Sep 30 2009
by Diana Nelson Jones/Sept 30
Pittsburgh ranks in the top 25 cities in green commuting, but we need more chicks on bikes. Thanks to BikePGH, we have a survey conducted from Census information and passed along by BikePGH's Erok Boerer.
Portland and Minneapolis lead the way... they're the Yankees and Dodgers of New Urbanism... but thank God we're not the Pirates. We're slightly below the average but above the median in bicycle commuting. Where we shine is on foot. We commute on foot way above the average, less only than Washington, D.C. and Boston and a little ahead of New York. This makes Walkabout proud.
We're up there pretty high in transit ridership and in not driving alone.
Questions of the day (respond to djones@post-gazette.com and I will post your answers):
1. If you started the summer going car-free on Fridays are you still observing car-free Fridays?
2. Have you changed your commuting habits, and if so, from what mode to what mode?
Of the 60 most populous cities BikePgh analyzed for walking, bicycling, driving, driving alone and riding buses, Dallas is last.
To see the whole report, visit http://bike-pgh.org/2009/09/2008-city-commuting-trends-are-in-how-does-pittsburgh-stack-up-nationally/
Sep 29 2009
by Diana Nelson Jones/Sept 29
No doubt, every North Sider who attended last night's meeting to oppose Duquesne Light's proposed cooling station in Allegheny Commons Park left lights on at home and possibly a computer and a radio besides leaving plugged in all the apparati of our electrical addiction. (Even turned off, plugged in stuff sucks electricity.)
There were, of course, lights on in the Hazlett Theater, and a sound system for the microphones and a computer-generated slide show of imagines and diagrams for the audience of 160 people.
We are accustomed to and, by now, psychologically and emotionally hot-wired to need all this power, which is generated by coal-fired plants, which are, collectively, the Evil Empire in the battle for the environment.
What the North Side is fighting - a proposed 28-by-9-by-9-foot metal box inside this park - is ugliness, green-space encroachment and historic inappropriateness.
Allegheny Commons came of age during the post-Civil War era and blossomed into a Victorian marvel of magnificent fountains, tree-lined pathways, benches, monuments and a lake much larger than the Lake Elizabeth of today. It had islands with trees in it and a boat house.
Today, that park, the city's oldest, is undergoing historic restoration, an effort to be phased in with continuous fund-raising over 15-20 years. An historic boathouse is in the plan. Right now, the phase of restoration is focused on the East Park section that runs from East Ohio Street north to North Avenue and west to Federal Street. Duquesne Light's underground vault, which it needs to marry to a proposed block house of equipment to cool lines more efficiently, sits within that portion, just inside the sidewalk on Cedar Avenue where Foreland Street dead ends.
The restoration initiative has cobbled together funds in the $2 millions and is being true to the park's past. No disguise as yet imagined for this cooling station would fit. The initiative wants it on Union Avenue at East Park's south-west confines, among buildings.
What confounds everyone who sat in the theater last night is the engineering thinking that says it has to be here and can't be there. No one from Duquesne Light showed up; an engineer or two would have been a great courtesy to the residents who came out, representing 11 neighborhoods.
Jenn Saffron, a dynamo of neighborhood activism in Deutschtown, called to the crowd to "bring five of your friends to the next meeting," the date of which will be widely circulated.
Representatives from the mayor's office, including art commissioner Morton Brown and public works deputy director Mike Gable, said the city does not support Duquesne Light's proposal. Councilman Doug Shields told the crowd the city, as land owner, would have to make application for this station, not the utility, and that, by code, the city could, with due notice, even revoke Duquesne Light's license to operate the vault.
Many in the crowd demanded that Duquesne Light move the vault out of the park. They agreed it would cost the utility (read: the consumer) more to do that, just as it cost PennDOT (read: the taxpayer) a lot more to locate the "parkway north" where it is today instead of its original proposal to run the highway right through the middle of Allegheny Commons Park.
Tom Barbush, a resident of Allegheny West, pointed out that people successfully fought PennDOT on that point. (PennDOT eliminated a huge chunk of Deutschtown in putting the road where it is today. Walkabout editorial: Highways through cities R bad.)
"It will take resolve to persuade Duquesne Light that we won't stand for this preposterous proposal," he said.
The greatest power of all - besides, possibly, the PUC - is consumer power.
We pay less for electricity than it pains us to pay; surely less than for gas heat and gas for our cars, and so we are not invested yet in the solution to electrical use. One reason upgraded cooling equipment is needed is because there is so much more demand now. Can you say "casino"?
Electrical service follows the demand for it.
So to friends, readers and countrymen, Walkabout begs you to conserve. Conserve everything. And in your idle time, be thinkin' about what that casino and its parking lot could someday be reused as.)
Sep 28 2009
Diana Nelson Jones/Sept. 28
Today is National Good Neighbor Day, so make good use of it and lend someone a cup of sugar. If you're all out, just do what you know you should do 365 days a year: Behave as if you lived next-door to you.
Before we get deeper into the topic of today's discourse, Walkabout wants your examples of good and bad neighbors. Write in with short stories about the neighbor from hell or the wonderful neighbor or neighbors near you, and send photos whether of an eyesore or the swell egg in your hood. Walkabout will post appropriate entries.
It takes a lot more care to be a good neighbor when you're shoulder-to-shoulder, and a lot of us are. In my neighborhood, most houses are immediately adjacent to another house and most front doors are a stoop away from the sidewalk. We have no contracts obligating us to neighborhood responsibilities, but 16 million Americans do.
Ryan Poliakoff is one. The author of the new book, "Your Neighborhood: A Consumer's Guide to Condominium, Co-op and HOA Living," he is on the board of his condo association in Hollywood, Fla. (Visit www.newneighborhoodspublishing.com)
Many people buy into these associations thinking it'll be great to have a pool and a clubhouse and maintenance taken care of without realizing they have joined an old-fashioned tsk-tsk village. If you or I leave our garbage out four days early, the crews will collect it before the Bureau of Building Inspection or the health department can cite us. If you live in a condo association and do that, your neighbors are the fuzz.
Ryan said lots of people need to get up to speed on how to live under these arrangements. Condo, co-op and home-ownership associations are little governments making legal and business decisions.
"The president of a condo association is like the mayor of a small town," he said. Residents of these community associations need to get involved in their own governance to make sure money is well-managed and enforcement is proper. These boards can put liens on people's homes if fees are not paid and even foreclose, so they have a lot of legal power but they are volunteers in a not-for-profit construct. It's a job most people get into because they want to serve their community only to find themselves stuck for term after term, with neighbors talking about them behind their backs -- high-school hell all over again.
"Community service is required in this world of shared ownership," he said. "It comes back to the village idea and most of us are not conditioned to be good villagers."
Sep 28 2009
Deutschtowner Randy Strothman sent these photos of the People's March where it ended in Allegheny Commons Park on Friday afternoon. I'm delighted to have them to share, but I am SO over the G-20 and ready for what's next, as long as it doesn't involve concertina wire and jackbooted ninjas.
What follows G-20, of course, is H2o: Rain.
DONATE YOUR G-20 PLYWOOD
If you have post-G-20 plywood or other materials you used to board up or secure property, the folks at Construction Junction in North Point Breeze have an incentive for contributing it to them -- a tax deduction.
In its recent e-mail, the CJ reports that plywood is "a much coveted item and we hardly ever get it."
Sep 25 2009
by Diana Nelson Jones/Sept 25
If you're here for the G-20 and your afternoon just yawns with open time, or if you're local and want to do something besides listen to helicopters, you can join a walking tour of the neighborhood to see its evolving environmental laboratory. (That was yesterday, Friday.)
Saturday update: It's exciting to report that, while many students in Oakland were just hanging out, possibly clueless, a dozen or so students among 35 people came out for the tour. On the hour-long walk around Larimer, we saw site after site that stakeholders have changed from grit to green -- community gardens and urban farms --, where people have started businesses and, in the case of a former BP station at East Liberty Boulevard and Frankstown Avenue, are using stimulus money to renovate it into an energy center where people can get help, from job training in the green-collar industry to help with energy bills.
The promotion of and advocacy of Larimer's green possibilities is branded as GET: Larimer. The GET stands for Green Environmental Tourism, but we like G-Larimer in the spirit of the longest two days this city has seen in a while.
Whether you spent yesterday in Larimer or under your kitchen table, today we have our city back and tomorrow (metaphorically speaking) , you will be hearing more from Walkabout about Larimer's progress..
Sep 24 2009
by Diana Nelson Jones/Sept 24
The Mexican War Streets has elevated the verb "stoop," as in "We're stooping tonight." It's a party that has come to mean something more than a cluster of neighbors getting together around someone's stoop for some wine or beer, nibbles and chat in the evening.
In 11 years of popping out my door to attend a "stoop" party, I have sensed that this practice is far more important than it looks. These gatherings invariably swell into the street, which is key -- we usually slow traffic and show all who pass that our home is more than our houses. I've wondered whether people in other neighborhoods stoop, either as a few people gathering spontaneously or as parties that consume part of the sidewalk and the margins of the street.
Let me know if your street has a penchant for this.
I have just discovered Jay Walljasper's "The Great Neighborhood Book" (New Society Publishers), the concept of which he describes on the Project for Public Spaces Web-site. PPS is a partner in his endeavor. Visit PPS at http://www.pps.org.
PPS has 30 years of experience "helping communities achieve their dreams of becoming safe, lively, livable, lovable places," he writes, giving examples that remind me of our fine tradition of stooping. Thought I'd share two examples from his book:
--In the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, a man helped transformed his neighborhood simply by putting a bench in his front yard. The first thing he noticed is that older people were walking around the block again because they had a spot to rest along the way. Then he saw other people stopping to talk to one another at the bench, increasing the community spirit of the area. Then, several other of his neighbors added benches to their yard, giving the whole block a more convivial feel.
--In the city of Delft in the Netherlands, a group of neighbors were fed up with cars speeding down their street so one evening, under the cover of darkness, they dragged old couches and tables into the middle of the street. They arranged the furniture in a way that did not block the traffic but did force it to slow down as drivers had to negotiate their way around these objects. Shortly, the police arrived and, while noting that this action was clearly illegal, also admitted it was a really good idea. Soon, the municipal government was creating their own more permanent version of the neighbors' old furniture-and the idea of traffic calming was born. It is now used all over the world to make streets safer for everyone by helping drivers slow down and recognize that the street is not just for cars.
Read the entire article at http://www.metroplanning.org/articleDetail.asp?objectID=4101
Sep 24 2009
by Diana Nelson Jones/Sept 24
At the "Rally for Clean Energy Jobs" last night in Point State Park -- the last leg of a national tour that has brought green- and blue-collar people together -- Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers struck a neighborhood chord in their homage to Pittsburgh, the title track of their upcoming CD, "East Carson Street."
Joe told the audience -- a thorough mix of locals and out-of-towners -- that the band formed when there were still steel mills up and down the river and the old ladies of the South Side wore babushkas.
Smoke and baushkas aren't too evident these days, but the deep tug of emotion Pittsburghers have about their roots are as strong as ever. I wasn't the only one wiping a tear as he sang about the not-too-distant past. A few measures of the lyrics went like this:
"Some people said I should leave,
There's no use hanging around;
"If you want to make it, boy,
You better get out of this town..."
... and then the recurring lyric that hit the nerve: "I can hear this town breathe, I can hear its heart beat."
A lot of people weren't really listening. There was hype in the air, buffeted by low cloud cover and bouncing off the helmets of military police clustered all over the place. But I have been keeping my ears open for even the slightest acknowledgement that this G-20 Summit is relevant to neighborhoods. Joe made it real.
As he sang, it struck me how lucky are we who feel Pittsburgh's aspirations, its exhalations and its pulse. How lucky we're going to be on Saturday when these life-giving vibrations return.
Sep 23 2009
by Diana Nelson Jones/Sept 23, 2009
When Everybody's Kitchen and Seeds of Peace set up in a private parking lot in my neighborhood yesterday, you'd have thought we were being invaded by Martians. Chat on the neighborhood web site alluded to 911 calls and comments of how this caravan of young people making food for protesters would be a hassle at best and a nightmare at worst. The police showed up, and the ACLU had to be called.
The police have run these volunteer food-distributing groups several times during their short stay here. And some of my neighbors think that's OK. Some think the church that gave the group permission to use its parking lot is a bad neighbor. As for me, I am heartened that a church is acting socially appropriate. These volunteers are among the good guys. They have taken their buses and beat-up cars and bicycles to do relief work after hurricanes, including Hurricane Katrina, said Amy, a member of Everybody's Kitchen and a resident of New Orleans.
I met Amy this morning in the
off-leash dog exercise area. She had three dogs and I knew she was from this group because I recognized the little Basset hound mix from a photo in today's paper. After she entered the park she headed to where one
of the dogs was pooping and scooped it up in a blue bag.
She
told us the police attention has been over the top. One car delivering meals failed to use a turn signal and six police cars swarmed around it. Later, over in the parking lot, I met Ben, who said he was asked
for an ID and questioned about it being from out of state.
"Isn't this America?" he asked. "Aren't there more than one kind of ID?"
Maybe this is how far we've come toward abetting violations of our civil authorities -- that we would think people who volunteer to feed others and look different than we do are scary. "They think we're terrorists," said Amy, and I thought instantly that this situation would be a great plot for an episode of "The Twilight Zone." (You have to be old enough to remember that, sorry.)
Some people have let the G-20 build-up take over their sensibilities and gone from being their usual overly perturbed to straight-out fantasizing. Some neighbors suggested animal control be called because the dogs appeared to be in bad shape. If they had pet the dogs, they would have felt how shiny their coats are. This morning, the dogs were romping happily in the park, well-adusted and well behaved.
In the parking lot, the food smelled great, and everyone was scurrying
around ladling it out, laying table cloths, stirring food on the stove
that's set up in one of the buses. Nearly everyone in the group was
tattooed, some had dreadlocks and the smell of patchouli reminded me of
post-hippie college parties I attended.
The new hippie is like the old hippie, both in how he looks, what he believes in and by how the middle-class mainstream reacts to him. People who grew up in the '60s should have perspective, but it is they who are acting the way 1960s-era parents did -- scared of social activism.
You are on the fringes when society looks askance at your activities even if they are lawful. These groups are here with the permission of the land owners, making food to contribute to a cause that many think is worthy, protest being the founding American art form.
If the police have the leisure to dog groups such as this, we must have more than enough law enforcement for the G-20.
Sep 22 2009
Dear readers, the Streetsblog Network has put out a call for photos of bike traffic that they will compile into a slide show on Streetsblog.
Sarah Goodyear of the Network will accept your photos and hopes to get a good representation of what bike traffic is like throughout the country. It's "a way of getting to know each other, to see what is possible, and to identify where we need to push for change," she wrote.
Send your photos to her at sarah@streetsblog.org. Or you can tag your photos with streetsblog in Flickr. Her post calling for submissions is at http://dc.streetsblog.org/2009/09/22/wanted-your-eyes-on-your-streets/
And here's a posting from Savannah: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bicyclecampaign/ and Portland http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikeportland/biketraffic
We have been noticing a lot of law enforcement soldiers on bicycles in the 'burgh over the past few days, and not all of them are as polished as our blue, so just be careful not to wield your camera in a threatening manner or take photos that they might think make them look fat. And as always, be safe in traffic.
Sep 18 2009
by Diana Nelson Jones/Sept 19
You don't have to be young or wear army boots with skirts or have tattoos or ride a bike or be able to text while holding onto a bus strap to adhere to GLUE. (Great Lakes Urban Exchange: Visit http://www.gluespace.org/) . But the demographic of 18-40 -- the age group most cities want to keep or attract -- is the target. A lot of 20- and 30-somethings aren't just staying in Pittsburgh, they're staying for active reasons.
Carrie Hagan helped organize the Pittsburgh GLUE party last night in East Liberty. Her assessment of Pittsburgh's lingering bad rep was profound. She called it "an interesting trick of historical memory."
Americans have a bad rep for having bad memories, she said, but if it's about something they think is bad, the memory is passed down and never revised. She said she thinks Pittsburgh's reputation also suffers from an elitism that has devalued the working class. The only reason anyone had heard of Pittsburgh back in the day was because of the working class, this city's spine and guts.
"I didn't know anything about Pittsburgh before I moved here," she said, "but people universally told me, ‘You're going to love it.' " She confirmed that she does. She's a grad student at Carnegie Mellon University, has lived here for six years. "It is such a fun city, and it's so beautiful."
"I don't think I can see myself living anywhere else," said Melissa Osiecki, a 22-year-old native of Lawrenceville who works for Pop City, an on-line on-the-‘burgh zine. She thinks our lingering rep is due to being small. "People don't want to come here and give it a chance. I know a lot of people here who want to go to New York. It would be nice if we expanded the population here a little bit."
In the GLUE photo studio, set up in the side room of the Shadow Lounge, I talked to Michelle Coker, 25, after taking a really bad photo of her. She held a sign that read ,"I will stay if Pittsburgh can sustain all my life goals."
She wants to find love, a successful career, own a home and travel. She lives in Monroeville and works for the Regional Equity Monitoring Project (www.pennsylvaniaequity.org).
She said Pittsburgh has granted her many gifts of "exciting spontaneous experiences," such as the exchange with the guy in the orange Lamborghini. "Ohmygod!" she said. "I said to the guy [driving it], ‘Can I sit in your car?' and he said, ‘Wull... yeah,' so I got in and we sat there talking. It was so fun. And next weekend, I am going white-water rafting. It's cool that I can do that here.
"I've been here all my life, and I'm going to law school in Wisconsin next year. What will bring me back is a comfortable life and love at home. If you don't have those things, it doesn't matter if you live in New York City or Kansas City."
............I swear, sometimes people make me so happy ...............
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