Thanks to the Idaho Statesman Business Insider for a great story on social media use and business. Reporter Harrison Berry interviewed several local businesses and experts, including Martin Johncox, a Boise public relations consultant.
I recently ran across this 2008 column that was published in the Idaho Statesman. The original Statesman page is no longer available, but the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho has kept it up (see Statesman reader comments here). While we clamor for more transit, cities like Boise simply haven’t required the kind of development style that transit needs.
Growth of the past 15 years is not conducive for transit
READER’S VIEW: Public Transportation
Idaho Statesman, January 23, 2008
By Martin Johncox
I’ve been following the discussion of local-option taxation and transit in the editorial pages of The Statesman. While I support local-option taxation and transit, there’s been little discussion if cities have been preparing their built environment to support transit.
From what I can tell, cities have a spotty record on enforcing the kind of development needed to make transit feasible. This lack of transit-oriented development undermines the cities’ otherwise good arguments in favor of local option taxation.
Transit lacks point-to-point flexibility. To make up for that, people must bridge, on foot or bike, the distance between the transit stop and their destination. To get people to do this, you must build a human-scaled environment, where buildings come right to the sidewalk; things are stacked on top of each other to conservedistance; and homes, offices, shopping centers, schools and other destinations are directly connected with sidewalks.
The best examples of this kind of development locally are from a century ago: the historic neighborhoods and the downtowns of Treasure Valley cities, developed when cars were scarce and the locations of tracks and train stops determined what got built and where. Transit friendly is necessarily pedestrian friendly.
But we’ve built just the opposite in the past 50 years. Giant parking lots, absent of sidewalks, encourage people to drive from one parking lot to the next; subdivisions are fenced from each other and neighboring shopping centers; and very long blocks and cul-de-sacs lengthen pedestrian trips.
In such an environment, people will not walk to the nearest transit stop, even if they could find it. If a train dropped off people by the mall, they would be in the middle ofsome of the most pedestrian-hostile development in Idaho. Could we expect a rider to catch a train or bus stopping 100 feet from their home, when it’s in a shopping center on the other side of a fence and the only other way is a half-mile walk out of the subdivision? No amount of local-option taxation flexibility will fix this.
To be fair, it’s been less than 15 years since Boise and other cities awoke to the need to build for transit. Indeed, for most of the past century, transit-friendly Main Street America was illegal to build under zoning codes. Only relatively recently have local governments become receptive to Smart Growth principles.
Yet in those past 15 years there’s been precious little progress toward enforcing transit-friendly development. Boise’s 1997 comprehensive plan was a visionary statement of urban planning that, unfortunately, has not been followed diligently enough to improve opportunities for transit. There are very few examples of shopping centers built in Boise in the past 10 years, for example, that are truly
transit-friendly. Shopping centers still have huge parking lots between the stores and the street. Cul-de-sacs are still common and many subdivisions still have just one or two ways in and out. Pedestrian- and transit-friendly development styles are mandated downtown only.
We’ve made some improvements, like mico-pathways in subdivisions and pedestrian networks inside parking lots. But from a practical, on-the-ground perspective – and compared to the examples people a century ago bequeathed us – transit remains a vestigial part of our built environment. (See “The Next American Metropolis” by Peter Calthorpe to learn how transit oriented developments can work in modern times.)
I fully support the vision for transit in the Treasure Valley and I believe local-option taxation authority should be granted. But we should realize that for more than a decade, we have had the local mandate to require transit-friendly development and have made little apparent progress.
Martin Johncox is a former Statesman reporter who covered local government and
urban planning. He is currently a public relations consultant at Alexander and Associates, focusing on land use and public policy.
Today’s Business Insider, a weekly publication by the Idaho Statesman, carries a great story about Fisher’s Document Systems of Boise. Fisher’s has a fascinating story to tell of how they re-cast their business and pulled it from the doldrums and reporter Bill Roberts tells it well.
About six months ago, Fisher’s hired Alexander and Associates to write a news release about their transformation. It took months of pitching to local media before a journalist realized the news value and decided to write their own story from it. With Fisher’s – as with many of our clients – a soundly crafted news release and persistence do pay off.
The Idaho Statesman recently published a letter to the editor from me, but it was cut. The complete letter as submitted is printed below. When I used to serve on The Statesman’s editorial board, one of my duties included editing letters and I understand the need to occasionally do this.
However, The Statesman has given Tony Jones many opportunities to lobby against anyone (other than him) living on Hammer Flat, so it is unfortunate they could not print at full length my single letter exposing Jones’ hypocrisy. As long as I’m at it, here and here are the documents relating to the illegal subdivision, which is a few miles east of Boise.
“As a public relations consultant who assisted Skyline Development, I am proud of my role in helping earn approvals for The Cliffs. Unfortunately, due to the economy, this visionary planned community never got the chance to carry out habitat restoration and environmentally conscious development on the Hammer Flat plateau.
“I have listened to Tony Jones for years and his latest opinion, ‘Fewer humans may be just what Hammer Flat needs,’ compels me to write. While Jones calls for Hammer Flat to be kept free from encroachment, he himself lives there. While he demands we follow development rules, he lives in an illegal subdivision. While he decries unplanned development, his remote living choice requires he burden neighborhoods with his traffic. While he advocates environmental stewardship, he drives on sediment-spewing dirt roads and soils Hammer Flat through his septic system. While he presses for fiscal responsibility, he relied on Boise taxpayers to extinguish 2006 brush fires that threatened his private Idaho. While he rails against development, his business, www.rmecon.com, does economic feasibility studies for developers.
“I hope the Statesman mentions Jones lives on Hammer Flat next time it publishes one of his opinions saying no one should live on Hammer Flat.”
Update @2:50 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 25: The House Revenue and Taxation Committee voted 13 to 5 today to kill the proposed beer and wine tax. The Idaho Beer and Wine Distributors Association and The White Space have done an excellent job using social media for public policy, the first such use I am aware of in Idaho.
Like every other communications specialist on Earth, I have been diving into social media, including Facebook and Twitter. I have set up a number of Facebook pages for myself and my clients (including Metro Express Car Wash, Alternate Energy Holdings Inc., and my own company) and gotten the word out on Twitter.
I’m especially interested in the public policy applications of social media, however, since that’s my area of focus as a PR practitioner. Marketing firm The White Space has done an amazing job rallying public attention around a proposed hike on the beer and wine tax, opposed by the Idaho Beer and Wine Distributors Association. As of this writing, nearly 1,200 people have joined a Facebook page and more than 800 people have registered their e-mail addresses on donttaxmybeer.com. I am one of about 240 people on a Twitter feed and the group hosted a Tweet Up on Thursday night. Did I mention they have a blog?
The White Space has done an excellent job using social media to raise public awareness (they’re also getting me and other bloggers to discuss the issue). But the results at this point are mixed: at the end of the day Tuesday, Feb. 24, 27 testifed in favor of the tax and 21 against, with one neutral. There’s plenty of mobilizing information on the Facebook page and Web site and dozens of Tweets have kept peopel abreast, yet only 21 people have spoken against the proposed tax. Of course, that’s going to change tomorrow, as the Legislature has had to extend hearings into Wednesday, because so many people wanted to testify. It wouldn’t surprise me if hearings went beyond Wednesday.
It’s easier to get people riled up about something than it is to get them to trudge to the Legislature in the middle of the day and wait an hour or more for the opportunity to speak their mind. The White Space and the beer and wine association have done a remarkable job in getting public support for their position. If they can translate that into large numbers of people testifying on their behalf – the most prized kind of public involvement – they will have shown that social media buzz can translate into serious clout in the public policy arena. PR wonks like me will be keeping close watch.
The White Space has blazed a trail for other Idaho PR firms and, at the very least, their work for their client is to be commended. While I support the tax, a little tiny part of me wants to see the effort to defeat the tax succeed, just to show that social media can be a potent force in the political process.
There’s been a lot of emotion but not enough light on the issue of a transit center in downtown Boise.
Hoping to get the project shovel-ready to take advantage of a federal grant that expires this year, officials from the Ada County Highway District, City of Boise and the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho are putting the proposal on a fast track. It would bring pedestrians, cyclists, motorists and busses together in downtown Boise, and a rail system could someday hook up to it. More than just a bus stop, the idea is that people could switch between different transportation modes at the center.
I think it’s a great idea and should move forward. But, as The Boise Guardian says, “…it looks to us like a recipe for disaster jamming passenger cars, buses, and pedestrians into a narrow side street.” Yes, possibly – or it could be a recipe for success, assuming that moving more people in and out of downtown is a good thing. It all depends on how it’s done.
As a public relations consultant, I have to say the agencies could be doing a better job at making their case, especially in the media. So far, print and broadcast media coverage has been your basic journalistic tale of people fighting some proposal with which they are unfamiliar.
My unsolicited advice: local government PR people should be presenting examples of where these kinds of transit hubs have been successful, why they have been successful, and how they could be successfully adapted to downtown Boise. This is a great opportunity to invite the media into explanatory stories and show under what conditions transit hubs benefit the public and merchants in other cities.
Here are some good examples the folks at COMPASS have refererred me to:
Some of these plans are much more than what we are propsing. But I include them to show that other similar cities have successfully pulled off ambitious and successful transit center plans.
Of course, questions about the public process will remain. Also, historical preservation needs will have to be accommodated. But for the time being, local governments could make their job easier, and improve public understanding, job giving their transit hub proposal some grounding and context.
Public relations people get so wrapped up in promoting our clients that we sometimes forget we can use your skills to help friends.
Last week, I got an email from David MacNeill, who recorded me last fall for a musical project. Our families have hung out together a few times and become friends.
David said he, his wife and daughter were being evicted from their BSU-area home and they were asking for any work or barter opportunities. A few days later, he sent another email to his social network asking for “micro-loans” from people to help buy a mobile home, an affordable alternative to living in a traditional home (I gave David $50 a few days later).
I forwarded the email to Dave Staats, a Statesman editor, asking if The Statesman could somehow help this family and suggesting there could be a larger story in the issue of people making a run on mobile homes in the current economy. I have asked Staats for coverage of my clients many times in the past and, as always, it all boils down to what extent my story idea serves the public interest.
Later that day, I got a call and some Tweets from reporter Brad Talbutt, saying he had already interviewed David MacNeill and was researching the larger trend.On Sunday, The Statesman published a well-researched story about how “The Valley’s RV parks are being filled up with working-age people who can’t afford to live in a house.”
I like to see my “clients” make the front page of the paper, but the stressful situation of this family just makes me wish the coverage leads to more micro-loans, donations and sales of David’s CDs. Whatever your profession – law, medicine, sales, construction, development, Web design – consider how you can use your skills to help a friend who needs you.
The story also underscores the importance of newspapers and their ability to judge and define important trends. Without a daily newspaper or other large media, this family’s situation, and the larger trend they represent, would have a much harder time getting notice.
