Always looking for Case Studies for the future options for BP.

via [ Post Trib ] “Westville Oil Refinery Will Be Cleaned” By Gitte Laasby

WESTVILLE — After more than two decades, one of the nation’s most polluted sites — the former Cam-Or waste oil refinery in Westville — will finally be completely cleaned up around 2013.

It will also mean fewer public health risks from exposure to lead and other dangerous pollutants, and improve the environment, officials said.

The companies were Cam-Or customers and helped generate the waste oil at the now-vacant 15-acre site north of Indiana 2 near U.S. 421.

The site is bordered by private homes to the east and located within the West-Tech Redevelopment Area.

Originally owned by Westville Oil, the facility operated as a refinery for reprocessing waste oil starting in 1934.

From the 1950s to 1978, waste oil discarded at the facility was stored in 11 unlined lagoons, which allowed contaminants to leach into soil, groundwater and Crumpacker Ditch.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted a cleanup in 1987, treating 9.5 million gallons of contaminated water and removing about 112 drums. The agency later determined more remediation was necessary.

“The pollution at this industrial site occurred over several decades and the clean-up of contaminated soil and groundwater is expected to take years, so it was a complicated process to hammer out a legal agreement to fully fund the remediation of the site,” said Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller in a statement.

“This agreement helps resolve a lingering environmental impediment to future economic development and hopefully jobs for the LaPorte and Porter county areas.”

Groundwater along a one-mile plume extending from the site is contaminated with a solvent, benzene and other pollutants. Soil at the site is contaminated with the carcinogen benzene and heavy metals, such as lead. In June 2008, EPA decided lead-contaminated soil will be excavated and safely consolidated on-site, and contaminated groundwater will be extracted and treated.

According to the EPA, low levels of contamination have been detected in several of the private wells downgradient of the site. Read more…

Thomas Case Studies, Environment

[ SUPERFUND365 ]

Each day for a year, starting on September 1, 2007, Superfund365 visited one toxic site in the Superfund program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We began the journey in the New York City area and worked our way across the country, ending the year in Hawaii.

Today the archive consists of 365 visualizations of some of the worst toxic sites in the U.S., roughly a quarter of the total number on the Superfund’s National Priorities List (NPL).

Thomas Case Studies, Environment, What I am Looking at

via [ OurWorld 2.0 ] “Mapping critical politics: a land use expert talks tar sands” By Max Ritts

The late geographer Bernard Nietschmann once observed that “more indigenous territory has been claimed by maps than by guns”. Whether or not you agree that more can be taken back with maps, it is hard to overestimate the role of representations in the shaping of collective understandings and modes of possible intervention in political struggle.

Land use maps can have a number of applications. In many countries, they are prepared by government agencies, for a variety of reasons, or by individual groups and organizations. Often, land use maps are made publicly available for the benefit of those interested in land use trends. These maps can also become important in zoning and property disputes. Read more…

Thomas BP / TAR SANDS, Case Studies, Tar Sands, Ways of Seeing

[ Form Follows Tax Laws ] By Candy Chang.

Shotgun houses are so damn cute I want to pet them. It’s all thanks to New Orleans’ tax laws and people trying to get Best Value. The government taxed property based on lot frontage; so people made their houses as narrow as possible. The government taxed two-story houses more; so people added second floors to the rear, where it didn’t count. The government taxed houses based on the number of rooms; so people didn’t make closets or hallways, which counted as rooms.

And then there is this amazing example of plantation plots along the Mississippi river from Dave Tufte.

“The frontage tax, in turn, had its origins in the plantation and river transport system of colonial Louisiana… Each plantation had a small waterfront – to ship out sugar or whatever, and deliver supplies – and a very deep farm. This was so that every owner could have access to cheap transportation. Since operating the plantation on cleared land behind the levee was problematic, it didn’t make much sense to tax its value. Instead, the frontage could be taxed since it was representative of the number and size of ships that could dock for transsshipment.” – Dave

Thomas Case Studies, Planning Mishaps, Urbanism

Land use patterns in fence-line industrial communities are perfect examples of brand territory. The brand is a protected collector of profit. Infringe on potential future profits by dreaming of community focused development on adjacent properties, and industry will be quick to block development. For doing so could cap allowable toxic releases at lower levels.

However, the inverse practice of locating industries adjacent to incompatible community focused uses does not apply. That would require an interested party with deep pockets and broad influence.

Thomas Case Studies, Economics

Last weekend I visited Vinton County to help my brother in-law run for county commissioner. The trip gave me a little education into this region of the country. - Phone Photos

Information on Vinton County via [ Wikipedia ]

Thomas Case Studies, What I am Looking at

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) has begun to map out housing costs by factoring in transportation. We are not far from indexing other costs associated the overhead that comes with choosing a community in the purchase of a home (property or sales tax, produce, local services, health care, education, industrial externalities - pollution, etc). It is only a matter of time that a rating system based on such indexes becomes widely adopted.

This doesn’t bode well for regions that continue developing along the last centuries model of outer suburban development. At some time a comprehensive index will be developed to help home buyers make informed decision. And once this occurs it will be much easier to make regional comparisons. Perhaps regional leaders ought to ready their communities for this new playing field on which to compete.

According to the H+T Affordability Index Lake and Porter counties in Indiana (where I call home) don’t measure-up so well.

In the lefthand map above, the yellow areas show where housing is less than 30 percent of average income and the blue areas show where it’s more than 30 percent. On the righthand side, the yellow areas show where housing costs plus transportation costs are less than 45 percent and the blue areas show where that combined measure is more than 45 percent. It’s an indirect comparison, but as you can see, a lot of places look cheap when you just look at housing (on the left), and that picture changes when you factor in transportation.

To make matters worse if you factor in the additional costs of living in Lake County, it simply doesn’t make sense for a home buyer to burden themselves with such overwhelming costs.

Additionally, how would Lake County measure-up if we also factored in costs associated with industrial pollution?

• Lake county’s air-shed ranks 9th of 3140 counties as the most polluted.
• Lake Counties waterways are also some of the most polluted in the country.

What if this index was combined into an Energy Performance Scorecard (EPS) for home buyers to make a more accurate assessment of the value of a potential purchase? Shouldn’t all costs associated with the purchase of a home be made available to the buyer as part of disclosure.

Thomas Case Studies, Economics, Energy, Environment, Information Graphics

Aaron Renn of the Urbanophile has a valuable series of posts on government consolidation. This is a timely discussion as municipal leaders in Northwest Indiana consider options for cutting costs.

… as a discussion of some of the pros and cons of “big box” vs. “small box” government.

• Replay: An Examination of City-County Consolidation

This piece will serve as a warm-up to a forthcoming series on the downsides of the consolidation of US city and county governments

• Downsides of Consolidation #1: Neighborhood Redevelopment

• Downsides of Consolidation #2 – Cost Increases, Dilution of Urban Interests, Deferred Problems

Thomas Case Studies

Marktown - East Chicago Indiana

[ Marktown Historic District ]

As proposed, the federal budget would slash funding for National Heritage Areas by 50% and completely eliminate two key preservation programs – Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America. The reality is this funding matters now more than ever, and not just because these programs protect and preserve our national heritage.

Saving America’s Treasures
.

Thomas Case Studies

via [ The National Academies Press ] “Understanding Climate’s Influence on Human Evolution”

I have always been fascinated by a spatial understanding of “who we are” and “what we know.” In my mind there is an innately spatial component to both “Climate” and “Evolution”

[ Correlation Between Genetic and Geographic Structure in Europe ]

Description:

The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The geological record suggests that some of these evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the intriguing possibility that key junctures in human evolution and behavioral development may have been affected or controlled by the environmental characteristics of the areas where hominins evolved. However, with both a sparse hominin fossil record and an incomplete understanding of past climates, the particular effect of the environment on hominin evolution remains speculative. This presents an opportunity for exciting and fundamental scientific research to improve our understanding of how climate may have helped to shape our species, and thereby to shed light on the evolutionary forces that made us distinctively human

Thomas Case Studies, The Biodiversity I Live, What I am Looking at

In the Production of Space

via [ Next Nature ] “Correlation Between Genetic and Geographic Structure in Europe”

The map on the right is a geo-political map based on capitals as landmarked locators. The map on the left shows the genetic relationship between these 23 populations. The area assigned to each population represents the amount of genetic variation in it.

A team of scientists tested almost 2,500 people to compile a geospatial genetic map. The map was published in the August 2008 issue of the scientific journal Current Biology in the article Correlation between Genetic and Geographic Structure.

Thomas Case Studies, What I am Looking at

via [ Planetizen ]

For possibly the first time, the EPA has issued a report the directly links climate change mitigation with local land use strategies, says Patty Salkin.

The EPA’s new report is called “An Assessment of Decision-Making Processes: The Feasibility of Incorporating Climate Change Information into Land Protection Planning.

“Says Prof. Salkin, “Although this report focuses only on land preservation programs, it may signal the beginning of some thoughtful and needed discussions in (the) area of federalism and climate change.”

Abstract via [ Law of the land ]

Land protection decisions are long-term, hard to reverse, and resource intensive.  Therefore these decisions are important to consider in the context of climate change, because climate change may directly affect the services intended for protection and because parcel selection can exacerbate or ameliorate certain impacts. This research examined the decision-making processes of selected programs that protect land to assess the feasibility of incorporating climate-change impacts into the evaluation of land protection programs. The research focused on a sample of the LandVote database, which documents land protection ballot initiatives that sought to protect wildlife and watersheds. Of this sample, we reviewed the decision-making frameworks of 19 programs. Most programs use quantitative evaluation criteria and a bottom-up process for selecting parcels. Almost all programs have one or more advisory committees. The  analysis revealed that strategies that might be useful for incorporating climate change into decision making include new decision-support tools for advisory committees, promulgation of different land protection models, and educational outreach for elected officials. As jurisdictions learn more about possible climate change impacts, certain land protection strategies may become more desirable and feasible as part of a portfolio of adaptation strategies that ameliorate impacts on watersheds and wildlife.

Full Report

Thomas Case Studies, The Land I Use, Urbanism

1984 to the Present

The only time I was in Las Vegas was in 1986. As urban growth expands Lake Meade lowers.

Thomas Case Studies, Planning Mishaps

via [ The Urbanophile ]

I take a look at the cities which are often touted as progressive urban role models, places like Portland, Denver, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Austin, and find that one thing that unites these cities is their lack of African Americans. This is in marked contrast to most cities of the Midwest and South. The following chart illustrates:

The Urbanophile: The White City.

Thomas Case Studies, Urbanism

via [ Pruned ]

Prune has a remarkable three part series focusing on the spaces underneath transportation infrastructure. Very much worth the look.

Under Spaces 1

Under Spaces 2

Under Spaces 3

Thomas Case Studies, Infrastructure

via [ Google Books ]

This was an “of course” moment when I realized the Burnham Plan could be found online at Google Books. And yeah, it’s there. Enjoy!

Thomas Case Studies, Chicago

In a previous post To Grandma’s House We Go I tried to show in a simple real life example the importance of community focused planning, and how incompatible the present land use patterns in East Chicago are for the activities of children. I also did a post on Portages catalytic project - a subarea plan of the Marquette Plan. In this post I tried to show how Portage benefits from implementing their catalytic project, with a strategy very similar to East Chicago - little exposure to the lake but utilizing their riverfront to realize greater opportunities. With the Comprehensive Plan, East Chicago threw away the Marquette Plan’s catalytic project.

There is no greater canvas than what is writ on the land. There is no better way to understand who we are than how we allocate resources and provide for ourselves - that is what comprehensive planning is about.

<Background>
In 2006, as president of Redevelopment, I was asked to participate in the Mayor’s weekly economic development meetings. This was something I had been requesting. These meetings included representatives from the major industries in the City, including BP, ArcelorMittal, Kemira, NIPSCO (Northern Indiana Public Service Company, electric utility),  and the Northwest Indiana Forum (a regional economic development corp), and a few department heads. I was tapped to work on a sub committee to inventory and characterize underutilized parcels and prepare market them. The committee was headed up by Eric Pritcher (a NIPSCO representative), and included John Artist (E.C. Director of Redevelopment), Jimmy Ventura (E.C. Director of Economic Development), Kay Nelson (Environmental Director at the Forum), and Diane Thalmann (Director of Economic Development NIPSCO). When I walked into my first meeting Kay Nelson was going through the inventory of properties and discussing land use. I asked one question “who is determining land use?” Kay responded “they were.” I then asked if this ought to go through a comprehensive planning process.

Well I continued to advocate for a comprehensive plan, suggesting that the kinds of initiatives the city had planned would require the authority of a comprehensive plan. The city tried it their way until they realized they were required to bring their plans to the residents.

Eventually the Mayor appointed me to chair a staring committee to conduct a comprehensive plan for the city. In this role I managed a process of consensus building in defining goals and objectives, determine how to finance the process, authoring an RFQ (request for qualifications) for a planning entity, manage the interview process, and final selection. However, once the actual planning process began I was relieved of my duties and the City engaged the planners (in this case the Lakota group) themselves, and I became just another homeowner with a private interest in the community.
</Background>

The following are the comments I submitted in response to the city’s proposed concepts. I’ve included three maps of existing land use, proposed land use, and my comments on land use adjacent to our waterways. I could have submitted many more comments, but I felt it most important to focus on a Catalytic framework for the community. In essence - a first order of business for properties that are held in common - our waterfronts.

East Chicago 2007 Comprehensive Plan

My Comments

Comments to Proposed Scenarios:

My comments focus on the beneficial potential of our waterway and Lakefront to meet the demographic and economic needs of the coming generations. I strongly believe that development must occur in an environmentally responsible and sustainable manner. This does not discount industry. It is a part of our foreseeable future, but after 30 years of an industrial depression industry cannot be our ONLY future. Re-industrialization alone, will continue our present state of depression. We must provide the quality of life our educated children demand when they choose a community to live and raise their children.

1) Lakefront Development: I support plans that would reposition these lands as public lands with public access, not private condos and a yacht club.

2) Trail System: Create a trail system throughout our waterways, connecting our neighborhoods from the south to the north and to the Lakefront. This is an opportunity to use a natural trail system to bridge gaps with in the community and re-connect our isolated neighborhoods. Unfortunately, each concept presented proposes to add additional industrial uses between the community and natural areas, continuing to repeat bad practices of cutting neighborhoods off from each other and community focused assets - nature.

3) Mittal Property: This is possibly the most significant piece of property in East Chicago. How we determine its future use will determine the possibilities for the next generations to come. This land is presently a decommissioned Mittal property that is adjacent to future consolidated plans of the plant. It has water access on the canal and is adjacent to the core of North Harbor. This property is also in walking distance to the Lakefront.

Besides Concept C of the “Dickey Road Industrial Area” there is no other community focus redevelopment of these industrial lands that can serve as a buffer between such absolutely incompatible uses (Heavy Industry / Residential). This is one reuse scenario vs. two reindustrialization scenarios. Concept C will need to be flexible if it is to be seriously considered, and I believe strongly that this concept ought to serve as the foundation for land reuse discussions and not an outlier in those discussions. If this recreation scenario is not acceptable then we ought to consider other less intense uses, such as passive green space. We can also consider a land trusts. Openlands has a very good relationship with Mittal and would be interested in aiding these discussions.

4) Mittal’s Electric Furnace: I suspect Mittal has requested that we leave this parcel out of any discussions. I understand Mittal has been planning to decommission its present use in the near future. However, it will be important to any future discussions on this side of the canal

5) Turning Basin: It is important not to accept a short-sided plan that only re-industrializes the underutilized land. This parcel is well positioned to serve as a waterway focus development that is more compatible with nearby neighborhoods and perhaps serve as an access point for the community. It could easily serve as an anchor and catalytic project for future development along the waterways. I can imagine a dry dock area. I have talked to the land owner and he is open to the idea.

6) Property along North sea-wall of the Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal: This is a great opportunity to assemble these near-shore properties for natural areas and trails. Industry can continue to operate as they have. U.S. Gypsum has already developed plans, in partnership with Daniel Goldfarb of the Wildlife Habitat Council, to do natural plantings and trails. Daniel has also worked with Conoco Phillips and Citgo to develop similar plans on their properties in East Chicago.

7) CDF: We need to work quickly with the U.S.A.C.E. to develop greenery along the southern and eastern edges of the property. The south because it is across the canal from proposed recreation, and the east because it sits at a major gateway to the city.

8) Natural Area: This is a natural wetland that has never been developed. While there are no remaining natural assets with public access within the city, Industrializing this land today does not make any sense. There is an opportunity to open this land to a trail system and extend the green space north to Columbus drive.

9) Area bordered by the Canal to its east, Railroad avenue to the west, Columbus Drive to the North, and the CSX Line to the south: Plans are underway to clean the southern branch of the Grand Calumet River. This opens opportunities to create community focus development along its banks and extend the neighborhood to the east side of Railroad avenue. There is enough acreage for about 400 homes and green space. This kind of development would justify cost associated with preparing these lands for new uses. I suggest developing a program to relocate businesses to the planned industrial park north of the canal.

10) TOD: This is a great opportunity to leverage a strategy for the airport for the benefit of East Chicago. By extending the South Shore to the Airport down the CSX line, just north of Chicago Avenue, the airport gets much needed access to the Chicago business travel market, and East Chicago gets a TOD opportunity near its downtown (Indianapolis and Chicago ave). The CSX traffic could be rerouted south to the 9^th expansion bridge. This would bolster East Chicago’s retail district and link our municipal functions more directly with the Chicago market. It would also give the housing starts identified in #9 a strong reason for attracting young professionals and create a walkable community once again around our downtown district.

11) Green Space along southern Fork in the Canal: 90% of the proposed green space in this Plan is DNR property along the Grand Calumet River. Each Alternate Scenario in this Comprehensive Plan proposes to re-industrialize the land between our neighborhoods and these natural areas. These once again repeat bad past practice by cutting off neighborhoods from each and community focused assets. If anything we ought to use natural areas to buffer neighborhoods for industry. Not the inverse which is what is proposed. To be consistent with the DNR natural areas I suggest creating a strategy to extend these areas to our neighborhoods starting with this parcel.

12) Industrial Property along Cline: This property is within a half mile of the East Calumet neighborhood. It is inappropriate for heavy industrial use. Let’s again stop repeating past mistakes. I suggest light industrial uses servicing the airport. We also need to provide significant buffers between the neighborhood and its industrial neighbors.

13) Alternate Flight Pattern from the Gary Airport: I have a petition with more than 200 signatures asking for the flight pattern to be diverted away from Guadeloupe Circle, Prairie Park and Washington Park neighborhoods. These neighborhoods represent the only sustaining middle class neighborhoods in East Chicago. These neighborhoods include two elementary schools, a middle school and a hospital. The noise pollution in these neighborhoods due to the present flight pattern consistently rises above 90 decibels. Absolutely unacceptable.

14) Brownfield Strategy: Lastly this plan lacks any brownfield redevelopment framework necessary to diversify landuses and our local economy. With 40% of our industrial land out of productive use East Chicago is in serious need of a brownfield redevelopment framework. Without it East Chicago can not avail themselves of Federal Brownfield redevelopment funds to inventory, characterize, remediate these properties so as to put them into new uses. All of which the USEPA has already promised to fund for this City. To neglect it is criminal.

General Thoughts

Existing Conditions:

1) ~80% of E.C. is zoned Heavy Industry, with about 40% of our industrial lands are out-of-use. With advances in technology and the U.S. economy shifting to a service oriented economy, we have endured 30 years of a industrial depression. Re-industrialization is what E.C. has always done. Today, East Chicago is no longer the center for Jobs it ones was. In fact, the city is now the largest single employer of East Chicagoans, employing 1,300 people (these are considered service jobs). This does not including School City, the Library and the other taxing districts. The Comprehensive Plan does nothing to reposition the use of these most impaired lands to meet the needs of a contemporary American community / economy.

2) Incompatible uses: During the settlement of East Chicago, housing and industry went hand in hand. It was during this era that Sunnyside, Washington Park and Marktown were developed. Each was developed with generous natural buffers between them and industry. A 100 years of industrialization has brought continued encroachment of industry on these neighborhoods, cutting them off from there surroundings, and essentially creating the condition for blight. This has resulted in homeowners losing the wealth creation potential necessary for a sustainable community and supporting retail businesses in the downtown district. Today this is unacceptable and this plan does nothing to mitigate against these impacts, but does quite the contrary and creates the conditions for more stress on homeowners. Our community is a pattern of heavy industry adjacent to neighborhoods (such as North Harbor and Mittal, East Calumet and Citgo). In some cases industry surrounds the neighborhood (such as Marktown, and New Addition). The Comprehensive Plan does nothing to reconnect isolated neighborhoods, buffer them better from industry, or reclaim any of the abandoned industrial properties as a community focused asset.

3) Question: How many communities in America have Oil Refineries (the size of BP - the Largest inland refinery) and Steel Mills (Mittal)? And how many of them are in small densely populated urban communities? I will go out on a limb to suggest that there are none besides East Chicago. Lake County ranks as the seventh most toxic county in the nation (out of 3140 counties), with 50.3 million pounds of chemicals released in 2005 (based on TRI data), or 20 percent of the state’s total output. These discharges are attributed to three industries located in or around East Chicago (BP, Mittal, and U.S. Steel). For the sake of the residents don’t you think there is too much industry, and pollution concentrated in such a small area? This plan ought to propose a strategy to address the negative impact industry has on the Quality of life of the residents and establish a compatible land use strategy so that both Industry and resident’s can prosper?

With out improving the Quality of Life, East Chicago will not attract young professionals to live here, not even our children, who have gone off to receive an education. The Marquette Plan addressed these issues by repositioning the region economically and environmentally and focusing on our strongest asset - our lake and waterways (the place where our older industries occupied).

Comprehensive Plan Concepts vs. The Marquette Plan

In light of the fact that the land use scenarios proposed by the Comprehensive Plan are in direct opposition to the Marquette Plan, I believe it is important to draw out the comparisons.

The Comprehensive Plan focuses exclusively on a single dimension of the Marquette Plan, the reaffirmation of its lost industrial base. Hence, the RE-INDUSTRIALIZATION OF EAST CHICAGO. There is little attempt in the Comprehensive Plan to diversify land use, clean-up our most contaminated properties, and improve the quality of life for residents. There is no formal Brownfield framework for addressing these issues. How can East Chicago reposition our economy to meet the needs of a contemporary American community if we do not address the impairments at the base of our economy?

a. The Marquette Plan focused on our most environmentally impaired and out-of-use lands along the canal and where the market has not been able to function.

b. The Marquette Plan repositions the land adjacent to North Harbor towards community focus development. Besides Concept C of the “Dickey Road Industrial Area” there is no community focus redevelopment on these adjacent lands in the Comprehensive Plan. This is one reuse scenario vs. two reindustrialization scenarios. Concept C will need to be flexible if it is to be seriously considered, and I believe strongly that this concept ought to serve as a beginning for land reuse discussions and not an outlier in those discussions.

c. The Marquette Plan takes in to account that heavy industry is consolidating and encourages it to move up the peninsula and north of the canal away from neighborhoods. This again is contrary to the Comprehensive Plan, which has no apparent concern for these incompatible adjacent uses.

d. The Marquette Plan creates buffers between heavy industry and our neighborhoods in North Harbor, Marktown and New Addition. This begins to address the depressed housing market and blight we see in these neighborhoods by pulling industry away from where people live. A major characteristic of the Comprehensive Plan is the lack of buffering between such incompatible uses (Heavy Industry and Residential).

e. The Marquette Plan proposes to pull down Cline Avenue and reroute traffic along the rail line and directly into the steel plant, giving the community access to these newly available lands along the canal. The Comprehensive Plan maintains Cline avenue as a formidable barrier to community focus development.

f. The Marquette Plan adds much needed public access and green space to East Chicago along our waterways and Lake. The Comprehensive Plan pretends to add public access and green spaces. It proposes private development in all scenarios on our lakefront (Condos and a Yacht club). Re-industrialization is also a commitment to private development along our waterways. The green space along the Grand Calumet River is in fact in DNR control and for the protection of these lands. The Comprehensive Plan proposes to sever access between our neighborhoods and these much needed natural areas with industry.

g. The Marquette Plan creates an opportunity for a trail system throughout our waterways, connecting our neighborhoods from the south to the north and to the Lakefront. The Comprehensive Plan add no additional trails to the DNR plans and does not leverage the open area along the canal, but again proposes to re-industrialize these lands.

NOTE: Within the next 10 years an environmental cleanup of the Grand Calumet River will be complete, opening adjacent lands to new use. To place industry back on these lands make as much sense as allowing U.S. Steel to pollute into the Grand Calumet River after a $20 million clean up job.

East Chicago's Marquette Plan

East Chicago’s replacement of the Marquette plan focuses on private condo development on the lake front and pushes community open space to the other side of Cline Avenue (a state highway). To do this they have propose to move the water filtration facility to make room for the private development. To implement this plan they have seeked and received RDA funds, and stimulus funds. What could have been an increase in public access amenities has turned into a private affair for the Mayor’s funders, <RED FLAG>yacht club included</RED FLAG>. It must be noted that east Chicago has 7.3 miles of lakefront exposure and only 100 yards of public access. This proposal does not increase public access. Thusly it ought not to qualify for public dollars.

In absent of a solid well thought out proposal for redevelopment along our waterways and Lakefront I propose that the Comprehensive Plan adopt the Marquette Plan as its waterway and Lakefront component.

Thomas Case Studies, East Chicago, Planning Mishaps

On labor day I participated in the 5th annual Labor Day Pullman to Marktown tour sponsored by the Pullman Labor Ride. We had a wonderful time. I took several hundred photos of the event and got the chance to speak a little on the contrasts between the Illinois and Indiana sides of the Calumet Region.

Link to full set of photos [ Pullman to Marktown Bike Ride ]

Kevin Murphy’s Labor Day Presentation to bike tour participants at the Zone

Thomas Adaptive Reuse, Case Studies, East Chicago

East Chicago Indiana, August 30, 2009

On August 30, 2009 our family took a bike ride (white dotted line in above map) from our house in Indiana Harbor to Grandma’s house on the East Chicago side of town. The ride is ~2.2 miles through a variety of landscapes including heavy Industrial. There are only two ways to get from the Harbor side to the East Chicago side. You either take Columbus Drive or Chicago Avenue. Neither are very friendly toward bikers or walkers, not to mention children. Besides the occasional metal scraper lugging overly large qualities of metal on bikes it is very rare to see anyone walking or riding through these corridors. We tend to ride our bikes within the neighborhood or load the bikes in the bed of the truck and ride elsewhere. But on this day it was gorgeous we took a tour down Columbus Drive.

Google map tour of our bike ride with photos from the above slideshow.

Background / Strengths / Weaknesses

Regardless of what officials say, East Chicago is not community or child focused. There is no access to nature within the community, nor are there any friendly corridors for children to travel on to get through the community. In fact the community is so fragmented by industrial interests that I have begun to compare it to the land fragmentation in Palestine. Granted the comparison is limited. A sure sign of public corruption is the lack of community focused planning and development.

Local environmentalists, particularly Mark Reskin of IUN, often argue that industry was the first to settle East Chicago and housing encroached on the industry, as if that would be an argument for the kind of environmental devastation that has occurred under his tenure. The fact is the earliest settlers were not industry, but pioneers and hunters. Later in the 1800’s  wealthy Chicagoan’s built large vacation homes on the East Chicago shores, and highlands. I realize it is difficult for many to recognize any of the regions natural features, but this was once a region of ancient dunes and swales and natural marshlands.

When industry first came to these shores, they brought with them worker villages, such as Sunnyside and Marktown, to attract a stable workforce. They also demolished or moved the large homes. During this period housing and industry went hand in hand, as they looked to build a workable community. Industrial and community leaders went to great efforts to hire some of the countries best landscape designers and architects, and built a world-class library system and recreation facilities.

It is often thought that industry constructed these villages adjacent to their factories in a hap-hazard manner, so that workers could walk to work. When you review these early settlement patterns you can see how natural buffers and distance had been used to separate housing from industry. In fact Marktown’s original designs were based on Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept. Thus Buffering between these two incompatible adjacent uses goes back over 150 years and was written into East Chicago’s early city plans. I’m not suggesting that these buffers, with our present understanding of environmental hazard, were adequate, but it does reveal how the original intent of the designs and concepts acknowledged the need for them.

<slight tangent>
I find it remarkable to see the development of suburban corporate headquarters around Chicago (down the I-80 corridor, I-90, and the northshore), provide generous buffering between their office complexes and the surrounding community. In recent years many of these developments have become LEED certified. Yet in East Chicago some of these same corporations provide no buffering between their industrial complexes and the surround community. I don’t have to mention that none of the facilities are LEED certified. An interesting case is the BP campus in Naperville, which used to be located in Whiting until they could no longer attract professionals to the area do to the lack of quality of life, and yes BP’s campus is LEED certified.
</slight tangent>

What actually occurred here over the last hundred years was the continual encroachment of industry interests on residential quality of life, and the taking of community and private residential wealth. Each new industry involved not only a taking of public and private property, but a taking of community values and visions. Every successive period involved a massive taking of community wealth in the service of industrial benefit. It must be noted that this taking of the public and the personal wealth of the residents could not be done by industry alone. It required the participation of local, regional and state governments, and later included environmentalist.

This encroachment continues today as BP expands its facilities, by placing six cokers just across the street from one of our neighborhoods. Local tif districts had to rewrite their schedules to take into account the future increased assessed value that would be lost due to the BP project - a clear demonstration of the taking of private homeowner wealth for industry interests. In the 1980’s a whole neighborhood was demolished to make way for Pollution Control Industries (PCI). Praxair sits on what was once public property with plans developed for a central park uniting the East Chicago and Harbor sides.

Today’s challenges:

• High concentration of heavy industry
  • More than 80% of East Chicago is zoned heavy industrial with ~14% zoned residential.
  • 40% of industrial properties are out of production and considered to be a brownfield
  • About 15% of residential properties are apart of the USEPA Superfund site - Calumet neighborhood.
• Fourteen fairly isolated neighborhoods with little to no linkage between them, cut off by industry. Several neighborhoods suffer from incompatible adjacent uses, such as chemical, oil, or manufacturing plants. The result is that many neighborhoods have their own identity and community center.
• Little or no access to natural areas
  • East Chicago has 7.3 miles of lakefront Exposure with only 100 yards accessible to the public - Joerse beach.
  • Yet Jeorse Beach is such an impaired asset that it ranks 3rd in the country, and 1st on the great lakes, for beach closings due to hight bacteria level.
  • Dupont prairies, with ancient dune and swales is highly contaminated and not accessible to the the public.
  • No bike trails
• Lake County ranks as the 7th most polluted county in the country (out of 3141 counties). The pollution is mainly attributed to three major industries which reside in or within a half mile of East Chicago: BP (largest oil refinery in the midwest, second largest in the country), ArcelorMittal (largest integrated steel mill in the country), and US Steel. These industries represent tens-of-billions-of-dollars of interests in East Chicago. I suggest Lake county aim at being just average - ranked 1570 out of 3141 counties.
• Location of 2 (Kemira, Dover Chemical) of the top 101 most dangerous chemical facilities [ Link to report ]
• The Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal is also considered to be the most polluted waterway in the country.
• Depressed downtown with many vacancies, making most residents auto dependent for shopping.
• Blighted neighborhoods and housing stock. The medium home value in several of our neighborhoods is less than $25,000
• No sustained cultural institutions.
• High Crime
• Poor Educational system - ranks last in the state of Indiana on ISTEP test
• Political/industrial/environmental corruption

East Chicago is a clear and obvious point source to our shared environmental challenges. I truly believe the extreme nature of East Chicago’s environmental impairments qualify it to be ground-zero in the environmental and sustainability debate. Repairing the land use practices that are allowed to occur here would go a long way in repairing what ails the world.

The Good (Strengths):

• There are still remnants of East Chicago’s heyday. I live in one such place, across from Washington Park, which was originally designed by Jens Jensen, with a greenhouse.
• Good recreation facilities including an old minor league baseball stadium
• There are still remnants of great talent and people of good intention. We have families whose tenure goes back to the 1920’s, but they are becoming fewer.
• Faith Based Organizations. As a port of entry community East Chicago has always been known for its churches. Today most of the remaining talent are associated with faith based organization.
• Lakefront: although it is highly impaired, it is a repairable asset
• Riverfront: although, again, highly impaired the riverfront could become the cities strongest natural asset and provide a way to knit the neighborhoods together with bike paths. Includes access to the dupont prairies and another parcel (~200 acres) of untouched land right in the middle of east chicago (with Praxair to the east, the canal to the west, the CSX rail line to the south and a tank farm to the north).
• Industry continues to play an important role in this community. We just need to raise their environmental performance to a minimum level that is compatible with a sustainable community. Industry is also a link to our past history.
• Historic Landmarks: including industrial housing communities such as Marktown and Sunnyside, and an array of other buildings. We just have to stop the Mayor from demolitioning them.
• Proximity to Chicago. Despite our proximity, if East Chicago does not have fluid access to Chicago, it might as well be hundreds of miles away.
• Opportunities for a downtown commuter rail system, with direct access to Chicago.

In my mind no project ought to move forward in this community if it doesn’t address the challenges we clearly face and/or build the capacity of our strengths. This is the position I took when the BP project was first considered and I hold to it today. So how is it that East Chicago can be the recipient of a $3.8 billion investment by BP and NOT receive any of the benefits to address our obvious impairments (while spreading the wage and economic development benefits to middle-class communities in the southern part of the county)? Under this scenario why would a poor blighted community like East Chicago provide BP with a $165 million dollar tax abatement?

UPDATE:

Added video tour.

Thomas Case Studies, East Chicago

There is a lot to be cognizant of in the dynamics of our past settlements and how we have become an array of our present. In every place where place is found and every gap we fortify, we grapple with each array and force a future we hope to portray.

Site of Chicago, in 1820. The second Fort Dearborn, built in 1816, is situated to the left of the main river channel. From a lithograph by J. Gemmel, published by D. Fabronius, probably in 1857

I am learning more about the genetics of our organizing principles as they present themselves in our built environment - a diorama of the universe within. My instincts are to search out first principles, first causes and identities associated with the founding of this Mega-Metropolis on the lake. Exponential growth patterns encourage me to look back as if a culture of fewer could carry all we know and see today.

In this place with the Lake so large, we operate with the notion that it is capable of absorbing every folly. Today, the Chicago metropolitan area is six-and-a-half-million and growing. Upon investigation we can see paths of patterns in how the city became what we see today. Carolyn Raffensperger of the, Science & Environmental Health Network was very kind to give me this early view of Chicago from the water. Although it seems sparse it is rich in three basic elements: the water we drink (with 20% of the worlds fresh water), the land we sow (with the richest soils in the world), and the air we breath (the vast sky’s of fresh clean air). Yet, we often forget the life of which we are apart, and which knits and communicates between the three basic elements of our region, and creates the possibility of every identity. 

So here we are again on this magnificent lake, faced with a new array of challenges that prompt us to envision whole new ways of being. We are at this epic moment, faced with the greatest urban renewal project humankind has ever known. Most of our time on the land has been spent sheltering ourselves from the elements, now we are beginning to conceive how we may live in harmony with them. We are looking again, and taking inventories of the built and natural environments, and mining the past for answers. We are questioning the forces that played upon our common intent, and the subsequent patterns of practice produced. We are collecting again, this time data, frameworks, systems, best practices, stories and designs. 

This mere adolescent act of building capacity is changing who we are and how we interact with our surroundings. It is having ripple effects throughout our society and the world, including how we do business, and how we move through the world. It is changing every material we make, use and, and reuse, and animating every inert material with multiple tasks never before thought of. We are mining our dumps, junkyards and garbage cans. We are designing from cradle to cradle, and eliminating the throw away society. 

We are changing the equation.

To a certain degree Chicago studios and labs have been at the forefront of visioning new equations. The Urban Lab’s H2O project is one such vision for revitalizing our watershed by borrowing and extending motifs from the 1909 Burnham Plan of Chicago. Regardless, this new era continues to face enormous challenges from legacy industries and planning frameworks, particularly transportation frameworks developed for fossil fuel dependent industries. 

This epic moment in urban renewal will require new transportation design concepts which maximize alternative energy resources. Transportation planning during the past century was rarely integrated into place making land use designs. Highway H2O is not only an unfortunate metaphor but an all-too accurate one for industry looking back to the “hey days” of the 1950’s transportation expansion models. Another transportation related failure of the twentieth century has been our deep dependence on fossil fuels. Although our Investments portfolios are stocked with Oil, future use projections of oil indicate we have very little choice but to get beyond this addiction. As the energy equation for fossil fuels becomes less favorable this will strengthen the viability of alternate sources.

Energy Challenges Still Tying Us to Past Patterns of Behavior
As we begin to retool and make the necessary transition out of our deep dependence on fossil fuels we need to be pragmatic and mindful of how far some will go to hold to this legacy industry. We are at a very perilous moment. Today Chicago is retooling its refining capacity to support the heavy sour crude coming out of the Canadian Tar Sands. It is estimated that the Tar Sands will supply enough fuel to support the present rate of growth in our region for the next decade.  Yet, it comes at a tremendous cost to Chicago by:

• Degrading our environment: piping in, refining, and burning this high sulfur product throughout the Chicago land region (BP on the shores of Lake Michigan) will increase aggregate levels of pollution and further stress our sustaining airshed.
• Increasing energy costs: 1-barrel investment to produce 5-barrels of product (for heavy sour crude from the Tar Sands). That is down from 1-barrel investment to produce 100-barrels of product (for sweet crude).

It also comes at a tremendous cost to the natural resources in Alberta and the surrounding areas. 

• Deforestation: The tar sands ranks second to the Amazon Rainforest Basin in its rate of deforestation on the planet, and wiping out the ancient Boreal Forest in Canada.
• Increased CO2 Emissions: The tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production.
• Massive Tailing Ponds: The tailing ponds are growing, > 50 kilometres

As we are beginning to understand the importance of environmental sustainability from the viewpoint of our Great Lakes, we are simultaneously (due to our appetite for fossil fuels) creating a watershed disaster on the scale of Lake Michigan.

The Environmental Defense has called it the most destructive project on Earth.

Envisioning a Future
The best way to clarify future markets is with better solutions and cooler products. What apple did to the music industry can be replicated in the transportation industry. The “Living Planet City” out of Canada, the same Canada of the Alberta Tar Sands, have developed a visual aid for envisioning ways of organizing our communities around renewable energy. 

via [ Living Planet City ]  

Imagine a world where we no longer need to burn dirty fuels like coal or oil from the tar sands that cause global warming.

It would look a lot like the Living Planet City, where people’s homes, workplaces and vehiclesare powered by harnessing renewable energy from the sun, wind, water and earth. And it is possible now!

The Living Planet City is a virtual city, but real communities in Canada and around the world are already using similar systems. In these communities, citizens are gaining a whole new understanding of energy, and actively engaging in the fight against climate change. They are lowering greenhouse gas emissions and securing a local, renewable energy supply, all while reducing their energy bills and creating good, green jobs.

Thomas Case Studies, Chicago, View of Lake Michigan