Posts by Ksenia Kaladiouk

Environmental sustainability, smart urban growth and public wellness are at the very top of the agenda. But most of your employees can't live out the very values that they work for; they're too busy fetching their dry cleaning and keeping their shoes shined.

Let's relax the professional dress code in favor of something a little more practical.

Secretary LaHood, it would be nice to get more people out of the morning gridlock and onto a Metro, right? Employees who choose to walk or bike to work might put a dent in the diabetes and obesity numbers, isn't that true, Secretary Sebelius?

If more people chose to wait for the bus instead of hopping into a private vehicle, I bet the environment would have no objections, right Ms. Jackson? For that matter, I bet your cooling costs (and your carbon footprint) wouldn't be so high if people didn't wear wool all summer. I get warm just thinking about August in DC.

Undoubtedly, some of your employees make great choices already, out of necessity or otherwise. But you aren't making it any easier for them. And it wouldn't cost you a dime to make the change. In fact, it might save everyone a few dollars.

Of course, all of your workers would see some returns if they didn't have to suit up for work every day. In addition, a more active, health-conscious employee workforce would help to reduce your organization's insurance overhead. In turn, employees would enjoy lower premiums and, eventually, fewer reasons to see the doctor in the first place.

And, Secretary Donovan, you know better than anyone, as more and more people find themselves living in urban areas, individuals' choices regarding their health and their habits—from how they choose to commute to how many loads of laundry they wash in a given week—have a larger and larger impact the way our cities develop and evolve.

The very concept of what it means to look like a "professional" needs a makeover. Lest you think that this would mean lowering standards, let me assure you on behalf of the fashion police: it would not. We love good style, and we love great clothes. But even we don't think that respect for a person's professionalism should hinge on whether he or she showed up in khakis or couture.

More often than not, when it comes to game-changing strategies, the private sector leads and the public sector follows. It's no surprise. Bold moves often require more risk than a government agency like any of yours can reasonably and responsibly agree to take on.

Here, then, is a rare opportunity. This is your chance to be taste-makers. Relax your dress codes and start a movement. Many fixes are expensive and challenging to implement. This one costs nothing at all and promises some big potential returns, from healthier, happier employees to cleaner, greener cities.

This year, I spent my Turkey Day in Istanbul. I stayed a little over a week, but I don't think it took me more than a few hours of sightseeing to recognize how very different this metropolis is from Washington. One of the most notable differences I came across is how Turks conceive of and plan around their national monuments.

While DC fights to keep the National Mall a memorial unto itself, even Istanbul's oldest neighborhoods (2,000+ years of use) integrate historical treasures and modern establishments with great success.

In the world of cities, Istanbul is nothing short of a heavyweight. With an estimated population of over 14 million residents (as high as 17 million by some counts) and about 2,500 years worth of history under its belt, the metropolis is one the most impressive and diverse in the world.

Today, the megacity calls Turkey its home and it is, at least in legal terms, a secular community. Since its humble beginnings around 600 BC, however, Istanbul has played host to a number of empires, religions and cultures.

With so much history and so much civilization to account for, I expected to find a city that kept is cultural treasures under lock-and-key. But one walk through Old Town—the most ancient part of the metropolis, and the home to vast majority of Istanbul's sites, including the Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace—proved my assumptions entirely wrong.

Photo by David Alpert.

Instead, what I found was a bustling neighborhood that played host to a myriad of restaurants, shops, park areas, bike share stations, street vendors, locals, and tourists. And, it just happened to include one of the Seven Wonders of the World and a slew of other notable historical sites. No big deal.

Photo by David Alpert.

As I snacked on a kebab at the edge of the 1,600 year old Hippodrome of Constantinople, I couldn't help but wonder how different the area would be if the US National Park Service were in charge.

Here's my best guess.

If we were to judge by the state of affairs on the Mall today, that would be it for the cafés and most of the street vendors. No more private art galleries and no more fruit stands. Few locals and fewer hotels. Bike share stations? Probably not. And, definitely no kebabs.

Last year, I volunteered regularly for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Visitor Services representative. It was a fantastic opportunity to interact with tourists visiting the museum, and often our capital, and sometimes a city of any kind, for the first time.

It was my job to answer their questions and point them in the right direction. Most of the time, I really enjoyed the work. There were only two questions I dreaded: 1) "Can you recommend a few good restaurants nearby?" and 2) "Where can I buy some sunscreen (or band aids or a calling card or a pair of socks or a pack of cigarettes)?"

These are reasonable questions with no reasonable answers. I hated being the bearer of bad news, especially when visitors with a laudable moral consciousness were concerned. Unfortunately, the reality is—and was—that aside from the USHMM café, there are no restaurants near the museum, and the closest convenience store is a hike, as well.

Instead of leaving the look-but-don't-touch policing to the multitude of museums that flank the Mall, the National Park Service enforces a set of policies that turn the entire space into an immaculately preserved dead zone.

Of course, to be fair, the locked-down, mile-long strip of federal buildings surrounding the area doesn't help matters any when it comes to creating a friendly, mixed-use space. But, at the very least, these structures are inaccessible to the public for reasons of security, and they are places of work. The Mall, on the other hand, is a place of recreation, and I pick on it, because there are no legitimate obstacles to opening it up for classy, organic, well-planned commercial development.

If the National Park Service ever considers the idea, Istanbul's Old Town is a perfect case study for how things may go right. While every monument, mosque, obelisk, and museum has its own space, the areas in between are filled with modern conveniences, such as restaurants, shops, and street vendors.

Istanbul has gone through many transformations, but the most beloved and impressive structures remain respected and intact, even after all these years. Indeed, perhaps it is because of its age, rather than in spite of it, that the city has done such a great job of integrating the old with the new. If nothing has undone the Hagia Sophia yet, it's unlikely that a hookah bar and a couple of carpet stores will suddenly get the job done.

Our Mall and the monuments on it are much, much younger, but we can learn from older cities and use their experience to our advantage. We ought to be confident in the fact that our national treasures are impressive, inspiring and important. And we shouldn't tiptoe around them just to make sure no one forgets it.

It's nice to think that we can preserve every last square inch of our capital for our grandchildren's grandchildren just as it exists today, but it's neither smart nor sustainable.

Plus, if my grandchildren's grandchildren are anything like me, I'm sure they'll be much more interested in enjoying a beer at a Mall-side café with a clear view of Mr. Lincoln than running back and forth across a pristine, treeless lawn in search of Advil and SPF 6,000 sunscreen. Maybe they'll dig kebabs, too.

The Maryland county served as the setting for a recent study by Heather Schwartz, of the Rand Corporation, and based on Heather's findings, it may be a model for other areas in search of a new and effective strategy for raising educational standards.

In her study, Heather sought to uncover the impact of economically integrative housing on academic success among elementary-aged students. In short, she was able to track the progress of a cohort of highly disadvantaged elementary students whose families, previously tenants of traditional public housing, had been randomly assigned to low-poverty areas affiliated with low-poverty elementary schools.

Over a period of five to seven years, she was able to track significant improvements in math and reading scores among the transplanted population. Furthermore, not only did the students placed in low-poverty schools outperform their moderate-poverty peer group, but they had also played catch-up to their peers. By the end of elementary school, the resettled population had narrowed the achievement gap with their non-poor peers by one-half for math and one-third for reading.

While it may come as no surprise that placing kids into more stable environments and sending them to wealthier schools has an effect on their academic performance, the rate and consistency of academic improvement among kids in the study is nothing short of impressive.

Given the success and simplicity of the approach, it is astounding how uncommon it is for US cities or counties to implement such a strategy.

I had a chance to sit down with Heather following her presentation, and one of the first things that I asked her was, "Why Montgomery County?"

As it turns out, the DC suburb is currently the single largest community to feature a policy of inclusionary zoning, without which Heather's study could not have been possible.

Inclusionary zoning amounts to a set of laws that require developers to set aside housing for lower income families. In Montgomery's case, the Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) program means that approximately 15% of homes built are to be sold or rented at below-market value. More often than not, the right of first refusal to purchase the home falls to the Housing Authority. Nestled within otherwise affluent communities, these dwellings provide stable, high-quality housing and unrestricted access to community resources for families that would otherwise find themselves in poor public housing developments.

Although, as Heather pointed out, inclusionary zoning has been around since the early 1970's and many studies have indicated the model is highly successful, relatively few communities have embraced it in the same way as Montgomery County.

While there are likely many reasons that this is the case, one concern that may arise is whether integrating schools to include variable poverty levels may actually decrease the performance of students hailing from low-poverty homes. Heather's finding's indicate that no such trend exists, and that the effects of mixing up an elementary school population through inclusionary zoning yields only positive effects for the economically disadvantaged students.

Of course, inclusionary zoning policies are not limited to Montgomery County. Heather is following up on her original research with a new study that will examine 11 cities and over 15,000 addresses.

For the time being, effective and enforced inclusionary zoning is predominantly a highly local movement that lacks widespread popularity. With research initiatives like Heather's and forums like the "How Housing Matters" conference, coupled with growing, bipartisan alarm regarding the state of education and child welfare in the US, perhaps we'll see more interest and more implementation of inclusionary zoning in the future.

Former mayors, health officials, programmers, designers, and transportation gurus all touted the irrefutable benefits afforded to metro areas in possession of well-organized, well-analyzed, and well-used records. From building a stronger case for federal investment in the latest transportation initiative, to heightening civic engagement through the timely release of resonant facts and figures, a municipality with a grip on its own data streams has the potential to see some high returns.

Should DC spend more dollars investing in meaningful data collection and analysis? Should government-sponsored programs, like CaBi?

About a month ago, I stumbled upon a Capital Bikeshare van when returning my bike to a nearby station. I asked the gentleman filling the dock if he had a system for swapping bikes beyond a real-time station tracker, like the one on my iPhone.

There's no time for that, he explained. Today, his is a reactive role. He's on high-alert, damage control.

But what about tomorrow? With enough data, predictive modeling could amplify his impact. If he were armed with software that could anticipate shortages and overloads at CaBi docks, rather than waiting for the problems to set in, he could get ahead of the trends. Rush hour may always pose a challenge for a shared bike network, but off-peak, his outfit could, potentially, do the job of two or three CaBi vans, with half the stress.

This is just one high-profile instance of how smart data management can improve a municipal service. At the Intelligent Cities Forum, contributors presented many more examples. From layering health data atop air quality and transit grids to determine the optimal health conditions for city dwellers, to aggregating congestion patterns, pedestrian safety reports and speeding violations to make the smartest decisions regarding traffic diffusion, data done right has the potential to revolutionize decision-making in the modern city.

Whether DC will benefit from the data it could potentially store is not a question of "if," but "how."

At the city level, predicting which metrics truly warrant long-term aggregation is no simple task. On the other hand, collecting and storing data is easy and cheap. So for now, perhaps it is better for major cities like DC play it safe and collect as much data as possible.

And when we're ready to act on the data we have? Sometimes the first steps aren't nearly as daunting or financially burdensome as they might seem.

On Monday, at a panel on "The City as a Lab," Dustin Haisler, former CIO of Manor, Texas, shared the success his city enjoyed when it began tagging documents, files and even on-going municipal projects with QR codes. Rather than implementing an expensive document management system, Haisler and his team opted to use free, QR coding technology.

Through widespread implementation, the codes did more than just keep the government offices organized. By posting QR codes on buildings and signs around town for passers-by to scan using their smart phones, Manor experienced a growth in tourism, heightened resident engagement, and a new level of transparency with regard to city-sponsored developments and projects.

At the end of the panel, an audience member asked Haisler to disclose how much the initial phase of QR implementation cost his city.

"$400," he replied. "Printing costs—for the tags."

Approximately two hundred residents turned out for the event, as well as a number of reporters, the Fox 5 camera crew, several ANC commissioners and Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells.

Although on the basis of Census data Ward 6 has an acceptable number of residents, portions may be nonetheless be reassigned to Ward 7, which has to take on more people. Currently, the natural boundary of the Anacostia River separates the two wards, except for Kingman Park in Ward 7 on the west side of the river.

Kingman Park residents have been clamoring to rejoin Ward 6, but the redistricting committee is expected to instead draw a new dividing line, somewhat arbitrarily, at 17th Street (SE and NE).

The posters and chants that rally-goers brought with them to the front lawn of Eastern Senior High School this evening reflected a variety of arguments against the change. Parents fear that having Eastern High School, which is east of 17th Street, in Ward 7 would complicate efforts to create a cluster of good public schools in the neighborhood.

Photo by the author.

The rally, however, is just the latest in a series of actions that the Ward 6 community has undertaken in protest of the potential redistricting.

Petitions for Capitol Hill unity have been circulating the neighborhood for well over a month. The community has played host to a number of open forums devoted to the issue of redistricting. ANC Commissioners such as Brian Flahaven (6B09) have dedicated significant resources to educating and mobilizing area residents.

One rally participant showed her support with an extra-large poster prominently advertising Councilmember contact information. And, in fact, locals have flooded the subcommittee members, Councilmembers Michael Brown, Jack Evans and Phil Mendelson, with emails and phone calls.

Photo by the author.

Next up is the subcommittee's presentation and vote on the proposed plan, due to take place this coming Thursday, May 26.

If yesterday's event is any indication, the Capitol Hill community will prove to be an active and persistent participant in the final stages of the redistricting process.

Cross-posted at The Barney Circular.

Once complete, the space will play host to a number of garden plots, a water feature, plenty of turf for enjoying the greenery and even a wall reserved for outdoor movie screenings. 13th Street Park & Garden, Inc., the 501(c)(3) that oversaw the lot's transformation, will also organize educational events to take place on the property throughout the year.

The story behind the project's success is one of collaboration and cooperation among a number of offices and organizations that is nothing short of inspiring (if a bit drawn out).

When residents approached the DCHA and Tommy Wells in 2007 with the idea to turn the property around, both rallied behind the idea of revitalizing the space. At the time, the lot played host to a single dumpster and a colony of mosquitos. The DCHA, which manages the Kentucky Courts retirement community immediately adjoining the space, saw particular value in the project. Upon receiving a formal proposal for the park's design prepared by a handful of volunteers on the basis of broader community input, the DCHA responded by allocating $250,000 to the project.

Initial construction began in 2008, but a funding gap soon developed, as prepping the lot for construction proved costlier than expected. Though progress stalled for a time, the DCHA partnered with 13th Street Park & Garden nonprofit in applying for a Stimulus grant through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In the fall of 2009, the project received an additional $650,000 investment from HUD. Not long thereafter, work on the property resumed, and today, the park stands nearly complete.

In the most recent phase of the project, Casey Trees donated nine trees to the development. This past Friday, representatives partnered with volunteers from around the neighborhood for the planting. In the process, residents got a sneak peek of the park and the reaction was undeniably enthusiastic.

Once construction wraps up, oversight and management of the space will formally pass from DCHA to 13th Street Park & Garden as per a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two parties.

With greater community engagement, a safer, more functional neighborhood and one less lot for the DCHA to manage, everybody wins.

So, once again, what does it look like when a group of neighbors, a non-profit or two, a couple of federal agencies and a handful of DC government offices partner effectively?

It looks like a walk in the park.

The task force report wrote that not long ago Barracks Rows was "often avoided in the evening." Since then the neighborhood adjacent 8th Street SE has seen home prices surge and crime fall as businesses began to invest in retail space. Even as Barracks Row filled up with attractive eateries and swanky bars, the ANC's attitude toward new dining establishments is surprisingly standoffish.

Just a month or so after the Retail Mix Task Force issued its findings, I found myself in attendance at the season two finale of The Sunday Circus at the Fridge Gallery, a two-hour long performance featuring over half a dozen performance artists from the DC area and beyond.

Tucked away into a rear alley connecting Barracks Row to 9th Street SE, The Fridge is a showcase for art with a multipurpose twist. With classes offered weekly, an on-going schedule of performances, and plenty of wall space devoted to aspiring and well-known artists alike, the gallery is both a rich and productive venue.

This establishment is thriving, and no matter what the ANC might suspect, it is not thriving in spite of taverns and cafes, but because of them. Smart bar and restaurant owners value a diversified commercial terrain that attracts new customers.

Restaurateurs brought more life to Barracks Row and are more than willing to put their money where their real estate is. After all, educational events, gallery openings, and shows all draw hungry crowds.

If you don't believe me, head over to the Fridge for a Sunday afternoon art class. You'll see the list of sponsors that reads like a Barracks Row restaurant guide. Local restaurateurs are invested and investing in the Row's success.