We gathered a group of designers, architects, landscape architects, and other members of the development community, and just like the numerous other charrettes around the city, came up with some really cool streetscapes, open spaces and building massing for an area of Glenwood Avenue, just west of downtown.

Design is important and plans are critical, but I found myself staring at them, doing quick calculations on cost and gasping at the chasm between what was on the paper and chance of it getting built. I fear these sketches and drawings we and all the teams came up with are perhaps destined to rest for eternity in some architect’s file drawer and never see the light of day. The problem being there is no implementation plan or program for providing additional public effort to link these drawings to reality or a built end product.

If I learned anything about planning while working for my previous employer, DSU, it is that a plan is worthless without community buy-in and appropriate implementation. DSU marketed (and still does after being bought by another firm, Bonestroo) themselves as a company whose plans get built. That is important. DSU did some very good work in their day and I’ll be damned if they weren’t one of the better community planning firms in the Twin Cities at getting buy-in from elected officials and the general public for the plans they created. So often plans are simply pretty pictures with no results. I’m always asking “yes, this is a nice plan, but did it get built?”

The lesson here, for my mayor and other visionaries, is of course to get those pretty pictures drawn by leading designers in your community. Create the vision. Get the public excited about it as well. But provide political will and mechanisms for the follow-through. Make sure the necessary zoning changes can be made, and leave some budget for finding a development partner and even some elusive public dollars to offset gaps in the market, which of course is often the reason for the charrette in the first place.

Building great cities indeed takes good design teams, but the uncomfortable reality is the process often exceeds the term of most mayors. I guess you could say it takes a village to build a village.

Center City Philadelphia is a business-led organization whose mission is to keep downtown Philadelphia clean, safe, beautiful and fun. They achieve this through a Business Improvement District (BID) that encompasses a 120-block area in the core. The BID provides cleaning, security and promotional services that enhance but don’t replace those already existing with the city.

I am impressed by the results. I liked the banners and landscaping, as well as the street cleaning machines that keep things looking well-tended. Most of all, I like the hired staff of personnel that roam the sidewalks at all hours, helping visitors find their way, reporting crime or vandalism, and generally being a happy face for the downtown. These “eyes on the street” help deter crime and improve the entire experience for locals and visitors alike, something Minneapolis and other cities could learn from. Kudos to Center City Philadelphia for making the streets of Philadelphia a better place.

The timing of the event, or “Summit,” as it was called, was to advance an urban agenda for this year’s presidential election and the new congress and president in 2009. The core argument is our 100 largest metropolitan areas (cities and surrounding suburbs) contain 65 percent of our population, generate 75 percent of our GDP and consume just 12 percent of our land mass, so therefore we need policies that maximize the potential of metro areas. We are a metro nation, thus we need metro policy.

The Blueprint looks at four key areas: innovation, human capital, quality places and infrastructure. They recommend that the federal government be a partner in the process; cities cannot simply go it alone. Furthermore, the federal government must empower cities to innovate, utilize human capital, improve infrastructure and create quality places. And the federal government must measure results and maximize performance.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Bruce Katz, who directs the Metropolitan Policy program at Brookings. He is bullish on the potential of this effort. He insists the federal government must be a good partner in empowering metro areas, but ultimately believes it is more of a bottoms up effort, and the metro areas with the best local, metro, public, private, corporate and non-profit leadership will benefit the most.

This is just the beginning. The Blueprint is a multiyear effort, and has the power to create legislatable change at the local, state and national level, supported by thorough research and all in the name of advancing American prosperity. I encourage you to go to the Brookings Metro Policy website and unearth some great information that may help you improve your metro area. Yes, it is all a bit wonky, but their work contains some fantastic maps, charts and statistics. There is a lot of work to do, and the work of the Brookings provides a solid foundation of research to affect change, especially in this important election year.

I was in Milwaukee mainly to focus on the Highland Gardens and Highland Homes project, a redevelopment of two aging and, in typical fashion of 1960s public housing, quite dreadful towers and rowhomes in to a new urbanism neighborhood of single-family homes and elderly/disabled public housing. A case study of this project can be found at the ULI Case Studies website.

Highland Homes and Highland Gardens are a HOPE VI project, and are great examples of the effectiveness of that program in terms of redeveloping housing and reinvigorating entire neighborhoods. Indeed, in a recent interview with Bruce Katz of the Brookings Metropolitan Program, he cited HOPE VI as one of the better federal programs for cities.

Highland Homes and Highland Gardens are also good examples of universal design. The Highland Gardens building is entirely accessible to residents in wheelchairs, with easily removable and interchangeable bath/showers and counters/cabinets to allow ease of use by residents.

Plus, Highland Gardens has one of the largest green roofs on a residential buidling in the midwest. Other redevelopments in the core are using other green features such as pervious pavers on streets. Chicago gets a lot of attention for HOPE VI and green initiatives, but keep your eye on their neighbor to the north, Milwaukee. Great things are happening.

On a related note, a recent publication by the Urban Land Institute titled Infrastructure 2008 makes a compelling case that the United States needs to get its act together and improve its infrastructure overall. I couldn’t agree more. As I sit in a crowded Chicago O’Hare airport, it kind of hits home. Think of how many of these people could be on high speed rail headed to destinations of less than 500 miles? Me, for one.

I have written in the past about the really terrific Amtrak service between Chicago and Milwaukee (well, terrific by Amtrak standards - they could use hot coffee service). I should be on a high speed train home to Minneapolis now, rather than waiting for a bogged down airport to release me home. High speed rail throughout the Midwest, from Chicago to Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Des Moines, Detroit, St. Louis, etc., could alleviate a whole lot of pressure in air traffic, and actually have a nationwide impact.

And just last night I sat with friends in Chicago and learned that the high speed rail service from the new Block 37 development in the Loop to both O’Hare and Midway is underfunded and delayed, which only aggravates an already overloaded CTA. The CTA in general is quite a mess, around $6 billion in the hole just to restore tracks to good condition and eliminate slow zones. Ouch! The transit problems in Chicago are not unique to other American metro areas, either.

I rode Amtrak between Philadelphia and Washington DC last week. Acela service began a few years ago, and I considered taking it. But checking the timetable, I’d spend roughly twice the amount of money and wouldn’t get there much faster. That is because they bought the trains but never improved the trackage for the higher speed. That drives me nuts!

Yes we need to maintain our bridges, levees, dams, highways and airports. But we do need to find ways to fund better systems like high speed rail. I learned last week that the Maglev high-speed train was invented in America, but we have yet to use it anywhere in this country. I suspect funding and political will (they can be the same thing) are the culprits. We are clearly well-intended but need to find more ways to fund a better infrastructure to keep our cities and economy competitive. It is all linked together, just not very well, I’m afraid.

I am happy to say that I contributed two of the case studies that appear in the book. One is The Glen, in Glenview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and the other is Crocker Park in Westlake, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland.

Suburbs need town centers. They need places for people to gather, linger, live, work, and of course shop and dine. Ideally they are linked by transit to the rest of the metro area. The mixed use town centers featured in this ULI book, and numerous other town centers, are part of a trend across the country to provide new and exciting destinations as enclosed malls fall out of favor. The good news is these town centers are succeeding. They don’t necessarily have all the things I listed above, but they are attractive, well branded, well maintained and managed, and in many cases have become regional destinations.

A few things to remember about these new mixed-use town centers. They are very expensive to pull off, and often subsidized, which is not a bad thing. Often what they are replacing is a greyfield or brownfield, or simply an underutilized site. As well, despite being very walkable and well-designed within their borders, they are often hard to reach on foot, by bike or by transit.

Mixed-use town centers are typically retail driven, and are in prime suburban locations, often where a traditional regional mall could have been located. In other words, they can’t work everywhere. Indeed, that is what a development like Victoria Gardens (located in Rancho Cucamonga, California) is - a regional mall with department store anchors in a pleasant, walkable, village-like setting. (A mix of uses is planned, but wasn’t built when I visited.) Those like Excelsior and Grand in suburban Minneapolis have a much greater amount of housing as a component, but the retail had to be there to begin with in order to get premium pricing on the residential units. A lot of suburbs want a fancy town center like those featured by ULI, but do not have the resources nor the market demand to make them work out.

I was able to visit my two case studies, and I liked what I saw. Crocker Park is really nice, with apartments above retail, some good restaurants, a multiplex theater, very good events programming and an oversized chess set. I wish the Dick’s Sporting Goods store, being a terminating vista, was instead city hall or a library, but you can’t have everything, right?

The Glen is a former naval air station, and they even saved the old hangar and control tower building, which visually anchors and distinguishes the project. The Glen town center is surrounded by attractive residential infill as well as an adjacent park and lake, which complement the project well.

I would be remiss if I didn’t credit the municipalities for allowing these mixed-use projects to exist in the first place. Most of these mixed-use centers would previously have been illegal according to zoning in their respective cities, so kudos to enlightened planners and elected officials for allowing new zoning codes and changes, not to mention assisting with public financing for these projects.

My favorite urban and suburban places are typically older downtowns, town centers or village cores; those that have evolved over time. Naperville, Illinois, Claremont, California and of course Country Club Plaza in Kansas City are just three of numerous older suburban downtowns that come to mind. The new mixed-use town centers, especially those featured in the new ULI book including Crocker Park, The Glen, Excelsior and Grand and the East 29th Avenue in Denver are beautiful, well designed places. One hopes that they can evolve well in to villages for the ages that are known more for their gathering places than just their shopping options.

In the course of researching this article, I stopped at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Las Colinas was started in the 1980s as a master planned mixed use area with office, hotels and residential. It is built on a lake and canal system, so it has this vague Venice/Japanese theme, weirldy cool. But the wild part of it is the people mover system, which is an elevated mini-monorail designed to link the major destinations at Las Colinas.

Granted I was there on a weekend, so it was already pretty quiet, but Las Colinas sure had this feel of a good idea gone awry. The thing is, if the monorail can be linked in to the light rail station planned nearby, suddenly the whole thing has new life and a multimodal link is formed. I hope it works!

The short bike commute to Ellis’s daycare is not pretty. In fact, it is a lesson in urban history and fraught with plenty of obstacles. I ride out my alley, up one street, into a driveway and on to a sidewalk, turn right, slow down to watch for trains, then stop at Hiawatha Avenue, a big highway that runs parallel to the light rail line. It is busy and imposing. At least you can push a button and get a walk signal, but is is not a comfortable crossing and there certainly isn’t a formal place for bikes. Once across it is again up on the safety of the sidewalks, if you can call them that, for they are a combination of crumbling concrete and asphalt adjacent to a former mill that is destined to become a nice TOD if the Gods cooperate. Then I cross four sets of active freight rail tracks and if traffic is light, I then descend down in to the street and continue the next two short blocks to the daycare, aware the entire way that cars coming from every direction may not see me. And all this towing kid in a trailer. It isn’t far, but it cuts through a swath of old and new (and future) Minneapolis. Nonetheless, it is the journey that counts, right? And beleive it or not, it is easier than driving!

Changing gears (no pun intended) from Minneapolis to Indianapolis - My friend and colleague Adam Arvidson, a Minneapolis-based landscape architect and writer, recently wrote in Metropolis Magazine about the new urban bike trail in Indianapolis. Read his article here. It seems as though the fair city of the famous car race is leading the pack in terms of urban biking. I’m sure the Dutch aren’t envious…yet, but be sure to bring your bike next time you are visit Indy.

Improved bike lanes and bike access in our cities is one of many keys to their livability and sustainability. It can’t just be recreation trails, either, although that is certainly important, as we Minneapolitans know. The entire city needs to be accessible on foot, by bike and by transit. The new path in Indianapolis will certainly be one to watch as it evolves and connects more of the city together.

Everywhere you look, there is talk of green. My local paper, the Star Tribune, published a special section recently on how to be more “green.” It discussed the usual suspects of recycling, installing energy-efficient light bulbs, building or remodeling with energy-efficient materials (bamboo and cork are all the rage), and buying a hybrid car. Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, as chair of the National Governors Association, has made clean energy his main topic. Of course, we are all familiar with the writings of Thomas Friedman and the Nobel Prize-winning efforts on the part of Al Gore to raise awareness of climate change.

But rarely, from my local paper on up to Friedman and Gore, does where we live garner a mention. Yet it must. True, our buildings are responsible for the greatest amount of carbon dioxide emissions, but transportation is close behind. Most Americans depend on an automobile for nearly all needs, and that not only creates CO2 emissions but also makes gas price increases more painful because they must drive. New York City doesn’t have the lowest per capita energy consumption because New Yorkers recycle and drive hybrids, but rather because of urban density and transit. Urban dwellers are more energy efficient because they occupy smaller spaces and because they meet more of their needs without an automobile.

Geography is destiny. True, we need to be a whole lot more energy efficient with our building practices in this country, but all the green buildings in the world solves only half the problem if they are accessible only by car. It is a mixed blessing that high gas prices are finally prompting this discussion, but Paul Krugman is helping us finally get there.

As Doug Farr notes in his recent book, Sustainable Urbanism, getting urban design right in order to mitigate climate change is this generation’s moon shot. It involves both how and where. The planning and development industry knows this, and knows how to get it done. But, as Krugman points out, it will take an educated public to accept higher density and push for increased transit funding, and simply more sidewalks. This may be our moon shot, but luckily it doesn’t involve rocket science to get us there.

Unfortunately, the discussion revolves around how to get the price of gas back down. Even our presidential candidates float the idea of a federal “gas tax holiday” for the summer, a ridiculous notion considering our literally crumbling and underfunded road system. Congratulations to Senator Obama for taking a stand against it. Still, there is no high level discussion of the future of transportation funding.

Luckily, there are several groups trying to push for a more enlightened federal reauthorization, which is due to occur next year. A recent article in the Washington Post by Judith Rodin sheds light on the issue. It was reprinted in my local paper, the Star Tribune. Link to it here.

Rodin discusses the lack of transportation funding, even for existing roads and transit, but also points to the Center for Housing Policy report that indicates working families spend nearly as much or more for transportation as they do for housing. For a link to a previous Joe Urban entry that discusses this study, click here.

We need to worry less about the price and source of more oil and more about simply reducing our dependence on it. As individuals we need to find ways to drive less, and entities all the way up to the federal government need to be on board in this effort. The last thing we need is a gas tax holiday. A progressive federal highway bill is imperative.