Indies are just plain cooler

Independant retailers shape the character of a neighbourhood. They create a sense of place. They are tourist magnets. I bet you've never heard anyone say "I've got to get to San Francisco - there's a GREAT Starbucks there!", Montreal? "That Tim Horton's on Ste. Catherine's rocks my world!"

Not gonna happen. It's the indies that make the memories.

Independant retailers are members of your community. They belong to your local school board, coach your daughters soccer team and support the local artists. They honestly care about the health of the neighbourhood as much as the health of their business.

It's time we treated them with the respect they deserve.

A 2002 case study in Austin, Texas showed that for every $100 in consumer spending at a national bookstore in Austin, Texas the local economic impact was only $13. The same amount spent at locally based bookstores yielded $45, having more than three times the economic impact.

A 2003 case study of Midcoast Maine covering several lines of goods and services validated these findings. In Maine eight locally owned businesses were surveyed. The survey found that the businesses spent 44.6 percent of their revenue within the surrounding two counties. Another 8.7 percent was spent elsewhere in the state of Maine. The four largest components of this local spending were: wages and benefits paid to local employees; goods and services purchased from other local businesses; profits that accrued to local owners and taxes paid to local and state government. All eight businesses banked locally, used local accountants, advertised in local businesses publications, purchased inventory from local manufacturers, and used local Internet service providers and repair people. The study estimated that a big box retailer returns just 14.1 percent of its revenue to the local economy, mostly in the form of payroll. The rest leaves the state, flowing to out-of-state suppliers and back to corporate headquarters.

Beyond the fact that traditional big-box retail blocks are just plain ugly, they also promote many suburban ills that creep into our urban fabric. The perpetual race-to-the-bottom that has started our local mom-and-pop shops feeling that they must purchase the same cheap, disposable Chinese sweatshop wares to stay competitive. Fighting these "category-killers" by their rules means sure defeat. Local business must retain it's local flavours, while offering quality products if they are to survive. Yes, it will involve some innovative thinking, but the evidence shows that smaller, locally-owned business' know their markets better and are quicker to adapt to a changing market.

So, let the big-butt-ugly-box retailers flame out in the peak-oil hangover that is on the distant horizon. The Walker/Provincial road Legacy Park development will cease to be a profitable enterprise when the SUV-driving unemployed autoworkers figure out that they cannot afford the gas to make it out there to purchase their 69 cent underwear in bulk. Then you will see these chain retailer's committment to Windsor as they pull up their stakes in the looming economic downturn.

I think I'll head down to Taloola Cafe for a coffee now...

The Walkerville Diet

I live in Olde Walkerville--an appropriately named community nestled amongst century old trees, beautiful garden townhomes and stately manour houses. It's built in a traditional grid pattern that encourages pedestrian traffic. The homes are built close to the street with large, welcoming front porches, making socializing a natural hobby. I even built a nice little waterfall out front to augment the street life with it's sounds of trickling water. One of my favorite pastimes is to relax on the front porch with friends and my favorite frothy beverage and people watch. I know we're not performing any scientific studies, but the conclusion we've drawn from our many hours of performing these rigorous observations - Walkerville residents are in great physical shape.

Old, walkable communities have long been sought out as vaction retreats in quaint European cities. How many members of your family have saved their pennies for years to afford to visit Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom? Mackinac Island, Greenfield Village - all very popular pedestrian oriented vacation spots that seem to make people forget their daily drudgeries. These locations are sought out for their peaceful environments and postcard-like settings. There's also another je-ne-sais-quoi quality that makes people feel comfortable - the lack of vehicular traffic. So, why is it that we don't demand the same environment in our day-to-day life?

"The evidence is conclusive: our car-dependent habits are killing us," Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation spokesperson Dr. Anthony Graham said in a news release. "Simply put, the suburban dream has gone sour," The foundation's first study of urban versus non-urban living shows that car-dependent Canadians are more sedentary and at increased risk of being overweight or obese.

The group's research shows that city-dwellers are much more likely to walk or bike to work or to do their shopping.

"It kind of comes to the fact that if you're a long way form where you want to go, you're unlikely to take your bike or walk," said Dr. Todd Anderson, a cardiologist in Calgary. "You're going to take your car."

In my neighbourhood, we have all the necessary amenities within walking distance, so we tend to use our feet a little more than those living out in Southwood Lakes or Forest Glade.

As reported in Science News; Lawrence Frank is no couch potato. Taking full advantage of his city's compact design, the Vancouver, British Columbia, resident often bikes to work and walks to stores, restaurants, and museums. That activity helps him stay fit and trim. But Frank hasn't always found his penchant for self-propulsion to be practical. He previously lived in Atlanta, where the city's sprawling layout thwarted his desire to be physically active as he went about his daily business.

"There was not much to walk to," says Frank, a professor of urban planning at the University of British Columbia. For example, he recalls that there was only one decent restaurant within walking distance of his old home. Many restaurants and other businesses in Atlanta cluster in strip malls that stand apart from residential areas.

In Vancouver, by contrast, Frank's neighborhood contains dozens of eateries, and he often strolls to and from dinner. "I'm more active here," he says.

As of late, there has been some serious research behind the notion that a city's urban design will determine the health of its residents. This is important research that Windsor's elected leaders should come up to speed on before it puts any more shovels in the ground.

In September 2003, two major studies linked sprawl and obesity. Since those reports, researchers in fields as disparate as epidemiology and economics have generated a spate of similarly themed studies.

In the first of the 2003 reports, researchers analyzed data from a nationwide survey in which each of some 200,000 people reported his or her residential address, physical activity, body mass, height, and other health variables. Residents of sprawling cities and counties tended to weigh more, walk less, and have higher blood pressure than did people living in compact communities, concluded urban planner Reid Ewing and his colleagues at the University of Maryland at College Park's National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education.

In the second study, health psychologist James Sallis of San Diego State University and his colleagues reported that residents of "high-walkability" neighborhoods, which have closely packed residences and a mix of housing and businesses, tended to walk more and were less likely to be obese than residents of low-walkability neighborhoods.

In 2004, Frank and his colleagues produced additional connections among urban form, activity, and obesity. The data on more than 10,500 people in the Atlanta area indicated that the more time a person spends in a car, the more obese he or she tends to be. But the more time people spend walking, the less obese they are.

Frank's team, like the other groups, found that areas with interspersed homes, shops, and offices had fewer obese residents than did homogeneous residential areas whose residents were of a similar age, income, and education. Furthermore, neighborhoods with greater residential density and street plans that facilitate walking from place to place showed below-average rates of obesity.

Still, institutional hurdles remain. Many developers prefer to do as they have always done: build horizontally -- an approach that allows them to build in phases and to cut and run if the economy turns sour. (Such strategies don't work so well when you're building vertically.) Many transportation engineers also have a stake in maintaining the status quo because funding for transportation has generally been geared toward moving cars, especially via highways. Since changing road standards and zoning is difficult and time consuming (because these laws tend to be local),as Sallis puts it, our city's "DNA just keeps replicating itself."

With a generation raised in sprawl, eating fast food and driving long hours, is it realistic to assume that people's behavior will change if the environment changes? Some studies suggest no -- that less-active people will naturally choose communities that allow them to be less active. However, another study showed 30 percent of the respondents reporting that they wanted to live in walkable neighborhoods but were unable to afford them. Luckily, here in Windsor, these walkable communties (the ones that are left, that is) are not yet held as valuable as the fringe-built suburbs. Many experts agree that this will change, and as gasoline prices continue to climb into the stratosphere, these old pedestrian-friendly communities (Olde Walkerville, Sandwhich Towne, etc.) will once again be a preferable environment to raise a family.

In 2007 however, when many families choose a suburban life, they make a clear-eyed choice: to sacrifice the adults' health and well-being (with a longer commute, fewer cultural attractions, etc.) for the children's well-being. The suburbs are presumably built with children in mind - with crime-free residential neighborhoods, backyards and cul-de-sacs to play in and better schools. But studies have shown that the new suburban realities may be affecting children's health as well. Currently, an estimated 20 percent of school-age children are obese. And only 13 percent of children walk to school, compared with 66 percent in 1973. Sometimes even those playful, active creatures for whom the suburbs were made find themselves stranded like commuters on a long ride to an unhealthy adulthood.

So, want to appear as the "Next Biggest Loser" in future Windsor Star "Fit City" reports? Chose your next neighbourhood wisely.

Piggybacking Suburbanites

There has long been a philosophical divide between urban and rural dwellers. The conservative-minded "king of the castle" suburban dwellers vs. the more idealistic liberal minded urban dweller. There are always going to be exceptions to the rule, but this generalization will stand up to scrutiny.

There's always those who feel that they are being asked to contribute more than everyone else.

That was the sentiment articulated in this letter to the editor printed in the Windsor Star yesterday. It captures the urban/suburban divide quite nicely:

Let those who benefit pay for the new watermains
Monday, June 25, 2007

Re: Watermain replacement levy.
This recently enacted additional charge on every water bill in the City of Windsor is a gross abuse. This practice applies a financial burden upon all its water users, not just upon those who actually require the upgrading of water delivery lines due to age, damage or impaired operation. Some (in fact many) citizens reside in homes built within the past 25, 15, 10 or five years upon which hefty development charges were levied before their respective dwellings were constructed and occupied.
To now apply additional levies each month constitutes double taxation. These citizens are being assessed on the water bill as if they lived in homes that now need new waterlines. This is not the case.
If the city needs to replace watermains, as I suspect it must, the appropriate mechanism would be a local improvement charges bylaw under Ontario Regulation 586/06 and the Municipal Act 2001. When a watermain or mains and feeders require maintenance or replacement, it would be appropriate that the charges for such works be raised from those in the areas concerned who have enjoyed the benefit of delivery through those mains being replaced for periods (according to public works) of 60, 80, 100 or more years. These costs should not be collected from others who have received no advantage or service from those pipes nor will enjoy the benefit in the future. Such costs are rightly collected from those who will profit from the improvement.
Bruce R. McLeod
Windsor

Mr. McLeod should be careful what he wishes for.

The subsidization that urban sprawl receives is well documented. The late Jane Jacobs, Toronto's pre-eminent urban theorist, warns "Suburban sprawl is far more costly than anyone imagines". That new raised ranch out in the suburbs might not seem to be a bargain if the hidden costs incurred by a few people -- but paid by everyone-- were added to the price. "Beware, there are always side effects," said Ms. Jacobs, whose new book, The Nature of Economies, is making analysts rethink how important human potential is in economic growth.

All taxpayers are subsidizing sprawl to the collective tune of at least half-a-billion dollars a year, concluded the Greater Toronto Area Task Force headed by consultant Pamela Blais. The further utilities are extended and the busier the highways, the more expensive they are to build and maintain. But these costs are shared by everyone through utility rates and taxes. More difficult to tally are the costs of air pollution, deterioration of the environment and traffic chaos. Ms. Blais estimated the suburban sprawl is adding as much as $1-billion each year to the costs that have to be covered by taxpayers for health care and law enforcement.

Sprawl is subsidized through infrastructure funding

Leslie Parrish, of Corporation For Enterprise Development writes that when development occurs on the outer fringes of town, the local government must re-create a system of roads, schools, and public safety services, while having to continue to support an underutilized set of older ones in the center section of town. Development that occurs in these outlying areas has far higher marginal costs than infill and renovation in developed areas. This cost rises even higher when new developments are low density. Since in low density developments residents are spread out on larger lots, the same amount of sewer line, roads, and other services are used by fewer people, reducing economies of scale.

Utility companies also subsidize sprawling, low density development. Telephone, cable, and electric companies often charge customers on an average cost basis, with the same rate collected for all customers no matter where they live within the metropolitan area. Compared to a customer in the downtown area, a household in a fringe suburb costs 10 times as much to serve. Therefore, residents living closer in subsidize those living farther away. Though many local officials encourage new growth, citing its economic development potential, the services these communities must provide often outweighs the benefits they receive. Commercial and industrial uses do tend to pay for themselves, however, these developments usually spur more residential development, which make their benefit questionable from the sprawl perspective as well.

Sprawl is subsidized through automobile and highway subsidies

A majority of federal transportation spending has traditionally always gone to highway funding. These new highways open up additional development potential on newly accessible, undeveloped land. Driving is also heavily subsidized. Despite recent complaints of rising fuel costs, these prices are much lower than they would otherwise be if the full environmental and health impacts were taken into account.

Data gleaned from Canada's 2003 census helps to shine a spotlight on the current imbalance between urban infrastructure spending and the expense of supporting suburban development. For every dollar that suburban dwellers received in municipal infrastructure upgrades/installations and services, they only paid 86 cents. That leaves the cities established neighbourhoods - those who have been paying for their infrastructure for decades - to pick up the tab. This includes fire, ambulance and police services, as well as all the hard infrastructure that is provided to these fringe developments.

Writers such as Mr. McLeod have no problem being on the receiving end of municipal largess, yet when it is their turn to contribute to the pot (that they have done their fair share in emtying) they scream foul. I suspect there would be a huge problem with a user-pay system if it was fairly implemented across the board. Then, those $200,000 raised ranches out in the farm fields would easily begin to approach $750,000+. I doubt we would have a problem with urban sprawl then.

Cultivating Windsor’s Creative Class

Cultivating Windsor’s Creative Class
An economic argument for cultural investment

“Want to know where a great place to invest in real estate will be five or ten years from now? Look at where artists are living now.” The reason? It has been proven that artists—defined as self-employed visual artists, actors, musicians, writers, etc.—can stimulate local economies in a number of ways. This is the advice Business Week Magazine gave it’s readers in February of this year.

This may come as a bit of a surprise to the casual reader, but there are numerous tangible economic benefits to promoting and investing in the local arts and culture scene. These reasons were apparently well hidden when our municipal politicians recently made the decision not to extend emergency funding to the Capitol Theatre. For the economic benefits that accumulate when a community values its artistic and “bohemian” constituency are precisely what Windsor needs in times such as these, with our worst economic and employment outlooks ahead of us.

The inertia of our industrial economy

Generations of “living large” off the fruits of the industrial revolution has lead to an economic monoculture in this community. There are presently families in Windsor with four or five generations of employment history with the same company. As any biologist, or economist will tell you, a monoculture will not survive long as it is vulnerable to even the slightest ill-health and change in its environment. All it took for Windsor to experience this market downturn that is sending thousands of autoworkers to the unemployment line is a spike in oil costs. These are global factors which are out of the control of our municipal government, so it is imperative instead to focus on aspects of our local economy which we can have a positive influence on.

This is why we must diversify our local economy if we are to avoid the dust bin we are headed towards. This idea is nothing new – Eddie Francis has made the quest for new information-based investment one of his mayoral mantras. What city council needs to realize is that their firm disregard for the Capitol’s future, and that of the arts community in general, will have negative reverberations throughout the city as a whole.

If we are to achieve the strong and diverse economy that the Mayor states that he desires, then Windsor must build the kind of community that is attractive to the “creative class” - those individuals whose talent is to create meaningful new forms, such as the artists, architects, information technologists and entrepreneurs - purveyors of new ideas, high-tech industry and regional growth. It is the role of creative industries and occupations that are recognized as a driving factor in the development of cities such as New York, finding that networks of artistic and creative individuals are key conduits for investments that result in new ideas, commercial innovation and income growth.

According to CEO’s For Cities, a Chicago-based urban think tank dedicated to speeding innovation in cities, “[I]t is difficult to overstate the impact that the college-educated 25 to 34 year-olds … will have on a city’s future prosperity. With rising demand for their skills and with competition for them now on a global scale, cities must be magnets for these highly-coveted workers or they will fail, because in the knowledge economy, it is the creativity and talent inherent in a city’s workforce that will shape its economic opportunities.”

Artists and bohemians are direct producers of amenities that draw other creatives through what is called the “artistic dividend”: the arts and cultural activities that increase the vibrancy and diversity of metropolitan areas, influencing other industries and generating growth. Several studies document the role of amenities and lifestyle – in the form of entertainment, nightlife, culture, and so on – in attracting educated populations. In fact, an empirical study finds that high amenity cities have grown faster than low amenity cities. So when a community is stagnant in its investment in these amenity-increasing arts and cultural activities, it will be overlooked by the growth-inducing creative class. When a community actually divests in its established arts infrastructure, it is taunting its home-grown artistic community to find a welcoming environment elsewhere. This is precisely the message that our current city council is sending out – that our community doesn't value our cultural institutions.

Entrepreneurs add to and thrive on creativity, the arts and entertainment.

Entrepreneurs are often the most creative people you'll ever meet, and since birds of a feather flock together, they're often frequenting the most artful, entertainment-rich venues, events and movements in their city. They locate in communities with low housing prices and a high quality of life. They gravitate to dense urban cores with a high amenity quotient. They are patrons of local arts and cultural venues. And to top it off, they have the highest earning potential of most of the rest of the population. It's a positive feedback loop - build it, and they will come - to continue building it.

Therefore, we not only need to attract the creative class to Windsor but we need to retain them once they're here. We also need to nurture our homegrown creatives and show them that we understand just how important it is that they grow and prosper here in this community by providing them with the support they need to thrive. Windsor has the low housing costs and access to markets and population that makes it ripe for attracting and “growing our own” creative class. These individuals will play a key role in Windsor's recovery from our economic downturn. However, forcing a landmark like the Capitol Theatre to close its doors forever is not the way to lay the groundwork.

Welcome to ...scale down

Welcome to ...scale down. It's truly a pleasure to have you here.

"...scale down" is a response that few people consider nowadays. Here in 21st century Western Society, when "growth" equals prosperity, anything else - by default - equals decline. It's a mantra that is repeated so often that it has become truth. With respect to the community of Windsor, Ontario, the ...scale down blog seeks to determine whether the ideals of growth holds the promise of prosperity that it's cheerleaders say it does.

Windsor's future is too important to leave in the hands of a government whose vision is limited to getting re-elected in four years. Our history has shown that short term gain equals long term pain. Today we find ourselves mired in a monoculture of hemorrhaging industrial jobs and an evaporating tax base inadequately being used to fill the money pits of ever expanding road networks leading to unsustainable suburban sprawl. As a community we rally against a heavy-handed border solution being imposed upon us, yet we are akin to the proverbial boiling frog when it comes to the effects of our quest for the newest, shiny acquisition.

So now it's time for our community leaders to add a new term to their repertoire ...scale down. By scaling down our drive to grow for the sake of growing, we will in turn strengthen our community. (Organisms in a natural environment do not grow in perpetuity. At some point in their existance they reach their limit to growth and start to mature and strengthen) By redirecting the millions of dollars we're allocating to auto-centric infrastructure, we can invest in welcoming, pedestrian-scaled walkable neighbourhoods. By scrutinizing our current fixation on Big-Box retail development being built on agricultural greenfield sites, we will reinvest in our locally owned Mom-And-Pop stores that keep our wealth right here in Windsor where it belongs.

So that is the purpose to this blog. It is my first, and I hope it eventually compares favourably to the rest of it's brethen in Windsor's established blogville. Please be patient with me as I settle into a routine. Jump in when you want and we can start to build an urban-design idea-factory that can shed a little light for our elected officials and misguided administration. Yet, the devil is in the details, and I can't wait to see where this ride takes us.

Thanks for reading...

Chris