@amatsplanning

1. @amatsplanning Facebook.com/ amatsplanning Connecting Communities and Creating Great Places in Northeast OhioIntegrating Land Use and Transportation Decisions Jason Segedy Director Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study

2. 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

3. Northeast Ohio Today • Current Trends • 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

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. 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

7. Transit stop on Flight Memorial Pkwy in front of Wendy’s. No bench, shelter, or even a concrete pad at this heavily utilized stop.

9. Montrose - 1970

10. Montrose - 2010 SR 303 looking west

11. 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

12. 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

13. Learning By Doing • 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 • Not being afraid to start small (the key is starting) • Work on fundamentals • Build trust • Inspire hope • Build authentic relationships

14. And now, for our session. . . Jason Segedy Director, AMATS Jsegedy@akronohio.gov www.amatsplanning.org www.switching-gears.org