One of the ways the project team has kept in touch with the community is through the West Franklinton MindMixer page at www.westfranklinton.com.  The beauty of this website is two-way communication: the project team can start a general conversation and the members of the West Franklinton community can fill in the details.  The site launched on January 2, 2014 with six core topic areas requiring community input:

1. Community Identity + Image
2. Driving, Walking + Biking
3. Housing + Neighborhood
4. Retail
5. Parking Strategies
6. Parks + Open Space

Collectively, these core topics generated 177 individual ideas with 193 comments over a period of two months.  We were thrilled with the feedback and the active participation of community members, and we are currently working on incorporating this wealth of local knowledge and energy into recommendations and strategies that will be presented at the second public meeting on April 30th, 2014 at Gladden Community House from 5 – 7pm.

There’s obviously a lot to read through in these discussions, but there are many tricks to getting a quick idea of the general concerns and even mood of a discussion.  Among them is a simple and easy visualizing technique that was all the rage in planning circles circa 2011: the word cloud.  A word cloud is merely a visualization of text data, where words from a given source are sized according to their use.  That is to say, the more a word appears in a given text, the larger it will appear in a world cloud.

Word clouds are by no means a substitute for carefully reading through text or other analysis exercises, but they can reveal some pretty interesting patterns and are a handy visualization regardless.  We decided it would be fun to throw the discussions from the original six MindMixer topic areas into wordle to see what these community discussions look like.  We’ll probably continue to play with these visualizations over the next few weeks (I would particularly like to edit out the words “West” and “Franklinton” to see what else will stand out), but the results are below.  What do you think?

Community Identity + Image

Idea Titles Text

Discussion Text

Driving, Biking, Walking

Discussion Text

Idea Titles

Housing + Neighborhood

Idea Titles

Discussion Text

Retail

Idea Titles

Discussion Text

Parking Strategies

Idea Titles

Discussion Text

Parks + Open Space

Idea Titles

Discussion Text

“Creating successful urban retail districts is a goal of planners and community leaders alike. But as Robert J. Gibbs points out in Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development(2012; Wiley; 272 pp.; $80), planners may be hampered in that task by an overly romantic view of an ideal shopping area. Even in the best planned new urbanist developments, he points out, retail components often fail to live up to expectations.

….(Gibbs) explodes various myths about what makes a successful retail district and lists some of the common mistakes made by planners, business owners, and community leaders — failing to begin a project with a professional market analysis, for instance. He shies away from easy answers. While clearly in favor of the walkable retail districts that planners typically espouse, for instance, he concedes that they don’t always succeed financially.

Gibbs includes plenty of useful information on specifics such as parking. His book will be most useful to private-sector planners and those who work with public-private partnerships. But the material it contains will also be helpful to public planners dealing with zoning issues. — Ryan Smith”

Several of us here at UDG, have at one point in our lives, worked for real estate market analysts (in fact, we have several current clients that are in this line of business).  This is where we learned the value of conducting a market analysis for planning and development purposes.  Our backgrounds in GIS and Urban Planning provide us with a unique perspective on the concept of the market analysis.  We have seen more than our fair share of good and bad examples of market analysis.  If you are a city conducting a land use or comprehensive plan, it is in your best interest to include market analysis as part of the planning process.  In addition, you should thoroughly vet the analyst to make sure they understand what the goals and objectives of the plan are.  Traditional, boilerplate market analysis is not going to suffice.  Cities, and the spaces within a city, are unique.   The market analyst must be willing to approach their task as part of the entire planning team, which means they must be engaged in the process from start to finish.

Traditional market analysis does not address the goals of a land use or comprehensive plan.  There are two basic questions planners need to answer with respect to the market analysis:  1.  Is there a market and 2. how “much” should we plan for? Further, planners (and the public in general) may ask questions regarding “what it takes” to achieve the critical mass required to achieve the desired results.  For example, “how many households do we need to add, at varying income levels, to achieve the critical mass required to support a medium-sized grocery store?”

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are the perfect tool for conducting this type of analysis and far too few analysts invest the time and money to employ a robust GIS to help them answer these spatial questions.  A GIS makes it much easier to visualize the current conditions as well as visualize future conditions – which is at the heart of the concept of planning.

Urban Decision Group has been fine tuning this very type of analysis into a service we call “Planning Market Analytics“.  Planning Market Analytics is specifically designed for informing  comprehensive or land-use plans.  Like a traditional market analysis, field observations are required but the observations must be targeted and focused on the goals at hand.  Our service focuses on a data-driven GIS model to produce predictive analytics via established methods such as Huff Modeling.

The Planning Market Analytics service is usually expensive because of its intended audience.  The audience for a traditional market analysis generally consists of developers and  financiers.  That group is looking for very specific price points, rents, and lease rates for defined product types like town homes or 2 bedroom apartments.  The planning audience, on the other hand, is focused on the larger picture.  They need to  know if a project has a  chance at being successful (is there a market?), how much space should be allocated, what infrastructure improvements will be necessary, etc.  Two different audiences require two difference approaches.

So if you’re a city, county, region or state that is engaging in city or regional planning, I agree with the letter writer above.  Do you your homework first.  It’s a nominal portion of the project cost that can literally save you millions on the back end.

If you would like more information on Planning Market Analytics and you live in North America, contact Urban Decision Group at 614-383-8447 or email Rick Stein at rstein at urbandecisiongroup.com.

I’m hopeful that Devin will find the time to go into his project in more detail in a longer blog post, but I was really struck by how intelligently he and his teammates went about their framing their project. They struck a really mature balance between practicality and ambition that I can imagine playing out very well in a development meeting.  It’s a credit to the Ohio State’s relatively new City and Regional Planning undergraduate program.  Most UDG staff members are alumni of Knowlton’s MCRP program, so we’re always excited to see what the grad and undergrad students are working on.  And honestly, the future looks pretty bright if this is the quality of work that one can expect from students in these programs.  How ideas are presented matter just as much as the ideas themselves; if that’s something we can ensure that the urban planners, designers and advocates of tomorrow understand, then we’re in pretty good shape.

What I do consider to be a mostly urban phenomena is the modern food truck.  Food carts aren’t new by any stretch of the imagination, but mobile food culture in the US has grown to the point of backlash and co-option.  (Which is a form of success, yeah?)  Food trucks and urban planning have enjoyed a strong and supportive relationship for many years, driven by concentrations of the kind of people who find a thrill in tracking mobile food vendors through interactive maps and twitter.

Food carts are such a big thing that they’ve somewhat outgrown their own mobility.  Cities across America hold regular food cart courts with a revolving or permanent set of mobile food businesses.  Like many planning trends, this arguably began in Portland, OR, but–like many good ideas–it spread.  After testing the waters with several successful food carts, and years of food truck themed festivals, Columbus now has its own permanent food truck court at Columbus Commons every Thursday.   I find this to be ridiculously exciting as the last food cart court I attended at the Commons was so popular that I was unable to try anything.  Another thrilling option (that has been around for a little while) is Franklinton’s Dinin’ Hall which is open M-F from 11-2.    Community building, micro economic development, local entrepreneurs and food.  Does it get any better?

If you don’t want to wait until next week to survey some of the many food truck options in Columbus, there’s always the Food Truck and Cart Hop by Hal and Al’s on the southside. It’s a good excuse to bring out the bike from winter storage.  Secure bike parking is free and the weather is supposed to be fine.

(Though we all know this is Ohio, so bring a rain coat just in case.)

I debated my previously innocuous choices as I idled away, waiting for the light.  My destination was only five miles from my home at most.  I could have easily biked. I enjoy biking, but had wanted to avoid the rain.  The bus was another option, but the route would have at least tripled my travel time each way, making it an inefficient and unappealing alternative.   So I chose to drive.

Obviously my decision to drive was understandable and nothing out of the ordinary.  I’m willing to bet that most people in the same situation would have made the same choice, but that’s precisely the point.  That people will make choices that are most beneficial or useful to them is obvious, but it’s a powerful framework to build on.  When we as planners or communities try to change collective habits that have a negative impact on our quality of life, we tend to think of some combination of reward and/or penalty.  This certainly has its place, but, where individual choice is concerned, we might be prudent to consider the long term impact of simple convenience on the choices we make.  I would have taken the bus if it were the more convenient option, and I’m positive that I’m not alone.

It might seem to be an obvious thought, and it certainly isn’t a new one.  But it helped me feel a little better when the light finally turned green and I was able to continue to my destination.  Unfortunately, we can’t enact change over night, but we can move forward with a clear idea of how to achieve goals in the long term.  When it comes to altering the individual decisions that increase CO2 emissions, part of the long-term solution will be to encourage better choices by making them the more convenient and obvious option.  It’s a start.

So Franklin and Delaware Counties are bright spots in a state where most counties lose population overall, but what other information can we infer from these growth rates? A friend asked if these growth trends might indicate that individuals in Central Ohio are starting to prefer urban environments over the suburban, with Franklin County representing urbanity and Delaware County the suburbs. It’s a good question, but the short answer is… not really.

Beyond the fact that one year is not enough information to establish any sort of statistically relevant trend, that more people are moving into Franklin County matters a little less than where in Franklin County they are moving (as some have already discussed). After all, there’s a big difference between greenfield development outside of Columbus City limits and moving into the city center. It’s also important to separate natural population changes from migration. Natural population growth includes births and deaths, and the remainder are individuals moving in and out of an area.  This type of voluntary population change would obviously be the more interesting demographic for exploring a preference for urban or suburban environments.

But getting back to my friend’s question, there are some basic ways we can look at this data to get a rough idea of where things stand. Again the really interesting question isn’t whether people are moving into Franklin County, it’s where they’re going. We can get an idea of exactly where people are going in the county by disaggregating the Census data from the entire county to census block groups. Since there’s no question on the US Census about a preference for urban or suburban communities, the next step is picking some kind of proxy. I decided to use population density. Population density is usually expressed by the number of people per square mile or square kilometer. Basically, it is the ratio of people to space: a small area with a large number of individuals has a higher population density than a large area with few individuals. Higher population densities, therefore, correlate with more urban environments and lower population densities with suburban or rural areas. My thought was that if people in central Ohio were starting to prefer urban communities, then the population density of Columbus proper should increase over time. Sounds like a perfect excuse to make a few maps.

Before I get to the maps, I have to emphasize that this is a quick survey exercise. I’m an academic at heart and I’d feel horrible if I didn’t point out that I didn’t triple check my numbers, I didn’t account for natural vs. migratory population changes, and I didn’t account for the growth rate (percentage increase) of each census block, or any number or time consuming things that would better validate these results. This is a sketch of population patterns in Franklin County, Ohio, and it’s a game anyone can play. If you have some kind of access to a mapping program, I encourage you to download this free data from American FactFinder and explore on your own. It’s a fun nerdy time.

First we have Franklin County’s population density in the year 2000.  I calculated population density by dividing the population of each census block group by its area.  If I were making this map again I would probably leave the numbers in the population density scale, but at the time I thought the numbers were too confusing because the census block groups can be such small areas.  I’d also retain labels for the highways and major roads to make the map easier to understand.  Regardless, I think this map largely reflects what you’d expect if you’re familiar with Columbus or Franklin County.  The areas with the highest population density are generally within I-270 (the circular outerbelt highway) and are further concentrated immediately south and north of downtown (downtown is smack in the middle of the map within the rectangle of highways).

Next is Franklin County’s population density in 2012 using the census estimates.  You can’t see it on the map, but I decided to keep the numeric range behind the density scale (lowest, low, middle, high, highest) the exact same as in the 2000 map because I wanted to see exactly how the population densities did or did not change.  My theory was that, given the same scale, an influx of people into the city (a preference for urban living) would result in more dark blue areas around the core.

It might be a bit difficult to see at first, but instead of a steady gain in population density in the heart of the city, it seems that the population densities spread out a bit throughout the county, meaning there was actually some density loss in Columbus, particularly in the German Village/South Side area.  (It would be interesting to go through foreclosure data to see if this area was particularly affected by the housing crash – perhaps that can be a future map series.)  North of downtown in the Short North/University area held pretty steady and density gains are apparent in the communities that surround Columbus proper.

After making these maps to demonstrate why an increase in Franklin County’s population doesn’t necessarily mean an increased desire for urban living, I started to wonder if I was over complicating the issue.  Maybe it would be better to simply see how areas lost or gained population over the twelve years.  I decided to make another map that just looked at whether each census block group lost population, gained population, or held steady from 2000 – 2012.  Again, I did not differentiate between natural and migratory population change.

The green areas in this map represent a net population gain since the year 2000 while the grey displays a net population loss. This map largely confirms the 2012 population density map in that the areas that lost density experienced a net loss of population over the same time period.  It also suggests in simple binary terms that areas outside of Columbus seem to have experienced population growth in equal or greater terms as the city proper.  To double check I made one more map highlighting Columbus’s city limits.

The opaque areas of the map are Columbus proper.  This makes it a bit easier to see that although the city itself has experienced a healthy amount of growth over its entire geographic area, there were losses in eastern portion of the city and much of the growth is in the periphery.

At the end of the day, these maps confirmed my suspicions: Sorry, friend.  Franklin County’s growth rate doesn’t really mean that more people are choosing an urban life style.  However, the last map brought a bit of unexpected optimism.  Columbus may not be the densest urban environment, it may have even lost some population density since 2000, but it has experienced positive growth downtown and downtown’s surrounding neighborhoods.  I can’t help but feel that this is a good sign; if you’ve seen the development boom in central Columbus lately, you might agree.  From the mixed-use development underway at High and Hubbard in the Short North, to the construction of apartments around Columbus Commons, to the the grand opening of the downtown Hills Market, it certainly feels like there’s a renewed momentum for the central area of the city.    Perhaps in another ten or so years we’ll look at the census data and see, thanks to present day efforts, that individuals are in fact expressing a preference for urban living in Central Ohio.

To that end, I was lucky enough to give a presentation with Rick and Jennifer Evans-Cowely during the 2012 APA OKI Regional Conference on the topic of  web-based technology in the planning process.   (See the presentation for yourself here.)  My section focused on social media and some unconventional ways to make use of it.  I spent a lot of time in that presentation talking about Twitter, but today I’d prefer having a short discussion about one of my favorite social media applications, Pinterest.

As you probably already know, Pinterest is popular online curation board where users collect images by saving (“pinning”) them to “boards” organized by topic.  The boards can be maintained by an individual user or open to contribution by invite or the public.   Pinterest was named fastest growing social media site in the history of the internet back in February, and currently boasts over ten million members.  It’s highly visual, beautifully designed, immensely popular, and somewhat tricky for businesses and organizations that do not directly sell products or creative services.  However, we’re pretty adamant that Pinterest can have a big impact not only for planning related businesses and organizations, but on projects themselves.

Pinterest is useful to planning projects and organizations in four ways:  branding, community outreach, envisioning and inspiration.  Because Urban Decision Group maintains a growing Pinterest page, I’ll use us as an example for each of these uses.

Branding

We knew from the start that maintaining a Pinterest page was unlikely to directly result in new clients.  However, because we’re a somewhat new company (circa 2010!), it was important for us to start making our presence known in the world.  Moreover, we wanted to make sure that we were establishing a presence that went a bit beyond the mere facts of our company and our employees.  We wanted to showcase what we like to think about, what sort of big ideas inspire us, and what makes us tick as an organization.  In short, we wanted to start establishing context.

I’m no marketing expert, but I believe this is the textbook definition of branding: establishing and telling the story and inspiration behind a company, idea or organization.  We chose to accomplish this by focusing our Pinterest page on the three pillars of our company:  Urban Design, Maps and Mapmaking, and Data Visualization.  These are the three big ideas that drive our company, and nearly all of our Pinterest activity reflects one of these three topics.  We have a narrative and we choose to stick with it.  Hopefully the planning applications are obvious here.  A company could, of course, choose to take on a similar strategy, but there’s no reason that a place or even particular project could not use Pinterest to start establishing context and big ideas.

Community Outreach

Pinterest is the ideal place to start highlighting community ideas and dreams.  UDG doesn’t practice much community outreach per say on the company Pinterest page, but we’re big proponents of folding Pinterest into the community outreach process.  Group boards could be established for the community to either add images that they felt represent their current communities or that showcase goals and dreams for the future.  Public Pinterest boards have the potential to drive community dialogue and to alert planners to trends in community thinking.

Envisioning

Envisioning, my favorite part of the community outreach process, is where we think Pinterest really shines as a planning tool.  Actionable items should, of course, result from community envisioning exercises, but it is the best time to think boldly and to identify goals that, while maybe aren’t immediately attainable, could inspire and guide a community, place or project well into the future.  With its visual nature, Pinterest was made for big ideas.  We use our three pinterest boards not to show the day to day things our company has done, but to push what is beautiful, creative and possible within each category.  In this way we hope to show what moves us as a company and what we aspire to.  Planning organizations and projects could and should take a similar approach with group boards that encourage stakeholders and community members to think big.

Original source: NY Mag

Image:  James Corner Field Operations via urbanism.org.

Image:  Andres Duany.  Pinned from this site.

Inspiration

The benefits of thinking big in planning are generating excitement, building community and stakeholder investment and raising standards for communities and projects.  As planners, I don’t think we should ignore the fantastic.  Very few people join the planning field because of a deep commitment to the status quo.  Likewise, stakeholders and community members have their own big visions of who they are, where they’re going and what is possible.  It’s our job in part to distill from these dreams actionable, sustainable and attainable plans to help guide communities to these larger ideals.   Inspiration, like creativity, must be nurtured.  By encouraging creative activity through Pinterest use, planners can rely on the community to crowdsource their energy and ideas to assist with the planning process.

This would be the funnest bridge ever.  Image:  Atelier Zündel Cristea

At the end of the day, Pinterest is just another item in a planner’s toolkit.  It’s not meant to supplement other, traditional community outreach practices, but it’s a great compliment when leveraged correctly and it’s a handy visual organization tool.  At the same time, Pinterest can be invaluable to any company seeking a cheap and efficient way to establish its identity to the greater world.    We highly encourage other companies and planners to think of way to incorporate Pinterest use into your social media strategy and planning projects.  Be sure to let us know if you do – we’d love to see what sort of big ideas your company or community is thinking of.

Image:  Martin Grohs

In 2008, the American Community Survey (ACS) began surveying the U.S. population on the subject of health insurance coverage.  To date, the most complete data set available is the 2008-2010 3 year ACS which excludes counties and cities with less than 20,000 people.  Therefore, it’s not a complete count like the decennial census.

The ACS collects data for this category by age.  Although, health insurance is an important topic for all ages, we wanted to focus on the most vulnerable sector of the population – those under age 18.  The following table contains the state by state tabulations  for the uninsured population under age 18.

The percent of the U.S. population under age 18 that is uninsured is approximately 8.6% (excluding towns and counties with a population under 20,000).  Check out this map which illustrates where the uninsured young people live.  There are some areas that stand out.  Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Arizona have rather significant shares of the uninsured under 18 population.  There are also notable pockets of uninsured children in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.  This reflects the concentrations of Amish communities.

It’s estimated that the insured population directly pays an additional $1,017 in health insurance premiums to pay for the health care costs incurred by the uninsured.  But what about the long term ramifications of having so many uninsured children.  Are these children more likely to be unhealthy adults and if so, what is the cost to society?

National health care is a hot topic in America.  Is it a right or a privilege?  What about the long term economic impact of having so many uninsured children.  Are they more likely to become uninsured adults?  Are they more likely to develop health problems at a younger age?  Who pays for all the negative externalities?

I’ve always been fascinated by tornadoes.  They take on many different shapes and sizes and can be quite beautiful.  But tornadoes are serious business.  Researchers and chasers study them relentlessly.  They have their own reality television shows.  The art and science of predicting where and when a tornado will strike has improved greatly since 1974, but there is still much we don’t know about tornadoes.

I’m sure at one time you’ve seen a traditional “Tornado Alley” map or maybe you’ve seen a map of the U.S. counties most likely to get hit with a tornado.   I wanted to create a map that was more detailed than something at the county level.  I wanted to zero in on precise locations where tornadoes have historically occurred because the past is likely to predict the future.

To start, I located some data provided by the National Weather Service (NWS).  They had a GIS file of tornado tracks from 1950-2006.   Information on the intensity (EF scale), the length and width of the track, property and crop loss estimates, as well as fatalities and injuries were included in the file’s attributes.  In order to quantify the impact of a tornado without including biased data,  I chose two variables  – the number of tornadoes and the intensity of each tornado.  Next, I simply laid out an imaginary 10 square mile grid across the U.S. as a geography for aggregating my data.  I chose a 10 square mile grid because it is usually much smaller than a county (on average you can fit 4-5 grid cells within an average sized county).  I counted each tornado that crossed into a grid cell and summed up the EF scale intensity of each tornado (actually, I added a value of 1 to each storm’s EF number to account for storms with an intensity of EF 0 ).  Each of the data values were normalized before computing a final value for each between 0 and 1.

The results of the exercise can be found here in this interactive map.  Based on our methodology, the part of the country most likely to experience a tornado is located on the Oklahoma and Kansas border – specifically, the the northwest corner of Kay County, OK and the southeast corner of Sumner County, KS:

Luckily, this is not a densely populated area.  In fact, less than 500 people live in this particular cell.  However, the Top Ten Tornado Hot Spots include several areas where the population is high:

As you can see, there are several heavily populated corridors that are historically most likely to experience a tornado.  Oklahoma City (OK), Shreveport (LA), Little Rock (AR), and Jackson (MS) are the most heavily populated cities within our computed danger zone.

If we assume that small changes in the climate over time will not result in dramatic shifts of tornadic activity, then we can safely predict that the areas of high tornadic activity in the past will continue to experience intense, long-track tornadoes into the future.  This knowledge should affect things like building design and cityurban design, disaster preparedness, and insurance rates.

We’ll be posting various maps related to this exercise on our Pinterest site over the next couple of weeks.  Check back from time to time to see what we’ve come up with.

Public and private planners not only have a responsibility to help develop disaster plans – they are some of the best equipped to do so.  Large-scale disaster planning requires professionals to think in terms of time and space – two skills planners are required to employ.  Disaster planning also requires knowledge of who you are planning for.

Here are some demographics for the aggregate area of the Contamination Zones (50 mile rings) to give you an idea of the scale of nuclear disaster planning that needs to take place.

Of particular concern are the young and the population that lives in group quarters.  These population bases are likely to require assistance in the event of a disaster.  They may also require special accommodations.  For example, if you had to evacuate a maximum security prison you are going to need a place to move them to AND a staff that is qualified to manage the prisoners.  Another likely scenario requires tending to the elderly that would be evacuated from nursing care facilities.  Hurricane Katrina taught us that it is not enough to have a plan in place – you need to have multiple plans for different scenarios.

FEMA has posted some nuclear disaster preparedness information that is worth reading.  It is important that each household is acquainted with the plan(s).  However, large-scale coordinated planning at the city, county, state, and national level is critical.  This  is where we’ve fallen short in the past (see Hurricane Katrina).  Effective planning (and execution) is largely a function of leadership.  Those in leadership positions should be capable of managing multiple large-scale plans.

If you would like to read more about disaster planning and disaster recovery, check out the American Planning Association’s disaster planning blog.