PhillyMatters

Saturday, December 12th, 2009 | Essay, Planning | No Comments

This post is not just about Philadelphia, but it is a little sentimental. This post is really about place, and what makes a place. I’ve recently returned home to Philadelphia to visit my family and celebrate my mother’s birthday, giving rise to a number of thoughts on what makes a place.

I realized immediately that I wanted to put my thoughts into words when I walked up to the gate at DIA and saw the word “Philadelphia”. Just the word gives me comfort; I like the way it’s spelled, the way it sounds, and all the memories it conjures. This is when I realized that place is more than a location. Place is all the experiences, smells, tastes, sights, and sounds. Place is love lost and love found, lessons learned, laughter and tears. Place is a movie and blanket on a cold day in your downtown apartment; place is a kiss on Walnut Street; place is children’s laughter on an early fall day in Rittenhouse Square.

I will carry with me forever the taste of a real Philly Cheesesteak, memories of disinterested customer service, the way people say “Fuladelfia,” the rabid sports fans (more rabid than most places on this planet, save soccer fans in Europe), and the hot, humid days of summer that make you want to shower three times a day.

Philadelphia, whether on the periphery or in the center, was part of my life for 24 years. Arguably, it still is part of my life. As I’ve realized, you can take the boy out of Philly, but you can’t take the Philly out of the boy. My new home, Denver, is not any less important, just newer. After a week of travel for work, coming back to Denver is comfort. The skyline and mountains are imagery that will be imprinted with me whenever I decide to take the next journey. And the friends I’ve found there have built new memories that will make this place yet another so hard to leave but exciting to return.

Planners often boil place down to the basics, forgetting the intangibles that make a place. It is a tough balance though. Tearing down grandma’s house may open up the building of new memories for 100 new people, but tearing down a memory is an awful struggle we see play out over and over at planning meetings and in courts all the time. Planners look at streets, setbacks, uses, and transit. These are all possibly dry topics, but a good planner connects these to the very real interactions we have in a place. Planning is about building the infrastructure of memories and experience. It is an exciting prospect, but one that planners miss in the process of planning.

Tags: philadelphia, philly

Transit gaining traction?

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | Cities, Planning, Transit, Trends | No Comments

The NYTimes, this weekend reported on better than expected ridership on the Phoenix light rail.  The Times points out that the 33,000 average daily riders come primarily from weekend riders looking to get out to the bars and restaurants.  This comes as little surprise to me, as many light rail systems, including the one in Denver, far surpassed initial estimates of ridership.  This story has played out over and over again in cities like Minneapolis, Houston, and Charlotte.  The Overhead has more on these underestimates.

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Tags: high speed, light rail, phoenix, Planning, Transit

Cities XL: Next Generation City Simulation

Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | Planning, Technology, Trends | No Comments

Growing up, my first computer game was SimCity (the original).  Ever since then, I’ve become fascinated with cities and, more importantly, the spaces between our real cities and the virtual communities we create online.  I eventually ended up in the field of urban planning (unfortunately, it is not appropriate to release monsters on your city) and devote much of my mental and professional energy to imagining new ways to engage people around sustainability and planning.

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Tags: cities xl, civic engagement, games, simcity, simulation

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | Planning, Transit | 4 Comments

For the past two weeks, I’ve been traveling a lot for business and pleasure and I realized that I’ve utilized a healthy mix of transportation options: light rail in Minneapolis, planes between Denver and Minneapolis and Philadelphia, commuter rail in Philadelphia, automobiles in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and good old fashioned walking.  What has been great about this trip, is that I’ve used each of these methods as part of a transportation system–a network of options.  This seems like an obvious observation, but what troubles me is that too many discussions on transportation seem to separate out the various modes (cars, trains, planes and bike/ped) into warring camps.

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Tags: california, high speed, mega-regions, Planning, tgv, Transit