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Guest Opinion | Marsha Rood: If You Build It, They Will Walk

Published on Tuesday, May 25, 2021 | 5:17 am
 

Pasadenans have found a renewed passion for walking and being outdoors. COVID-19 lockdowns have had a lot to do with it. Restaurants and retail have had to be creative to survive. Ironically, the pandemic may have given us a glimpse into the “possible” – what it could look like to prioritize people over cars. In addition to recreation, walking is a serious way to get around. The pedestrian needs more attention if we are to address density, traffic, and the need for parking, especially in its commercial core and adjacent neighborhoods. If we were to redesign our transportation networks with the pedestrian in mind, we can create a “new normal” where people spend less time in their cars. 

The epicenter for housing density in Pasadena is the Central District – the area bounded by Corson Street, South Lake Avenue, California Street and Pasadena Avenue. City policy over the past 30 years has been to target urban mixed-use/multi-family housing density to the Central District away from single-family neighborhoods – and it is working. Many large mixed-use, multi-story developments with thousands of housing units have been built in the Central District over the past 25 years. This trend is continuing. So far this year, 1,081 housing units are under construction with 1,717 in the pipeline or permitted, for a total of 2,798, exactly twice as many as the other seven Specific Plan areas combined. As a result,  in the next two years the residential population of the Central District is expected to grow to upwards of 28,000 residents. In spite of this increasing residential concentration, as one council member put it at a recent City Council meeting, “The Central District is not a neighborhood; it is a commercial district.”  This was a surprise to many of the thousands of us who live here.   

This concentration of commercial uses, public services and amenities combined with thousands of residents in the Central District offers the rare opportunity to create a significantly more walkable community in and around the downtown. The City has targeted housing growth to the Central District,  but pedestrian improvements, including green space, have not kept up. In order to fulfill its long-term vision, the City should focus on creating pedestrian networks in the Central District “….where people can circulate without cars.” This has been a long-term goal of the city and one of the General Plan’s Guiding Principles for nearly 30 years. 

Do people walk in the Central District? In communities with pedestrian-friendly compact environments, something that local governments can foster, California’s Local Government Commission found that people are four times more likely to walk to their destinations than to drive.  One of the primary reasons for this, according to the Commission’s findings, is that 75% of vehicle trips in California are less than one mile,  walking distance for most people. Importantly, the Commission found that in more compact areas with many uses, “…people who live within walking distance are more likely to support near-by stores and create better neighborhood connections.” Good access comes from having a diversity of uses and services intermingled within your own neighborhood, so you don’t have to go across town — or outside of town — to get to what you want. The average pedestrian speed of three mph is the perfect speed for a “15-minute” city. 

To better accomplish improved pedestrian access, Pasadena needs to create effective, strong pedestrian connections from adjacent downtown neighborhoods to major commercial areas along Colorado Boulevard and South Lake Avenue.  This includes slowing traffic and making pedestrian crossings safer on major streets such as Union, Green, Cordova, Del Mar and California. 

It is not for lack of knowledge about how to improve the Central District for walking. Witness the City’s nationally and internationally recognized revitalization efforts in Old Pasadena where pedestrians are the main way to get around. It was one of the City’s top priorities and not a lot of expensive engineering and improvements were needed to do it.  Although the “pedestrian tool kit” is well-known, there is no staff in the City’s Department of Transportation, the Department of Public Works and/or the Economic Development Division charged with improving pedestrian networks – the synergistic relationships among planning, transportation and economic development are missing. Moreover, traffic engineers see pedestrian improvements from the lens of the car. If seen from the lens of the pedestrian, successful walkability is not an ad hoc set of responses to car/pedestrian injury and kill rates at intersections; rather, it is implementing pedestrian improvements, including green space, as part of integrated pedestrian networks. It is all about linkages and connections.

The City continues to heavily invest in and build roadway improvements in  Pasadena’s suburban neighborhoods. Over the past 20 years, only minimal amounts have been spent in the Central District for pedestrian access.  For the most part, traffic mitigation and transportation improvement fees, which includes funding for pedestrian and bicycles,  come from new development in the Central District.  However, almost all of these fees are  spent outside of the Central District for traffic mitigation. In that way, these fees are of a general tax than a fee for mitigating impacts from nearby development. The City’s 2021 list of transportation improvements funded by nearly $127,500,000 in total fees shows that 98.3% is designated for traffic mitigation, 1.4% for ADA ramp improvements, and only 0.38% for pedestrian improvements in the Central District.  Why does this matter? Installing pedestrian-friendly walkways is critical for existing or new residents coming to Pasadena’s urban core to reduce the need for a car and for more parking.

Notwithstanding the significant increase in the number of housing units in the Central District and its existing and growing population, no one City Council member represents the interests of its residents.  City Council leadership is dispersed among four Council Districts and is expected to remain so for another ten years. The recently appointed Redistricting Task Force includes only one member from the Central District. This despite the fact that Mayor Gordo said the Task Force “…will ensure all voices are at the table on a matter as important as the redrawing of Council District lines.”  Further evidence is that there are no representatives from the Central District to the recently established seventeen-member Mayor’s Housing Task Force.  The Central District with upwards of 20% of Pasadena’s population and growing has a larger population than the average council district.  But clearly does not have a seat at the table.  Continuing to divide the Central District into four pieces is a form of gerrymandering and, in fact, threatens the success of Pasadena’s unique “sense of place”, a General Plan goal. Council members focus on the Central District when it comes to private development projects but less on the public spaces between the buildings needed to make the explosive housing growth work. 

Will Pasadena be a city by intention or by default? Many times, the solution lies in how we define the problem.  As San Diego urban designer Michael Burton put it, “We must not build housing; we must build communities.”  Building a walkable community is all about vision and political will. 

Marsha V. Rood, FAICP; Former Development Administrator, City of Pasadena; Vice President, Downtown Pasadena Neighborhood Association 

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One thought on “Guest Opinion | Marsha Rood: If You Build It, They Will Walk

  • I live in the Playhouse District of Pasadena and I do love it here. However, putting up more and more condos/apartments on every single corner that’s available, is making traffic more and more unbearable. I get it, there’s revenue to be made, but it’s not in the community’s best interest to overbuild. I see new condo/apartment buildings going up on a daily basis. While it was nice at first, traffic has now become a nightmare, which doesn’t make it as much fun to live here anymore. I love Pasadena, but I do wish they would take into consideration that enough is enough, when it comes to all these new condo/apartment buildings.

 

 

 

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