Category Archives: Planning

Biking… a dilemma

By Malaika Abernathy

Quoinett Warrick on bike

OP staffer Quoinett Warrick on Capital Bikeshare

If only biking in style was this easy.

As an urban planner in the District, I wholeheartedly embrace a walkable and bikeable model of urban life.  I cheer as Walk Scores for the District’s emerging neighborhoods exponentially increase as bike amenities and services are introduced.  I applaud our local pioneers who actually walk the talk by biking not only to work, but also to leisurely run errands and meet up with friends.  I even smile with amazement when I see my boss, OP Director Harriet Tregoning, stepping into a meeting in upper NW with helmet and bike in tow (yes, I’ve actually witnessed her biking from our office in SW to points WAY north in the District!). So as I get amped to begin my own biking soliloquy, somehow I get stuck at the door looking for my car keys instead. I know, I’m a hypocrite… but a well meaning one.

The reality for me is far deeper than just biking itself. It’s the after effects of biking that leave me perplexed.  The sweating, the change of clothes and the showering at work all require a level of dedication I’m simply not interested in. For those of us who remotely care about maintaining a business professional appearance during the day, I ask you, how do you do it?

Everyone has their own unique routine. I see the towels in the office shower air drying. I pass the bikers early in the AM with all their biking accoutrements from cute helmets to versatile biking shoes. Oh and the infamous rolled up pant leg, with the innovative Velcro fastener to secure it. And then I think, I can do this!  

DDOT staffer Monica Hernandez on Capital Bikeshare

DDOT staffer Monica Hernandez on Capital Bikeshare

 The last bike-to-work occasion I attempted required a fairly large back pack of necessities… shower gear, towel, deodorant, make-up and all other trinkets and essentials necessary to be work appropriate.  

Somehow the list of essentials grew, and my knap sack quickly grew to the size of a small mountain.  So with everything in tow, I managed to mount the bike without tipping over. Surprisingly, I arrived to work in about 20 minutes, but was completely drenched. On my way up to the shower, I noticed a colleague trekking behind me with not an ounce of perspiration visible. Off he went into the office as if he had just stepped out of a biking magazine.  Then I catch a glimpse of my reflection and realize I’m definitely the nerdiest and sweatiest biker chick ever. Not a title I’d like to carry stepping into the office.  And then I think, if this is embracing a bikable model of urban life, then I’d rather just cheer my peers on. Hip Hip Hooray, for those of you that have figured it out. Hip Hip Hooray.

How Sustainable DC Meets DC’s Region Forward Goals

By Tanya SternSDC-Logo-2013

The previous OPinions blog post talked about the release of the District’s final Sustainable DC Plan to make Washington, DC the healthiest, greenest, and most livable city in the nation. The Plan is the result of hard work and collaboration by the Sustainable DC coalition of District agencies, residents, and stakeholders from the private, non-profit and institutional sectors.  The Sustainable DC Plan addresses the challenges of creating jobs and growing the District’s economy; improving the health and wellness of residents; ensuring equity and diversity across the city; and improving the climate and the environment. It puts forth goals, targets, and specific actions to implement the plan over the next twenty years.
 
OP Sustainability Planner Laine Cidlowski and I created this post on the Washington Metropolitan Council of Government’s Region Forward blog about how the Sustainable DC Plan is also a major step in helping the DC region meet its Region Forward goals. 

Final Sustainable DC Plan Released

SDC-Logo-2013Mayor Vincent Gray released today the Sustainable DC Plan to ensure the District is the healthiest, greenest, and most livable city in the nation. The plan is the culmination of 20 months of work by the Sustainable DC initiative, launched in September 2011 and co-led by the DC Office of Planning and the District Department of the Environment.  This initiative has been a collaborative effort involving several District government agencies, more than 700 working group participants, stakeholders from the private, non-profit and institutional sectors, and thousands more who submitted sustainability ideas online and participated in more than 180 public meetings and events.

In April 2012, Mayor Gray released his Vision for a Sustainable DC to make the District the most sustainable city in the nation by 2032. The vision set out ambitious overarching goals and targets for nine areas related to sustainability.  These goals and targets served as the foundation for the creation of the final plan.

The Sustainable DC Plan comprehensively addresses four key challenges: creating jobs and growing the District’s economy; improving the health and wellness of residents; ensuring equity and diversity across the city; and improving the climate and the environment. The plan includes 32 goals and 31 targets, and offers 143 specific actions in the built environment, energy, food, nature, transportation, waste and water.

Actions in the Sustainable DC Plan include:

  • Coordinating targeted workforce-development strategies and education programs to create jobs and foster business growth in the green economy;
  • Building 1,000 more renewable-energy systems and enabling residents and businesses across the city to more easily invest in shared renewable facilities;
  • Modernizing all of the District’s public school buildings to at least the LEED Gold standard under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED system and expanding sustainability-education efforts citywide.
  • Controlling pollution caused by stormwater runoff with 2,000,000 more square feet of green roofs and a healthy tree canopy over 40 percent of the city;
  • Completing 37 miles of streetcar network and 100 miles of citywide bike lanes;
  • Establishing facilities to accept residential and commercial compost; and
  • Providing tens of millions of dollars in innovative financing to promote private-sector energy- and water-efficiency retrofits.

The final Sustainable DC Plan and more details about Sustainable DC are available at www.sustainable.dc.gov.

How DC is planning parking for a 21st Century city

By Tanya Stern

DC Office of Planning (OP) Director Harriet Tregoning and District Department of Transportation (DDOT) Director Terry Bellamy co-authored this Washington Post op-ed that talks about how the District is planning for parking in a 21st Century Washington, DC. Of particular focus are proposals included in OP’s comprehensive update of the District’s 50+ year old zoning code: simplifying the complex parking minimum standards and eliminating parking minimum requirements downtown and in other higher-density, mixed-use settings near frequent mass transit.  DDOT also recently launched moveDC, a collaborative transportation planning effort to incorporate transit, vehicular, bicycle, pedestrian and freight uses into a single Multimodal Long Range Transportation Plan for the District of Columbia. The plan is scheduled to be completed in 2014 and will include recommendations to create a seamless and convenient transportation system for the District.

To learn more about the parking minimums proposals, please visit OP’s ZoningDC blog and this Parking factsheet.

To learn more about moveDC, please visit  www.wemoveDC.org or check it out on Facebook (www.facebook.com/WeMoveDC) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/wemovedc).

The Best Three Blocks in DC: Columbia Road, NW

By Art Rodgers

Cropped version_A Rodgers_Best 3 blocks mapWhen it comes to hyperbole, “it’s got it all” might be the most overused, but with regards to describing what makes Columbia Road, NW from 19th to 18th Streets a successful urban street, it’s dead on.  Ok, so it doesn’t have a zip line into Rock Creek Park, but with the slope and the trees it could be fabulous.

There are three core elements to the best three blocks in DC and they start with Kalorama Park, which has huge shade trees, two playgrounds, a community garden, a basketball court and a beautiful westward facing slope for catching the sunsets.  It is the community’s center and without it, these three blocks would be far more ordinary.

Next it’s got people living in anywhere from six to eight story buildings, to row houses, to even a few single-family detached homes.  Through tools like rent control, limited-equity coops, and a few nearby subsidized buildings, all kinds of people live in the neighborhood including fixed-income retirees, a few low-income families and of course the ubiquitous young professionals.  That said, I wouldn’t disagree that some more affordable housing, so lower income families could be in boundary and send their kids to one of the District’s best public school at Oyster, would be a good idea.

A Rodgers 3 blocks blog post_Kalorama Park & surrounding apt bldgs at sunset

Kalorama Park and surrounding apartment buildings at sunset (Photo: Art Rodgers)

The final core element is handy daily shopping including two local grocers, three competitive dry cleaners, a liquor store, a gallery/frame shop and an athletic shoe store. Not far away there is a hardware store, an electronics store, a post office, and several import stores.  The stores keep the sidewalks active with people running errands, picking up a carton of milk or other sundries or going out for a tasty frozen treat on a hot summer night. Did I mention the range of restaurants from fabulously affordable Mediterranean and Peruvian Chicken to Brazilian, French and Sushi and how they are adapting to the growing population of toddlers? No? Well I have now.

Note: The delicous new restaurant Mintwood Place almost made it into this graphic, but its too new to be a neighborhood institution, however a recent siting of President Obama builds a really strong case!

Note: The delicous new restaurant Mintwood Place almost made it into this graphic, but its too new to be a neighborhood institution, however a recent siting of President Obama builds a really strong case! (Graphic: Art Rodgers)

I must admit the rest of what makes the best three blocks in DC are an accident of location.  It’s bracketed by Rock Creek to the west, Walter Pierce Park to the north, 18th Street’s entertainment strip and Marie Reed’s comfortably dog eared, but shaded and cool kiddy pool to the east.  Beyond the three blocks in the immediate neighborhood are two more supermarkets, and farther are the adjacent destinations of Woodley Park (Red Line Metro) across the fabulous Duke Ellington Bridge, Columbia Heights (Green Line Metro) connected by the DC Circulator and Dupont Circle (Red Line Metro) with all that they offer.

Others may wish to point out how the assets of their neighborhood make them such wonderful places to live, and that’s actually the point.  Let’s identify what are the elements of urban areas we love and make sure that all the neighborhoods of DC are provided the same opportunity for relatively sane (but never boring), if not high quality urban living.

 

Where might DC area federal jobs be located in the next 15 years?

By Charlie Richman

(Click to animate) OP’s analysis of possible DC area federal office locations though 2027

What if the General Services Administration is right about telecommuting and stops renting office space?

We looked at where GSA puts federal workers today, and imagined where the workers might be in 15 years if plans for increased telecommuting proceed.  Existing rules already favor transit-accessible locations.

Our back-of-the-envelope analysis started with GSA’s current offices.  We dropped expiring leases each year to meet an aggressive schedule for consolidating space, ending leases farthest from mass transit first and consolidating jobs at the remaining sites.  After 15 years all of the leased space would be gone.  Look what that would mean for the density of jobs downtown!

(Click to animate) Federal job density in the DC-area over the next 15 years

We don’t believe the future will look exactly like this, but we’re trying to learn from the exercise.  Perhaps we’ll need to focus more on meeting the needs of part-time telecommuters.

What do you think?

Poppin Fresh Dough

Blind Dog – Image courtesy of blinddogcafe.com

By Elisa Vitale

No, it’s not the Pillsbury Doughboy, but a bakery or restaurant may be popping up in your neighborhood.  Pop-ups are temporary, or not so temporary, businesses that operate during off hours at bars or restaurants when the space would otherwise go unused.  In addition to enlivening spaces that are dark during the day, pop-ups bring new offerings to neighborhoods; allow entrepreneurs to gauge interest by local residents; and provide seasoned cooks, or those just starting out, a chance to see how they would fare in the risky restaurant business.

Noah Karesh, Jonas Singer, and Cullen Gilchrist launched Blind Dog Café in Darnell’s Bar on Florida Avenue in February 2012.  The café takes advantage of the bar’s space, including a kitchen, that sits empty during the day.  Gilchrist, a line cook at Ardeo + Bardeo, wanted to evaluate neighborhood interest in a coffee shop.  He is responsible for the menu and his sister runs her own start-up, Black Strap bakery, from the kitchen and supplies the café’s baked goods.  Blind Dog Café has proven so popular that the pop-up expanded to the Science Club’s patio at L and M Streets, NW for the summer.

While Blind Dog Café is a pop-up that’s here to stay, there are more temporary pop-ups around DC.  You might associate H Street NE with bars and live music, not brownies and baguettes, but stop by H Street Bakes and that could change.  H Street Bakes is a monthly pop-up bake sale (the venue rotates among bars) that features treats from local residents and employees.  Kim Moffatt, a local resident and the pastry chef (and waitress/hostess) at Granville Moore’s, who also provides desserts and baked goods for Boundary Road, started the pop-ups to determine neighborhood interest in a bakery on H Street.  You’ll also find Crunkcakes at H Street Bakes.  Faith Alice Sleeper and Raychel Sabath cooked up the idea for these boozy cupcakes while working together at the Rock & Roll Hotel.

Crunkcakes – Image courtesy of districtofcrunk.com

 

Erica Skolnik, of Frenchie’s, is looking for a permanent storefront for her bakery.  In the meantime, she sells her baked goods at Seasonal Pantry in Shaw.  She recently had the opportunity to take over the Seasonal Pantry space for a one day bakery pop-up when the gourmet market was temporarily closed.

Frenchie’s - Image courtesy of frenchiesdc.com

Kera Carpenter, owner of Domku in Petworth, says that she would have benefited from a mentor and a space to test her concept – that’s why she’s working with Priya Ammu and DC Dosa.  Ammu is the winner of Think Local First’s StartUp Kitchen competition, which is targeted at providing resources for emerging restaurant businesses.  Over the fall DC Dosa took over the Domku space (Domku is closed Mondays), giving consumers the chance to test the dosa and provide feedback at this pop-up restaurant.

 

Is there a space in your neighborhood that would be perfect for a pop-up?  What type of restaurant would you like to see?

Height Limits Make Great Places

By Kim Williams

Around the turn of the 20th century civic activist, urban visionary, and developer Mary Henderson clearly got city planning. Among other things, she understood that by controlling building heights, you can create great places for the benefit of the public.  A stroll through Meridian Hill Park with its low-scale buildings framing the park to either side confirms this attitude.

According to the 1910 Height Act, buildings at the time could rise 85 feet on residential streets.  For the strong-minded Mary Henderson, 85 feet was too high, especially for Meridian Hill Park where views to the city were a major part of its allure.  Henderson argued that buildings that rise above the standard skyline cut off light, air and harmony of height.  In her flamboyantly written editorials and oral testimonies, she claimed these streets were diseased and suffered from what she labeled “pulmonary consumption of residential avenues.”  Henderson also often noted that buildings that rose above a certain height made “pygmies” out of existing building stock—quite a visual image illustrated by the historic photograph here.

As a reference point for building heights along residential avenues, Henderson looked to the Champs Elysees in Paris, noting that it always maintains a “comparative general height of 65 feet, which is enough for four or five stories.”   So, with 65 feet thus established as a maximum height in her own mind, Henderson set out to maintain it around Meridian Hill.  To either side of the park, along both 15th and 16th Streets, she built nine private mansions and foreign legations all conforming to this height limit, some of them shown here: 

When other developers deviated from her established norm, she interfered.  In 1915, for instance, she negotiated the purchase of land away from developer Harry Wardman who planned the construction of three apartment buildings overlooking Meridian Hill Park at 15th and Euclid Streets.  After completing the deal, she expressed satisfaction that the park was “now protected from any surrounding which could fall below a certain standard of beauty.”   The following year, when the Kennedy Brothers proposed construction of the Meridian Mansions apartments (now the Envoy) at 2400 16th Street at a height exceeding Henderson’s ideal notion, she sought to stop its construction.  When she found she couldn’t prevent it, she instead negotiated to collaborate on the building’s design, to “have a hand in helping it fit into the pattern.”

When it came to the Hadleigh Apartments (now the Roosevelt), she took her fight against its 77-foot height to Congress.  In her Congressional testimony, Henderson argued that the view from Meridian Hill Park was “the only one remaining in the capital” and is comparable to similar outlooks in Paris and Rome, which she claimed “have been preserved for posterity.”  Although it was built higher than she would have liked, the owners were required to eliminate pergolas that rose above the roofline, cutting off those precious views.

As long as Mary Henderson was alive, it seems, the height of buildings on Meridian Hill was held in check.  After her 1931 death, however, developers were free to exercise their zoning rights, introducing several aberrations into Henderson’s vision for Meridian Hill, the most egregious example of which is found at the base of the park, eliminating the views Henderson fought so hard to protect.

Despite such intrusions, the scale of buildings surrounding Meridian Hill Park as imposed by Mary Henderson makes the park one of the city’s great places.

Taming the Big Box

By Stephen Cochran

Pentagon City, VA (Credit: Street Google)

We’ve all been here.  It’s one of those places where we hand over $1 billion shopping dollars each year to Maryland or Virginia.  If even half of that money could be spent in DC, our 6% tax rate would generate $30 million in revenue.  That’s enough to supply 300 new affordable housing units, or pay for the education of 1600 District children, every single year.

The city has been working for decades to reverse this loss of dollars, and we’re starting to see results.  Larger retailers are moving into the District to supplement our local stores.  Some are bringing new designs that fit in with, and bring new life to, our traditional neighborhood centers. Others, unfortunately, continue to bulldoze trees, fill in wetlands, or construct stone-walled mesas so they can just replicate their suburban stores.

Planners need to provide models of how major retailers can come into the city without compromising good design and active street life.

Los Angeles, CA (Credit: Stephen Cochran)

This storefront I saw on Broadway in downtown L.A. shows how to do it:  name recognition, openness to the street, pedestrian and bicycles friendliness, and a broad selection of brand goods at every-day low prices.

Having a vital shopping street need not take a zoning overlay, or city subsidies; just some creative entrepreneurs, sensitivity to scale … and a lot of red paint.

Welcome to OP’s Blog!

By Tanya Washington-Stern

Welcome to OPinions, the blog of the DC Office of Planning! We envision this blog as a space for OP staff to dialogue with you about the urban environment and related topics such as urban design, historic preservation, transportation, health and other areas that intersect with planning. We want to talk about innovative, thought-provoking or just plain cool trends and developments in the urban planning world.  The geography of our dialogue is not just Washington, DC and its region, but also the United States and the rest of the world.  This blog is our room to look beyond our official day-to-day work and talk about what we as individual planners find interesting.

If you want to learn more about the DC Office of Planning and our neighborhood and citywide plans, reports and initiatives, please visit our official website, www.planning.dc.gov. We are also on Twitter and Facebook.

We hope you will join us in these conversations!