FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Inbox Reader Mail, School District

Inbox: Reader Mail (Multiple School Delays)

by  • 

A reader wrote me with a concern about a proposed change to delay the time that school might start on some days, to accommodate meetings of school staff. Her email appears below, with my reply in blue thereafter:

Reader: I feel the public should know what the school board is tiring to pass basically under the table. They would want school to start one hour later every Thursday so the teachers can discuss what has been going on. What are parents with smaller children in school supposed to do as many of them have jobs to go to. I feel the public should be aware of this matter as it will greatly affect some people.

Adams: My views, simply described, on our schools can be found in my post entitled, “On Public Education.” Most especially, I am interested in the ways that a spontaneous order — rather than a engineered solution — can advance substantive learning though interesting, creative possibilities.

The author of this proposal does not matter to me; it’s a bad idea in any event.

The proposal to delay school hours is a poor idea for two principal reasons. First, it visits the effects of administrative and internal workings of the district onto parents. That’s a poor practice — internal needs of an organization should not be visited on customers, clients, or patients. What those within an organization want is sometimes different from what a customer wants or needs. That’s a sign of a poorly focused organization, out of alignment with its customers’ needs.

Second — and far more important — is the stress that a delay like this places on working parents. It’s foolish to think that an employer would be indifferent between a full day off, and eight delays of one hour. I may have control over my schedule, but most people don’t, and they fell the stress of an impatient employer who expects workers to arrive on time, each and every time. A day off is easier to arrange than any number of one-hour delays — and this should be intuitive to those who run our district.

I urge the district to abandon this stress-creating proposal.

Holiday

Lincoln’s Birthday

by  • 

It’s Lincoln’s birthday today, and it offers us the moment to consider that singularly great man. The true advocate of freedom respects and admires Lincoln. (See, for example, Timothy Sandefur’s Liberty and Union, Now and Forever.)

Lincoln visited Wisconsin, and delivered a speech before our agricultural society in September of 1859. The speech addressed particular topics of interest to its audience, but ended with an observation that’s both haunting and hopeful:

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! — how consoling in the depths of affliction! “And this, too, shall pass away.”

And yet let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.

Libertarians

The Citizen’s Life

by  • 

Longtime readers know that I am from a libertarian background (affectionately called being ‘in the movement,’ in such families). I am the fortunate inheritor of a proud tradition. Some have asked me my thoughts on free expression in the face of hostility or opposition, and I’ll offer my perspective.

First and foremost, officials in most communities accept criticism as part of their public lives, and are consequently respectful of America’s legal and political tradition of free expression. Most places are fair and well-ordered.

Rarely, a person may live in a place where officials are disrespectful of the American guarantees of free expression. It’s unfortunate if you live in a place where public officials or officers try to intimidate and cow ordinary citizens into silence, either through the use of their office, or with the help of their idle, private supporters.

The worst cases of public officials’ attempts to shame and coerce citizens into silence for exercise of their rights happened in segregation states decades ago — but it still happens in disordered, troubled communities today.

Wherever you live, you have the right as a citizen to live out American promise of free expression. Here are some observations that you may find useful.

Know Your Tradition. No matter how knowledgeable or educated you may be, it’s always a good idea to carry with you books and documents that remind you of your tradition. Take time to read a few words each day, to remind yourself of who you are, and where you live. In my own case, I carry in my briefcase a small Bible, a book of prayer, and a copy of the U.S. Constitution. In my wallet, I carry a small plate inscribed with the Bill of Rights. I have read each fully, far more than once, but I always learn something new in reflection.

Some people may tease you when they first see that you carry these books, but if you take a moment and explain what they mean to you, you’ll be surprised how many people respond positively. In reply, they’ll tell you what matters to them. Listen carefully to what they have to say; that’s the beginning of a great conversation.

(The Bill of Rights edition that I carry is available from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the copy of the Constitution from the Cato Institute. Our law is more than one document, but this is its foundation.)

Know Your Rights. If you are unfortunate enough to live in a troubled, disordered place where police leaders or officials try to coerce citizens into silence, then you must review your specific rights carefully. Remember: if police or officials confront your for exercising your rights, they will be do so at a time of their choosing, their preparation, and your greatest surprise.

They do this because they are too weak or self-absorbed to respond to you on the merits of your lawful, political speech. They will try to shift the ground, to scare you into silence. They are bullies, and all bullies undertake an emotional line of attack.

If you have carefully reflected on your faith and on your political tradition, you will be better composed to face the adversaries of free speech. They may be ferocious, but you will be composed.

Maintain the Harmony of Your Home. Very rarely, a public official will disgrace himself, and violate our political tradition, by going to a citizen’s home, and trying to ‘shame,’ ‘scare,’ or ‘intimidate,’ the citizen into silence. Your political speech is a constitutional right, for which you need never be ashamed. Still, they may try to pressure or scare you.

Ask them to leave — you owe them no audience on your property. They are uninvited; send them away without discussion. They may try to cajole you into a discussion on your own doorstep. Ignore them: They are weak and detestable. If they were respectful of the American political tradition, they would have answered you through political speech. As they show no respect for our political heritage, they deserve only a reminder to leave your property.

Never Respond with Anger. It’s a garden-variety trick of bad policing, for example, to try to provoke a person to anger, and then contend that the person was violent, hostile, etc. They may say all sorts of threatening things to you (about which they will lie), but you must never respond in kind, no matter what they say. This is, of course, another reason to avoid discussions where they try to confront you on your own property: their sheer audacity and arrogance is likely to be infuriating to an ordinary person.

They understand this, and they may use it as a way to provoke you. Never respond to threats; never make threats. Stay calm, always.

Reporters. In big cities (usually) and in well-ordered places (often), reporters are well-trained, and most maintain an independent position from public officials. Sometimes in smaller places, reporters are easily manipulated, captivated, or overly-supportive of public officials. It may be that they are pressured to maintain municipal ad revenue for their small papers, told they cannot have access unless they are positive, are ‘star-struck,’ or just third rate-hacks.

It doesn’t matter — be wary of them. They will help self-interested officials before they will serve their communities.

Recordings and Photographs. Some people ask what they should do if an official confronts a citizen about political speech, and asks to photograph or tape record a conversation with a citizen. Never allow this without a lawyer present — ever. The whole idea is crazy — and an official or officer has nothing good in mind by asking for something like this.

I have been asked if a citizen should carry a camera and dictaphone with him, in case of an encounter with hostile officials. Always remember that officials who confront you for your political speech, on your property or elsewhere, never have your constitutional interests in mind. Avoid talking with them at that time, no matter how insistent they are. They must never set your agenda by ‘ambushing’ you, or insisting they ‘need to talk.’ Their supposed needs are not constitutional rights — never forget this.

Officials who are upset over political speech are in the wrong line of work; let them go see a therapist or a priest. What they ‘need’ you cannot give them, in any event.

Be careful producing either a camera or voice recorder: (1) it may encourage abusive officials to linger, and (2) they may try to take your possessions from you, in the process possibly destroying your property or injuring you. If they’re so angry that they don’t respect your speech rights, then they likely won’t respect your property rights, either.

I carry both a camera (with video capabilities) and a voice recorder, because I like to take photographs of interesting natural scenes, and because I sometimes dictate memos. (Older iPods used to have voice memo capability, but I do not think that the iPod that I have now does.) I have been in all sorts of political debates in my life, and have a knack for staying calm, but I still would not encourage others to do anything except asking officials to leave the property, or walk away.

The True Friends. Most importantly, always remember that you are never alone in our free society. There are many people, of all political views — conservatives, moderates, progressives, and libertarians — who believe in free speech just as you do.

Be happy! It’s fun to live out a citizen’s life.

Ignore people who place social connection or office ahead of principle, and make friends with those who believe in speech rights as you do. You will find that they will be among the best friends anyone could ever have.

City, Libertarians, Public Records 1

The Public Records Law

by  • 

We are fortunate to live in Wisconsin, as our state is committed to good and open government. Part of our law includes the Public Records Law, found at Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31 – 19.39. About a week ago, I contacted our city manager, in reference to the administration of the law.

I have now submitted my first request under the Public Records Law.

I was happy to hear that our most recent Common Council meeting, from Tuesday, February 5th, included a discussion of the Public Records Law. It is a statewide requirement, and more importantly, an expression and commitment to good government. (I will post more about that council meeting separately.)

In every case, there may be the temptation, based on self-interest, to shirk the law, defeat its purposes, or hide and conceal information.

(To see how government may disregard good government, and fall into the temptation of breaking the promises that it makes to its citizens, see my post entitled William Schaefer and Whitewater, in particular, paragraph four.)

We must not allow that to happen in Whitewater.

City, Police

The Upside Down Commission

by  • 

A reader wrote me, and observed that there would be no response to my Police Commission Series, or my follow-up post, because PFC members would be asked to step down if they acted independently. That’s turning the roles and responsibilities of those on the commission, and those under its authority, upside down.

That’s likely true, but if so, it shows how empty and hollow our Police and Fire Commission truly is. Anyone – official or citizen – could ask someone to step down; they have no power to compel it.

Consider what Wisconsin law says about the clear authority of the Police and Fire Commission, from Wis. Stat. § 62.13(3):

CHIEFS. The board shall appoint the chief of police and the chief of the fire department, who shall hold their offices during good behavior, subject to suspension or removal by the board for cause.

That’s an impressive and significant responsibility. It is what the law itself authorizes.

It’s sad and embarrassing that our PFC falls so far short of what I believe Wisconsin expects. Imagine a mature man or woman, who takes on a statutory responsibility, and behaves only compliantly, subserviently, and obediently. Those who hold the office can and should exercise its authority fairly and independently. If that duty is too much for these volunteers to bear, they should ask other citizens to help them to rise to this necessary task.

This is no dissipated, gilded aristocracy; we are a free and robust people.

It was a German philosopher who correctly observed that it is not enough to have the courage of one’s convictions – it is also necessary to have the courage to resist the contrary convictions of others. If we do not have at least as much – so that we cannot be cowed, silenced, or shamed into obedience – then we are not the people most useful to our free society.

A normal, mature man or woman should not fall silent because of the views of public officials (especially insecure or incompetent ones), laughable small-town aristocrats, or any number of self-important people. It is impossible for a serious person to be impressed by ordinary people ‘acting big.’

A person may act as though he were Yertle the Turtle, with all those self-important notions, but he would be a turtle, nonetheless. Mack the Turtle knew the truth of the American promise: “I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.”

There is an odd, but persistent, notion that a few people in this rural town can silence those they dislike through community pressure. A dissipated, enervated, calcified town clique will resort to this approach. It will not, however, succeed. In this regard, it is true that they have not been paying attention to what I have been saying.

I am a true believer in the rights America affords all citizens. I do not doubt that it is difficult to exercise these rights; I will not fail to do so.

There’s much more to write, and so I will continue.

School District

School Board Meeting for January 28th

by  • 

Like most school board meetings, in districts across Wisconsin, budgets, finances, headcounts, and enrollment (all related, of course) occupied most of the meeting. Two topics, though, stood out.

The first was our 4-K program. Whitewater did not originate the program, but few cities in Wisconsin need it more than we do. We are, for so many, a hard-scrabble town, with poverty above the state and local average. The option of earlier programming is more useful to us than to a wealthier community.

Our schooling is closer to a safe harbor, for example, than a community like Williams Bay.

There’s a related point, and it concerns the preoccupation of education as budgeting: all the talk about finances begins to obscure the work of public education as instruction in substance. Different, more creative, and inspiring teaching need not always cost more, or be encumbered with endless talk of budgets, etc.

More time emphasizing, at each and every meeting, the substantive work of eduction, enumerating a few teaching successes, would be a good practice.

Finally, as I mentioned once before, an endowment — although a matter of money — is a good idea, if managed well, and directed toward advancing a core teaching mission.

City

Expand Our Library

by  • 

We have a beautiful public library, and it serves our community well. It is one of the unalloyed good things of Whitewater.

The Irvin L. Young Memorial library offers all the community what knowledge offers: enrichment, adventure, and opportunity. As a young man, I would often walk to the library in the evening, and there a world awaited.

We who are comfortable are made more so in a library — there’s always something new to find or discover.

We have any number of people — seldom discussed, but our neighbors nonetheless — who are in poverty or otherwise challenged. They are neither poor nor challenged in a library: they are there what we are in the library. This is as it should be, and through a library, might always be.

There is a committee working to expand our library so that it might be more helpful and of greater use. I wish them the very best in their effort; their work is the good work of our community.

City, Police

Police & Fire Commission: Reasonable Procedures Update

by  • 

Readers may recall that I posted a series in December on the Whitewater Police and Fire Commission. I set out reasonable suggestions for a sound police policy based in part on a U.S. Justice Department white paper, entitled, “Principles for Promoting Police Integrity”

Below I have reproduced a table that lists reasonable suggestions, and progress made toward better – and normal — practices since my original posts.

No meeting since my series to see if content is now effectively more than merely a shallow, unquestioning, official-led session.
Meeting Notice: Generous notice for meetings No progress – last announcement of meeting had no more than the minimum statutory two days’ notice. Many committees in Whitewater have meeting notice over weeks ahead based on a regular schedule
Meeting Content
Thorough Minutes: Useful, detailed notice of minutes No meeting since my series to see if minutes are now more than merely regurgitated agendas.
Citizen Complaints Process: Complaints Form No change – no available, online complaint form
Citizen Complaints Process: Designated, identified person to handle
complaints 		No change – no single, publicly-designated official
Citizen Complaints Process:
Spanish Language Translation Copies 		No change – no translation tools online.

Some additional remarks –

On the idea of refusing to respond to anonymous or pseudonymous criticism:

There may be some who can credibly and consistently contend that anonymous or pseudonymous criticism does not merit a response – but police leaders would not be among them.

The leadership of the Whitewater Police Department would almost surely respond to an anonymous tip, when they thought it in the community interest. Anonymous tip lines exist almost everywhere – would they not take a tip like that? If someone reported anonymously on a potential crime, would the leadership of our force ignore it? (Here I mean, of course, ignore it on principle, not by error, accident, etc.)

The idea of refusing to respond to anonymity or pseudonymity is not a credible refusal on principle – it’s a refusal based on self-interest.

Let’s be clear though — there is always a response: to change, to stay the same, or to act indirectly. Everyone knows this, and from the first instances of political criticism in America – or anywhere else – these three responses have always been available, and at least one has always been taken.

Whitewater is no exception. Quite the contrary – it’s likely a case type of the third response.

On the idea of using social pressure to silence criticism:

Consider something else that I wrote in December:

There are, however, two groups who argue against truly free speech, for different reasons. The first group comprises those in this town who like the position that they have, and feel that they’re entitled to special consideration. There’s a belief some people have here, that position justifies, excuses, and entitles. They think and act situationally — if they are so-and-so, then they should be trusted, and they are entitled. I reject this view. They are justified, excused, and entitled only through law and morality, not based on an appeal to their status. When the town faction acts, they act first and foremost based on status — they ask and expect trust based on who they are, or what they claim to be.

Their status is unimpressive to me. It should be unimpressive to any resident and citizen: they are just people, neither more nor less. I can be neither smooth-talked nor cajoled into support for what I oppose. I could never be co-opted onto a board, commission, etc. I lack for nothing that those I criticize could give me; the tradition of which I am a grateful inheritor gives me more than they could take. They ask that speech be curbed, but they would never curb their actions in return. In any event, my speech — and yours — is a right, yet their actions are often in disregard of others’ rights. We could never have a fair trade: some would sacrifice what liberty allows in exchange for others’ ceasing a disregard of their fellow residents’ rights. That’s the worst possible bargain.

They stand on local status as entitlement, and that’s why the exercise of speech rights is so disturbing to them. One would think that Whitewater were a small, corrupt island in the middle of nowhere, for all the difference it makes to those who oppose mere speech on the basis of their inflated sense of local self-importance. They don’t have a meritorious position; they have a mistaken view of themselves and of the rights of others in our city.

I meant what I said then, but a few critics perhaps aren’t so sure, so it’s worth repeating. more >>

Development, Free Markets

Planning: Legislating Aesthetics

by  • 

One of the challenges of government planning is how quickly it slips from mere rules to compete, to seeking to engineer a quantitative outcome, to seeking to engineer intangible preferences of aesthetics. So one goes from paperwork to start a business, to the number of business types a community may have, to what colors the storefronts of those businesses can be. That’s where comprehensive planning leads — to any number of concerns about wholly subjective matters like color preferences or supposed ideas about which modes of life have ‘higher quality.’

It’s natural that a person, in his own home, might prefer one color of tapestry over another. It’s an audacious stretch, though, for a public body or city to legislate in favor of some preferences, and not others, in color of a sign, etc.

I can well understand that those who are on a planning board are interested in these matters in their own lives; I’ll stipulate that they’re all likely to be very tasteful in their private choices, too. What I don’t believe is that their public role should include limiting your private choices.

If you want a sign of a certain color on your business, so be it. If you choose well, the community will find your establishment more attractive and enticing; if you choose poorly, customers will shun you. You should be free to make your own choice, and I do not believe that a public body should constrain you.

A group of planners will never know or follow aesthetic trends so well as all the community. Rejecting choices, or requiring a great explanation for them, will slow development and use of new styles, color combinations, etc.

That other communities also restrict choices does not mean that we should also — it need not be that way.

We would do well, I think, if we trouble ourselves less about these matters, and if we discourage others from being so occupied and intrusive about them also.

Libertarians, Uncategorized

Blogging: Once and Future American Tradition

by  • 

Many years ago, Bernard Bailyn wrote a masterwork on the intellectual atmosphere of pre-revolutionary America entitled, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. That book was the winner of both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes. In that work, and in other studies since, Bailyn shows the power and use of pamphlets — often anonymous or pseudonymous — in shaping opinion in favor of independence. Pamphlets played other roles, too: many were small collections of poetry or religious tracts.

I am quite sure that the objects of criticism in these pamphlets dislike them intensely. So be it; they were part of the tradition of free speech on this continent that continues to this day.

It continues to this day in many forms, including blogs like FREE WHITEWATER. On the main page of my blog, I have listed a very fine, pseudonymous blog, the Foothill Cities Blog, that comments on life in towns in California. Another is daTruthSquad, from New Jersey. (Bloggers often find names for their blogs that seem odd and unusual to non-bloggers, but are very much a part of blogger culture.)

In Wisconsin, there are over one hundred — 100 — local political blogs. Many cities in Wisconsin have one such local, independent blog, and some have a few. They are in Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, Waukesha, Fond du Lac, Whitewater — these blogs are springing up all over the place. (I am not referring to the pale imitations of blogs that are affiliated with local newspapers; I am referring to independent commentary, much like that of early American pamphleteers.)

Naturally, local officials despise these blogs, and consider them an affront. How dare someone write these things? Often they try (unsuccessfully, of course) to suppress the independent commentary, or bemoan its pseudonymous nature, or smear those who write these blogs.

America has returned to her pamphleteering tradition, in a new, electronic form. This form will not go away — it will surely evolve, and grow more robust.

I am sure that this makes life less convenient for public officials who formerly relied on a few complaint local newspapers and their small circle of stodgy, uncreative, reactionary supporters. Those few want their old, easy world back again.

It’s not coming back.

One last point: the only line of advance is forward, by embracing the full and rich constitutional tradition of our beautiful country. I am a small publisher of, from, and for America and what it offers. I am just a common person, but many great people have committed themselves to free commentary undeterred by criticism, personal attacks, etc., etc. Great libertarian heroes, for example, Paine and Mencken, were attacked in all manner of ways. (I am religious where Paine was lukewarm, and Mencken cold, but they are no less admirable as models of free expression.) They believed in what they were doing, kept doing it, and didn’t care what critics thought.

They grew more vigorous over time, not less so. Those who do this sort of thing enjoy it, and prefer the heat of the kitchen. Publishing like this is a romance with both the American and American libertarian ways of life.

Anyone can embrace this way of life, and in doing so, become confirmed in the effort, and better for it. Through blogging, one becomes more American, by drawing closer to the heritage of free expression — attributed, pseudonymous, or anonymous, that America guarantees to all.

Some may dislike these rights, but those who oppose them truly oppose the heritage of the country they profess to love.

City, Police

No Enforced Settlement in the Lawsuit Against Larry Meyer

by  • 

On January 22nd, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Callahan, in a thorough, thirteen-page decision and order, denied federal defendant, and former Whitewater investigator, Larry Meyer’s motion to enforce settlement in this the lawsuit against him.

The order including setting a scheduling conference between the parties for February 8th, at 10:00 a.m., to “discuss with the parties the further processing of this case to final resolution.”

City, Development, Free Markets

Planning: On a Moratorium

by  • 

I am opposed to a moratorium on first floor residential housing in our downtown, and that would include a moratorium of any length. I think it’s clear, though, if one considers the arguments in favor of a moratorium, that different advocates have had different goals in mind. Some want a moratorium to give time to decide what policy to advocate for the downtown. This is something like ‘planning to decide,’ if not ‘planning to compete.’

I don’t think that an open market for all this space, for any legal use, is what many here have in mind. It’s what I have in mind.

A second group favored, and I think some might still favor, a longer moratorium not to draft a plan, but to engineer a result. They want some businesses in, some businesses excluded from competition, to produce the sort of downtown they think would be better for the community.

At the Planning Commission meeting in early January, I think that it’s clear that many advocates of a moratorium wanted the moratorium to engineer a result. That’s one of the reasons that advocates of a moratorium in that meeting wanted a long moratorium. If engineering an outcome, and excluding some uses and attracting others, is what advocates of a moratorium want, it will take a long time. If that sort of managed, determined goal is what advocates want, it will take years. It makes sense, based on their goal, for them to ask for a multi-year moratorium.

In fact, I think it will take them longer than two years — it will prove to be a never-ending processes of seeking, finding, losing, and seeking again the mix that they want. A single recession will make the two year moratorium seem far too short for those who want a given outcome, and they will need more time to compensate for unforeseen circumstances. They’ll have a current level of vacancies to fill, new or unexpected vacancies, and the goal to find only their preferred businesses, and not others, under those circumstances.

That’s not two years — that’s ongoing. Two years might as easily be twenty.

Current vacancies, and the difficulty filling them, suggests that engineering a result in the downtown will be harder, not easier.

The second group advocates a moratorium only to propose guidelines. (I think that these guidelines will likely turn out to be a long moratorium, by the way.) Still, it’s a different stated justification for a moratorium.

I would neither ban some uses, nor prevent a private group from trying to attract others. What I oppose is a private group seeking public prohibition to make its recruiting efforts easier. The private group speaks for many, but not all; I would not favor them through a modified ordinance, public moratorium, etc. They can recruit as they do now, and I would not alter the existing conditional use policy by imposing a categorical moratorium.

Their preferred, favored businesses may not be arriving as they’d like, but I would not alter the ordinances of this city to make their preferences easier by excluding other commercial uses through a moratorium.

City, Development, Free Markets

Planning: Walkable Urbanity

by  • 

Here’s a post on ‘walkable urbanity,’ or ‘walkable urbanism,’ Christopher Leinberger’s term for those characteristics that set successful downtowns apart from unsuccessful ones, or from suburbs, etc. During the Planning Commission meeting in November, when I heard the term raised, I was surprised that it was used in connection with Whitewater. I briefly mentioned the concept briefly when I wrote that

By the way, when Brodnicki mentions the term ‘walkable urbanity,’ she’s referring to a term that urban planner Christopher Leinberger coined in “Turning Around Downtown: Twelve Steps to Revitalization.” His paper’s available from Brookings.

What neither Brodnicki nor Bowen demonstrated is how the proposed project [specific first floor residential housing] would prevent or appreciably inhibit walkable urbanity. If they want to contend persuasively that walkable urbanity is threatened, they owe it to others to show how that would measurably happen in this case. Otherwise, all they offer is unquantifiable, measureless speculation, wrapped in a clever term. That’s not what Leinberger had in mind.

I left aside the question of whether the walkable urbanism that Leinberger mentions in his 2005 paper, and elsewhere since, is really for a place of our size and scope. I think that the answer is ‘no,’ and that its application to our circumstances conflates the needs of a metropolitan downtown with those of a small rural town.

I will make three quick points.

Leinberger on Walkable Urbanity. Leinberger’s famous for use of the term as part of a downtown revitalization plans. His 2005 paper, “Turning Around Downtown: Twelve Steps to Revitalization” is well-known and regarded. Considering his paper, and use of the term, I think it’s clear that he has large cities — nothing like ours — in mind. I thought that then, but I didn’t explain the point. (Since then, someone wrote and chided me that my criticism in the area of development needed a fuller explanation. I agree.)

The term itself implies a large urban area — it is, after all, walkable urbanity. Far more significant, all of the examples that Leinberger cites in his paper are large municipalities. He cites just over a dozen cities, and they are all far larger than we are: Manhattan, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Atlanta, Baltimore, Portland, Chattanooga, Denver, San Diego, Santa Fe. Phoenix , and Kansas City. From this list, even the closest city in size to us is over five times our size (Santa Fe), and most are between ten and one-hundred times as large as Whitewater. The smallest of these cities (Santa Fe) has a population of seventy-two thousand, the largest (Manhattan) over 1.5 million.

There are no examples anywhere of small towns, anything like ours.

Although Leinberger contends that his suggested principles might work anywhere, he cites no town like ours. He does, candidly, offer many criteria that cut against application of walkable urbanity to an area (and this could easily include an area so small as ours):

While any approach must be customized based on unique physical conditions, institutional assets, consumer demand, history and civic intent, the paper lays out the fundamentals of a downtown turnaround plan…

That’s a lot of qualification, and the absence of any town of our size in the paper is telling.

Size and Scale for our Downtown. I thought in November that if some felt that a first floor apartment here or there was too much, she should show why — why would one or two, etc. be too much to bear? But I would have been skeptical even if Leinberger’s paper did not so evidently apply to another size and scope.

However one wants to describe the distances for walkable urbanism — fifteen hundred, twelve hundred, one thousand feet, etc. — are simply, I think, ill-suited and too doctrinaire for our small town. The concept seems more like an ideological view that ignores the small size and challenges that our entire city faces. Ou entire downtown is smaller than even a section of the downtowns that Leinberger discusses.

Inhibitions, lack of attractions, etc. on how far a downtown person might walk apply far less when the entire downtown requires transit in a fraction of the time that an urban downtown would require. People will simply not find scale and size as daunting here as they would in the thirteen cities that Leinberger cites.

The principles of walkable urbanity, like ideas about pedestrian malls or sports arenas (also ideas that Leinberger considers elsewhere), are not concerns of our own small town.

Whitewater is smaller, and our obstacles different from those of the Leinberger’s large cities.

Jacobs. Finally, a few remarks about Jane Jacobs, from whom I think that Leinberger has occasionally, and subtly, borrowed. She, too, discusses the same effect of going from one attractive point to another, without a dogmatic estimate of distance. The second chapter of her Death and Life of Great American Cities, entitled, “The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety” is alone better than anything one will find from Leinberger.

Jacobs, unlike Leinberger, is candid about the limits of her work; she makes plain that she’s talking about cities, not towns. She notes that

This task [sidewalk safety through diverse kinds of tenant] is totally unlike any service that sidewalks and streets in little;e towns or true suburbs are called upon to do. Great cities are not like towns, only larger. They are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways…

Jacobs didn’t get everything right — she harshly criticized an Adam Smith she understood only imperfectly — but she did well-understand spontaneity. The idea of a spontaneous order, over municipal planning, pours soothingly from her pages. It’s why libertarians generally find her work supportive. Something else pours forth, too: an honest assessment that some ideas apply to cities, and not small towns. Leinberger would have done well to be so clear.

Our city is too small to have a downtown that should be subject to standards suitable — if they are at all — to far larger places. There’s an (unwelcome, I think) orthodoxy, a rigidity, in application of Leinberger’s ideas to our place of far smaller size and scope.