Dear Clientele:
This is the lesson for today: those who plan have to listen to those
whom they are supposed to be planning for, if the plans are to come out
right. City planners may have technical skills, but their job is
essentially the same as a tailor’s, or an architect’s — to serve the
client. They need to find out what their clients want, what their needs
are, how they will live in and move in their suits, or their houses, or
their cities. Only then can they design properly. The tailor, the
architect, or the city planner who imposes his vision on his clients
without taking into account their wishes is a poor craftsman.
The candidates for city council and the mayorality are running for
positions in which they can convey the wishes of the citizens to the
planers whom they hire. If the candidates won’t listen to you now,
they’ll be of no use to you later. How well are they listening?
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Zoning Post-Tregoning
Sue Hemberger, Friendship Heights,
smithhemb@aol.com
It was heartening to hear last week that the Zoning Commission has
extended the comment period on the proposed new zoning code until April
17. Since November, when public hearings on the draft code started in
earnest, what we’ve seen is a series of concerns being raised by
residents of neighborhoods across the city. And I think what we’re
learning is that it was a serious mistake to do a wholesale rewrite
rather than to amend the existing code. Burying a series of significant
policy changes in a virtually unreadable 985-page text is recipe for
poor decision-making. We need issue-by-issue consideration (which, in
some cases, will mean neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis) of proposed
changes in order to evaluate whether they take us closer to (or farther
away from) where we as a city want to be.
The major obstacle to this kind of deliberative approach has been the
Zoning Commission’s reliance on the Office of Planning. On the one hand,
that’s a structural problem. The Office of Planning serves as the
experts that vet the Office of Planning’s own work. And if the Zoning
Commission decides that it wants to see that work done better or
differently, it has to rely on the Office of Planning to fix what’s
broken. But this structural problem has been aggravated by the dogmatism
and, frankly, the belligerence of the Office of Planning under the
leadership of Harriet Tregoning.
Fortunately, that last obstacle is about to be removed. Weeks after
having lost the Height Act battle and a few days before Bill de Blasio
would announce he’d chosen someone else to head NYC’s planning
department, Tregoning decided to take a job with the feds rather than to
go down with the sinking ship that is the zoning rewrite effort. It’s a
wise — probably essential — career move on her part. As long as she
doesn’t have to get the new code passed or be held responsible for its
implementation, Tregoning can claim kudos for her visionary leadership.
And when, quite predictably, her vision doesn’t translate into reality —
well, that’ll be someone else’s fault. Shades of Gabe Klein, Scott Kubly,
and the streetcar system. Or, for that matter, Michelle Rhee and DCPS.
At any rate, our challenge now is to take a fresh look both at our
zoning code and at what we want from our next Director of Planning.
These are timely questions to raise during this mayoral election season.
In essence, zoning is about how much of what belongs where. The answer
that Tregoning’s Office of Planning has proposed in this new code is
“more of everything, everywhere.” This approach represents an abdication
of responsibility for planning the city’s growth, as well as the
abandonment of zoning as a tool for balancing the interests of
neighboring property owners and for taming or channeling market forces.
Outreach on the proposed new code has focused on a few planning
trends — granny flats, corner stores, and the reduction or elimination
of on-site parking requirements. These issues are essentially sideshows,
distracting attention away from both the sizable giveaways in the newly
expanded downtown and the Office of Planning’s failure to address the
most important problems — affordability, uneven development, retention
of new residents, and a series of quality of life issues — we face as a
city. What we need is a citywide discussion about how and where we grow,
conducted by a Planning Director who listens to, learns from, and
respects the people who live here. Someone who is a fundamentally a
problem solver, who will appreciate what’s special about our city and
recognize what we want to preserve, but who is also willing and able
(both competent and empowered) to initiate the long-term efforts
necessary to address our most enduring challenges. We’re not going to
attract anyone with those qualities or ambitions if our next appointee
is saddled with the unenviable task of implementing a poorly conceived
and badly drafted new zoning code that has been adopted over the
protests of neighborhoods throughout the city. It’s time to step back,
learn for our mistakes, and do this right. Obviously, the current code
isn’t standing in path of growth or redevelopment. There’s no urgent
need to jettison it, much less to adopt something worse.
###############
Lessons from New Orleans
Alma Gates,
ahg71139aol@com
In her 2010 book, The Trouble with City Planning, Kristina
Ford uses the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to demonstrate how city
planning decisions are made. Ford recognizes that generally, the
attitudes of and approaches taken by planners are fairly universal.
So much of what Kristina Ford experienced in New Orleans has been
paralleled by DC Office of Planning’s approach to the Zoning Regulation
Review (ZRR). The “review” of the zoning regulations began in 2007 with
two roundtables where many residents testified before the Zoning
Commission on revisions they felt were needed to update and bring
clarity to the city’s current zoning regulations. Rather than listen to
the public that advocated for a major edit of the current code, OP
seized upon an opportunity to completely rewrite the zoning regulations.
This is what Kristina Ford meant when she wrote, “[planners] write plans
based more on their pet planning theories than on what they know about
the city.” The young staff of planners OP hired to shepherd the rewrite
knew very little about the nation’s capital, its unique neighborhoods,
or its Comprehensive Plan that looks at the “big picture” of how change
will be managed in the years ahead.
Currently, the Zoning Commission is struggling with OP’s
ideologically-based zoning document, which vaguely reflects
Comprehensive Plan guidance. This was not the intended outcome of the
2007 roundtables, and demonstrates OP wasn’t listening to what
roundtable witnesses said in 2007. Ultimately, the Zoning Commission
will decide whether a major edit of the current code is best, or the
city should move forward a transformative ideology. There are parallel
lessons to be learned by DC residents from the way planning was handled
in New Orleans, but first and foremost it is important to recognize that
planners have their own ideas, ideology, and pet planning theories, and
they don’t listen.
###############
It seems that the DC government is in violation of a federal law that
forbids the construction of overhead wires in the City of Washington.
The law is as follows:
“The Commissioners of the District of Columbia shall not, after the
fifteenth day of September, eighteen hundred and eighty-eight, admit or
authorize any additional telegraph, telephone, electric lighting or
other wires to be erected or maintained on or over any of the streets or
avenues of the city of Washington, and the said Commissioners are hereby
directed to investigate and report to Congress at the beginning of its
next session the best method of removing all electric wires from the air
or surface of the streets, avenues and alleys, and the best method of
interring the same under ground, and such legal regulation thereof as
may be needed; and they shall report what manner of conduits should be
maintained by the city of Washington, if any. and the cost of
constructing and maintaining the same, and what charge, if any, should
be made by the city for the use of its conduits by the persons or
corporations placing wires therein, and upon what terms and conditions
the same should be used when required so to do, and for such
investigation, one thousand dollars is hereby appropriated: Provided,
That the Commissioners of the District may, under such reasonable
conditions as they may prescribe, authorize the wires of any existing
telegraph, telephone or electric light company now operating in the
District of Columbia, to be laid under any street, alley, highway, foot
way or sidewalk in the District, whenever in their judgment the public
interest may require the exercise of such authority — such privileges as
may be granted hereunder to be revocable at the will of Congress without
compensation and no such authority to be exercised after the termination
of the present Congress.”
Which means that the DC government cannot authorize the erection of
overhead power lines in the City of Washington. This law was issued by
the 50th Congress in 1888 for the 1889 fiscal year for the DC
government. And because the DC government is in violation of the law
they should be dealt with accordingly.
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Anacostia River Cleanup Petition
David Bardin,
davidbardin@aol.com
Please ask friends and family to consider cosigning, with former
Mayor Williams and me, the petition below asking today’s elected
officials to give toxins seeping into the Anacostia River their priority
attention (and please consider signing yourself if you have not already
done so). Yesterday’s Washington Post reports our big program to
end most overflows carrying sewage fecal matter into the Anacostia. We
need parallel efforts to control toxins in the river’s banks and bottom,
left over from past industrial activity. Let me know if you have any
questions.
Take the first easy step by signing the petition to the mayor and DC
councilmembers at Change.org,
http://tinyurl.com/mxj4g5a: “The Anacostia River and its surrounding
community have the potential to be an extraordinary ecological,
recreational, social, cultural, and economic driver for the DC region.
However, the nation’s capital cannot reach its potential as long as
dangerous chemicals in the riverbed and at certain places along the
banks remain unaddressed. I urge you to make a commitment to fully
cleaning up the toxic chemicals found in and around the Anacostia.
Specifically, I ask that you pledge to have the toxic cleanup underway
by January 2017 — three years from now. Experts say this is aggressive
but doable. River toxins have been associated with an increased risk of
developmental and behavioral problems as well as cancer. The longer we
wait, the longer we jeopardize the health of our community. Instead,
let’s get on track to fully enjoy the benefits from this extraordinary
natural resource.”
###############
Gary’s item in “themail” [February 9] was quite timely. He talked
about how liberal the city is, but let’s take a look at the effects of
that liberalism. In the Washington Post on February 10 there was
an article on homelessness in the District, which has reached epidemic
proportions. The article did not discuss one of the worst of the city’s
facilities for the homeless, the campus at DC General. Three or four
years ago Ward 6 City Councilman Tommy Wells deposited thousands of
homeless people in abandoned buildings on the site. At the same time he
allowed other members of the city council to concentrate all the
methadone clinics on the campus. The result was an influx of drug
dealers. What kind of politician permits this to happen to powerless
poor people? A liberal, that is who.
All Liberals have two traits. First they are paternalistic. They know
better than anyone what is good for the downtrodden. I doubt the
homeless people at DC general wanted to be dumped there en masse. Forty
years of housing projects revealed to everyone what the effects are when
you concentrate thousands of poor people in one area. Pathologies such
as crime and drug dealing are the inevitable result. No one knows this
better than the poor and they certainly would have voted against being
concentrated like livestock. And I am sure they would have opposed
locating a methadone clinics nearby. But Tommy knew best.
The second liberal trait is that liberals just want to feel good
about themselves. Tommy felt good because he was helping the poor by
giving them a place to stay. He had done a good deed. The long term
consequences never entered his feeble little mind. If you are interested
you can read the E-mail traffic of the neighborhood effected by Tommy’s
policies at yahoogroups.com. The group is New Hill East. Here is the
link:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/newhilleast/info.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Plan to Develop Dupont Circle’s Historic
Patterson Mansion Revealed, February 17
Peter Wolff,
intowner@intowner.com
A plan for converting the Washington Club’s former home to a new use
is to be presented to the Dupont Circle ANC on Monday evening, February
17. For more information, visit
http://www.intowner.com to read the Special Report posted at the top
of the home page.
###############
McMillan Park Fundraising Event, March 27
Cecily Kohler,
cecilyk@juno.com
Join the Friends of McMillan Park on Thursday, March 27, at 6:30
p.m., for a cocktail party fundraiser at 410 GoodBuddy Gallery, 410
Florida Avenue, NW. The proceeds from this major event will benefit the
Save McMillan Park Legal Fund to preserve this historic and important
green space. The evening will include food, drinks, and raffle prizes!
McMillan Park is currently endangered by commercial development that
would destroy the park’s majestic underground caverns. Our organization
was founded by community supporters and neighbors who have fought
tirelessly to preserve McMillan Park since 1989. Until World War II, the
land was used by the DC community at large as a central park for
recreation, cultural events, and gatherings.
For ticket sales and additional information, please contact us at
237-0427 or restoremcmillan@gmail.com and visit
http://www.friendsofmcmillan.org.
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