Category Archives: Places

An innovative revenue stream for suburbs: exclusive advertisements on city property

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Naperville, Illinois is considering a new tactic to provide for funds for the city’s coffers as there is nearly a $5 million budget shortfall projected for next year:

Naperville is considering an unusual option for long-term revenue: giving corporations exclusive rights to advertise on city property.

In a memo to the City Council this month, finance director Karen DeAngelis cited several examples of how this could work, including a program in which KFC pays for pothole repairs in cash-strapped cities in exchange for stamping the fresh asphalt with the chicken chain’s logo.

Naperville also could sell the naming rights of buildings or allow companies to advertise their products as “the official drink” or “the official burger” of the suburb for a fee, DeAngelis said.

“It’s not something we’ve done before, so we would be on the leading edge and we would need to be careful,” she said in an interview.

This might lead to some very interesting scenes – “Naperville City Hall, brought to you by Geico.” I imagine such ads might be attractive to businesses for the amount of people who might see them, particularly in a vibrant downtown Naperville.

Would a majority of suburban residents go for this? As one expert suggests in the story, this could lead to some negative repercussions and a process of “NASCAR-ization.”

If the city of Naperville couldn’t raise a significant amount of money with a program like this, would it be worth doing it on a small scale or would it just lead to more trouble than its worth?

Trying to give people warm feelings about traffic tickets

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I think it is safe to say most people don’t like receiving traffic or moving violation tickets. Could there be a way to help people feel better about receiving these tickets? Cambridge, Massachusetts is trying to improve the image of driving tickets:

But the city of Cambridge, Mass., is looking to cultivate a Zen-like demeanor among parking offenders with the New Age-themed tickets it’s handing out these days.

“It’s trying to debunk the idea that all parking tickets are a hostile action, because I don’t think they are,” Susan E. Clippinger, the city’s transportation chief, told the Boston Herald.

According to the Herald, the parking ticket makeover in Cambridge — home to Harvard and MIT — is part of public art project by the city’s artist-in-residence, Daniel Peltz. In addition to the 40,000 new parking tickets Cambridge printed, the city is incorporating mood-enhancing imagery in its approach to parking enforcement, as the Herald notes: “There are new street signs explaining traffic rules in offbeat ways; ‘10,000 Excuses,’ a mural of excuses given by ticketed drivers; and plush, stuffed ‘soft-boots’ to give the ultimate parking penalty a warmer, fuzzier feel.”

An interesting program. One thing that may work in their favor: changing up the signage and typical protocol might shake people out of their complacent driving behaviors.

What about trying another tact: framing the tickets as part of a larger campaign of public safety. Could drivers be placated a little if the tickets came with an explanation about how driving within/at the rules saved lives, injuries, and money (and tax dollars)? This would give the often solitary activity of driving a more communal focus: we need people to obey the traffic laws and regulations to help everyone get where they need to go safely. If you break the rules, it is not a “victimless crime.”

Slower growth on the edges of suburbia

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While many cities struggle with finding money, some suburbs are still growing. On the suburban fringe of Chicago, about 42 miles southwest of the city, Oswego is still experiencing growth though the pace has slowed:

This year, the local school district reported 648 more students for a total enrollment of 16,828, the village expects to issue up to 100 new-home permits and the village’s population is expected to top 30,000.

And sales tax revenue rose 8 percent — to $4.8 million — for the fiscal year ending in April. The village’s top revenue source also appears stable so far in the new budget year…

In 20 years, Oswego exploded from a village of 3,876 to nearly 30,000 and to an even larger market area that includes unincorporated areas in Kendall County, the village of Montgomery and portions of Aurora.

With the slow-up should come increased business for existing firms. But for the foreseeable future, major retail developments that once arrived in tandem with new residents aren’t likely.

So this is what the recession looks like in Oswego: no decline, some difficult in filling in existing retail and industrial space, but still growing tax revenues, some new home construction, and school enrollments.

I’d be curious to see a larger analysis of how suburbs, particularly those that were growing in the last decade, have fared in the economic crisis. Even with the money woes, I can’t imagine many have declined in population or though perhaps business has declined. My guess is that suburbs that were growth areas five years are in a holding pattern or are experiencing slight growth like Oswego.

Making art out of sprawl

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The Infrastructurist comments on a story about an artist who uses sprawl and suburbia as his subject. The Infrastructurist and the story commentator suggest these images are alienating and ultimately, tragic:

The suburbs are totally self-contained, labyrinthine, and generally terrifying. The Times describes them as “static, crystalline and inorganic. Indeed, some of these streets frame retirement communities: places to move to once you’ve already been what you’ve set out to be.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

I don’t think one has to see these images as tragic. A couple of possible defenses of such images (and the one The Infrastructurist has on the story is a good one):

1. These can be seen as very ordered places. Not ordered in the sense of traditional city grid ordered but they still have a logic. The streets may be more winding but these communities seem to be centered around retail centers or parks. They may even have their own kind of beauty.

2. If one already thinks sprawl is bad, then viewing these overhead shots may just be throwing fuel on the fire. However, these images can be read as the American manifestation of particular social and cultural values: individualism and privacy as built in single-family homes and suburban streets for our cars. In America, the particular expression of these values may be best exhibited in suburbs. There are other ways suburbs/sprawl could be structured to still support those values – or perhaps these commentators would suggest these values themselves should just be done away with. But that is not a problem with these images; it is an underlying issue with sprawl and suburbs.

Searching for good colleges in the suburbs

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Newsweek recently put together a list of desirable colleges. One of the lists is the “25 most desirable suburban schools.” A couple of questions:

1. Are there people who specifically search for a college because it is located in a suburb? I can see the appeal to many of applying to a college in a big city – but I doubt being located in a suburb tops many lists of what people are looking for in a college.

2. I would take issue with whether several of these schools are suburban schools. The University of Notre Dame? It may have its own address and zip code but it is basically surrounded by South Bend. The real suburbs of the area, a place like Granger, are miles away. The University of Virginia is located in Charlottesville, roughly 70 miles from Richmond. For these two cases, this is a very loose definition of a suburb.

Uno’s with America’s “worst pizza” – but it tastes good!

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Yahoo likes to run stories about the “worst foods” in different categories and an updated list examines pizza. The #1 worst pizza in America: Uno Chicago Grill Chicago Classic Deep Dish Pizza (Individual). Here is the nutritional information and the description of the pizza:

2,310 calories
162 g fat (54 g saturated fat)
4,920 mg sodium

Wait, wait, wait. This is a one-person pizza? Yup. All 2,310 calories are destined for one soon-to-be expanding belly. This pie has been a perennial pick for us over the past three years, and the reason is simple: No other personal pizza in the country even begins to approach these numbers. It breaks every single caloric recommendation on the books, and it does it under the guise of a must-have “classic” dish. With the country being plagued by obesity, Uno should have the decency to banish—or significantly improve—this dish.

I want to briefly discuss two arguments made in this description:

1. The author suggests Uno’s is being malicious by slapping the “classic” label on this pizza. The suggestion is that being labeled “classic” means people think it is a “must-have” and are essentially being duped into selecting this pizza.

2. Because obesity is a big problem, Uno’s “should have the decency” (perhaps “responsibility”?) to fix this dish.

Some thoughts on these two arguments:

1. The Uno’s pizza is a “classic.” Deep dish pizza is perhaps the best-known food of Chicago. Naming this food a “classic” is not a trick; it is part of the city’s culinary heritage. Should an unhealthy food item not be allowed to be called “classic”?

2. Perhaps the pizza could be made healthier – but I don’t think Uno’s would suggest it should be eaten at every meal. If you eat Uno’s pizza, it’s hard to eat much of it as it is quite filling. Compared to the other six worst pizzas on the list, Uno’s likely reaches the smallest market.

(Personal disclosure: perhaps I am overstating the arguments against and for the pizza. I like deep-dish Chicago pizza. I don’t eat it all that often but I have had Uno’s (or Due’s) many times and I enjoy the experience. However, in recent years, my deep-dish alliances have moved over to Giordano’s because their pizza tastes less heavy and at least appeared to me to have less grease than Uno’s version.)

Learning about race from the South

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The Christian Science Monitor has a story about seven lessons that can be learned about race from the South. Here is the list: “recognize how far we’ve come,” “talk about race like a Southerner,” (#3 is not listed in a heading but is something like “see the benefits of frequent interaction between blacks and whites”), “Blacks love Southern opportunity,” “don’t stereotype whites,” “segregation by any other name…,” and “keep moving forward.”

One thing that caught my attention: #6 discusses segregation in the North, a region which supposedly has been more favorable to blacks. Several academics dispute this notion:

“The concept of Southern exceptionalism has obscured a lot of American history and a lot of Southern history, and it’s time to put that to rest and understand how deeply interrelated America and the South is, and how much the two have always resembled each other,” says Larry Griffin, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of “The South as an American Problem.” “For decades and decades, the South’s legacy has been the basic trope that permitted white Americans [to excuse] themselves from all racial guilt and project it to the American South.”

A group of historians – including Mr. Sokol and the University of Michigan’s Matt Lassiter – are revisiting how the North and South diverged after the Civil War. One of Mr. Lassiter’s findings is that Northern segregation happened largely by the same kind of government decrees that enshrined segregation in the South.

“The North has been a freer place, in some ways a better place [for blacks], but on the level of spatial segregation, structural inequalities, and poverty, [the North] is no better than the South and is, in many cases, worse,” says Sokol.

Sociologist James Loewen has also tackled this subject in Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. Loewen found that in the North between 1890 and 1940, blacks were forced out of many communities, often by informal “sundown laws” that required them to be out of a community by sundown or suffer the consequences.

An interesting article in a country that has difficulty discussing race and dealing with the consequences of a racialized society.

Listing the “coolest suburbs worth a visit”

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Critiques of suburbs have often included the charge that they are boring. But perhaps this stereotype is cracking: Travel+Leisure provides a list of the “coolest suburbs worth a visit.” A few things seem to unite these communities: they have “cool” cultural attractions (and some have drawn the attention of celebrities) and have a uniqueness or character that sets them apart from the “typical” suburb.

While I don’t suspect that suburban tourism will soon explode, this is a reminder that there is a lot of interesting things to see and do in suburbs. And if more and more visitors and tourists do head to the suburbs, I’m sure the communities will be happy to see them.

Polluting power plants and municipal boundaries

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Many people do not want to live near facilities like power plants, sewage treatment plants, and landfills. However, if the facility is outside municipal boundaries, there may be little citizens can do. The Chicago Tribune presents a classic example – a power plant emitting heavy pollution that draws less attention because it is just outside Chicago city limits:

From a plane, it would be easy to think one of the nation’s dirtiest power plants is within the Chicago city limits.

But the aging State Line Power Station, a major contributor to the city’s chronically dirty air, sits just a few hundred feet over the state border in Indiana, leaving it largely unnoticed and untouched during a decades-long effort to transform the Chicago area’s smog-choked history.

Protesters regularly march in front of two other coal-fired power plants in Pilsen and Little Village, demanding an end to noxious pollution that wafts into the Chicago neighborhoods. Federal and state prosecutors are suing the owner of the plants to force significant cuts in smog- and soot-forming emissions.

Yet a Tribune analysis reveals that the State Line plant, built along Lake Michigan by ComEd in 1929 and bought by Virginia-based Dominion Resources in 2002, is far dirtier than either of the Chicago plants. It emits more lung-damaging nitrogen oxide than the Pilsen and Little Village plants combined, and churns more sulfur dioxide and toxic mercury into the air than either plant.

The article goes on to say that there are efforts to force this plant to clean up. Considering the attention these kinds of plants tend to draw when located in more populated areas, its interesting that this one has received less notice than other facilities.

A note: this plant can be seen easily from the Chicago Skyway.

New Urbanist plans for Waco, Texas

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New Urbanist ideas about mixed-use neighborhoods are often appealing to municipalities: they suggest one can design and produce vibrant, diverse, and walkable communities. Waco, Texas, which according to a member of the Greater Waco Chamber is perceived by many as “Texas’ largest bathroom break,” has hired a firm to develop such plans.

The goals of the city sound ambitious:

Waco’s plan is bold for a city that’s been without a vibrant downtown for about half a century, much of it destroyed by a 1953 tornado. The city wants half the growth projected by 2050 to locate downtown and have 100,000 people living there…

The consensus: develop the banks of the Brazos River, attract the young and empty-nesters from Baylor University’s growing student body and faculty, and highlight tourist attractions (Waco Mammoth Site archeological dig, Dr Pepper Museum and replica of the drugstore where the soft drink was invented, an 1870 suspension bridge over the Brazos, Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum).

If they build it, will people come to downtown Waco?

h/t The Infrastructurist