ULI just published an article I wrote about the future of office space. On a recent assignment, I came across an intriguing quote that the amount of office space required per employee will essentially shrink to one-quarter of today's level. In other words, companies won't need as much space as employees increasingly are able to work from home or anywhere. Wow, I thought, that would be devastating for the office market. Read the article at ULI here. I personally feel there is some merit to all of this, that the office market is at an inflection point as a result, and the best located and highest amenity space will win while a large portion of the market will languish indefinitely. What do you think? Please join the conversation at ULI.

What is the best way to experience and be a part of your surroundings? In city or countryside, this urbanist knows being on foot is tough to beat, but a recent trip to the Boundary Waters (BWCAW) caused me to reconsider. A canoe is hard to beat as the best way to experience wilderness lakes in northern Minnesota. Could a bicycle be the best way to experience the city? Perhaps the canoe and bicycle are kindered spirits. In his 1956 collection of essays about the Boundary Waters entitled "The Singing Wilderness," author Sigurd Olson describes "The Way of a Canoe" as an excellent means of experiencing the wilderness. The fluidity of dipping a paddle in the water and the responsiveness of the canoe allows one to truly experience the beauty and wilderness the Boundary Waters has to offer. If the canoe is the best way to experience wilderness lakes, then perhaps the best way to experience a city is on a bicycle. Sigurd Olson describes the pace of canoe time, and slowing down to get in to the rhythms of the wilderness. Slowing down in a city is similar; you can't race through it nor experience it properly from behind the glass of a motorized vehicle. Call this bicycle time. Olson describes the canoe as enabling "near flight" across the water, allowing "a sense of harmony and oneness with the earth." Just as the paddle is an "extension of your arm" in a canoe, the bicycle is an extension of your feet, enabling harmony and oneness with the street and buildings around you. As well, a canoe can cut almost silently through water, and a bicycle slices a quiet path through urbanity. Paddling gracefully across a wilderness lake allows you to see, hear, feel and smell the wilderness as you slip by. A bicycle in the city is no different. Paddling across Long Island Lake in the Boundary Waters is amazingly similar to bicycling through Haight Ashbury in San Francisco or along the canals in Amsterdam; you are at one with your surroundings. The pace feels right. Need convincing? The pace of a canoe is slow enough so as to not miss the scenery but fast enough to get across several lakes in a day. Each stroke of the paddle brings a new vista of water, rock and tree. Likewise, you can pedal at a pace slow enough to view street life and architecture around you, yet traverse a neighborhood in no time at all. Each street and intersection is a new perspective. The canoe is silent, allowing you to hear the breeze in the pines, the call of the loon, and the music of songbirds. On a bicycle, you can hear the boisterous laughter of sidewalk cafes, the revving and honking of traffic, air traffic overhead, and the clinking of bottles dumped in the recycling bin behind a restaurant. From a canoe you can smell the damp, mossy woods in the morning, the mists on the water, and the warm wind drying out the pines. On a bicycle you can smell the changing seasons in a city, the tantalizing scents of different restaurants, coffee shops, or bakeries beckoning as you pass by, garbage water spilled on the pavement, and the exhaust of vehicles passing you or idling in traffic as you glide by in the bike lane. Be it sight, sound, or smell, you are acutely aware of your surroundings. Likewise, you are exposed to the elements, at one with the weather, be it in a canoe or bicycle, for better or worse. When it is hot, you sweat. When it rains, you get wet. Just as fighting a stiff breeze builds character, pedaling or paddling downwind is like being on top of the world. On the water, the shade of morning gives way to the potent sun overhead. In a city, during a twilight ride you can pass from the heat of daytime pavement to the relief and cool of evening wafting across the road. But you are not just passing through it, you are part of it. We must balance the wilderness and the city. As Ed Glaeser explains in "Truimph of the City" we need urban places more than ever in order to interact and prosper. Perhaps as well, as another Ed (Edward Abbey) wrote in Desert Solitaire," we need wilderness more than ever. Certainly to experience it and get away from it all, but even if we never visit, just to know it is there. Regardless, wherever you are, it is important to know how to navigate it; to slow down enough to properly experience it. Pdealing and paddling are perhaps one in the same. That said, if you spend a little time in a canoe in the wilderness and on a bicycle in the city, you will come to know each in a way not possible from the confines of a motorized vehicle. At the end of the day, perhaps that is most important of all.

In May I caught some flak for a post on my website that discussed the merits of a broken traffic light and how it made crossing a major intersection on foot more palatable. Let's just say not everybody was amused, particularly those stuck in traffic as pedestrians got to cross the street. Needless to say, the traffic light was fixed, and the silver lining in this story is the improved Walk signals since that time. The intersection in question is 38th Street and Hiawatha Avenue (State Highway 55). This is a treeless, ugly expanse of awfulness where two streets meet and nobody paid attention until seven years ago when a light rail station began service immediately adjacent. Now, on any given day, hundreds of people (and nearly as many bicycles, it seems) cross this intersection going to or coming from the train. Prior to "the fix," reliably getting a Walk signal to cross either 38th or Hiawatha was impossible. Now, it seems the walk signal is automatic. (And I cannot be sure if the improvement is accidental or intended.) This is wonderful news, particularly given the 200 housing units and mixed-use development about to begin construction across from the station. But I must temper my excitement, for this is the bare minimum given the $800 million investment in light rail with no attention paid to the pedestrian conditions outside the station platform. If a car accident taking out a signal box is the way to improve the pedestrian environment, then we are indeed headed down the wrong road (tongue firmly in cheek). But I remain positive. Now we just need some better street trees, curb bumpouts, reduced speed limit along Hiawatha, a woonerf....

Story: a guy gets up in front of a crowded public meeting about a proposed project and says "I have two questions. Is this a done deal and will I get assesssed for it?" Upon hearing the answer to the first question is "yes" and the second is "no," he says thank you and promptly walks out of the room. That is one of the easiest dealings with a NIMBY I've ever heard. I wish all public meetings would go this way. Unfortunately, NIMBYs continue to be "mad as hell," as Scott Doyon discussed in a recent post about NIMBYs at PlaceShakers . The post brought up some interesting points, but I must disagree with the conclusion that building trust will solve the NIMBY issue. I'm usually an urban optimist, but I remain pessimistic that NIMBYs will ever change their tune. No matter ho much you try, you will not satisfy a true NIMBY. There will always be something to not like. And the problem is a dedicated few can derail a $10 million investment in a city that could be quite attractive and a positive addition to a neighborhood. So to Mr. Doyon's point, I don't think there will ever be trust to soothe NIMBYs' concerns. For example, where were these people 10 years ago when the master plan for the area was created? It indicated four stories then, so why get mad now when four stories are proposed for an actual project? And exactly why is additional traffic so bad? Remember, Detroit solved their congestion problem, and look what it got them? The homeowner who has lived there for 40 years and doesn't want a tall building across the street? What about me? I'm a homeowner that chose to live in my neighborhood exactly for the potential of increased density. The process is not perfect, but even when there is good leadership and a good developer with a good project queued up, it doesn't matter, there will be NIMBYs. And do they have and deserve a voice? Yes, but that is exactly why I get involved. I want to be the PEDIMBY (PlEase Develop In My Back Yard). I want to do exactly what NIMBYs oppose. I want to see new development in my neighborhood, particularly if it looks good and makes things more vibrant. I love Mr. Doyon's idea that NIMBYs need to put up or shut up: establish trust and tell developers what you want to see. Keep it positive. It is just that NIMBYs will always have their place, and they won't change their tune. So PEDIMBYs are vitally important to embrace change (it is, after all, inevitable - change will come, but make it positive) and work with developers to make good things happen.

I just saw Charles Landry speak. Mr. Landry is a worldly urban thinker, and I found his presentation very enlightening. One of the many pithy quotes he recited was "if your plan starts with parking, your vision may not be good enough." So to butcher an old expression, I must say I concur. Too often, we can't see the forest for the trees in urban development. We do start with the parking (trees), addressing design and context (forest) secondly. I was just in a charrette where the discussion immediately went to parking. How much parking we could get under the building determined the number of units. Following that, we considered how the building and uses may relate to the public realm and surrounding uses. Exactly backwards, and yet it happens this way all the time! In an ironic twist of our metaphors and expressions, it does make sense to start with the trees. Street trees. Begin the site plan at the very edge and show a boulevard of planted trees separating the sidewalk and the street. Then consider where the windows and doors are on the building and how they relate to the street. Figure out the density of the buildings and parking later. Repair that urban fabric that perhaps never existed. Then, no matter how good or bad your actual building is, at least you've done the city a favor by improving the public realm. Be a good neighbor. Then move on to the thorny issues of parking all those cars. Start with the trees and you will indeed see the forest.