of planners and policy people got together and conceptualized that as an idea, they probably would have been like drainage concerns and let's not do that, or they would have come up with a reason to not do it. So I think it's good to do pilots and to try things, but there are real issues that like, one of my first things that I did is I just like took pictures of all the parklets, spent all this time like trying to understand what are the issues. And then I talked with businesses and people and just like spent a ton of time identifying this. And there are access issues. Like there was one parklet that they put their platform not flush with the curb, but like 2ft up off the curb. And then they did this like super steep ramp that you could never actually go up if you were in a wheelchair to get up there. And then they put a table in front of it so like you can't even access it using the ramp. Like you have to step up onto it and then they put no railing around it. So it was this basically this like huge, steep stage and it was a bar. So it was like super dangerous. There were other people who were like plugging into the city's public electricity and using it for like lighting. There were some people who had like wires on the ground or like above the sidewalk, but people were running into it. And there were some people who had like, there's a bunch of street trees on that street, like beautiful street canopy, really well maintained. And there was one person who put like 10 heat lamps, like gas powered heat lamps in their park lit. And it was killing the Trees. So there were these.
- [09:24]
B
I get that.
- [09:25]
A
You know what I mean? Like, there are these like random restaurant things.
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B
Yeah. Restaurant tours were always at the top of our city code enforcement list.
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A
Yeah.
- [09:36]
B
I mean, they would do things in the middle of the night. Remember, Like a restaurant only makes money if people are eating at tables and.
- [09:43]
A
Exactly.
- [09:45]
B
So when they need to do a renovation, they get really innovative in how they would do their renovations so that they're shut down the least amount of time and they're in a cash business. So the fact that they would go and pay somebody up front. And so I found all the creative things. I totally agree with you. The things we saw in my community, when people started doing the parklet stuff, it was the bubblegum and duct tape would have been an upgrade to some of the things we saw.
- [10:18]
A
Yeah. But there's also really cool things that people do. And I think that the reaction, the reaction that we're seeing to things that are ultimately like basic code compliance issues, ada, fire utility access, like basic construction quality. And by the way, it's like if you build the railings strong enough, you don't have to have jersey barriers everywhere. Like for some reason DC has decided that they need to have jersey barriers all over the place. And I'm like, just design a slow street where people want to be and people aren't speeding and have stronger walls. But I think that there. I guess I would just want to say there's value to having some very basic standards. However, there's this very important conversation about the fees that you are charging for people to participate in a program like this and how the standards are creating cost expectations for actually building out a parklet. Like, Is this a $5,000 investment by a restaurant? Is it a $50,000 investment by a restaurant? Because the restaurants are benefiting by expanding their table space. Like, there's a benefit to that. But if the standards are so strict that it doesn't make sense to participate in something like this, then you're just not going to get any streeteries. And it's kind of pointless to have the program. It will only happen with like the nicest restaurants. Basically.
- [12:01]
B
It'll either happen with the nicest restaurants that will build the ultimate beautiful build out.
- [12:07]
A
Yes.
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B
Or the pizza joint that's going to build it on a shoestring budget and just accept a bunch of ticket citations until it's too much of a pain.
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A
Yes, exactly.
- [12:17]
B
You'll never get that middle ground work on this. And you'll lose all the innovative things that we saw early on. In the pandemic, when I looked at the DC thing, I actually went to their manual because I was like, so when the pandemic happened in my community, I wrote a manual. And we had three objectives in that manual. The first was to just let everybody know that you were allowed to have outdoor dining. Like. Like, people didn't believe that that was in our ordinances, so we needed to show people they could do that. And it was like, an encouragement from the city to say, like, you know, you're allowed to do this. We'd love to see it happen. The second was to inspire youth. So, like, where do these go? And, you know, there's right and wrong places they could go. So, like, in a parking lot, where could it go? On a certain streets, where would it go? Just, it's kind of sharing that catalog of images. In 2020, there were very few people that had that image in their mind. Now we have, like, lots of pieces. And the third thing that we did, which goes to some of the basic regulatory components, is that we wanted to make sure there was a clear space to meet ADA so that on a sidewalk, you weren't just, like, overwhelming the sidewalk. People will be able to walk easily on the sidewalk without interruption. And I've seen these kind of parklets in. In some cities, the dining tables, they push up against the restaurant and they make the pedestrians walk way out to the edge. In others, they put the sidewalk up against the windows of the buildings and they push the tables out to the edge. I have my own personal opinion. I. I like having people walk through the tables because that's part of. If you go to fun, exciting outdoor dining areas, that's the experience. Like, you're. You're out on the street. The other thing is that all these places, let's say it's a cold night or rainy day. If I can get people close to the windows, that's the best billboard. You know, happy people, steamy, warm food that looks good inside. We don't have to look across vacant tables. We can just see inside the restaurant that, hey, this is someplace I want to dine. But, yeah, we had to, like, set those pieces up so that there were basic standards that what. What we would expect inside the building or out on the street, we could meet safety. We could also meet sanitary conditions so trash wasn't dumped out on the street. We had to inform restaurants that used our public trash cans that that shouldn't be for restaurant trash. If they were going to do that, we needed to work with them to coordinate. Who would Pick up that trash. Like, who would empty. We would only come around once a week to empty the city trash cans, but a restaurant would fill in a night. So if you're going to do that, just go bag it up and put it in your dumpster and like work together. But yeah, the. We need some basic rules that everybody can equally follow. But what I see here in D.C. is that my question I would have with their community, and I think it kind of answers itself is, are we making the rules? Like, are the rules so complicated and the process so long that it's resulting in these unintended consequences? Or are the people just so unaware of how to do this stuff that we're going to just charge them out so they opt not to do it?
- [16:06]
A
Well, yeah, that's a really good question. Is like, are they getting rid of the program by establishing the long term program that nobody wants to participate in? And I feel like this happens all the time with zoning, whether intentional or not. I think how you set the standards needs to. It needs to consider multiple different types of participants. And it's very unfair. I think if you have a standard that basically favors the nicest restaurants that can afford to build to the standards and excludes all of the, like small business peaches shop, like, that's not a fair application of the rules. So I feel like that is like a very healthy way to look at these kinds of programs to make sure that, you know, you're treating restaurants all the same and regulating things that really matter. And one of the things, like, as, as I was like exploring this many years ago, I. So I collected all of the parklet programs I could find and I made this giant spreadsheet of like serious. I love Excel. I made a giant spreadsheet of like, what are people regulating all across the country like, so that I could see, like, where is the heat of like everyone regulates this. And then what are like the weird things where it's like only two cities cared about this issue and it's not that normal to regulate because that I think is important because what was typically regulated was like ADA compliance, fire safety. Like there's maintenance like this. Whoever has the park lit, how are they maintaining it? There was like sight line issues and how you deal with perimeter buffers, like having reflective tape, stuff like that. Like, there's very basic standards that I think any restaurant could reasonably meet and it doesn't cost that much to meet it. But it starts to get into, I think especially the issue of seasonality which I saw was brought up in this article that people, you know, there are people who want these to be seasonal, which means that you would have to break down this whole thing every season and then build it back up, which I think is not very reasonable. And, you know, materials and the process and the fees, like, you can really, you can really, really make these programs very expensive depending on what you're regulating. So I think that that is really important. It's like, what are the, what are the basic life safety issues?
- [19:07]
B
I. I experienced that up in Medicine Hat.
- [19:09]
A
Okay.
- [19:10]
B
Action Lab. So it's a. It's in Alberta, and they get winters, so people don't want to dine outside in the winter. So in a rational sense, the city said, okay, we're going to build these. And they would do the wooden platforms that were equal with the street or with the curb, so it was like, you know, really nice. They would build these out and then in the fall, they would require all the restaurants to take them apart and put them away for winter. When you would look at these restaurants, where do they store all these extra tables and this giant wooden deck that was out in the street.
- [19:48]
A
Exactly.
- [19:49]
B
It created all this other mess. And then.
- [19:54]
A
I would just say if a city wants to do that, then they may as well design and fabricate modular platforms that the city leases and they come set it up for you and then they break it down rather than putting it on the restaurants to do that. I mean, I think if I feel like it doesn't make sense to put it on the restaurants to design modular components that they have to hire people to break down and set up and then store.
- [20:25]
B
Because it'll be the wait staff and the dishwasher putting it together. Yeah. The least qualified, like, they may know how to fix the light bulb or get the oven running in the restaurant, but we're not going to ask them to go out and like build this and it's going to be an hourly at tip wage.
- [20:44]
A
Yeah.
- [20:45]
B
No, but the other thing I saw with this is that when what we're missing in the whole discussion, and this is where I think DC really misses the point, is that this outdoor area is the first level. This is the first increment of an investment. So, okay, let's just assume they're saying a 35 mile per hour street speed or less Outside of the two freeways through D.C. you can't go very fast on any of those streets that are going to have this outdoor dining. They're all really old, narrow streets. So then they put up a giant jersey barrier and they train Everybody that there's no longer parking there or the extra asphalt we have is being transformed to something else. What I would be interested in is just reinforcing the idea of increment. So, okay, we're going to go and do the wooden temporary thing. We're going to see if that's works in this neighborhood. Does traffic fall apart? Because that's what I hear many times. Oh my gosh. We're going to take away a lane that's going to impede all the traffic or we're going to remove parking and nobody will be able to get to our neighborhood because we don't have the three parking spaces in front of our business. I hear the nobody will eat outside because of weather or climate or, or culture. But all these things start to happen. The amount of money they're spending on the like. I was looking at just one of their little sketches in the D.C. plan. What they're telling us, all of the jersey barriers and concrete barriers costs just to install that before you even put the tables is like a minimum of like $4,500. And if you're going to do that every year, what is that next increment? Okay, we first start with the outdoor dining with the step down on the curb. We're just going to put it on the asphalt. Then our next experience is going to be that we'll put in the raised patio space and we'll put in a barrier. So that's like a little semi permanent. And then the next piece to it will be that like, let's go and actually build out the curb. Let's go and actually reclaim the street for a wider sidewalk. That is something lasting in the neighborhood that today may be outdoor dining, but in the future it might just be public open space.
- [23:17]
A
I think that's brilliant because. So I guess another thing I'll add is that back in May, I went to D.C. to go to the Nacto conference and I went on a streetery like walking tour and I saw a bunch of these streeteries and they're built out and they're operating pretty well. I think your point about this next increment, you know, making this go from a pilot to a permanent program, it ought to involve the city instead of putting it on the business owners to follow these standards, build, build to the standards. And it's like, why don't we just redesign this street as the next increment and shift the curbs? I mean, it is the public realm, after all. It's our public streetscapes. And I do Think that the success of streeteries, I mean, I know you can't do it all at once, all in one place, but I think it's an invitation for cities to seriously look at moving where their curb is and building these as extended sidewalk areas and then letting restaurants put tables out into these extended sidewalk areas. And like, I just, I think that that may be the real answer here to think about the next increment is actually just redesigning the street completely in these areas where they want this to happen, rather than to try to build out all these different designs and have restaurants pay a fee. It's like just, just extend the sidewalk, make it a 30 foot sidewalk and let people put tables and chairs out there.
- [25:16]
B
And somebody's going to say, I just know, because again, we're strong towns and we're trying to think about finances of cities. Somebody say, well, who's going to pay for that? Well, here's what my response is. When we look at incremental development, incremental growth in our cities, incremental improvements. When you think about these tables going out onto the sidewalk and into the street, each one of those tables is generating revenue for the business in the city. Each of those are stabilizing those businesses. And there's some rules I see in all of these sorts of ordinances that you can only be within a certain, like the front of your. If you have 35ft of shop frontage, you can have 35ft of outdoor dining. If you go to Miami Beach. Here's the secret. And I only know this because I went to school down there and experienced all this. Very few restaurants out on Ocean Drive, the most iconic street in America, all the deco buildings, all that fancy outdoor dining. I think there is only one kitchen on that entire block. Food is actually prepared two blocks away and they bus it across the street for that outdoor dining. So the restaurants are only leasing the porches and the sidewalk area. So to be in the most glamorous street in America to have outdoor dining and the cooking is occurring where the real estate's a little bit less where the actual restaurant's located. So in these areas, like if we maybe in the mid block, we can't do the outdoor dining because there's hydrants or some sort of drainage piece. But everywhere we daylight an intersection, meaning we put a little space where a pedestrian crossing is or every, every area where we want to put a, extend the curb out to optically narrow the street, we should allow those to kind of be open and let the restaurants figure out how to move There, but not be restricted to that spot that generates wealth in those areas. And we can map that. You, you don't, you can't map it by restaurant, but you can map it by areas. And, and if you see that you've allowed for outdoor dining, you can count how many we have, we can see what the growth of taxes coming in on those. Yes, totally point to that. To say, look here, we're going to make an investment. We're going to kind of acknowledge we have a growth in our revenue over the next couple of years. We're going to reinvest that amount on our streets and we're going to perpetuate this into the future. Because here's the other beautiful thing with it is that we're taking unproductive space, extra asphalt that requires lots of maintenance and upkeep, and we're converting it to a productive space that we can allow entrepreneurship to occur and people to gather. All the, you know, in D.C. it's an urban area. It's all about. That whole city is all about meeting folks and engaging in politics and lobbying. Instead of doing it in a dark corner of a restaurant, let's do it out on the street. You know, let's make it visible for all and, and, you know, convert our unproductive, highest liability infrastructure into something that's productive, that encourages more small businesses to emerge.
- [28:54]
A
I think there's so much about what you just said that is brilliant because first of all, I love the idea of a lot of restaurants being able to share a kitchen. I mean, imagine if you just have one big commercial kitchen where many different restaurants could share a hood and grease trap and all this expensive infrastructure and run their restaurants in a way that is just more affordable because that's such a huge barrier to opening a restaurant is building out those spaces. So, so that to me is just very interesting. But it really made me think about that. I can't remember, I can't remember what the name of this restaurant is, and I think it may be referenced in this article, but there's one streetery in D.C. that it takes up like tons of space. It's a huge street. It's like 12 parking spaces or something. It's an enormous streetery and it's taking up a huge portion of the block. And it's like you have this huge area that is a streetery and then it goes back to parking. And then I think down the block there's another one. And it's like, I feel like that would be the perfect block for them to just Come in and say, hey, we're getting rid of parking on this side of the street, we're extending the curb and we're just going to make it a consistent extended sidewalk cafe area. And you guys can just use it like go to town, use this area. Because to your point about who's going to pay for it, what's the benefit here? It does result in tax revenue and this article does talk numbers and talk about some of the revenue that just one restaurant generates for, for the city just as a result of this parklet program or streetery program. So there's a real benefit there and there's a real even value capture mechanism, opportunity that, that could help to pay for this kind of thing. But I think that a lot of the politics, I guess, around streeteries and parklets comes down to. It's really fundamentally coming down to the fact that we're putting the onus of designing these spaces onto the restaurants. And so we're over engineering these programs to try to avoid the worst case scenario. And I think if the cities just came in and just designed the public realm in a way that supports cafe dining, which isn't that complex, but if, if we just designed our streetscapes to support that and just made a decision that like, hey, we're, it makes more sense to have streeteries here, we're going to make this whole sidewalk dining, we're not going to have parking here. It doesn't need to be like, as Chuck would say, a futon, you know, not, not a comfortable bed, not a comfortable couch. We're trying to do two things and I think where these have been really successful, it's kind of just begging cities to take that next step to change the streetscape.
- [32:17]
B
And cities are so adverse of failure, they're so concerned these things are going to fail. I've talked to many technical staff at City hall and they would rather not take action because of the potential of failure than actually take action and have a chance of failure. We need to go and publish all of your research on the parklets because it's just fascinating. I try to do something, maybe I'll.
- [32:45]
A
Write an article on it. And I would love to call on one city, just do this, be the leader of all the other cities to look to, to say, hey, our next increment of our parklet program is that we're just going to redesign one block and allow restaurants to use it as open cafe space and see what happens.
- [33:08]
B
I think there's some simple things cities could do. Like I wouldn't put It I don't know why a city thinks that a restaurant owner is going to understand what the roadway level of services and like they're gonna have to hire an engineer who's going to be skeptical of this. Yeah, if, if I was. If I really wanted to support my local businesses. And many of these restaurants are all locally owned. You know, they're not. The national chains have kind of figured this out. But the people that will benefit most are our local businesses. I would simply go with my city engineer and my map and a map of the city and identify all the streets like green as these are the streets I have no question in my mind are low speed. We have too much asphalt or we have the ability to go just eyeball it and put an outdoor dining. And I just green all of those streets and it's just like by right you're a restaurant owner. I'm the city engineer, public works director. I can come out eyeball it with some chalk and tell you where to put it and be done. I then go to the next level of streets. These are the ones that are maybe a little bit more dicey or like an area that we need to do a little more analysis to. And I would just identify that, that I'm going to. I'm not going to wait for the private sector to figure it out. It's important for our city. I'm going to start figuring out what I need to do from a citywide standpoint to make that kind of yellow street move to green. And then I'm going to identify ones that are just like no way like this is. These are ones that there's narrow as they can be. Parking is a priority or capacity is a priority. And we just lay those out. We could cut through a lot of the mystery and a lot of that beta testing just by sharing what our technical staff already know. Like the street that has all the hydrants. We just say, okay, that's a street that's going to need additional technical review. This street doesn't have hydrants. So they're at a location we don't have to worry about. And we could go out and yield a lot of these without a lot of paperwork and months of debate. Just in the spring we'll go out. It'll be a fun way for our city engineer or public works director to get out of the office and meet with business owners and kind of point and figure out where they go.
- [35:37]
A
Yeah.
- [35:38]
B
And roll with it.
- [35:40]
A
I think that is the difference between I guess local government operating as a more top down Entity versus more bottom up. Because in a lot of these programs, it's like, I'm trying to think of it from the perspective of a local business owner where you're like, okay, there's this program. It's very technical. There's all these rules. I need to fill out an application. I have to hire someone to do a site plan and da, da, da, da, da. Like, the more of that you put in front of somebody, especially if you are like a small local business owner, you have no background in this. Maybe English is not even like your first language. I mean, that's just. People won't participate in a program like that versus if you're a local government and you proactively come out and make a decision about what this space is going to be based on. Based on the fact that there is a market for it and there are restaurants that are. We already know where they're wanting to do this. And then just building for. For what people want to do and making it as straightforward as possible to participate and just having very simple, straightforward rules for business owners to follow and then manage it. I mean, it's. Obviously, I think people would say this is all more easily said than done, but I guess I would just invite people to really think about how these programs work from the point of view of a small business owner who has no background in planning or public works, no technical expertise in these areas, and then, you know, maybe don't even speak English.
- [37:39]
B
Yeah. Have them walk in the shoes of these business owners.
- [37:42]
A
Yeah.
- [37:43]
B
But I. Abby, I love your idea of creating the very first food hall street.
- [37:50]
A
Yes, I love that.
- [37:52]
B
And I think that you have the expertise to it. Again, if you're a city out there and you're like, how can we be innovative? How can we be bottom up? Abby's the person to talk to because she has ideas of how to get you to develop a food truck street or a food hall street. That would allow for lots of innovation, lots of excitement on a street. I mean, this would be even more exciting than a farmer's market.
- [38:20]
A
I think it would. Every city wants a farmer's market. You're totally right. Let's do a food hall street. And I'll say. I'll just say the first city that builds one of these strong towns will hype you up. We'll write an article. We will hype you up. Yeah, like, that would just be so cool. And it really starts, I think these parklet programs, these pilot programs in cities are. It's kind of like it. It's the signal for where to do this. Like we've done a pilot program. We see where people are participating in these programs. It is your signal for where you might take it to the next level. And I think that's, that's absolutely right, that that's the next increment. And I want to see somebody build a food hall street.
- [39:16]
B
And it doesn't cost the thousands of dollars or the months of review that each individual business goes through. I mean, I think, Abby, you've collected everything to regulate and like what to think about through this stuff. DC has figured out how to make it the most complicated application process, the highest price. So like we could really simplify this and rotate it out and use models we already know that are really bottom up. And having a food hall street just. I'm thinking about all of the little pop up articles that we've shared from across the country of fun activities that could occur. You could have almost, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner things happening. You could have variety of foods. It would just be the coolest activated space in a city. And it's not reliant on anyone. Building it truly maximizes the public realm, the space that we all can enjoy.
- [40:21]
A
Edward, I'm going to. I have this on my wall. Hold on one second. And I know that people who are listening won't see this, but I'm thinking of a very specific place in a town. I don't remember what town it was. It was in Catalonia in Spain, and I painted it, but it was. It's a food hall street. So do you see this?
- [40:43]
B
This is incredible.
- [40:44]
A
So this is on my wall.
- [40:46]
B
Yeah. For those of you who don't know, beyond Abby's incredible podcasting skills and her talent as a planner, she's also a very, very talented artist.
- [40:57]
A
Thank you, Edward. So you see this? You see that? This is. It's literally a street that they turned into like a plaza. So they took all the cars off of it. And people just. There's trees and there's tables and there's tons of restaurants all along it. And people come out. You can order food at the restaurant and go sit down. Servers will come out and check on you and take food orders. And it, I mean, it really is. It's probably the next increment to what we're talking about where you have no cars at all. But it truly is. I'll have to find the location because it's exactly what we're talking about, of just a space with tables and chairs and people and lots and lots of restaurants all along it that you can engage with. And it is an amazing, beautiful space, which is why I painted it like it was one of the coolest spaces I've experienced. And I think here in the United States, these parklet programs, they probably shouldn't be the final stage that we're picturing where we're trying to ask business owners to figure out ADA compliance and fire safety and traffic sight lines.
- [42:21]
B
No, because we're asking them to solve the things that it's a city we've yet to solve.
- [42:26]
A
But it's like we, you know, city. The city hat we've identified all these things. Fire safety, sight lines, perimeter barriers, material composition. Like, it's like we've figured out all these things that matter, and then we're telling the business owners to take that and then build something out of what we've decided is important when it's the public realm. And so with the city hat on, it's our street. Let's design it for all these things that we think matter and not put it on the businesses to design all this stuff and try to figure out an interpretation of all these rules.
- [43:10]
B
Yeah. And the people at City hall are actually the ones that know all this stuff the best.
- [43:16]
A
Exactly.
- [43:18]
B
So it. I always got in trouble, Abby, because I would draw stuff when I do development review, I could draw stuff faster than I could write up a staff report. Like, everybody got what I drew. Like, it was no problem because I just moved stuff on a page and a staff report that got hung up on words. And the city attorney would come in and like, talk about interpretation. As municipal staff, I would really encourage folks to go and take the time and figure it out. And you don't have to do the whole city pick the area. Like, all the planners I talk to all go to incredible conferences APA Main Street. They come to our national gathering, they go to cnu, they experience all these places, and they know where the easy as lift is in their community. We can do a lot of stuff in planning so that we can stage it up so that this is like the next easy step.
- [44:20]
A
Yes, totally.
- [44:22]
B
And. And we don't have to wait for a hodgepodge of whatever engineer, whatever restaurant comes forward. We also, as we're reviewing plans, when they come forward, we can challenge it and make sure that it would accommodate the outdoor dining. So at some point, we may have on street parking. What if we do flush curbing in those areas? Or what if we do raised planters where we can. As we're developing the street, we get all the pieces Lined up so that that next increment is just a matter of fact that it's so evident we just can do it.
- [45:00]
A
Well, Edward, let's leave it there. I love that we talked about this topic and it went a direction that I didn't expect that I think was way better. So I'm really excited about this idea and I can't wait to see the first city to implement a food hall where there used to be streeteries or parklets. I'd love to see it.
- [45:23]
B
And we've got to share out your beautiful drawing that inspired all this.
- [45:29]
A
So I'll go find it and I'll send it to you in our slack chat.
- [45:38]
B
Cool.
- [45:38]
A
Well, let's go to the down zone. So this is the part of the show where we can share anything that we have been up to these days. Anything we've been reading, watching, doing that has been inspiring us. So Edward, I'll throw it to you.
- [45:53]
B
Well, I am super excited. We're coming right up. So if you're listening to this right now, we're a week before Thanksgiving. But this weekend I am driving my whole family up to Notre Dame. I get to take my boys there to where I went to my graduate, did my graduate work. There is a Leon Career conference and exhibit. So this is a celebration of his life. I'm. I'm really excited not only of showing my family Notre Dame and doing that whole pilgrimage up there, but also spending some time with others that were also inspired by Leon Career. He had a huge impact on the trajectory of my professional thinking. All the people speaking at the symposium were all faculty members, people that introduced me to all of these crazy ideas and helped me figure through that. So that's kind of. I get to geek out a little bit. So we get to do a little fighting Irish. I get to show my kids an incredible college campus which is way nicer than when I went. So thank you for everybody that's participated in that contribution to the campus, but also spending some time with some really talented architects and thinkers and celebrating the life and work of a really inspirational figure. So all I can say is that the beginning part of that's going to be a nine hour road trip. So pray for us. I hope the. I'm not sure my boys fully understand what that means, but it, it's a big throwback for me for all the family trips that I did.
- [47:31]
A
Wow, that, that sounds like so much fun and that I, it's incredible the work that Lee Ann Creer has inspired, you know, across this profession and that I'm a little bit jealous. That sounds amazing. And a good use of the, the long break as well. So I'm actually, I'm kind of gearing up for Thanksgiving too. I'm. I'm going to be going to St. Louis and I've been, I've been really getting into buying cooking magazines because of Thanksgiving. But now I'm kind of generally buying magazines when I go to the grocery store because when I was looking into Thanksgiving recipes and trying to think of something creative to do, you know, you go to your phone and you type, type in recipes and you go to these websites and they're all associated with like a long drawn out blog about the recipe and it takes forever to actually find the recipe. So that was driving me kind of crazy. So now I've started going to grocery stores and just buying food magazines that have all of the recipes on the page so that I don't have to look at a screen every time I'm trying to make something. So that's been something I've been getting into recently and will probably continue to do so going a little bit old school and actually buying magazines again.
- [49:07]
B
I'll show you one of the guilty pleasures my wife and I have. We go to thrift stores and used bookstores and look for the church cookbooks.
- [49:17]
A
Oh, interesting.
- [49:20]
B
You know, the, the old church ladies had gone, collected all the family recipes and they're usually in a spiral bound and the ones that, they're all great but the ones that are like the prize for us to find are the ones where their notes on the pages about the family, the recipe or how to make it better. So the handwritten really. So every once in a while we'll go across and we'll find, you know, the Episcopalians or the Lutherans. They'll be their little cookbooks. And then you'll find the page start up of the special cookie or Susie's potato casserole and it'll have like notes on that stuff. So yeah. If you're. If you wanted. And they're harder and harder to find. But as you're out and about, that's if that's your jam. Look, look in all the used bookstores and thrift stores for the, all the church cookbooks and flip through to find notes because some of them are gossipy. So that's kind of fun.
- [50:22]
A
That's fun. Yeah.
- [50:25]
B
They'll talk about whatever Christmas that they were first introduced to. This or that.
- [50:29]
A
Yeah, I'll get very invested in the Dr. Of these cookbooks.
- [50:35]
B
It's so refreshing just to have like the core information you want that you don't have to go through a six page blog to figure out you don't have the ingredients.
- [50:45]
A
Yes, yes. And there's just something about like having to pick up your phone, go to the tab that you were at and then it refreshes and then you have to scroll back down and I don't know, there's something about just having it on paper that I think works really well. And I think you've just inspired what I'm going to be doing maybe for the rest of the day today because I'm off this afternoon. So I think I'm gonna go to half price books and go to their used cookbook section and try to find something like that. I'll let you know if I find anything.
- [51:25]
B
Yeah. And if they're good, once you test out the recipes, if they're good ones, be sure to share.
- [51:29]
A
Yeah, I will. Absolutely. Cool. Well, hey, thank you very much for bringing this article to our attention and for spending some time on Upzones this week. Appreciate it.
- [51:41]
B
Great. Thanks, Abby. It's always a pleasure to hang out with you and share ideas.
- [51:45]
A
Yeah, I love it. Awesome. And thanks everyone for listening to another episode of Upsound. Bye.
- [51:56]
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.
- [52:17]
A
Sam.