Aaah, Madison. I'll be there tomorrow through Sunday at CNU 19. I will be part of a CNU team blogging about the conference, and I encourage you to follow us at http://liveblog.cnu19.org/. I'll be covering a tour of Milwaukee led by former mayor and current CNU President John Norquist, as well as in-depth sessions on Retrofitting Suburbia, how to implement walkable thoroughfares (not as easy as you think!), a tour of Middleton Hills, presentations by William Cronon (professor at UW Madison) and Will Allen (founder of Growing Power), a Q and A with Ed Glaeser (author of Triumph of the City), and a lively smackdown between new urbanism founder Andres Duany and landscape urbanist Charles Waldheim. Say what you will, I think sparks will fly during that "discussion." I'll also be bringing you asides from around Madison, including the Memorial Union Terrace, Brocach Irish Pub, the farmers market on the Capitol Square, and other great urban places. Stay tuned to the CNU Live Blog website and to the Joe Urban website. For those of you not heading to Madison, you are missing out. For the rest of you, we'll see you real soon, and On Wisconsin!

My heart goes out to Wisconsin this week, but there is a part of me that says "you got what you asked for." According to the Capital Times in Madison, Ray LaHood has announced the U.S. Government will not be including imrpovements to the Hiawatha Line, connecting Milwaukee and Chicago, in its latest round of funding. The state of Wisconsin requested $150 million in upgrades to the line, which is growing in popularity, having increased ridership by 6% last year to 783,000 riders. This news is a shame for users of the line, but it comes on the heels of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker returning a $810 million grant awarded last year to expand service from Milwaukee to Madison as part of an effort to eventually connect high speed rail from Chicago to Minneapolis. That service would have enabled riders to travel from downtown Chicago or downtown Milwaukee to a proposed terminus in downtown Madison, which with a University and state offices, could generate substantial ridership. The state of Wisconsin sent a clear signal they didn't see rail service a an important part of their future by turning back funding for the Milwaukee to Madison line, and the U.S. Government appears to have taken that as an indication that perhaps they are not deserving of upgraded service, even on an already proven successful line like Chicago to Milwaukee. That is the biggest shame of all, because the Hiawatha Line is really one of the most deserving lines, with proven ridership and growth, for intelligent investment in our nation's infrastructure. Unfortunately politics derailed it. I guess if you want better rail service, you can't have one foot on the platform and one foot on the train, you have to get on board!

My colleague Charles Marohn from Strongtowns forwarded me this excellent video entitled "Roads Unfit for People." It features a very well done look at an intersection in London where a traffic signal was removed. It may seem counterintuitive, as pointed out in the video, but the intersection became safer after the removal of the light. Watch the cars, bikes and pedestrians navigate the intersection and you'll see this delicate dance of everyone using caution and allowing each other to proceed through in a somewhat orderly manner - again counterintuitive at first but logical when you think about it. Now watch this video on You Tube that I took today at 38th and Hiawatha, near my home. I call it "You Go, No You Go." True, the traffic signal was out (just blinking red - treat it like a stop sign). It has been that way all week. But the similarities to the resulting behaviour was uncannily like that seen in the London example. Believe me, a four way stop sign at that intersection is perhaps not the best long term solution, but.... ...But allow me a moment to point out the "dance." As you can see, the traffic is backed up to Lake Wobegon, but that's not the point. At the actual intersection, everyone is taking turns and pedestrians and bikes are almost on equal footing, if you will. Everyone is stopping. Everyone is looking. The train goes by, the gates raise, cars cross north to south, the eastbound car and bus pull up to Hiawatha, pedestrians cross to the median, one of them dashing across the entire street as the northbound vehicles are coming across, It is a dance. A bit clumsy, but a dance. And a funny dance at times. You go, no you go. That's what half the drivers seemed to be saying this week. They were used to zoning out there - red: stop, green: go. What the hell!? Now I have to think about it and be careful? I'm taking Minnehaha Avenue instead! As I watched the traffic before I started filming, one car pulled up to the blinking red lights, windows open. I could hear the passenger giving instructions - "who goes? who goes? OK go! Aaah, don't crash!" Bikers especially woudl get to the intersection and look left, right, left again, behind, above! Trust nobody! As a biker taking my kids to preschool every day in the Burley, I have to say I kind of prefer it this way. I cross that beast of a street on a typical day, and frequently, while sitting on the island between the right turn lane and the traffic streaming by at 45 miles per hour, I feel, um, insecure. I have visions of how on earth to try and jump out of the way of an errant car, while still saving my children in the trailer behind me. It isn't fun. Sure, it has been confusing for us this week, but at least at the intersection everyone is moving slow and for the most part, paying attention. I like that. I like that a lot. One difference between the videos (other than the lack of production quality of mine) is in the London example, it is a pretty narrow set of streets. There is not a lot of room there. You won't go racing through unless you are Jason Bourne evading, well, whoever he is evading. With Hiawatha, it is a big principal arterial that "reads" like a highway. People feel like they should go fast, and are used to doing so (at least racing between lights), but when they are forced to slow down because the traffic signal is malfunctioning, dare I say the intersection is safer as a result!? Any accident there will be less severe, on average, because of slower speeds. In London, they also make a very good point, and one we cannot ignore - the intersection featured has pretty low traffic counts. And so this wonderful urban experiment could perhaps be applied elsewhere in Minneapolis, at an intersection with fewer cars but a lot of pedestrians and bikes - 43rd and Upton in Linden Hills, for example! Still, here is the thought sticking in my mind: Sure, I avoided the intersection this week while in my car, but I actually looked forward to crossing the intersection on my bike. It felt better, safer. Here I was, encouraged to bike or walk because the crosswalk was better, and correspondingly I was discouraged from driving. What does that tell us about the priorities we put on different modes of transportation and how we manage it? 38th and Hiawatha needs a solution that makes it not only safer to cross on foot or bike, but also feel safer to do so. Everyone that agrees with me should contact their city council member and let their voice be heard. You go. No you go.

What impact does increased housing have on cities? This is particularly important to cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul, which have flatlined in terms of population growth as of late, according to the 2010 Census. (For a very good article about this, read Steve Berg at MinnPost.) This is very disturbing for a city with so much potential. So what do we do about this? Lot's of things, from plans to zoning for infill development, financial incentives for developers to develop and residents to choose the city, to imrovements to transit and the public realm. But what about getting existing residents to accept more development? Aha, all the plans and incentives can be for naught in the face of NIMBYs. On the one hand, we existing residents complain of our increasing property tax bills, yet many of us complain about new development, even if it can reduce our tax burden. So does it? I took my query to David Frank, a colleague and the new director of transit oriented development for the city of Minneapolis. After all, his charge is to create acceptance for, and to encourage denser development near rail stations. David got back to me with some preliminary numbers about the current tax collections - approximately $274 million for the city of Minneapolis in 2011. What about that proposed 100-unit apartment project at the nearby train station, opposed by some as too tall and a threat to create traffic problems and maybe crime? Well, we concluded that taxes collected on that project would total $108,750 per year if the units are valued at $150,000. In other words, a 100-unit apartment project adds .04% to the city's tax collections, reducing the tax burden on the rest of us. That may seem like a small number, but add several hundred units at each of the light rail station areas and in other popular locations like downtown and uptown, and suddenly the city is bringing in significantly more revenue. Sure, our numbers were done "on the back of a napkin," but in the real estate development world, that's the way we roll! The point is the city would benefit from a whole lot more development, and existing property owners should feel literally relieved when it happens. It would behoove city officials to look into and refine these numbers, particularly in these new days of austerity in so many of our cities. There are a lot of arguments for increased density in our cities, but the increase of tax revenue (and corresponding reduced tax burden) should be among them. It may also give NIMBYs at least reason for pause, as well.

A new video by Streetfilms looks at the many blessings of urbanism in Melbourne, Australia. Watch it here at Kaid Benfield's blog, brought to you via Mike Lydon. The lessons of good urbanism abound. It should be noted Jan Gehl has a role in the success of Melbourne, as documented in an article I wrote for ULI here. Enjoy!