National Zoning Atlas + Local Update

I attended Reconnect Rochester’s film event - “The Sprawl Effect” - last week, and it was fantastic! Information, important conversation, and inspiration were plentiful.

At the event, I was introduced to a new resource that is relevant to zoning conversations that I know are happening across our community. Reminder: zoning codes were highlighted in Poverty, by America as a key area to focus on for poverty abolitionist work.

The resources is the National Zoning Atlas, an effort to digitize, demystify, and democratize (the 3 Ds!) zoning codes across urban counties in the US. Of particular interest is an interactive map, that includes zoning information about much of Monroe County. In addition to the map, the website includes a section called ‘Atlases in Action’ that provides snapshots, examples of advocacy, analysis, and some curated research on the topic. It is worth perusing!

Note: the project’s focus seems to be urban areas and therefore only areas within Monroe County are included at this stage, and even within Monroe County there are some gaps (Irondequoit is not available, for example). The project is in building mode so we hope that their good work expands into the other 7 counties of our region.

Consider using the National Zoning Atlas to check your facts and inform your conversations about zoning codes in Monroe County! The link is also included on the National Data Sources and Services page under Resources (a great reference list!).

UPDATE: In a brilliant example of communicating and connecting, Shane Wiegand (of Our Local History at CCSI) alerted me to a local project done in collaboration with Dr. Stu Jordan at the University of Rochester on zoning regulations and city planning. Please find an excellent story map here and a map specific to exclusionary zoning in Monroe County (with 2018 data) here.

Curated Book on Urban Design

A close friend lent me the book Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery after a lengthy policy conversation. He told me I needed to read it; he was right. You should read it, too!

Note that Happy City is not written by social scientists so the objective of the book is not to prove or disprove a hypothesis. I loved and recommend Happy City because it is an exercise in out-of-the-box thinking. It is a catalyst for innovative problem-solving. It provides case studies of cities across the world, told as stories, and patched together for a wholistic and human-centered approach to the complex challenges of urban areas. Happy City highlights the successes of Vancouver, Canada, Bogota, Colombia, Siena, Italy, and Paris, France, and it uses history and exceptional scholarship to make arguments about what makes a city great and how to improve the quality of life for all city residents.

“And what are our needs for happiness?... We need to walk, just as birds need to fly. We need to be around other people. We need beauty. We need contact with nature. And most of all, we need not to be excluded. We need to feel some sort of equality." (pg. 6)

Montgomery introduces concepts like challenged thriving (pg. 37), the relationship between happiness, economists, and urban design, unintended negative consequences of urban sprawl (beyond the damage to the environment!), and on page 111 Montgomery references a relevant psychological study at the University of Rochester. 

We spend so much time reading about the challenges of the City of Rochester and perhaps you find yourselves talking about those challenges in your networks. Consider reading Happy City to catalyze more creative thought about what urban transformation could look like.

Consider Happy City for your brain food - it's high quality nutrition for healthy thought! 

Source: Montgomery, C. (2013). Happy city: Transforming our lives through urban design. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

Curated Article: Rochester Beacon’s take on “Momentum toward 2034”

On June 6th, the Rochester Beacon published an article about Rochester’s comprehensive plan, which is “concerned with planning and designing for people, not cars.” 

The article includes user-friendly graphics, a summary of progress, a description of the placemaking theme, and how community engagement plays into this work. As informed citizens, we should have an idea of the ideas and components of these kinds of plans, and this article provides a very approachable outline, with context. 

ACT Rochester also participates in the Transportation Impact Collective, a collaborative effort to add intention and momentum to this work. 

Curated Article: An Innovative Approach to Traffic Safety

The Stanford Social Innovation Review has an excellent article titled “A New Model for Saving Lives on Roads Around the World” that both highlights a successful program in India and models rigorous problem-solving. 

The article begins with descriptive statistics to paint the picture of the safety crisis for vehicles in India. Authors point out that India has only 1 percent of the world’s motor vehicles yet accounts for 11 percent of road crash fatalities. The data story is clear: Intervention is necessary. 

This article is particularly notable because of its advanced use of data for decision-making. In one section, authors describe how data indicated a need to prevent rear-end collisions, but that guidance from the West suggested tactile edge lines that didn’t work in India. The solution began with existing guidance and was then customized to suit the Indian community in need. Continuous improvement in action.

The Design Thinking section of the Stanford Social Innovation Review is an excellent resource to train our thinking about problem-solving.