Posts about Eastern Market Metro Plaza

Development

Suburban stereotypes pollute Post, WBJ reporting

by David Alpert   •   July 6, 2009 12:36 pm

Journalists writing "news" stories strive to make their articles impartial, but hidden biases about suburbs, cities, traffic and transportation often creep in. The Washington Business Journal, for example, reported on the Eastern Market Metro Plaza proposals, and explained the options in a straightforward manner. Yet the first sentence reads, "In case Dupont, Washington, and Logan Circles don't have you in enough of a driving tizzy, Eastern Market may add yet another traffic roundabout to D.C.'s mix."

Why are "you" necessarily driving through the area? This is a classic example of Entitled Driving Journalist Syndrome, where a reporter most likely drives from place to place, and sees issues from a "windshield perspective." Why doesn't the lede read, "If dashing across Pennsylvania Avenue from the Eastern Market Metro station has you in a enough of a walking tizzy ..."?

This week's grand prize for most knee-jerk anti-urban writing goes to the Washington Post, for Sunday's article on Fairfax County considering incorporating as a city. That plan would only change the county's legal status and relationship with Richmond, not any land-use policies. But the reporters, Sandhya Somashekhar and Amy Gardner, confuse the two concepts as the article slides back and forth between news reporting and repeating outdated anti-urban cliches.

The bias creeps in right at the start, which juxtaposes suburbs "where Washington goes to walk the dog and water the lawn" with something "many have tried to avoid: high-rise offices, blight, crime and housing that's more likely to have a balcony than a back yard." Most of our urban places, especially in Fairfax, are far from "blighted." And since when does all of "Washington" go to suburbs to walk the dog? Do Somashekhar and Gardner not consider the dog-owners with balconies part of Washington? Like the Business Journal article, this piece hinges on the unspoken assumption that suburban, car-oriented life is "real" living, and those people in Capitol Hill or Arlington are outliers.

A few paragraphs later, the reporters launch into another bout of rhetorical question editorializing: "What does Fairfax want to be? A giant urban expanse like many new Sun Belt cities? Or more of a residential suburb, with a handful of urbanized pockets sprinkled in?" Sun Belt cities are about the farthest thing from "a giant urban expanse." They're more like, well, Fairfax.

The article goes on to mention how more "Arlington County-style urban villages" are "quickly claiming the skylines," adding that "The Route 1 corridor and other pockets are increasingly marked by blight," though the reporters don't bother to define or explain this blight. Perhaps they consider any building taller than two stories to be "blight": in the next paragraph, they refer to "Fairfax's still-shining suburban glory," at a Swim and Racquet Club in Burke, VA, where a mother decries the loss of trees and her rising taxes.

While calling Tysons a "behemoth," Somashekhar and Gardner don't seem to realize that the growth in these denser pockets is largely what's keeping the Burke mother's taxes low, just as Arlington's strategy of concentrating development along commercial corridors allowed the county to increase its tax base significantly without developing many single-family neighborhoods. Also, as in Arlington, there's no reason that density in Merrifield and Route 1 means that suddenly Burke will turn into some kind of "blighted" "behemoth" itself. There are no plans to bulldoze the racquet clubs in Burke's "suburban bliss."

This is the fundamental error of the article, and much criticism of development; as with transit vs. driving, it's not black-and-white. Not all places in the county must look the same. If some people like Burke, Fairfax can and will continue to have places like Burke. But it can also have urban, walkable places too for those who like them. From their writing, it appears Somashekhar and Gardner can't conceive that people might be happy in a dense environment.

Holden and others probably would be quite unhappy if they ventured about 10 miles north to Merrifield. There, two sleek new five-story apartment buildings rise from a weedy parking lot. The bottom floor of one building is taken up by restaurants, a jewelry store and a tailor. The sound of nearby traffic roars as workers in scrubs from the nearby hospital brush past women with strollers and groups of young men. It was in Merrifield that county leaders celebrated their newest "park" last month—a brick-lined plaza with a fountain and some benches centered between new apartment buildings.

What's with the "scare quotes" around "park"? A public space can't be a park if it has some benches between apartment buildings? Somashekhar and Gardner fill their description with loaded language, like calling the parking lot "weed-filled" and talking about traffic "roaring" past. Even the retail "takes up" the ground floors of the buildings, as though places to eat and get clothes altered were somehow spoiling the place.

The reporters do interview one area resident, who unsurprisingly is very pleased with the "awesome, vibrant" nature of the area, and quote an expert who argues that on its current course, Fairfax will only face more sprawl and more traffic. But then, they mistakenly tie these very hazards not to the low-density land use patterns of Fairfax's past, but the denser plans of Tysons.

Politicians, planners and nervous neighbors are acutely aware of the perils of building up: more traffic if commuting patterns don't change; higher taxes to pay for the massive foundation of infrastructure that must be built; and, eventually, blight if Fairfax's new urban spaces or overall economy don't thrive. So far, Fairfax has been fortunate to escape many of the downsides of urbanization.

Ah, that "blight" again, which continues to have no context, and that not-so-subtle insinuation that urbanization is mostly downsides. Actually, building a denser Tysons has the best chance to reduce traffic, by adding opportunities for people to live near their jobs instead of driving long distances, or to ride Metro. And they've got the infrastructure issue exactly backwards. Infrastructure in a dense area is cheaper, not more expensive.

The one typically urban issue Fairfax is grappling with is neighborhood blight. Old neighborhoods such as Kings Park along Braddock Road or Huntington along Route 1 have been struggling with decline. Unkempt rented homes and falling property values dot these landscapes. Some areas, such as the partly vacant mall in downtown Springfield, have developed such an unsavory reputation that several of the mothers in Burke said they do not allow their teenage children to go there.

Finally, Somashekhar and Gardner get around to talking about blight, though, except for calling it a "typically urban issue"—an antiquated cliche from a bygone era if there ever was one—they actually describe neighborhoods that are far from actually walkable. Kings Park is just as full of single-family homes and no transit as other neighborhoods. I'm not very familiar with that neighborhood in particular, but it's many inner-ring suburban neighborhoods that have become run-down, not the walkable urban areas that are experiencing such a renaissance. And just because a few mothers who frequent the racquet club in Burke won't go somewhere doesn't mean it's actually a bad place.

As we're seeing from Detroit and so many other Rust Belt cities, it's our nation's overbuilding of single-family homes, far outstripping demand, that's causing high vacancy rates in many areas. It's also a consequence of national policies that pushed families to buy houses they couldn't afford. And finally, press "articles" that romanticize the picket-fence suburb while pooh-poohing urban neighborhoods only feed the problem.

The high rents in walkable parts of Arlington prove that many people do want to live in such areas. The only obstacle isn't crime or "blight," but the black-and-white mindset of people like Somashekhar and Gardner, who refer near the end of the article to "the stereotype of the gritty metropolis."

Merriam-Webster calls a stereotype "a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment." It's too bad that Somashekhar and Gardner can call something a stereotype, but write 1,300 words about the topic without ever examining their own prejudices, and have that bias completely sail over the head of their editor.

Roads

Eastern Market plaza road diet: Study and experiment, don't presume

by David Alpert   •   July 6, 2009 10:26 am

The moment the Capitol Hill Town Square team finished their presentation, one woman stood up ramrod straight, her hand in the air, an intense, determined expression on her face. The moderator called on her, and her statement was as sharp as her facial expression. This whole notion of traffic calming on Pennsylvania Avenue at Eastern Market Metro was just the wrong thing for Capitol Hill, based on faulty assumptions, she argued. We don't need traffic to move slower, or put any impediment along this commuter artery from Maryland.

A number of other residents echoed this sentiment, whether in questions, rudely shouted comments from the back, mutterings not entirely under their breaths from a couple next to me, or applause that broke out after questioners asked hostile questions to the project team—mirrored by approximately equally loud applause when other questioners challenged the car-centric assumptions of some other questions.

Many residents of Capitol Hill seem to have made up their minds one way or the other about this project from the moment they heard about it. In fact, EMMCA declared themselves unalterably opposed to a plan long before the team created a plan. That's too bad, not because we must realign Pennsylvania Avenue around Eastern Market, but because we should decide what to do based on evidence, not dogma, and the evidence isn't all yet available.

Most people instinctively believe that traffic is like a river. There's a bunch of water flowing down from a mountain, and running along a stream. Narrow the stream bed, and the water will run into some other river, or flood your house. If you dam it up, the water backs up to create a lake, and nobody wants a traffic lake. However, traffic isn't like water. It's more like air, which can expand and contract to fill the available space.

It was clear from the questions that many Capitol Hill residents were basing their opinion on the water mental model. If we shrink Pennsylvania from three through lanes to two, where will the cars go? Will they divert through neighborhood streets? Will traffic back up on Pennsylvania? Will slower-moving traffic create more pollution? What about emergency evacuation?

There's no particular reason to believe such a change would bring these effects at all. Some drivers may begin taking the Southeast Freeway instead. Some would switch to transit; Metro remains underutilized on the eastern ends of the Orange and Blue Lines. Some would bicycle, given the bike lane the team has suggested adding on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Or, perhaps, the change would make traffic worse or would divert substantial traffic to neighborhood streets. The transportation consultants from Gorove/Slade don't believe so, and have promised to release their findings. Side streets aren't designed for speed and even a slower Pennsylvania Avenue would be better than slogging through the stop signs. But we can judge for ourselves once we have all the facts. Driving along Pennsylvania from time to time doesn't constitute having all the facts.

Residents near Sherman Avenue in Columbia Heights would love to calm traffic through their neighborhood. Commenter angryparakeet wrote, "I'd like to reclaim [this] neighborhood from MD commuters." It's surprising and sad that some residents of Capitol Hill see efforts to make their neighborhood a more pleasant place as the wrong direction, closing their minds to other possibilities.

Fortunately, we can without spending millions to redo the plaza. Let's install the traffic modifications right now. The "Existing Improved" alternative suggests closing the short segments of D Street connecting to Pennsylvania, putting bulb-outs at many of the corners, and narrowing Pennsylvania by about half a lane, turning the third travel lane into a bike lane. We could implement these changes now with some plastic curbs, posts, and a little paint.

Let's try it out for six months or a year. If the change substantially worsens residents' quality of life, we can reverse it and redesign all three options to retain three travel lanes. If it improves the situation, then we can debate a straight road, an oval, or a rectangle free of the debate over traffic calming.

Public Spaces

Capitol Hill Town Square team presents options

by David Alpert   •   July 2, 2009 11:02 am

Last night, the Capitol Hill Town Square project team presented three options for improving the plaza where Pennsylvania Avenue intersects 8th Street, at the Eastern Market Metro station. The plans ranged from minor landscaping improvements and traffic calming to modifying the route of Pennsylvania Avenue through the site.

The study began with residents and business groups who envisioned turning this plaza into a "town square" for the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Currently, busy Pennsylvania Avenue bisects the area into two very separate sections, and the disjointed feel divides the commercial corridors on 7th and Pennsylvania northwest of the site from Barracks Row on 8th to the south. Other squares from the original L'Enfant Plan, like Stanton Square, became true parks thanks to the roadways running around, rather than through, the site.

The first option keeps the current arrangement with two separate parks on opposite sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. New and better landscaping would add trees, consolidate the paved part and creating a circular plaza in the eastern park. "Stronger plantings" in the Pennsylvania Avenue median would dissuade midblock crossings from 8th Street north of the plaza to the Metro station, where many people cross today.

Along with the other two, this option includes some traffic calming. The transportation analysts from Gorove/Slade concluded that Pennsylvania could become three lanes on each side instead of the current four, calming traffic without diverting cars onto side streets. They also recommend removing the short segments of D Street between 8th and Pennsylvania on each side, creating larger pedestrian plazas in front of the Hine site and Barracks Row.

Option 2, the "Triptych," would build an oval in the center of the plaza, creating three parks. Pedestrians would have to cross fewer lanes at any one time, and this option (as well as the third) create more direct walking paths from the north to the Metro station, removing the temptation to dash across Pennsylvania midblock.

The third option, "Central Park," involves fully diverting Pennyslvania around the edge of the square to create a single, large park. 8th Street would be closed to cars, but still available to emergency vehicles.

To minimize noise impacts for the residents on D Street, Pennsylvania Avenue would not actually use the D Street right-of-way, but would run parallel. A planted barrier would separate the two and reduce noise impacts on the houses. Nevertheless, as one resident pointed out during the question period, according to the team's diagrams, such a barrier would probably reduce noise to the first floor of nearby houses but not as much to upper floors, which often contain bedrooms.

Several people, including resident Kathy Henderson, called the Triptych the most "visually appealing" option, and I agree. As with a potential circle at North Capitol and Irving, a circle (here oval) borrows the design language of many other parts of DC (though Capitol Hill's vernacular does use squares more than circles). That options could create something with a greater sense of place than the current arrangement, while keeping cars far from nearby houses.

Next: Residents' reactions.

Public Spaces

Capitol Hill residents weigh in on Town Square

by David Cranor   •   October 8, 2008 3:43 pm

The Capitol Hill Town Square project held a Community Wide Input meeting on the evening of October 1st. The name might be a misnomer since it consisted of nearly two hours of presentation and about a half hour of "input", but that's what they called it. The "input" included a strong dose of close-mindedness from some community activists opposed to even studying an option that could move Pennsylvania Avenue.

You can see the presentation here. This was a community-wide meeting that followed an affected community meeting (for those who lived near the square). At that meeting, according to the Hill Rag,

[Barracks Row Main Street's Tip] Tipton was frank in conceding errors in initial outreach and communication and has since added six residential members to the current Task Force bringing the body’s total to 17 members.

The meeting started with some brief words by Councilmember Tommy Wells and Tipton about the project and the purpose of the meeting. It was similar to what Tipton wrote in the Hill Rag.

Then Sharon Ambrose got up to speak. The former Councilmember has been added to the task force committee as a Member-at-Large. She talked about how improving the Eastern Market Metro Plaza is "not a new idea," that her office and the local ANC had been involved—removing benches where the homeless slept and planting flowers and trees—for years.

Ambrose mentioned that the square has become more valuable as the neighborhood has become more active and that with the redevelopment of the Hine Junior High School site there is an opportunity for some Blue Sky Planning. She mentioned that the square has been a "what if" for a long time. I suspect Ambrose was brought in as a peace maker. She's still popular and trusted and those who worry that the voice of Capitol Hill residents will not be heard can take some assurance from the presence of Councilmember Ambrose.

Public Spaces

Capitol Hill may get a town square

by David Alpert   •   July 30, 2008 2:43 pm

Coming out of the escalator at Eastern Market, a visitor immediately arrives in the middle of a wide, open space filled with pretty much nothing. To get to most of the neighborhood, it's necessary to cross busy Pennsyvania Avenue to another wide, open mostly-empty plaza before reaching the wonderful neighborhood blocks beyond.

It wasn't supposed to be this way—L'Enfant intended a series of squares, some of which (like Stanton and Lincoln) became squares, while others (like Seward and this one) didn't. Now, the Capitol Hill Town Square project is considering alternatives. On the conservative end, we could simply landscape the existing triangles better:

Or, better yet, we could unify the green space, creating a central square that's actually square (well, rectangular) and routing traffic around, like at Stanton or Mount Vernon Squares. Of course, some people oppose the idea; after all, what works well in the northern half of the neighborhood would obviously be a disaster in the southern half.

There will be a community meeting, tentatively planned for September 24th, which I'll post on the calendar (in the right sidebar) when the time and place is announced. I'll be out of the country, missing not only this but Park(ing) Day and Car-Free Day, but I hope many residents of the Capitol Hill area will go speak up for a true town square.