Fifth anniversary of Urban Review STL

Today is the fifth anniversary of this blog.  Five years!  My life has changed dramatically over those five years, partly because of the blog.

On a personal note my great-nephew was born just after I started the blog, an early post included a pic of him just hours old.  Both of my parents have passed.  I went car-free, lived through a stoke, bought a car, started grad school, and I moved downtown.  In 2005 I  ran for the Board of Aldermen, and lost.  I have connected with so many great people over the years.  Hopefully I’ve made a difference.  Over these five years many more blogs have come on the scene locally.  I love it.  The more ideas and viewpoints being shared, discussed and debated the better off we are as a city and region.

Early on I still had thoughts about moving elsewhere.  But I can tell you today that I will live the rest of my life in St. Louis.  That means this blog will continue to evolve over the next five years and coming decades. Part of that evolution will be a new look that I hope to debut after the first of 2010.  As more contributors join me I hope to make the author of each piece more obvious.

After I posted that first piece five years ago I sent an email to some friends  — my first readers.  This year over 80,000 have visited this blog.  The numbers are staggering, I’m honored. When I started I had no plan for what I wanted to accomplish with the blog other than focus my attention at the moment.

In December I will graduate from Saint Louis University with a Master in Arts in Urban Planning & Real Estate Development (UPRED).  Earlier this week I decided to leave real estate sales so I can focus on consulting to developers and municipalities.  With a large number of municipalities within a 2-hour drive of St. Louis I hope to be busy.

Thank you for participating in my journey: adding your comments, giving me feedback, putting up with my rants and mistakes.

– Steve Patterson

Vote Yes on Prop N

This Tuesday voters in St. Louis County will determine how soon much of the Missouri side of the region goes smoke-free.  Well, mostly smoke-free.

If passed, Prop N would prohibit smoking in enclosed public spaces, including bars, restaurants, concert venues and indoor and outdoor sports facilities. It would also ban smoking on sidewalks and other outdoor spaces within 15 feet of an entrance to a public building.

The ordinance would exempt casino gaming floors; cigar and tobacco stores; hotel and long-term care rooms that have been designated for smokers; designated smoking areas of Lambert St. Louis International Airport; and bars that receive 25 percent or less of their gross sales from food.  (Source: West End Word)

I think many on both sides of the issue can agree the county and the city’s bill have too many exemptions and the wider a smoke-free policy is the less disadvantage any business may be. That is where agreement ends.

Despite the flaws I hope that voters in St. Louis County support Prop N so our region takes another step closer to being totally smoke-free in establishments open to the public.   The pro-smoking groups will tell you the smoking rate in St. Louis is higher than in other parts of the country.  That is about all I’ll believe from them.  The fact is many places want to go smoke free but are afraid to do so on their own.  They need the law to make it so competing restaurants in their immediate vicinity are also smoke-free.

Secondhand smoke is a public health threat, just like unsanitary restaurant kitchens or unsafe stores.
For workers who spend their days and nights in smoke-filled bars and restaurants, the danger is magnified.

They include many young people working at their first jobs. Often, those workers aren’t offered health insurance and aren’t in an economic position to quit.

People shouldn’t be forced to risk their health just to earn a living.  (Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial)

I agree, this is about the health of our community.  To me this is an important step in the right direction.

– Steve Patterson

9-1-1 Systems in a Mobile Phone World

Current 9-1-1 systems were developed decades ago before mobile phones became popular replacements for landlines. Each year an increasing number of households, like mine, do not have a land line.

From Wikipedia:

Dialing 9-1-1 from a mobile phone (Cellular/PCS) in the United States originally connected the call to the state police or highway patrol, instead of the local public safety answering point (PSAP). The caller had to describe an exact location so that the agency could transfer the call to the correct local emergency services. This was a regular problem, because the exact location of the cellular phone isn’t normally transmitted with the voice call, and with the exponential growth of cellular use, such calls were frequent occurrences.

In 2000, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an order requiring wireless carriers to determine and transmit the location of callers who dial 9-1-1. The FCC set up a phased program: Phase I transmitted the location of the receiving antenna for 9-1-1 calls, while Phase II transmitted the location of the calling telephone. The order set up certain accuracy requirements and other technical details, and milestones for completing the implementation of wireless location services. Subsequent to the FCC’s order, many wireless carriers requested waivers of the milestones, and the FCC granted many of them. By mid-2005, the process of Phase II implementation was generally underway, but limited by the complexity of the coordination required from wireless carriers, PSAPs, local telephone companies and other affected government agencies, and the limited funding available to local agencies which need to convert PSAP equipment to display location data (usually on computerized maps). Such rules do not apply in Canada.

FCC rules require that all new mobile phones will provide their latitude and longitude to emergency operators in the event of a 9-1-1 call. Carriers may choose whether to implement this via Global Positioning System (GPS) chips in each phone, or by means of triangulation between cell towers. Due to limitations in technology (of the mobile phone, cellular phone towers, and PSAP equipment), a mobile caller’s geographical information may not always be available to the local PSAP. Technologies are currently under development to remedy this situation and improve performance. Although there are now technological ways to obtain the geographical location of the caller, a 9-1-1 caller should try to be aware of the location of the incident about which he or she is calling.

I’ve read some cities are adding the ability to text the 9-1-1 center in case of emergency.  When I had my stroke on 2/1/2008 I could not get to my mobile phone.  But even if I had there is a chance I could not have clearly been able to verbally tell the operator my location.

To address my own concerns I recently bought a $3 app (reg $7) for my iPhone known as I am Safe.  Other phones to be added soon, I believe.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNtreYBbX7s&feature=player_embedded

If I press the app on my phone I can cancel in 3 seconds.  If not canceled it rings the phone and begins recording audio.  It also sends text messages to five people I predetermined.  Those same five will receive an email with a link to a map of my GPS location (example below) as well as the ability to hear the audio.  In case I’m at home the email includes the front door code and contact info for my neighbor with a key to my place.  I feel better having this app.  And yes, my phone is always close to me now.

I have no connection with this company other than as a paying customer.

I’m told the City of St. Louis is looking at our 9-1-1 technology and how to improve it.  But our region is vast and is covered by numerous emergency systems (23 in St. Louis County),  all tied to land lines.

Used to be you kept a dime for the pay phone, then a quarter. Then both. Now a pay phone is a rare sight in the urban landscape.

Voters in St. Louis County have a chance on Tuesday to determine if part of our region will get newer technology:  Proposition E-911.

– Steve Patterson

I See Vibrant Urban Streets

Three years ago I did a post, Envisioning Smart Growth, that I want to make you aware of.   In that post I featured some impressive photoshop work done by a California firm, Urban Advantage:

My original post has two intermediate steps between the before and after.  The firm’s website has many more examples of using photoshop to create visuals to show how streets can be improved through narrowing streets, widening sidewalks, building up to the street and so on.

I often like to visit their site to see the latest projects they have done, helping their clients all over the country to visually show how proposed changes would help streets and places mature into a more urban/walkable form.  Of the many posts I’ve done over the last five years this simple post was one of my favorites.  I have thoughts of transformations like this going through my head for every corridor in the region.

My hope is we, as a city & region, will begin to think beyond what we have today and work toward what we can have tomorrow.  This requires coming together to create a collaborative vision and implementing the zoning to ensure that future efforts build toward the vision.  I invite you to look through the many examples on their site.  The photoshop work is the easy part, I also know that streets won’t transform themselves without a strong vision.

– Steve Patterson

What is wrong with this sidewalk?

This sidewalk, heading South from Washington Ave. along the East side of 14th Street, has a number of issues.  Most notably it is too narrow.

On the positive side, the trees and parked cars make a nice buffer between the pedestrian and passing vehicles.  Since my stroke I’ve walked this sidewalk a few times and the half block you see here is harder to walk on than the previous two blocks to get to this point.  It slopes downhill slightly but that is not an issue.  The cross slope, however, makes this sidewalk very difficult to walk on.  The side to side slope is beyond allowable limits of the ADA.  To the eye you can see the slight slope.

The able-bodied would have no problem walking this sidewalk but for those of us with one leg that doesn’t work as well as the other find it a major challenge.

– Steve Patterson