Protected: Coalition Update – 4/18/2012
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Senate subcommittee votes to restore funding to HUD’s Sustainable Communities Initiative
Yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development approved its FY 2013 spending bill, including a restoration of $50 million in funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Sustainable Communities Initiative.
The subcommittee voted 15-1 to approve the bill, which contains $53.4 billion for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending for FY 2013, a 3.5% decrease from current levels. During the markup, Subcommittee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) emphasized the important role infrastructure investment plays in creating jobs and improving our economy.
“This legislation will create jobs and make critical investments in our nation’s roads, bridges, rail and transit systems, and airports. The bill also preserves an essential part of the country’s safety net by protecting housing assistance for low-income families and veterans,” Murray later said in a statement.
Memphis, TN Aerotropolis holds forum on new economic and redevelopment strategy
Memphis, Tennessee, a HUD Community Challenge grantee, held a forum last week to re-energize its regional economic and redevelopment strategy, which promises to generate over 1,500 new jobs with over $500 million worth of investment. 60 public, private, and non-profit groups are working together to bolster the regional job market, rehabilitate vacant and blighted housing, and improve transportation opportunities.
LOCUS President Chris Leinberger delivers keynote address at New Jersey Redevelopment Forum
A NJ Transit light rail train passes along Essex Street in Bayonne, NJ. Photo by Flickr user Flodigrip’s world.
In March, LOCUS President Chris Leinberger delivered the keynote address at the New Jersey Redevelopment Forum, an event hosted by Smart Growth America’s coalition partner New Jersey Future. The following is crossposted from New Jersey Future’s blog Future Facts.
Many in the luncheon crowd at New Jersey Future’s seventh-annual Redevelopment Forum were still digesting their cold cuts and salads when keynote speaker Leinberger stepped to the microphone and delivered an opening shot to their state’s midsection:
“New Jersey is the poster child for sprawl.”
A renowned urbanist, president of LOCUS; Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, Leinberger did not mince words when he described how New Jersey, like the rest of America, latched onto a drivable suburban lifestyle in the 1950s—and didn’t let go for the next half-century.
“Transportation drives development,” he noted. Modifying a well-known quote from Winston Churchill (“First we shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us”), he said, “We first build our transportation system, and then it molds our metro regions.” Investment in highways leads to drivable suburban development, he explained, while investment in rail, bus, bike lanes and sidewalks leads to walkable urban development.
Public support spurs progress at complete streets workshop in New Orleans
Holiday Drive in New Orleans is an recent example of complete streets work in action.
In December 2011, the City Council of New Orleans, LA, unanimously passed the city’s first complete streets ordinance. The ordinance, which encourages designers and engineers to build streets that accommodate everyone, has already gained widespread support. Now, it’s up to New Orleans leaders to actually make these changes happen.
Last month, Smart Growth America and complete streets experts Michael Moule and Michael Ronkin held a workshop for City officials in New Orleans to help make their complete streets plans a reality. Joining the officials were representatives from 12 local, regional, and state agencies as well as non-profit partners who also participated in the event.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce on federal investments in public transportation
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Janet Kavinoky responds to an editorial in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal which criticized federal investments in public transportation. In a post on the Chamber’s Free Enterprise blog, Kavinoky comes out in defense of diverse transportation investments, and calls on Congress to pass a robust transportation bill “for the sake of near- and long-term job creation, stronger economic growth, and enhanced U.S. competitiveness.”
Poking Holes in the WSJ’s Transportation Editorial [Free Enterprise, April 26, 2012]
Coalition Releases Annual Report
With its 2011 Annual Report (.pdf), the National Complete Streets Coalition offers a snapshot of the phenomenal success of the Complete Streets movement. The report highlights how the Coalition has helped to lead the movement and respond to its changing needs in 2011, celebrating the many milestones the year brought: at least 125 new policies … Continued
Partnership in the News: Tucson's Sun Link Streetcar Project Kicks Off
The Arizona Daily Wildcat reported yesterday that the Sun Link streetcar project, which is funded by a Department of Transportation TIGER grant, formally broke ground yesterday in downtown Tucson. Mayor Jonathan Rothschild stated that Sun Link would benefit the city and create jobs by connecting businesses and the University of Arizona to downtown.
From Heavy Industry to Great Neighborhood: Lawrence, Massachusetts leverages its community resources
As one of the last planned mill cities in the Northeast, Lawrence, Mass., was engineered specifically to maximize the water energy potential flowing on the Merrimack River. Between the 1840s and the 1960s, the city’s textile industry generated a constant flow of financial capital, luring other businesses and workers and contributing to a healthy, vibrant community.
But in the aftermath of World War II and a steady decline in domestic manufacturing, the city lost its economic engine and suffered the flight of its middle-class white population to the suburbs. What was a manufacturing powerhouse 40 miles north of Boston is now New England’s most heavily populated Latino City, home to multiple generations of mostly Caribbean immigrants who came as low-wage labor but have stayed to make the city their own.
Since the decline of manufacturing, the city has struggled to stay afloat amid volatile economic and development trends. The recession and resulting public budget crisis have encumbered it even further.
There is hope on the horizon, however: Lawrence possesses a dynamic civil community of nonprofit groups, residents, local property owners and small businesspeople who are charting a new course. Collectively, these groups are spearheading a movement to pump life back into the economy by leveraging Lawrence’s historic resources in a new way.
The textile boom left the city’s rivers and canals lined with 12 million square feet of mill buildings. “Some of these buildings are the same size as skyscrapers lying down,” said Andre Leroux, who has lived and worked in the city and is now the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance (MSGA). “At the time that they were in operation, they were the biggest buildings in the world.”
In Honor of Powell Calhoun and Donna Williams
The next time someone refers to a sidewalk as a too-expensive “amenity,” think about Powell Calhoun and Donna Williams. They were fatally hit by a driver as they traveled along a frontage road in Jackson, Mississippi that had no sidewalks for him to push her wheelchair.