CityCircles BlogInside a light rail startup

For anyone who questions our local commitment, check out this recent post from the Arizona State University Alumni Association. I was approached to talk about my ASU experience and how it shaped me for the association’s growing movement to get more young alumni involved.

The resulting Q+A was a lot of fun. It was a chance to put down all of our hard work with CityCircles for a few moments and think back to my college days (which weren’t that long ago). I really hadn’t had a chance to do that because I started working in a full-time position for The Arizona Republic the moment I graduated in May 2001. I’ve been working ever since.

Hindsight is 20-20, as they say, and it was great to reflect on some of the poignant moments – the formative experiences college students get that don’t always come from a textbook.

At any rate, if you are a young ASU alum aged 21-35 years old, I encourage you to become part of the Arizona State Young Alumni group. It’s an excellent networking opportunity for those who are starting or advancing in their careers. Sooner or later, your paths are bound to cross.

If you think all the buzz lately about where Phoenix is headed is a recent a phenomenon, think again. There’s one Valley nonprofit that’s been working on stuff like livable communities, land use, open space and more for 41 years.

In newsroom-speak, 41 years is a major scoop. Folks at Valley Forward have been working to get Phoenicians to think outside the box since 1969, and they’re seeing a change in membership that promises bold new ideas, in my opinion. The membership base, which for years was comprised of companies tied to real estate development, is now being refreshed with small merchants, solar energy companies and local startups.

We’re one of them. I just met with Valley Forward President Diane Brossart and its membership director, Jhenifer Krutz, to discuss how the organization could help us reach out to more people in the light rail community. By the time I left, I wanted to be a member and participate in its committees.

Their membership list is like a “who’s who” of the Valley’s largest companies. Many of them also support their local chamber of commerce, but the involvement with Valley Forward is interesting because it shows a willingness to balance economic development with environmental sustainability – a major policy statement, which is typically uncharacteristic of corporate entities.

I’m just mentioning this because I think it’s worth your time. If you are a small business in the Valley that can relate with Valley Forward’s mission, you might think about supporting the organization in some way – either through membership or by attending its meetings. They also have some upcoming candidate forums, and this is election season after all.

Eddie J at The Duce

Sorry for the tongue-twisting headline. But on Saturday, that’s exactly what a group of curious light rail passengers was doing Downtown – wrapping their palettes around a sampling of wines from local businesses.

After the success of Urban Wine Walk on April 24 (done in partnership with the Downtown Phoenix Partnership), we decided to roll out a smaller version – a minicrawl, if you will – that would encourage people to hop on board light rail and visit a set itinerary of businesses offering discounted wine and food in a small geographic area. They’d have wine glasses, a map, and a CityCircles liaison at every location.

Instead of running the event up and down Central Avenue, we focused on the Downtown Phoenix area because the proximity of the stations was much closer. With summer temps topping 110 degrees, this made for easier and safer walking.

The event began at 5 p.m. at The Duce, where owner Steve Rosenstein graciously volunteered his vintage 1968 school bus – dubbed “Old School” – to transport Rail Revue participants to Portland’s, the first destination on the wine-tinerary. At 10 p.m., Old School picked them up at Networks Bar & Grill (inside the Hyatt Regency) and shuttled them back to The Duce.

By the way, if you haven’t seen The Duce yet, check it out. It features a coffee bar, soda fountain, gymnasium, retail space, bar and grill, and outdoor patio in the shell of a historic warehouse. On the weekends, Eddie J belts out covers and Motown tunes as a one-man, synthesized band.

The event was a success. Twenty-nine people – from Tempe, Chandler, Scottsdale, Glendale, Phoenix and Laveen – came over for the fun, and everyone – including The Duce staff – asked us about the next event. Stay tuned!

If you are a business or individual who wold like to see a Rail Revue event in your light rail neighborhood, drop us a line below or email Adam directly at adam@citycircles.com.

Today, we got a note from Russ Baurichter touting the new blog “widget” that reels in discounts and specials at independent Arizona businesses.

For the technologically challenged, a widget is a small piece of computer code that you can put on your blog or website (usually in the sidebar) that pulls in links from what’s going on on another website. In this case, that “other website” is a local shopping app for the iPhone that was built by Hylo right here in Phoenix for Local First Arizona, a statewide nonprofit that promotes local, independent businesses. [You can download that widget here, then paste the code into your blog or website.]

Thanks for the heads-up, Russ. We realized, you know, there really should be a widget that highlights events near light rail. Let’s do it!

To include our light rail events widget in your blog or website, simply highlight, copy and paste this block of text below into your blog’s sidebar:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://cdn.widgetserver.com/syndication/subscriber/InsertWidget.js”></script><script type=”text/javascript”>if (WIDGETBOX) WIDGETBOX.renderWidget(‘b17e862e-10f3-466f-a769-14fff72e9ca8′);</script><noscript>Get the <a href=”http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/phoenix-light-rail-news-events-classifieds-o”>Phoenix light rail, news, events, classifieds | o</a> widget and many other <a href=”http://www.widgetbox.com/”>great free widgets</a> at <a href=”http://www.widgetbox.com”>Widgetbox</a>! Not seeing a widget? (<a href=”http://docs.widgetbox.com/using-widgets/installing-widgets/why-cant-i-see-my-widget/”>More info</a>)</noscript>

We chose Widgetbox, a paid service (with a free demo) to build this widget. It’s JavaScript, but we can make a version for different blogging software (i.e., Wordpress, etc.) as needed.

We may add more widgets in the future, but so far, the events one is the only one in Phoenix. Give it a shot, and please let us know what you think.

Just to show we’re a diversified bunch at CityCircles, I wanted to call your attention to a story I recently wrote for TIME magazine’s website about a potential new immigration law in Arizona.

The story highlights state Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, and his intent to introduce new legislation this fall that would prohibit children born here to illegal immigrants from obtaining a birth certificate in Arizona. It was the No. 4 most-read story on TIME magazine’s website, ahead of a piece on BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Personally, I think the oil spill is a much more important and far-reaching story with much more serious implications to a larger crowd of people (i.e., the world). Still, the illegal immigration story forces all of us to ask serious questions.

And coincidentally, these decisions weren’t made far from light rail: The state Capitol is a few minutes from Central Avenue/Washington station, and Pearce’s district includes the area around Mesa’s Sycamore/Main station.

See how we can tie everything back to a light rail angle?

If you are a Ruby on Rails developer looking to help an open-source project that’s worthwhile, here’s your chance: We have completed a test suite that allows you to play with new features and functions in a safe environment.

Everyone wins. The light rail community gets some new tools to use on CityCircles, and the developer gets a nice portfolio piece, since anyone associated with this project will have their name on the license. Here’s a little post we wrote for PBS’ MediaShift IdeaLab blog that explains the test suite concept in more detail.

If you can help, great. If you’d like to pass this along to a friend of a friend, please do so. Thank you!

Last week, we interviewed METRO CEO Steve Banta in Civic Space Park Downtown and listened as he spoke about his own background, lessons he learned in other light rail cities and, ultimately, what he thinks will keep light rail sustainable here in the long run (hint: taxes).

The talk lasted for about 30 minutes and covered a lot of ground, but the video highlights key points in the discussion.

We want to keep the momentum going for more of these videos. The idea is to spend quality time with people in the light rail community and talk to them about their experiences with the train. The goal is to show how people feel about the system, what it’s doing right and what it can do better as it grows to include 57 miles of tracks. We’re tentatively calling them “train testimonials,” but we reserve the right to change that at any time.

We’ll start spreading out along the line to include all parts of the rail community, not just Phoenix. So if you have suggestions for topics or people to interview, send me a note at adam@citycircles.com.

The folks at the much-revered Atlantic Monthly just ran a story about how new rail lines are one of the ways out of the deep morass the U.S. housing market is in. If it’s done thoughtfully, the author writes, it can help get the industry and the economy back on track.

How does it do this, you ask? By using rail to encourage community links and foot-friendly design. Check out this very telling passage:

Yet the creation of new, attractive urban spaces is slow and difficult, and becomes all but impossible without substantial new infrastructure. Most of all, it relies on good transit options—especially rail links—around which walkable neighborhoods can develop. Rail, biking, and walking infrastructure is the backbone of urban development, and as a country we’ve for the most part neglected to build it in recent decades, in favor of new roads for new suburbs farther and farther away from metropolitan hubs. To support growth in the next decade, we need to change that dynamic—and nourish our walkable urban spaces and neighborhoods. Complicating matters, in these cash-strapped times we need to find a way to do so on the cheap.

Whether you buy into this theory or not, that’s one of our goals with the CityCircles project. We’re trying to develop the tools people need to explore and celebrate that inner-city experience because, well, we can’t keep sprawling out into suburb after suburb and expect different results than we’ve already got.

The author of this piece, Christopher B. Leinberger, is a Brookings Institution fellow and a professor of urban planning. He makes a pretty compelling argument by looking at policies that American real estate developers followed in the early 20th century.

Irony? Perhaps. But this may be one instance in which history could repeat itself, and that might be a good thing.

The comments on Leinberger’s story are as interesting as the piece itself. In particular, we liked this rebuttal to Leinberger’s idea that private light rail lines are the answer to the problem.