Streetsblog Network Training at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Kansas City. Led by Aaron Naparstek and Dani Simons.

1. Today's Agenda:
9:30 - Dani Simons and introductions
10:00 - Aaron Naparstek, "Blogging for Change."
10:30 - Local Reports from Angie Schmitt and bloggers
- David Johnson, KCLightRail
- Alex Ihnen, NextSTL
- Kristen Jeffers, BlackUrbanist
- Randy Simes, UrbanCincy
11:40 - Jason Barron, Cincinatti Mayor's Office
11:55 - Neha Bhatt, Smart Growth America
12:00 - Stephen Davis, The federal transportation process
12:20 - Lunch and discussion: How can we help each other?
1:15 - Feedback surveys
1:30 - The end!

2. Streetsblog Network Gathering:
Building a Movement for Change
Aaron Naparstek Smart Growth America
@Naparstek New Partners Conference
adn@mit.edu Kansas City, Missouri
February 8, 2013

3. I. Background:
The New York City
Streets Renaissance
Campaign

4. How I got my start in this business

5. Honku: Haiku poetry about horn honking
Honku.org. Check it out.

6. Midtown Manhattan circa 2005
NYC transportation policy: Stuck in gridlock. Literally and figuratively.

7. Meanwhile…
Over in London
Congestion Charging

8. London: Motor vehicles removed from Trafalgar Square
Before:
After:

9. Copenhagen: 40% of Commuters are Biking!

10. Urban
expressway
removal
projects.
Before
Seoul, South Korea
Cheonggyecheon After
River.
Restored in 2004.

11. Paris: The Expressway became a Beach.
"I promise to fight, with all the
means at my disposal, against
the harmful, ever-increasing
and unacceptable hegemony
of the automobile."
- Mayor Bertrand Delanoë,
2001.

12. Bus Rapid Transit
The TransMilenio. Bogotá, Colombia.

13. "We like traffic, it means economic activity, it means
people coming here.
-- NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, August 2, 2006
A typical afternoon on Broadway, Lower Manhattan, 2006

14. New Yorkers had forgotten:
Streets weren’t always the sole domain of motor vehicles.
Mulberry Street, Manhattan’s Lower East Side, circa 1900.
Source: Library of Congress Photocrom Collection

15. Park Avenue was once… a Park!
Before 1922 After1922
Manhattan’s Park Avenue at 50th Street looking north

16. 1913
2005
"Erosion of cities by automobiles entails so familiar a series of events
that they hardly need describing. The erosion proceeds as a kind of
nibbling -- Jane Jacobs

17. Plan and design for cars and traffic, your city will get…
Cars and traffic.
This is the result of 80 years of planning for cars and traffic.

18. NYCSR: Reimagining the city's streets
What if we
thought of our
streets as public
spaces
rather than
transportation
corridors?

19. NYCSR brought together a coalition of advocacy organizations

20. NYCSR invited influential thinkers and leaders to NYC.
Enrique Penalosa
Mayor of Bogota
Donald Shoup
UCLA parking guru
Jan Gehl
Danish urban designer

21. Streetsblog launched in early 2006
Able to give attention to stories that might not get covered otherwise.

22. The original goals for Streetsblog
1. Cover a daily beat around sustainable
transport and livable streets issues.
2. Watchdog and reform the New York City
Department of Transportation.
3. Show and spread new ideas for NYC’s
streets.
4. Create a community forum for high-quality
discussion.

23. An audience of one.
Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff

24. II. The Impact
of Streetsblog
and the NYCSR

25. One of my first examples of the power of Streetsblog
In April 2007 Streetsblog got a hold of this secret plan.

26. Streetsblog put a face and a name on these car-oriented policies
No one had ever paid much attention to NYC's Chief Traffic Engineer

27. Streetsblog mobilized an unprecedented response
700 people
showed up to a
local meeting
that normally
would have
attracted 35.

28. This is what livable streets advocacy looked like before the Internet

29. Social media reduces the costs of four things that are
critical to advocates, activists and organizers:
• Access to Information
• Group communication
• Group coordination
• Public documentation and
distribution of information.
By reducing these costs, social media helps to
accelerate the political organizing process.

30. Streetsblog put pressure on City Hall and NYC DOT
Provided an outlet for frustrated progressives within NYC DOT

31. Streetsblog helped to create fundamental change at NYC DOT
NYC DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall resigns, January 29, 2007.

32. Fundamental change comes to NYC DOT
Janette Sadik-Khan takes over, May 2007

33. Parking lot transformed into a public plaza.
Before After
DUMBO, Brooklyn

34. Projects that had been "impossible" for 40 years start happening
Before After
Making Broadway car-free at Times Square

35. Car-Free Broadway at Times Square
Before After

36. Times Square
DUMBO, Brooklyn

37. Busy intersection transformed into a public plaza.
Before After
Ninth Avenue at 14th Street, Manhattan.

38. Madison Square, Broadway at 23rd Street.
Before After

39. Herald Square, Broadway in front of Macy’s

40. New Lots Triangle, Brooklyn.
Before
After
New public space near a busy subway station.

41. Select Bus Service
Dedicated bus lanes, off-board fare collection, signal priority

42. Building a citywide bike network.
Protected bike path on Prospect Park West in Brooklyn.

43. Thanks to infrastructure like this, we are seeing an incredible boom
in bike commuting in New York City.
The new protected bike path or “cycle track”
on Manhattan’s busy 8th Avenue.

44. Creating more complete streets.
First Avenue and E. 6th Street, Manhattan.

45. III. Tactics:
How to blog the
Streetsblog way

46. There are three audiences you want to reach:
1. The decision-makers
Governor Chief Traffic Engineer Mayor
Planning Director Police Chief Transit Head

47. There are three audiences you want to reach:
2. The public

48. There are three audiences you want to reach:
3. The local media

49. Remember, you're tell a story.
Stories often have good guys and bad guys.
Bad guys are compelling!

50. Regularity is important. Try to be there every day.
Headline round-ups are a great way to define your beat
and provide valuable service to readers.

51. Write good headlines.
- Frame the issue as clearly as you can
- Use officials' names
- Have fun

52. Bring new ideas and best practices to your community
Streetfilms (and web video, in general) is a great tool for this.

53. This Streetfilm helped to change policy in multiple cities.
Streetfilms' Bogota Ciclovia video

54. Try to make wonky, complex policy issues more accessible.

55. BREAKING: It's a news medium
There is value to getting news online first and fastest every once in a while.

56. Make stars out of your local activists…
The annual Streetsie Awards: Activists of the Year

57. … and make stars of your readers too
Feature your best commenters on the homepage

58. Get your readers involved and invested.
This awful group of
state legislators held
transit funding
hostage for a period
in 2009.
They called
themselves
"The Four Amigos."
Caption contests are a fun way to invite particpation.

59. Get your readers involved and invested.
Streetsblog readers
renamed them
"The Fare Hike Four."
(Incidentally, three of
these four are either in
jail or on their way.)
Caption contests are a fun way to invite particpation.

60. Hold government officials accountable
Put them on notice: We are watching what you say and do.

61. Hold your local media accountable
"A Second Avenue bike lane is
next to the Israeli consulate,
leaving many wondering what
would happen if a man on a bike
were a terrorist!"
Point out the absurdity of their ingrained windshield perspective.

62. Headlines from the Great NYC Bikelash of 2010-11

63. Even a high-quality outlet like the New York Times
will publish baloney

64. Do rapid-response fact-checking.
In fact, the exact opposite of that New York Times story is true.

65. Celebrate the innovators
More often than not, they only hear criticism.

66. Market and distribute your content!
The #BikeNYC hashtag on Twitter

67. Market and distribute your content!
Make use of existing social networks or create your own.

68. Raise money. Give it a shot!
Jonathan Maus at
Bike Portland is
raising three kids on
advertising revenue
from his web site.
I'm talking to you, Alex Ihnen!!!

69. Have fun! Try to be entertaining.
Don't be boring.

70. IV. Streetsblog Network:
Can we do more together?

71. We launched the Streetsblog Network in 2008
Concept: Connect local livable streets bloggers
to the federal transportation process

72. Today: Virtually every big U.S. city has a local livable streets blog
All blogs ≈ 450
High-frequency local blogs ≈ 125
Unique visitors > 390,804
Monthly pageviews > 1,375,909

73. Streetsblog Network members are becoming influential

74. Transit Miami compels Commissioner to respond and retract.

75. "Now twenty people testify at hearings. It used to be two."

76. 6,758 Twitter followers makes NextSTL a viable political force.

77. Fighting for Cincinatti's streetcar and other projects
Instrumental in helping defeat two different referenda intended to kill
the Cincinnati Streetcar.

78. Livable streets blogs encourage action and engagement.
"About 25 residents spoke in favor of the plan
compared to only 6 opposed."

79. It can be challenging to get readers to engage the bigger issues
Gutting the
Clean Air Act?
One comment.

80. It can be challenging to get readers to engage the bigger issues
Harassed by
SFPD while
biking?
60 comments!

81. “Digital networks have acted as a
massive positive supply shock to
the cost and spread of
information, to the ease and range
of public speech by citizens, and
to the speed and scale of group
coordination.”
- NYU Professor Clay Shirky,
author of Here Comes Everybody.

82. Does anyone recognize this urban public space?

83. Tahrir Square, Cairo.

84. On the local level the Livable Streets movement is powerful
350 people rally on a weekday morning to support a bike lane in Brooklyn.
October 21, 2010.

85. So, how do we build our movement?
How do we take advantage of our
network?
How do we move the federal
transportation fight
out from inside the Beltway
and onto local turf,
where we are winning?

86. Today's Agenda:
9:30 - Dani Simons and introductions
10:00 - Aaron Naparstek, "Blogging for Change."
10:30 - Local Reports from Angie Schmitt and bloggers
- David Johnson, KCLightRail
- Alex Ihnen, NextSTL
- Kristen Jeffers, BlackUrbanist
- Randy Simes, UrbanCincy
11:40 - Jason Barron, Cincinatti Mayor's Office
11:55 - Neha Bhatt, Smart Growth America
12:00 - Stephen Davis, The federal transportation process
12:20 - Lunch and discussion: How can we help each other?
1:15 - Feedback surveys
1:30 - The end!