Wash. leads metro areas in walkability

http://real-us.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071204/ap_on_re_us/walkable_communities

Wash. leads metro areas in walkability
By SARAH KARUSH, Associated Press Writer
12-4-7

Caitlin Jones and her fiance, Evan Oxfeld, grew up in suburbs where getting anywhere worth going required a car. When the couple started looking for their first home together, they wanted something different: walkability.

"For me at least, that was the thing I missed most about college — just being able to walk everywhere," Oxfeld said as he and Jones strolled through Arlington's Ballston neighborhood, where they are moving into a condo.

Young professionals like Jones and Oxfeld, both 24, are driving a national trend toward more walkable communities, says the author of a report to be released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution. The report ranks the Washington region first among the country's major metropolitan areas in the number of "walkable places" per capita, thanks to changes in just the past 15 years.

Christopher B. Leinberger, a real estate developer and visiting fellow at Brookings, set out to quantify the walkability trend by counting the number of "regional-serving walkable urban places" in each of the 30 biggest metropolitan areas in the country. "Regional-serving" means the place is not just a bedroom community, but has jobs, retail or cultural institutions that bring in people who don't live there.

Leinberger, who also teaches urban planning at the University of Michigan, counted 157 such "walkable places" — including Boston's Beacon Hill, Miami's Coconut Grove and the Houston area's Sugar Land Town Square, one of many built-from-scratch "lifestyle centers" to make the list. The Tampa, Fla., area was the only one without a single place on his list.

Leinberger counted only places where significant subsidies are no longer required to spur development. He predicted that many more — such as downtown Detroit and Crossroads in Kansas City, Mo. — would reach that point within the next decade.

Walkable cities have been around for centuries, but Leinberger argues that after the rise of the automobile, planners and real estate developers hit on the lucrative suburban strip-mall formula and stuck to it.

"For 50 years we had this collective amnesia about how to build great places," said Leinberger, whose institution describes itself as a nonprofit public-policy organization.

The New York area had the highest number of walkable urban places in Leinberger's survey. Most of the 21 places he listed are neighborhoods in Manhattan.

But the Washington region, with 20 walkable places, outranked New York on a per-capita basis, and Leinberger says it could serve as a national model. It has one walkable place for every 264,000 people.

"Today there are 20 that are at or near critical mass, downtown just being one of them," Leinberger said. "Twenty years ago there were two."

The new additions include District of Columbia neighborhoods such as the West End area near George Washington University, and the revitalized Capitol Hill.

Across the Potomac River in Virginia, Arlington County has seven places on the list, including Ballston.

Leinberger attaches one major caveat to his report: The survey did not take into account the size of each walkable place. For example, midtown Manhattan is given the same weight as Reston Town Center, a lifestyle center outside Washington, even though the latter has only a tiny fraction of the office and retail space, residential units, and hotel rooms of midtown.

Leinberger attributes Washington's success with walkability to several factors, including a large population of 20- and 30-somethings and recent strong economic growth. But the chief factor, he said, is the success of the Metro. The 31-year-old rail system has transformed the region, shaping development and making the walkable urban model more viable.

Leinberger calls rail transit a key factor in the success of walkable places. Roughly two-thirds of the 157 places he counted are served by rail, he said.

Good planning also helped in the Washington region, particularly in Arlington, Leinberger said.

When the Metro was being built, county officials lobbied to put their portion underground along a central commercial road, rather than above ground and along the interstate. The county then loosened zoning regulations around each Metro stop, a policy that gave rise to "urban villages" such as Ballston.

Oxfeld, a software engineer, and Jones, an academic counselor at Georgetown University, said proximity to the Metro was a key factor in their decision to live in Ballston. They also like being able to walk to restaurants and shops and the main branch of the Arlington Public Library.

Walking among Ballston's tall buildings recently, Leinberger praised the mix of commercial and residential spaces, the picturesque courtyards, and the use of underground parking instead of surface lots.

The one big mistake is Ballston Commons Mall, a suburban-style mall that has failed to attract many national retailers, Leinberger said.

Even Ballston's boosters agree with that assessment.

"It seemed to be the right answer at the time. It does not work today," said Julie Mangis, executive director of the Ballston-Virginia Square Partnership. The group wants to encourage more retail across the entire neighborhood, she said, which compared with some other sections of Arlington is weighted heavily toward offices.

Leinberger predicted retail options would improve as the area's population continues to grow.

And if Ballston's sparkling new buildings seem a little too sparkling and new, well, that is bound to change, too, he said.

"This has some character, and it's only going to get better with time," Leinberger said. "Rome wasn't built in a day, and it certainly didn't get the patina of Rome in much less than a couple of centuries."
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On the Net:

Brookings Institution: http://www.brookings.edu/

Gonzales Digs a Deeper Hole

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1646714,00.html

Tuesday, Jul. 24, 2007
Gonzales Digs a Deeper Hole
By Jay Newton-Small/Washington

Just when it seemed that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' reputation on Capitol Hill couldn't possibly get much worse, he showed up Tuesday for yet another hearing. And as with so many of his recent appearances before Congress, his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee raised a lot more troubling questions than it answered — not just about his own conduct of and honesty about the U.S. Attorney firings, but also about the Administration's domestic intelligence gathering programs.

That new wrinkle stemmed from Gonzales' testy exchange with Senator Arlen Specter, the panel's top Republican. Specter opened up with former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's testimony to the panel in May over Gonzales' actions while serving as White House Counsel. Comey had alleged that Gonzales tried to convince an ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital recovering from gallbladder surgery, to sign off on Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. "There are no rules saying he couldn't take back authority," Gonzales said, trying to explain that they had hoped Ashcroft might be able to sign off on an intelligence program due to expire the next day, a program that Comey as acting AG had refused to renew.

But what Specter really wanted to know was how that meeting squared with Gonzales' previous testimony that there had been no serious internal disagreements over the program. Gonzales seemed to believe he had a simple explanation. "The disagreement that occurred was about other intelligence activities, and the reason for the visit to the hospital was about other intelligence activities," the Attorney General said. "It was not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people."

Both Specter and later Senator Chuck Schumer latched onto Gonzales' puzzling comment. Schumer in particular brought up several examples where in sworn testimony Gonzales has named the Terrorist Surveillance Program as the one at issue during the hospital visit to Ashcroft's room. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy then ordered a complete review of Gonzales' statements to the committee. "This is such a significant and major point," Leahy said. "There's a discrepancy here in sworn testimony and we're going to find out who's telling the truth."

Specter later circled back to Gonzales on the matter, warning him: "My suggestion to you is you review your testimony to find out if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable," Specter said. The maximum penalty for being caught lying to Congress is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 per count. Specter wryly noted to reporters during a break that there is a jail in the Capitol complex.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, who was involved in the briefings at the time of the hospital visit, said the so-called Gang of Eight — the eight top bipartisan members of Congress on intelligence issues — were not briefed about any sunset the program was facing, as Gonzales claimed. He also emphatically refuted Gonzales' statements that there was more than one program under discussion at the time and that the Gang of Eight had agreed the program was so important that if it had been allowed to lapse they were considering emergency legislation.

"Once again he's making up something to protect himself and creating situations that never happened," Rockefeller said, adding that "based on what I know about it, I'd have to say" Gonzales has committed perjury.

Gonzales' woes actually began even before he was sworn in. He took his seat as a protestor held a pink banner reading "Impeach" behind him and to yells of "Impeach him!" from protesters in the room, who were quickly escorted out. Specter threatened the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the firings of the eight U.S. Attorneys last year and a Senate "trial" to hold in contempt those Administration officials refusing to comply with Senate subpoenas. Then Leahy gaveled in the proceedings, saying "the Attorney General has lost the confidence of the Congress and the American people." ( When asked about Specter's threat of holding a Senate trial on contempt citations, Senator Trent Lott, the No. 2 Senator Republican, said he didn't "believe that's necessary," adding he intended to speak with Specter about the issue.)

In his opening statement, Gonzales underlined all the important work the department is still engaged in, highlighting its hunt for sexual predators and its role in the war on terror. But when asked by Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, if his presence is more detrimental than helpful Gonzales said: "Ultimately, I have to decide is it better for me to leave: I've decided to stay and fix the problem and that's what I'm doing," he said over guffaws from hearing attendees. "We're bringing in good experienced people. We've changed policies, we've been made aware with some of the problems with our policies."

Much of Gonzales' time was spent telling the committee he couldn't remember, wasn't up to date or wasn't at liberty to discuss the details on everything from the department's controversial settlement with the makers of Oxycotin, a drug believed responsible for dozens of deaths and his consideration of death penalty cases. to his involvement in drafting U.S. torture guidelines while working at the White House and why he apparently lied to a Senate panel over President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping programs.

When Specter asked Gonzales whether the President has the right to prohibit the Department of Justice from pursuing Congressional charges of contempt against former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten — the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow is expected to issue two contempt citations for their refusal, citing executive privilege, to comply with subpoenas to testify — Gonzales had a short lawyerly response. "I am recused of speaking on that matter due to the ongoing investigation," he said.

Later, when Senator Diane Feinstein, a California Democrat, asked how many names were on the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired that he approved, he said he couldn't recall. "After all this time and all of the investigations into this, I find it hard to believe you can't remember," Feinstein quipped. "I'll have to get back to you on that," Gonzales said.

He couldn't remember answers for even the rare friendly inquisitors. After Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, tried to prod him about how long Comey was in Ashcroft's room — hinting that maybe he hadn't really been present for much of the conversation — Gonzales replied, "I don't remember."