Transcript Segedy_Session2A_1x - Ohio Department of Transportation

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Connecting Communities and Creating Great
Places in Northeast Ohio
Integrating Land Use and Transportation Decisions
7/15/2014
Jason Segedy
Director
Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study
Session Overview
• Northeast Ohio – thoughts on region and place
• How transportation helped transform Downtown
Kent
• Unlocking the potential of the US 422 corridor in
Youngstown
• How AMATS is creating better connected
communities
Northeast Ohio Today
• Current Trends
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Overall population decline
Overall expansion of developed footprint
Central city vacancy and abandonment
More infrastructure for less people
• The Future of the Status-Quo
– Social experiment that won’t end well
– Not enough money to deal with abandonment,
routine maintenance, and new infrastructure
– Higher taxes, more debt, continued abandonment
– Fiscal collapse, civic decay, civil unrest
What is Place?
• Places are fundamentally about people, not
things
• Places represent values - tradition, identity,
stability, and community
• Are these values objective and intrinsically important?
• Or are these values subjective and arbitrary?
• Are places nothing more than engines for
economic growth?
• Can they simply be discarded as obsolete, like
machines, when they are no longer “useful”?
• Or do they have social, emotional, and spiritual
significance that we ignore at our peril?
What about People?
• Where do they fit into the equation?
• Where do they stack up in the benefit/cost
calculations?
• Who is measuring the true human cost of
abandoning neighborhoods, communities, and
ways of life?
• Is it even possible to understand the social,
economic, and spiritual impact of our collective
decisions on where and how to build our
communities?
How Does Transportation Fit In?
• Transportation decisions do not occur in a vacuum
– They have a profound effect on people and places
– They are not value-neutral
– The value of any given project is based on subjective
assessments, translated into objective criteria
• Subjectivity is not a dirty word
– It is an inescapable reality of decision-making
– The “objective” manual says those lanes must be 12’ wide
because someone made (and codified) a subjective value
judgment that wide lanes are better than narrow lanes
– All objective criteria reflect someone’s subjective value
judgments about what is important
Transit stop on Flight
Memorial Pkwy in
front of Wendy’s.
No bench, shelter, or
even a concrete pad at
this heavily utilized
stop.
Montrose - 1970
Montrose - 2010
SR 303 looking west
Where Does the Region Fit In?
• Meme #1 – Places are no longer important,
regions are
– Economies are based on regional job markets
– Advances in transportation & communications have made
places irrelevant
• Meme #2 – Places are critical, regions are all the
same
– Since you can live anywhere, the “coolest” places will
attract the most “talent”
– People, especially young people, are tired of the suburbs
• The Reality – both places and regions are
important; it is not a binary, either/or choice
Bringing It All Together
• How can we fix our places and knit them together
with their regions to create an effective,
politically feasible, governing framework that
works for everyone?
• This is the public policy challenge of the 21st
Century, especially in the “Rust Belt”
• 3 areas the planning profession must improve:
– Leadership
– Risk-Taking
– Communication
Learning By Doing
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We are good at talking (creating plans)
We are not always so good at doing (slacktivism)
Leadership, risk-taking, communication are key
You will hear from a diverse group of people that
are taking intentional action to transform their
communities
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Not being afraid to start small (the key is starting)
Work on fundamentals
Build trust
Inspire hope
Build authentic relationships
And now, for our session. . .
Jason Segedy
Director, AMATS
[email protected]
www.amatsplanning.org
www.switching-gears.org