The San Francisco Bay Area (which is where I say I work in my linkedin profile) is a geographical region that covers 9 counties and 101 communities. Two of those communities are Burlingame (located in San Mateo county) and Healdsburg (located in Sonoma county). Neither town is San Francisco, so it would be a lie for me to say I work for a SF-based firm — “Not that there’s anything wrong with that…”

😉 EDITOR NOTE–Time out boys. move on to something else. (I admit we need more topics).

I will let you decide whether or not saying the company you work for is San Francisco-based sounds sexy or mercenary. I actually toned down your quote on Linked-In: “Dean Gunderson, Planner/Architect at Dreiling Terrones Architecture, San Francisco Bay Area.”

The link is:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dean-gunderson/b/621/37a

With that, I am done with this thread.

http://www.dtbarch.com/

You’ll see that the firm’s emphasis on Building, Land, Stewardship, and Activism isn’t just a tagline — and it’s why I work for them.

I reside in both Boise’s Northend and in Burlingame, CA — but will soon be relocating my CA apartment to a place near Oakland (my place by the airport is WAY too expensive). My wife and son both attend BSU and my daughter attends Boise High. My connection to Boise isn’t just superficial, or coincidental. I’m fortunate enough to be able to continue to live (in both locations) without a car, though my family does occasionally drive a stationwagon. This more than offsets my carbon-impact from the trips a make between my two homes.

The Harper’s article is occasionally brought up because it shows how little has changed in attitudes regarding neighborhood preservation in the Boise area — and how easily some policians are lured by the attraction of bright shiny objects (whether its steel rails, or federal coin). All those opposed to preserving the past cite the costs associated with bringing buildings up to code or those buildings’ lack of “value”, and they never mention the value of recapturing the embodied life-cycle energy in the existing structures. If they did, they would be forced to admit that renovation is better for the community and better for the environment. But, it isn’t a hard and fast rule — some smaller buildings aren’t worth preserving especially in light of the potential redevelopment opportunities embodied in the underlying land. The Goodman Oil property may be one of those cases — and I shudder to think of what may be lurking under the property, especially what may be now leaching into the aquifer and Boise River from that contaminated site.

I’d love to talk about the strategy involved in the county’s position regarding PC’s, but that would take a whole book. Suffice it to say, it was inextricably linked to both the BGG and CIM processes and the various rolls all the jurisdictions played in the BGG endeavor — especially in regards to annexations and tax-supported (non-PUC regulated) infrastructure. “Of course”, this is just my opinion and could/would never be confirmed by any elected official, but I was happy to play my part and if the circumstances where to repeat themselves I would do it again in a heartbeat (maybe this reveals a streak of masochism on my part).

And, TTWO, you might be surprised at the number of pen-named posters to this blog who are public employees. Dave has never forced the point, except once when he asked if I were interested in writing a guest post — at that point in time it would not have been “politic” to use my Christian name 😉

You reference the Harper’s article. It’s funny how some people continue to bring that up as if it’s the bible of urban renewal. It’s not. It’s, at best, sensationalist tripe. It offered no pictures and very few facts. Appeal to emotion fallacy at its best.

What was torn down that was so great? A bunch of dilapidated warehouses? Aren’t those the very things that new urbanists hate? Warehouses don’t have residences, don’t have cafes or bookstores or groceries or sundries. They are nothing but truck magnets and are enablers of the automobile society.

You can still see remnants today. Esther’s warehouse at 9th and Front, it’s used for storage. Much of its volume is nothing but air. What a giant waste of space. Over on my end of town we have Goodman Oil and the Boise Junk House et al. Big ugly wastes of space that don’t pay their fare share of property taxes. Should we save Goodman Oil’s warehouse because it’s… hell, there is no argument in the world you could make to convince most people that dilapidated warehouses should be saved. Look up the thread on it on SSP.

It is usually only the mercenaries who support projects that will ultimately put taxpayers on the hook. In the case of PCs, it was, pretty much, only the big developers and development services staffers like you who supported them.

In the case of the Folly-Trolly, the gig remains the same. Its main supporters are those who will, or hope to, gain from its construction.

As Curious George, in this forum, you never mentioned that you worked for Ada County Development Services. As yourself, in this forum, even after that massive core dump above, you neglected to tell us you work for a San Francisco architecture and planning firm.

Not only did I work for the County during its debute of its revised Planned Community ordinance (a service that I am proud of), I was also one of the county’s liasons to the Blueprint for Good Growth & Communities in Motion processes — as well as one of the county’s Board members on Valley Regional Transit’s Board of Directors (and to the chagrin of many, I supported the transit union workers — being one of the few Board members invited to attend their regular union meetings). I also served 12 years on the Technical Advisory Committee for COMPASS (starting when the organization was still the Ada Planning Association) — and several years on its Traffic Model Advisory Committee. As a member of one of COMPASS’ evaluation committees I voted to disallow the city of Garden City access to state funds to build a pedestrain bridge across the Boise River — since I believed that the city’s stance on public access to a portion of the Greenbelt should have disqualified it from using taxpayer money to expand that same Greenbelt.

Before working for the county, I served as the planner for BSU — only resigning after it became clear that the President would not cancel his contract with Taco Bell and recant on the renaming of the Pavilion.

Before that I worked as a project manager for BSU helping a number of departments secure additional classroom, laboratory, gallery and office space (but in so doing, also denying a whole range of other departments access to space). And, before that I worked in the private sector designing homes, office buildings, and grocery stores (the last project I worked on in that field was the downtown Winco).

If one can say anything about my tenure as a public servant it’s that I held the course along what I believe to be the correct path — even if it earned me the enmity of others.

In the interest of fair disclosure, I’m also a current member of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Past member of the Urban Land Institute, American Planning Association, and American Institute of Architecture (having also served as the Idaho Chapter’s Associate Director for three terms). I also worked with the Idaho State Historical Society in developing it walking tours of historic Boise, and spent several years leading the tours of the historic downtown business district. You can even dig up an old episode of Outdoor Idaho where I led a tour of the Capitol building.

Starting in 1992 I began authoring & leading urban design charrettes for the University of Idaho’s Architecture School, using Boise as the test-bed to discus a number of issues related to where planning & good intentions failed to better the lives of Boise residents (the first charrette was the problem of the connector and how to get pedestrians across Front and Myrtle).

Oh, and I also sculpt. If you google (or lexus-nexus) my name, you’ll find a solo show of my work was protested several years ago for showing (what the protesters referred to as) pornography. I followed up that show with a performance in the Vagina Monologues (reading my part from off-stage to adhere to the wishes of the play’s author).

There, now I’ve given you about as much ammunition as possible to make of what you will.

– Dean

In nearly every transit study done, buses outperform rail by a significant margin at lower overall costs.

The low population density in Boise, especially along the proposed route, is so far from being able to justify this project that it is laughable.