Read. Think. Act.

Catherine Read

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Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

Walkable City Jeff SpeckMost significantly, generalists—such as planners and, one hopes, mayors—ask the big-picture questions that are so often forgotten among the day-to-day shuffle of city governance. Questions like: What kind of city will help us thrive economically? What kind of city will keep our citizens not just safe, but healthy? What kind of city will be sustainable for generations to come? These three issues—wealth, health, and sustainability—are, not coincidentally, the three principal arguments for making our cities more walkable.

This is an engaging and readable book written by Jeff Speck of Washington, DC. I was captivated by the very first page and read all the way through to the annotated footnotes (which are quite interesting.)

Since I live in a small city, located in the middle of a huge county, next to our Nation’s Capital, this is not an academic exercise. We are in the midst of making decisions about redevelopment and roads that will impact Fairfax City for the next 50 years. If a project turns out to be ill conceived or poorly executed, we will still be stuck with it for decades.

The most striking aspect of this book is how “counter-intuitive” Speck’s advice appears to be. In other words, we tend to accept what I would term “commonly held notions” about traffic, roads, parking, economic development, housing and public transportation. SURPRISE! Just because a lot of people believe something to be true, doesn’t make it true. It just makes it something a lot of people believe.

So let’s try some data analysis, case studies, some actual . . . science.

One of my favorite “aha” moments is about Induced Demand.

Induced demand is the name for what happens when increasing the supply of roadways lowers the time cost of driving, causing more people to drive and obliterating any reductions in congestion.

Speck points out that “there have been so many incentives for driving, cars have behaved like water, flowing into every nook and cranny where they have been allowed.” So our quest to widen roads and reduce congestion only creates capacity for more congestion. Logical – right? So why do we continue to build more roads to try to “ease congestion” when the data shows it just creates more?Read More

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Virginia Senator Scott Surovell on Inside Scoop

(Oct. 3, 2016) Catherine Read talks with Virginia Senator Scott Surovell (SD-36) about a variety of topics in advance of the Nov. 8th elections. The presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has the potential to create additional electoral opportunities here in Virginia if U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia is elected Vice President. There is also a competitive Congressional race in the 10th District between two women candidates: incumbent Barbara Comstock (R) and challenger LuAnn Bennett (D).

One of the major local ballot issues in Fairfax County is the Meals Tax Referendum. The proposed tax would raise an estimated $100 million in additional revenues earmarked for the school budget, public safety, mental health services and tax relief. Senator Surovell’s district has a high number of Title I schools that would benefit from additional investment. The lack of teacher raises has made recruitment and retention of teachers an ongoing challenge for the Fairfax County Public School system. The Meals Tax is opposed by many in the restaurant industry in a campaign spearheaded by the locally owned Great American Restaurant Company.

Senator Surovell also takes us through parts of the Route 1 redevelopment plan. This particular part of Northern Virginia has some of the highest rates of poverty which greatly affects the schools, housing and transportation in the area. Senate District 36 has a great deal of economic and ethnic diversity. Sen. Surovell shows us maps, renderings and plans for redeveloping key parts of the area to include better transportation solutions and mixed use developments that provide additional housing solutions.

In the final segment, Senator Surovell discusses the Potomac water quality and the challenges of both cleaning up the waterways and protecting them from future pollution. He specifically addresses the disposal of coal ash and the problem with raw sewage originating in Alexandria. Efforts to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed are dependent on vigilance about the waterways that feed into it.