Build Maine conference to focus on investment for smart urban design
Courtesy / Carol Liscovitz
The sixth annual Build Maine conference, scheduled for Wednesday, June 5, and Thursday, June 6, in Lewiston, is designed to bring together people to share best practices and aspirations for building cities. Seen here is a session from the 2018 Build Maine conference.
Turning one-way High Street in Portland and Lisbon and Canal streets in Lewiston back into two-way streets could foster a greater sense of community and slow traffic.
Similar ideas pertain to Portland’s Fore Street, an example of a street that’s too wide. Cottage Street in Bar Harbor is an example of a street that’s just the right width.
Community and safety are among the primary factors that matter in the “new urbanism” movement, Jeff Speck told Mainebiz.
Speck, a city planner and urban designer with Speck & Associates in Brookline, Mass., will be a featured speaker at this week’s sixth annual Build Maine conference.
The conference, featuring workshops and presentations, is scheduled for Wednesday, June 5, and Thursday, June 6, in Lewiston. It is designed to bring together people participating in the act of building cities, according to its website.
Walkable cities
Speck is the author of the 2012 book, “Walkable City,” a best-selling city-planning book for three years. His recently released “Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places” takes “Walkable City” from ideas into action.
His presentation at Build Maine is titled “Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places.” He will draw attention to the need for better street design to reduce traffic fatalities, improve quality of life and enable greater economic vitality. He will describe the primacy of walkability in building more vital, resilient and appealing cities.
“Even the best urbanism won’t generate walkability if people think they’re going to die every time they walk out on the street,” Speck said in the release. “Still, most American cities that developed pre-war have a downtown. And today many have virtually everything they need in terms of walkability — except they’re utterly unsafe.”
There are simple solutions to reclaiming streets and making downtowns and neighborhoods safe for human and economic activity, he told Mainebiz.
Streets with wider lanes than they should have induces dangerous speeding, he explained. Turning signalized intersections into all-way stops on some roads has been shown to reduce crashes by about two-thirds, he said. Removing centerlines on some roads can potentially reduced driver speed by 7 miles per hour.
These changes, he noted, don’t reduce the amount of traffic the roads can handle.
It’s about reorienting suburban and urban spaces to center on things like building community and making street walkable and safe for all users, he said.
“It’s been an ongoing battle to bring back the forms of traditional urbanism, like the small town, village, hamlet and urban neighborhood, and also to reverse the ordinances that we always run into,” he said.
He added, “People are not attracted to places where their principal interaction with other folks is behind the steering wheel. It’s one thing to bump into somebody on the sidewalk. It’s another when you bump into them while you’re driving. The reorientation of society around walking and biking has been the focus of my work.”
Moving forward
Speck is one of a variety of speakers at the conference, which draws builders, funders, elected officials, engineers, lawyers, planners, finance institutions, and rule-makers to share best practices and aspirations for moving Maine forward within today’s political and economic climates.
Build Maine introduces cutting-edge business practices and focused conversations with leaders in transportation planning, real estate development and public service, demonstrating knowledge that can be applied locally, according to the release.
The conference is hosted by the New England Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism Maine, Maine Municipal Association, Maine Real Estate & Development Association, AARP Maine and Maine Downtown Center.
The idea for the first conference came about as an opportunity to dive into new ideas, collaborate and find new ways to solve problems that address quality-of-life and economic issues within Maine communities, Build Maine’s co-chair, Kara Wilbur, told Mainebiz.
Wilbur is a planner and urban designer with Boston urban design, planning and real estate development firm Principle. Wilbur is located in Portland.
The conference tends to attract about 300 participants. An interesting aspect, she said, is that municipalities sponsoring the event tend to bring large groups of people.
“We found that when towns and cities do that, they have a critical mass of people who are hearing the same ideas and are able to take that collective energy back to their own towns,” she said. “It changes the nature of the conversation.”
For professionals, she added, “It’s an amazing experience to be able to hear national speakers and to be able to connect with leaders from across the state who are interested in hearing new ideas and figuring out how to apply them locally. The cross-collaboration, geographically and between disciplines, has been exciting.”
June 5 workshops
June 5 features workshops at the Lewiston Public Library, 200 Lisbon St. Workshops will be held from 9 a.m. to noon and again from 1:30-4:30 p.m.
They include:
• Direct Action Organizing, hosted by AARP Maine. This workshop is about organizing around an issue to win change. The focus will be on how to plan and implement effective issue advocacy through organizing people to act together and think strategically.
• Tactical Urbanism will be hosted by Bicycle Coalition of Maine, Ransom Engineering, City of Lewiston, Lewiston Local Activation Team and Build Maine. The sessions will focus on best practices and low-cost strategies to reduce vehicular speeds, increase safety and comfort, and attract private sector investment for improved city streets. The workshop will include temporary, quick-build installations of a one-way to two-way street conversion, an advisory lane and intersection improvements, using Maine Department of Transportation-approved plastic bollards, tape, paint, traffic cones and other inexpensive materials. Tactics such as curb extensions, crosswalk striping, intersection narrowing, and four-way stops will be installed and observed to assess the change in driver behavior and pedestrian and bicycle safety.
• Maine-focused “lightning talks” will be held from 4:30 pm. to 8 p.m. at the Pub At Baxter, 120 Mill St., Mill 3, Lewiston. The session will share innovative Maine projects from people who are building Maine’s cities and towns, with conversation, food and beer. Free and open to the public.
June 6 presentations
June 6 feature keynote speakers at the Royal Oak Room & Iron Horse Court, 1 Bates St., Lewiston. They include:
• 8:30-9:15 a.m.: Kathryn Rogers Merlino, professor of architecture at the
University of Washington. She will discuss, “What does truly sustainable design look like at the building and neighborhood scale?”
• 9:15-10:30 a.m.: Rick Rybeck, director, Just Economics, LLC in Washington, D.C. He will discuss how some communities overcome ongoing fiscal challenges while also providing more affordable housing and commercial space.
• 10:50 a.m. to 11:50 a.m: Jeff Speck, city planner, bestselling author, and principle at Speck & Associates in Brookline, Mass. He will describe the primacy of walkability in building more vital, resilient and appealing cities.
• Noon to 1:30 p.m.: Food trucks and tours.
• 1:30-2:15 p.m.: Jenifer Acosta, developer in Bay City, Mich. An affordable housing advocate turned real estate developer, she will discuss her approach to building community trust, collaborating regionally and resurrecting buildings on the precipice of demolition.
• 2:15-3 p.m.: Andrew Howard, co-founder/director, Team Better Block in Dallas, Texas. He will share lessons learned from an all-hands-on-deck approach to urban design.
• 3-5 p.m.: Beer and brainstorm.
• 5:30-7:30 p.m.: Dinner and conversation.
For information and registration, go to www.build-maine.com.
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Ask the people of South Portland and Cape Elizabeth what they think about turning High Street into a two way street. Ask them if they like the traffic now at rush hour. I think the traffic would be backed up onto 295 trying to cross the bridge. As George Flaherty used to say, roads and streets are the arteries of the city that supports all commerce and residents.
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