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Zoning is the DNA of a community: it controls how you live, shop, and work.  After nearly a century of many cities separating those uses, now, they’re going back to the future: trying to recreate an old way of life. Streetsboro, Ohio is one such place. Drive down its main commercial district and it has nearly every chain store you can imagine: A Walmart and a Target, a Lowes and a Home Depot.

Streetsboro's big box stores are set way back from the street. The city wants to change that with new zoning. (Photo: Dan Bobkoff)

Some call it sprawl. Streetsboro calls it economic development. This six-lane strip of big box shopping centers has served this city well since its explosive growth started in the 1960s. It just doesn’t look like a traditional town.

The town center is an intersection with a grassy knoll on one side. But Jeff Pritchard is in charge of planning there now and he’s aiming for a future Streetsboro that would look very different. These big box stores could eventually be replaced by attractive housing and shops. The way towns and cities used to be.

“A place where they can walk to a corner store, maybe live above a store, says Anthony Flint of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “And, those kinds of things, that’s illegal in America today in so many of our communities. “

Illegal because of zoning.  In many cities and towns, zoning codes don’t allow living and working in the same place. And, when zoning spread across the country in the 1920s and 30s, that was considered a good thing.

“ You didn’t want to have a slaughter house next to a residential apartment,” Flint says.

But those issues aren’t as big a deal anymore. As the Great Lakes region reinvents itself, there’s a growing feeling among planners and thinkers that much of the public wants to spend less time in their cars. They point to rising gas prices, and think fewer people will want the single family home separated from everything else in their lives. So, cities as diverse as Peoria with its historic downtown, and Pontiac, Michigan, with its post-industrial woes are joining Streetsboro in rethinking their zoning.

Jeff Pritchard (Photo: Dan Bobkoff)

The change could be dramatic: something called form-based code. In his Streetboro planning office, Pritchard shows the city’s current colorful zoning map: purple for industry, yellow for homes, pink for those big box stores.

Streetsboro's Current Zoning Map

But there’s no overlap, no mingling of uses. Form-based code is the opposite. It encourages mixing. The city controls how a building looks and operates: say, three stories high, up against the curb, parking in the back. But it doesn’t dictate the use. So, it could be housing and shops in the same building.

How does this work in the real world? A decade ago, Miami, Florida had a mess of buildings, but some streets had few shops at street level. So, city planner Ana Gelabert-Sanchez pushed for parts of the city to try form-based code.  She says the zoning now allows for the kinds of streets more residents want to live and walk on.

“Younger people started moving into downtown because they wanted to live close by,” she says. “They wanted to work close by. So, it’s happening. And, what I think is great is that it’s happening at every age.”

But is this a life everyone wants? Critics say this is government dictating how people should live and that there isn’t enough evidence that a broad swath of the population really yearns to return to dense, urban areas.

“I sort of chuckle at those sorts of arguments,” says Lolita Buckner Inniss of the Cleveland Marshall College of Law. She says form-based code, and the larger so-called New Urbanist movement, is based on a nostalgic notion of cities. For many people, they had no choice but to live in a dense neighborhood.

“That wasn’t necessarily something that they sought or that was beneficial,” Inniss says.  “That was how they lived. Many of those people, when they got the opportunity, looked for less density, more fresh air.”

That’s not stopping Streetsboro officials from trying to turn a part of this exurb into more of a traditional town. It will likely take years or decades before the changes are noticeable. Standing in front of Walmart, Sean Smetak and Becky Slattery had a hard time imagining this strip having sidewalks and people walking.

“No, no, it’s too busy, definitely too busy,” they said.

But, they have no love for the way it looks now.

Half a century after cities across our region and country built sprawling freeways, many of those roads are reaching the end of their useful lives. Instead of rebuilding them, a growing number of cities are thinking about—or actively—removing them. That may come as a surprise.

Cleveland's West Shoreway (Thomas Ondrey / The Plain Dealer)

LISTEN TO THE STORY:

Download audio file (FreewaysFinal.mp3)

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When Clevelanders hear that the city plans to convert a coastal freeway into a slower, tree-lined boulevard, you get reactions like this one from Judie Vegh.

“I think it’s a pretty bad idea for commuters,” she said. “And if it were 35 mph, I would just be later than usual.”

Within the next few years, Vegh’s commute on Cleveland’s West Shoreway will likely look very different.

A rendering of what Cleveland's West Shoreway will look like after conversion to boulevard. (Source: ODOT)

Another view. The newly designed road is expected to make it easier to access Lake Erie and nearby neighborhoods. (Source: ODOT)

“This is not the traditional highway project,” said Cleveland City Planner Bob Brown. “The traditional highway project is obviously speeding things up, adding more capacity, and often ignoring the character of neighborhoods.”

Work has begun in Cleveland to better connect the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood to the waterfront. (Dan Bobkoff)

It’s quite a change. In the 1950s and 60s, freeways were seen as progress and modernity. They were part of urban renewal and planners like New York’s Robert Moses tore through neighborhoods to put up hulking steel and concrete roadways. Today, cities are looking to take them down.

The list is long. New Orleans, New Haven, Buffalo, Syracuse and San Francisco are just some US cities thinking about or actively taking freeways down.

Going Mainstream: See a List of Freeway Removal Projects from Around the World

Jim Weber, who is Akron, Ohio’s Construction Manager, says that city is studying what to do with its under-used six-lane Innerbelt that will soon need major maintenance.

“Perhaps we can remove sections of it and have it fit in better with the Akron grid system and offer an economic benefit by making land available,” he said.

Akron officials got the idea from Milwaukee which also removed a freeway and used the land for new development. It would have cost 3 to 4 times as much to reconstruct the road.

No freeway here. This neighborhood was spared a planned freeway that would have split SoHo. (Adee Braun)

I asked Tom Vanderbilt—the author of a book about traffic and what it says about us—to show me a neighborhood that’s doing well because there’s no freeway. He took me to the corner of Broome and West Broadway in New York’s SoHo neighborhood.

(Read Tom Vanderbilt’s Slate series on unbuilt highways–including in Chicago.)

Tom Vanderbilt in New York (Adee Braun)

“Especially in the past two decades it has become an incredibly vibrant, expensive, thronged with tourists, urban center,” Vanderbilt said.

SoHo is one of the fanciest shopping districts in New York. (Adee Braun)

In the mid-20th century, New York planner Robert Moses wanted to put a ten lane freeway here in Lower Manhattan. Back then, it was a fading industrial area.

“This would have created essentially a giant Berlin Wall cutting off what became SoHo from what became TriBeCa. And, these two are now essentially connected in what is a huge swath of hugely desirable real estate,” he said.

And, planners like Bob Brown in Cleveland see freeway removal as a way to make cities more attractive and desirable to companies and workers who can locate anywhere.

“ When you talk about improving the quality of life in neighborhoods and a city that translates directly into increases in population and jobs,” Brown said.

In cities that have already taken down freeways, property values often rise and waterfronts draw more people. Skeptics find traffic jams rarely materialize.

So, is this a repudiation of those Mid-Century builders who saw cars as supreme?

Jeff Chusid, a city and regional planning professor at Cornell, says in some ways it is.

“In other ways, it’s a repudiation of the mentality of the city as a machine,” he said.

Chusid says cities are changing. They’re no longer industrial places that need freeways to speed workers and goods in and out. Instead, planners are now focused on sustainability and making cities attractive places for both work and play.

To be clear, few are suggesting we remove heavily traveled roads, but even the US Department of Transportation is backing the idea of replacing under-used urban freeways.

In Cleveland, many are warming to the West Shoreway becoming a boulevard. Don Burrows of Westlake was walking around a Cleveland neighborhood that should benefit from the project.

“I like the idea. I think it will make the lake much more accessible to the population. I think it will the neighborhoods more livable,” Burrows said.

And, for Judie Vegh, the commuter, a Cleveland official says the Shoreway’s slower speed limit will only add 75 seconds to her commute.

The last international ship of the year just left the Great Lakes. The Dutch vessel dropped off Swedish steel in Cleveland and picked up grain in Duluth.

Many say increasing exports would help get the region and the country out of the recession.
Well, the Midwest still makes things. If we’re going to be an export economy, how do we get the goods out of the country?

Could we be doing a lot more international trade directly through the Great Lakes?

LISTEN TO THE STORY: Download audio file (ShipFINAL_web.mp3)

It is not easy to get steel mill equipment from Ohio to Germany.

Butech Bliss readying large equipment for shipment to Germany. Courtesy Butech Bliss

Especially when it’s the largest piece of machinery a company has ever made. Earlier this year, a manufacturer near Youngstown called Butech Bliss beat out foreign firms to supply a German mill with enormous steel cutters. It took a truck with 19 axles.

Courtesy Butech Bliss

“Actually, the shear itself ended up weighing about a million and a half pounds,” said Chuck Jackson, Butech Bliss’s Vice President. It was a $15 million order — half the company’s annual revenue. That was the good news. The bad news? Pennsylvania and Maryland wouldn’t let him truck it on their highways to the port in Baltimore. The trucks were simply too big.

He racked his brain for a solution.

Chuck Jackson

“I had heard faintly of people shipping out of Cleveland,” Jackson said. “But I never really thought about it.”

That ended up being his answer. He shipped the machinery out the St Lawrence Seaway and across the Atlantic to Germany.

Butech Bliss’s equipment being loaded onto ship in Cleveland. Courtesy Butech Bliss.

But for now, this is still not that common.

“It’s a chicken and egg problem,” said Brad Hull, a professor at John Carroll University.

He says there are Midwest companies that want to use the lakes and there are shipowners that want to serve them. But the shippers want to make sure the service is dependable and the ship-owners want to be certain there’s demand.

“So, essentially you’ve got both sides that need to meet in the middle,” he said.

For now, much of the shipping is based on luck. There’s no predictable service. This year, a drought in Russia has boosted the grain exports from Duluth, for instance.

Will Friedman is the new head of the Port of Cleveland.

“We’re not in control of our own destiny,” said Will Friedman, the new head of the Port of Cleveland. “Sometimes good things happen but it’s not because we did anything.”

Friedman hopes we’ll soon see small steps to changing that. There’s serious talk of starting a regular, predictable container service for the first time in decades.

For now, most ships like this one in Cleveland just have their cargo secured to the deck.

The last ship of the year in Cleveland. Workers unload steel from its deck. Photo by Dan Bobkoff

Cleveland and Detroit’s ports generate upwards of $2 billion in economic impact a year but that’s well less than Baltimore.

“We just want to be who we are better than we have been previously,” Friedman said.

Cleveland and Detroit’s ports generate upwards of $2 billion in economic impact a year but that’s well less than Baltimore.

John Baker says more activity on the lakes can’t come soon enough. He’s with the International Longshoreman’s Association and has spent decades trying to get more foreign business so his members can get more work.

It would probably depend on your viewpoint.  I would say that the residents on Sky Lane and near Bradley Road would be very interested in Mineral Mining Permit #10428.  The public notice for this application was placed in the Plain Dealer beginning in February.  I went on line to www.Cleveland.com to find one of the public notices by scanning the classifieds but gave it up as a futile endeavor.  The public notices are included with the classifieds and not searchable as far as I could tell.

I decided to call the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to ask for a copy of the permit application.  The very helpful state employee told me that the original application could have been revised several times so that the one he had available to send might not have up-to-the-minute information. He said he would answer my questions if he could.

Who applied for the permit?   Ty Inc. out of Independence Ohio

Where were the public notices advertised? They advertised in the Plain Dealer that they would be mining for sand and clay.

He suggested that he tell me what they planned to do.  They will be using heavy equipment to extract the sand and clay.  This will be open pit mining .  In an open pit mining situation,the site must be reclaimed.  They plan to use the soil and restore the site to a condition as close to original as possible.

 What is the time frame? It is a fifteen year permit.

How do they plan to reclaim the site?  It will be an open, vegetative site with a big pond.  He told me it actually would be a water impoundment feature.  He began to explain what water impoundment is. I asked him if it was like  water impoundment used when strip mining for coal.  The answer was: yes.  He then went on to tell me that the contouring  would be a 3/1slope and rolled erosion webbing around the water impoundment would be used. 

How large of an area are we talking about?  He said well, it is pretty large.  8 and 1/2 acres.  They intend to mine 30,000 tons of clay and soil and expect to reach gray silt at 12 ft with an ending depth of 24 feet  with the average being 20 feet.  The area is along Sky Lane and Bradley Road.

The last thing he told me is VERY IMPORTANT.  The DEADLINE for public comment is March 31st. Here is the address to send letters with questions, concerns, and a request for a public hearing to:

Chief John Husted
Ohio Department of Natural Resources
Division of Mineral Resources Management
2045 Morse Road,  Building H3
Columbus, OH 43229-6693

So here are some questions :

How will the strip mining effect residents of Sky Lane and Bradley Roads?
Will the ecosystems of two creeks be compromised?  What will ensure that they are not? 
What particulate matter will be added to the atmosphere?
What will be the effect on the water table and the watershed?
If this permit is granted, will this set a precedent for other vacant land within the city limits of Cleveland?What is the assurance that Ty inc. has the expertise for such an undertaking?

Is the EPA involved in the vetting of this application? Where and when do they step in?

What rights does the city of Cleveland and its citizens have in such a matter?

I talked to Councilman Brancatelli who has objected to the application. Monday, March 22 Councilman Brancatelli will formally oppose this application at the City Council meeting so that the City Law Department can take the objection forward.  Councilman Brancatelli has also requested a public hearing but does not know when and where it will be held  yet.

I do know from my talk with the state employee that a public hearing is usually held within two weeks after the deadline date.  In this case, March 31.  he said that the downside to a public meeting is that sometimes not all people are able to speak because of time constraints.  He said that letters of objection sent until March 31will be considered and that these letters should be sent.  he said the best way to be heard is to write a letter with concerns  and request a public hearing so that a lot of questions can be answered beforehand and included in information at the public hearing.

There are two things we can do:

1. WRITE a letter of Objection that requests a public hearing to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources 
2. ATTEND Monday’s City Council meeting and support Councilman Brancatelli.

Is this newsworthy? I believe it is.  Every resident of the city of Cleveland and beyond should  know about this mineral mining rights application that would approve mining within city limits. But how will they know?  I  am pushing this information out to as many people as possible.  If you agree, take the time to write a letter requesting a public hearing. Send the information to others who you think will want to support Councilman Brancatelli’s efforts. Find out as much as you can about this latest assault on the residents of Sky Lane and Cleveland.

What are you doing tomorrow night after work? I’ll be speaking here: NEO Premiere of PolyCultures v1.2 @ CSU: The Social Media & Sustainability Conversations. Join us?

If you’re looking for signs of economic recovery, look no further then Waterloo in North Collinwood. If you haven’t check out the district recently featured in the NYTimes and the Wall Street Journal, there’s no better time then today (or the next few weeks) during Walk All Over Waterloo.

George Nemeth has commandeered the ArtsCollinwood Gallery for a fundraiser. Beginning tonight from 5-9PM until they make him take it down or everything is sold, you be able to see his collection of NEO artists such as Scott Radke, Dott Schnieder, Niko Angelis and others as well as debuting some of George’s own work. Did we mention George is throwing down his famous homemade pizzas? Well eating some of his killer ‘za cold. What goes well with that? Cold beers of course!

“My fellow board members and I have committed to raising $5K each. This is my way of connecting with my social network, eating some great food, talking, and making a real economic impact in North Collinwood.”

ArtsCollinwood is located at 15605 Waterloo Road Cleveland, Ohio 44110 and can be contacted at info@artscollinwood.org or 216.692.9500

“Shields imagines a day when the Botanical Garden and the city collaborate on an urban farm with a large-scale composting facility and an all-season greenhouse that operates with renewable energy.”

Growing more than food in inner city | GreenCityBlueLake

Good questions from CSA Farm Girl:

To me a CSA is a unique and special relationship between farms and their members. I would ask any person who is considering joining a CSA to ask themselves and their CSA some basic questions.

-Is there a farmer directly involved? Do I know him or her, get to meet them, have an opportunity to visit the farm (even if weekly pickup is elsewhere?)

-Is one of my reasons for joining a CSA to directly support the farm and support small scale local agriculture in my region?

If so, would a farmer’s market be better for my needs.

- Is natural or organic important to you? How committed is your grower to those principles?

I would ask my CSA

· Who grows the food…?

Where does the food you’re eating come from?

via CSA days: Are all CSAs the same?.

“We ask everyone in Ohio to please contact their Congressperson today,” Prendergast said. “America can do what is easy or it can do what is best for its economy over the long term. Either way, decisions made in Congress in the next few weeks will likely set a direction for this nation that will last for decades.”

via News Releases.

Parts of an email from Carl @ Blue Pike Farm:

RALLY for the Chickens and the Bees.

Join your friends and Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Daddies, Goosey Poosey, Gander Pander, the Bee Babe and her friends for as rollicking good time in support of the proposed Cleveland legislation to relax the building code regulations restricting Chickens, Bees and other small critters. (Tom Turkey will not be available due to a death in the family).

Time: 2:00 P.M.
Day: Sunday
Date: December 7th, 2008
Location: Blue Pike Farm, 900 E. 72nd St. Cleveland (Between I-90 and St. Claire)

Bring your petitions, copies of your emails and your positive energy. We’ll collect all the support material and present it to Councilman Joe Cimperman on Monday morning, December 8th before the hearing on the legislation before the Cleveland City Council Committee of the Whole.

Bring the kids to play on Holly Hock Hill. Refreshments for the early birds.

After rewatching The End of Suburbia last night, these arguments (which I’ve emailed to Councilman Polensek) make sense:

Economic security; in these lean times raising your own food, veggies, chickens for eggs or meat, bees for honey etc. help stretch your families food budget. Maybe you could make a $ or $$ by selling some to your neighbors.

Food security; raising your own food helps insulate you and your loved ones from the contaminants in the industrial food chain (see i.e. this one about antibiotics in the U.S. meat supply; A direct relationship exists between food consumption levels and poverty. Families with the financial resources to escape extreme poverty rarely suffer from chronic hunger; while poor families not only suffer the most from chronic hunger, but are also the segment of the population most at risk during food shortages and famines. Or this about food scarcity:

Passage of the ordinance will help support local food initiatives.

Nothing could be safer than growing your own food, or purchasing locally grown foods.

One of the scarier points made in EoS is in our neighborhood, there’s about a 3 day supply of food. What can we do to increase the survivabililty/thrivability of North Collinwood? FYI, if you’d like to get together and watch The End of Suburbia let me know. I’ll put a party together.