Sabbatical

Nijmegen – Now for a Mid-Sized Dutch City

A re-routed course (due to COVID protocols) allowed for the addition of a mid-sized Dutch city into our course.  On Monday, we rode in vans from Odense, DK to Linden, NL, which is a very small town about 15 km from Nijmegen.  On Tuesday, we were greeted by an enthusiastic Dutch transportation planner in his mid-30s – Sjors van Duren. Sjors shared stories of being a fresh college graduate out of the University of Nijmegen who was the only one at his organization enthusiastic about cycling projects. Throughout the day, Sjors shared stories of projects he shepherded to improve cycling connections throughout the region including cycling super highways, “keep on going riding routes” and important bicycling bridge connections.  It was great to hear from someone mid (or early) career sharing stories about recent projects in a mid-sized city.  We hear from such a great variety of public, private, nonprofit and academic sector cycling experts throughout the class and I appreciated what Sjors offered to our roster of amazing speakers. Nijmegen was a great introduction to the Netherlands because it offered examples of a smaller city doing a lot of stuff recently (v. Utrecht and Amsterdam, which have been “at it” for 40+ years.) Remarkably, the cycling mode split increased by *20* percentage points from 40% to 60%. These were a few lessons I took away from our day with Sjors:

  • Cycling Super Highway = Keep on Going Riding Route: Sometimes you have to re-cast the same project in different communities to get buy in from the community.  Language, communication, and values matter. Couching projects in terms of values like social mobility, congestion, and health can build support from different politicians and residents.  The point is to offer safe, fast, convenient infrastructure that lets people get from place to place easily.
  • Back up your dreams with calculations: Sjors was able to build regional support for a cycling bridge from Cujik to Mook by using the tools of engineering and congestion to justify the investment in a cycling bridge to communicate just how cost-effective infrastructure for cycling is compared to motorways. He also said to put your math in a box after you’ve gotten political support, because it’s already served it’s purpose and there’s no need to revisit it.
  • Put some skin the game: On the same bridge project, Sjors told a story of getting municipalities to commit to each funding a little piece of the project in the region. When they came up a little short for funding, it was easy to get commitment for the rest of the funding because everyone had showed faith in the project.
  • Recycle infrastructure: Instead of building brand new facilities, find older paths and routes that can minimize the amount of investment required. One of the paths we cycled followed an old Roman road.  In the U.S., we do this with rail trails (though there are some political challenges that can raise the costs).
  • Sometimes you have to make it better for cars to make it better for bikes: Nijmegen has a lot of cars as well and we went through some intersections that see 50k cars per day. Sjors gave examples of trying to increase capacity for cars in some parts of the city in order to make it nicer for cycling in other parts of the city.   We talk so much in this course about making things harder for cars to encourage biking, but it was really useful to hear Sjors say “you’re never going to convince everyone” and that sometimes you make tradeoffs to improve cycling.
  • Pick the best communicator for the job: Sjors gave a good anecdote about learning who you can communicate with and being willing to step back to let someone else manage a relationship if they’re better at communicating with a particular audience.
  • We tradeoff safety for convenience: While it’s the safest for all road users (bikes, pedestrians, vehicles) to stop at every intersection, you trade off convenience for safety.  If you make it so inconvenient to cycle, then no one will do it.

Sjors talking about Nijmegen

Sjors and Nick riding on the “Keep on Going Riding Route”

Roundabout design

The “bad” route from Nijmegen to Cujik

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the “bad” route — pretty nice!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a side note, there are multiple ways to get from Linden to Nijmegen – we rode with Sjors on the “Keep on Going Riding Route” where bikes go non-stop on an off-street facility through a forest. It was lovely and pleasant.  He also described a “highway” route – we rode that route as well, and it was remarkably pleasant as well with protected infrastructure and beautiful roundabouts.  The “highway” felt more like a U.S. arterial and traffic was going ~40 mph maximum, mostly because the road was designed to slow you down.  I met a woman on the train who was an Australian ex-pat living in the northern part of the country.  She said “In Australia, when we talk about safety, we make roads as straight as possible and cut down all the trees. In the Netherlands, when we talk about safety, we make the road curvy, narrow it, and add trees to slow people down.”  It’s a very accurate description of the approach, and it’s really easy to see how well the Dutch approach works in a variety of contexts.

Lovely rural path

Bridges

Roundabout

Path outside Nijmegen

Riding near Linden

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Bicycle Touring in the Countryside

Bicycle Touring in the Countryside

Our class focuses on planning for people on bikes in large cities, mid-sized cities, and small towns/rural areas.  To facilitate this learning, we typically spend some days doing supported bike touring from location-to-location where our luggage is carried by our amazing on-site experts (Floris & Adam at Austin’s Adventures) while we ride our bikes from point to point.  The rides range from 20-30 miles each day and encompass a diversity of infrastructure.

This year’s class brought us to different locations and destinations. Normally, we bike up the coast of Denmark to Helsingør, then take the ferry to Sweden and bike down the coast of Sweden to Malmö.  COVID restrictions forced us to reconsider the schedule and route and allowed us to explore new areas.  That has meant that we’re experiencing this part of the country the same time as students, which is tough from an educational perspective, but interesting to see our immediate reactions.

I have loved riding bikes since I was very small and used my bike as a way to get some freedom to go buy candy at the Dairy Mart and visit friends. At some point, I was allowed to bike down the hill out of the neighborhood to go to Dairy Mart by myself and it gave me freedom before I had a car. I have vivid memories of my first “long” bike rides – I remember a 6 mile ride to a friend’s house in high school and being so impressed with myself.  Later in college, I started biking to campus because the bus was always full.  When I moved back to Kentucky, I bought a cycling routes about riding in the Bluegrass.  I vividly remember biking ~25 miles near Shakertown with my friend Ben and being so hungry and exhausted after!  Later in college, I started dragging my dad out on rides in the countryside near our house in rural Kentucky.  When he briefly retired in 2006, we enjoyed 20-30 mile road bike rides all over the Bluegrass until I moved to graduate school.  I gradually started doing triathlons and longer rides. I’ve always loved road biking in rural areas and feel so centered and happy riding by bicycle through beautiful landscapes.

All of that is to say, I love sharing this hobby and passion with others and really enjoy seeing others go through that process of “I biked that far!? That was hard, but that was fun and beautiful!” But in the U.S., it’s really hard to, in good conscience, convince people to go out on rural roads when drivers go so fast and the infrastructure is so poor.

On this trip, it has been eye-opening and inspiring to witness a group of college students bike further than they ever have before nearly everyday.  Many bike for transportation in the U.S. but few bike recreationally.  When we debriefed some of the rural ride, the reactions were mixed – some loved it but some realized that biking without purpose wasn’t for them.  For some, it inspired them to consider biking further distances that previously seemed unfathomable in the U.S.

Riding to Troense Island

Troense Island

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Troense Island

Troense Island

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the course of this week, we biked over 100 miles include 3 x 25-30 mile days. Here’s what our routes looked like:

  • Tuesday: Optional 11 mile ride to Troense Island from Svendborg
  • Wednesday: 27 mile loop around Aero Island
  • Thursday: 25 mile ride from Svendborg to Kornith via Esegkov Castle
  • Friday: 26 mile ride from Korinth to Odense via Ringe (some of the group got the fun experience of taking bike to train after an 11 mile cycle to Ringe!!)

A few thoughts about the infrastructure we experienced:

  • A central part of the national bicycle strategy is thinking about cycling for recreation. What’s so cool about this is that you can plan low-carbon (carfree) cycling vacations that involve taking a train to a small town, then a ferry to an island for cycling.
    • The strategy includes: safety & security, tourism, service, comfort, signage, and meaningfulness
  • During our trip, we followed some signed routes and veered off path for some diversions (like castles)
  • The quality of the infrastructure varied from rail trails to separated multi-use paths to lightly trafficked rural roads to highways with no shoulder.
  • Cars were much more attentive and cautious around cyclists than in the U.S. Not speeding too fast nearby or honking.
  • The countryside and island rides were really gorgeous and unique. It was great to enjoy those without a fear of cars.
  • There’s something I love about riding from a small town/rural area into a city – we did this in Malmö and Amsterdam in 2019. It’s really eye-opening to see the exurban to suburban to urban landscape shift. Some aspects of urban form are really similar to the U.S. (like a McDonalds and Shell station adjacent to a highway).  But the cycling infrastructure is completely different – from about 10 km from town, we were on a separated off-street facility the entire way. It was a cycling superhighway! At our presentation later in the day, we learned that the national government is putting an emphasis on longer distance routes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Ferry to Ærø Island

Disembarked from Ferry at Ærø

Beautiful trail on Ærø

Ærø Island

Ærø Island

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A fun wayfinding note:  Our guide/ co-leader Adam created many of the routes via RideWithGPS from afar.  The visit to Kornith was new, so we ended up on a short highway section – all of us noted how unpleasant it was (though really much less miserable than U.S. roads of this nature.)  At our bed & breakfast, Nick started talking to the host about the railroad station we saw and asked if there was still service there.  He mentioned how they had developed a rail trail from Kornith to Ringe.  We shifted our route based on this local intel and used the rail trail, then the Danish National Cycling Route 55 to get into Odense.   The new route added a few miles (3) but was much safer and more comfortable than the original route.  This happens in the U.S. as well – you often add mileage to be safer and more comfortable.

Cycling Superhighways

Rural bicycle infrastructure

 

 

 

Crew from Ringe to Odense

Arriving in Odense

Rural Infrastructure

Rail Trail

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Metropolitan Cooperation to Combat Climate Change through Transportation and Housing: Part 1- Research Approach

In this series of blog posts, I will summarize and describe sabbatical research conducted while living in Malmö Sweden for 4 months in 2022.

   Part 1: Research Approach

Part 2:  Policy Context

Part 3: “National Negotiation” Overview

Part 4: Key Lessons Learned

Originally, I intended to blog about research more frequently, but I got immersed in the experience and the research process.  I will start this series by describing how I approached this study and undertook research.  As I’ll discuss later, conducting research in a different language and policy context offered some puzzles to figure out.

Malmö Street Construction to Prepare for Express Buses

I became interested in this policy after hearing about it on our study abroad class in 2019 during a presentation by the city of Malmö bicycle planners who were talking about massive expansion in bus and bike infrastructure thanks to funding from the Swedish government under the “big city package.”  Under the “National Negotiation on Housing and Infrastructure,” (Sverigeförhandlingen) the national government builds cycling and transit infrastructure in exchange for the local government committing to a specific number housing units to accommodate population growth within the major cities of Malmö, Stockholm, and Gothenburg. I found this policy to be innovative and collaborative by trading massive infrastructure investment needed to support climate targets for dense housing needed to support bicycling and transit.

I want to understand how this policy was adopted and implemented, and carry lessons learned back to the U.S. context. My objectives:

1) To understand the political context and policy adoption process for the National Negotiation on Housing and Infrastructure, including how land use regulations and transportation finance changed.

2) To learn where the policy has influenced local decision making and urban form and where the policy has diverged from original conception to actual implementation locally; and

3) To apply lessons learned to inform policy formulation and implementation at a local, state, and federal level in the United States.

Approach

To conduct this research, I lived in Malmö, Sweden for 4 months, where I held a visiting researcher appointment at Malmö University within the Department of Urban Studies.  I began my research by identifying, downloading, translating, and summarizing key policies related to housing, land use, and transport. To examine this policy, I needed to understand the systems governing the use of land, construction of housing, and provision of transportation infrastructure.  I also needed to understand governance and taxation at a local, regional, and national level. Colleagues at Malmö University offered informal knowledge to confirm my understanding of policy prior to conducting interviews.

I gathered and translated national and city level documents that described the “Big City” agreements in Malmö, Stockholm, and Gothenburg.  These documents included the original frameworks, annual reports, and quarterly meeting meetings.  After summarizing these documents, I began scheduling interviews with key stakeholders at a national, regional, and local level.  Within each city, I scheduled interviews with planners, regional transit providers, bicycle infrastructure designers, and national transportation agency staff.  I also conducted site visits to see the places where new housing is being planned/constructed. To glean lessons learned for the U.S., I probed interviewees on the policy adoption process, collaboration, implementation, and key lessons learned.

Component Intent Approach
1) Context – Housing, Transportation, Land Use a) Describe context for land use planning and transportation planning in Sweden

b) Describe real estate and housing approach in Sweden to understand methods of allocation and construction

 

 a) identified Swedish names for key documents including comprehensive plan, detailed plan, mobility plan, housing supply plan, etc

b) locate and download documents in Swedish

c) translate documents into English using Google Translate

d) Read and summarize key documents

e) Verify understanding of approach with colleagues
2) National Negotiation – Context a) Describe the intent and goals of National Negotiation

b) Summarize key agreements with big cities: number of housing units, transportation investments, timeline, cost

c) Document progress to implement key projects (create maps)

 a) identified Swedish names for key documents including final report, annual reports,

b) locate and download documents in Swedish

c) translate documents into English using Google Translate

d) Read and summarize key documents

e)Search documents and websites to identify areas (using maps) of transit expansion and housing development (target for site visits)

 
3) National Negotiation – Evaluation

 

 

 a) Obtain perspectives on policy adoption and strengths and weaknesses of approach

b) Visualize new housing construction to visualize transformation (photos)

c) Visualize new transportation infrastructure (photos)

 a) Search websites to identify names to contact (note – most email addresses for individuals not readily available in Sweden)

b) Set up and conduct interviews with key individuals at the local, regional, and national level representing housing, transportation, and land use

c) Using research from Part 2 conduct site visits

 
4) Synthesis a) Examine key lessons learned from adoption to inform policy in the United States. In particular, I will focus on Oregon because it is the most innovative land use and transportation policy state in the U.S. and presents a useful context to analyze transferability of this Swedish policy.

b) Offer broader recommendations for local, state, and federal roles, including funding mechanisms. that are applicable nationwide.

 

 a) Write up and describe research process

b) Synthesize information from stakeholder interviews to develop key themes

c) Write up final report

Gothenburg – Construction and street for new tramline

 

In addition to the academic description above, I want to offer a bit of reflection on some of the differences and challenges with doing research on a policy in a different country.  While I’ve participated in comparative research in the past and led educational experiences abroad, conducting qualitative research in another country and another language was new to me.

I came across three different challenges:

  • Language and document access: I heard about the policy from a presentation and was able to find a 4 page summary in English. I found the same thing for the comprehensive plan.  As I got more settled in Sweden, I figured out what the Swedish words for various documents and thus, how to search for them.  The English versions of documents were ~10-20 pages but the Swedish versions are 300+ pages! Then I was able to locate and download documents in Swedish, and then use Google Translate to translate them into English – it’s not perfect, but it gives me the gist of what I need to know even if the wording might sound a bit awkward. I did a lot of independent research and then verified my understanding through informal conversations with university colleagues.
  • Finding interview contacts: My colleagues had some connections the helped me get in the door for interviews, but in some cases I had trouble finding the names and email addresses of appropriate contacts. I scoured annual reports and meeting minutes to find names of key staff at the city level but often found higher-level officials (like city managers) rather than technical experts. I could sometimes find names, but no email addresses meaning that I emailed a general email account for the city and awaited a response to get connected to the right people.  (Somewhat of a black box approach.) This actually worked out (to my surprise!), but it took more time than I anticipated.
  • Technical conversations in another language: As I’ve mentioned, English is spoken fluently and extensively throughout Sweden as it’s part of primary education across the country. As an English speaker, it was easy to take this for granted – I was extremely lucky that I was able to conduct interviews in my native (and only fluent) language and that contacts were willing to speak to me.  Several times, my interviewees noted how they hadn’t spoke English recently (partially due to COVID and the lack of visitors/travel) and how difficult it was to find the translation for technical terms.  I joked with one interview about how talking in English at a coffeeshop is much different than talking about comprehensive planning. This part of the process gave me a new perspective on something I had been taking for granted and gave me a great appreciation for the time and attention people gave me.  As I plan to continue collaborating in Sweden, it has also encouraged me to continue my study of the language so I can get more up to speed in these conversations.

In the next series of blogs, I’ll describe and summarize my understanding of context and policy.

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About the neighborhood — Lugnet

In researching MKB for my previous post, I also wanted to learn more about our neighborhood and when these houses were constructed.  While Sweden has a detailed Land Registry with lots of details about properties, it seems that you need a personnumber to access details.  I dug a bit deeper and took a step back to better understand the Swedish approach to housing.  I found out our housing was build in the 1970s.

Sweden experienced a population & economic boom following World War II and committed to an approach of improving the quality of housing and building public housing through municipally owned housing companies.  The new housing had greenspace & parks and access to services (like preschools, shown below) integrated. Unlike many other countries, municipally owned housing is not means-tested meaning access isn’t limited by falling under a certain income threshold or paying a certain percentage of your income for housing. That means people of all incomes have access to publicly provided housing.  Over half of renters in Sweden live in public housing. About 30% of people are renters.  (As an aside, the cost of housing to buy seems very reasonable – approximately $400K for a 1100 square foot condo in the heart of the city.  While it’s not easy to compare in this way,  a quick search in Boston, a similar sized /quality apartment is at least double this price.) The lack of “means-testing” has become a critique of the Swedish approach to housing.  This is something I want to learn more about – what if you’re under the income requirements and can’t find housing? Stockholm has famously long queues for apartments.

In 1965, due to the ongoing housing shortage, Sweden committed to building one million homes over 10 years through the famous ‘Million Homes Programme’.    The intent was to provide higher quality housing and produce new housing to meet housing shortages.  The construction was heavily subsidized for lower income housing.

Our neighborhood is called “Lugnet” and the name of our street translates to “calm street.” It is lined with 6 story buildings with courtyards, so this doesn’t necessarily align with the name of the street.  I wanted to know more about this style of housing and when it was built. Digging deeper, I learned this:

The Lugnet district was originally a legendary working-class district in central Malmö, which was demolished to make way for a modern building. During the 1960s and 1970s, the simple street houses that have existed here since the middle of the 19th century were demolished. Our properties were built in 1979 and 1890.- MKB

Talking to locals and colleagues, everyone seems to have a slightly different take on whether demolition as good, bad, or necessary.  Some say the homes were really cute and historic but others say the quality was poor and the homes were built in geologically compromised way. This site shares some of the history and controversy of demolishing the older, working class homes & neighborhood for new construction.

This website provides a lot of photos of the area before demolition: https://bilderisyd.se/produkt-tagg/lugnet.

Lugnet photos (including schools)

Connecting this example to the U.S. context, the construction of this neighborhood serves as an example of what we call urban renewal where older, working class neighborhoods were demolished to build new post-war construction.  In my own hometown of Frankfort, Kentucky, the “Crawfish Bottom” neighborhood was demolished to build a Civic Center & large state office building (which were recently demolished in 2018.) In this neighborhood, the result was more density in close access to the city center. Here in Sweden, the new Lugnet neighborhood was developed with consideration of childcare, greenspace, and serving older adults. It’s pretty remarkable to see the preschool inside our building (and across the street) so active all day and a mix of age groups living in the city center.  In the U.S., we’ve started integrating services more in permanent supportive housing but it is far from the norm.

As I continue my research on land use, housing, and transportation, I want to better understand:

  • What does land seizure/eminent domain look like in Sweden? (How do public agencies gain access to land?)
  • Where is new housing being constructed? Is it infill or greenfield?
  • How do people of all income levels access housing?
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Living in Malmö

We have arrived in Malmö and are getting settled into our new city where we will live for nearly 4 months.  As a city planning professor, I’m constantly trying to understand urban form and transportation networks when I’m traveling.  As I acclimate to a new city, I’m trying to understand when various parts were developed, how, and under what policies and laws. I’ve learned so much about the politics of Sweden and history of this city & housing in just a few short days – I’m eager to learn more.

Lugna Gatan courtyard

We are living in an apartment held by the university for visiting researchers.  Our apartment is located near the center of the city, close to Strogatan (shopping street) and Triangeln (transit station and mall/shopping area.) The street where we are living is called Lugna gatan which translates to “calm street” in the neighborhood “Lugnet.”

The urban design in this area is interesting – there are several 7 story u-shaped apartment buildings with courtyards in the middle.  The apartments are designed very well with tons of light in each room. While the complexes are bulky, each building is split up so there are ~28 apartments accessed through individual doors (rather than a large central entry way with long, winding hallways.  Each floor has 4 apartments and the design also means few shared walls. The building is remarkably quiet.  There’s shared laundry in the basement and a courtyard with a playground, bbq area, bike racks, and recycling/compost.  There is a pre-school across the street. The buildings are made of brick with aluminum siding around the balconies, which gives a somewhat brutalist feel.

Outside of Lugna gatan

School across from building

We assumed the buildings were constructed post-war and started doing some additional research.  It turns out our apartment building is owned and maintained by MKB, which is the city of Malmö’s non-profit housing authority.  We kept seeing “MKB” on apartment buildings and looked it up. Some interesting facts:

From what I can tell, you register interest in an apartment online and search vacancies through the website.  There is a municipal housing agency (Boplats Syd) that aggregates apartments from MKB and other landlords. Some of the apartments have minimum income requirements, and in general, you have to earn 1.5x the rent. There are requirements about second homes, savings, debt, and number of tenants.  Some also mentioned that your work couldn’t be too far from your home! One says: “You can usually have a maximum of 2 hours commuting distance one way between your work and home.”  The rents are very reasonable and are set through tenant/landlord negotiations. For example, our rent for a furnished 1 bedroom, 61 sq meter (656 sq ft) is 8423 SEK (or $896 a month) including all utilities except broadband. For a nice apartment steps away from the center of city, I find this remarkably reasonable.

I found out some interesting facts about Lugnet that I’ll share in a future post after some further research.  As I embark on my research project in Sweden, I want to find out more about:

  • How is construction of government subsidized housing financed?
    • Does the government offer both housing construction subsidy and rent subsidy?
  • How is land obtained to construct housing?
  • Who is eligible for government supported housing?
  • How long are the waiting lists for housing? (queues)
  • What are the building codes and maintenance requirements for government supported housing?
  • What are the characteristics of other landlords and rents (beyond MKB?)
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Sabbatical to Sweden

From February to June, I will be living in and conducting research (with  my husband Nick Meltzer) in Malmö, Sweden – a city in Southern Sweden in the Scania (or Skåne) region. I will use this blog to share updates on my research and adjusting to living abroad.   I will be collaborating with faculty colleagues at Malmö University and studying an innovation policy called “National Negotiation on Housing and Infrastructure.”

In June, I will co-lead a group of 17 students (with Nick Meltzer) to Denmark and the Netherlands on the Study Abroad program “Planning Cities for People on Bikes.”

I co-led this trip in 2019 with Marc Schlossberg. On that trip, we visited Malmö for 3 days after biking up the Danish coast from Copenhagen to Helsingør, taking a ferry from Helsingør to Helsingborg, then biking down the Swedish coast, stopping at Island Ven/Hven  before continuing to Malmö and onto Copenhagen to complete the Öresund Strait Circuit (described here).

Some photos from that trip:

 

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