Keep America Beautiful 2014 Notes

The Power of Storytelling 3

The canonical storyline 3

Cigarette Butts Litter Prevention 4

Four highly tested strategies 4

Partnerships multiply reward:effort 4

Media blitz 4

Small business impacts 4

Talking Trash Plenary Session 5

Handling trash 5

Snow removal 5

Disposal of material 5

Emergency response 5

Demographics and social commentary 5

Logistics and deployment 6

Alternatives 6

Getting the Most Out of Re-TRAC 7

Information management platform for recycling and waste management 7

Use cases 7

Analytics and reports generated automagically 7

BIBB 7

Honeybees Collapse 8

Underlying reasons 8

Stakeholder meetings 8

Vibrant Urban Tourism and Leisure Spaces 9

History of urban shared spaces 9

1 Have a plan 9

2 Clustering and critical mass 9

3 Have anchor tenants 9

4 Lease agreements include defined operating hours and days, usually evening hours 10

5 People living and staying downtown in condos and apartments 10

6 Pioneers with patient money were convinced to invest and wait 10

7 Start with one block, a demonstration block 10

8 Solve the parking dilemma 10

9 Public restrooms 10

10 Development of gathering places 11

11 Narrow roads, widen sidewalks, make crosswalks awesome, street trees every ten meters 11

12 Create community gateways 11

13 Unify way finding with classy design, clear branding 11

14 Gateway to the smaller downtown area 11

15 Blade signs perpendicular from the facade 12

16 Outdoor dining as third place after bedroom and office 12

17 Verdant shop fronts 12

18 ?? 12

19 Give the downtown district a name 12

20 Experiential marketing 12

The Power of Storytelling

We deeply understand stories

Statistics don’t move or motivate us [or grant funding sources], stories do. Statistics are required and ubiquitous after funding is secured.

The canonical storyline

· Once upon a time…[setting]

· And every day…[introduction]

· Until one day…[hook]

· And because of this…[rising action]

· Until finally…[climax]

· And ever since that day…[resolution]

Cigarette Butts Litter Prevention

Four highly tested strategies

· Support/advertise local anti-littering laws

· Build awareness with public outreach

· Install ash receptacles at transition points

· Distribute portable pocket ashtrays

Partnerships multiply reward : effort ratio

Usual suspects:

· City agencies, public works

· Business improvement districts

· Town councils, city councils

· Hospitality groups

· Main street associations

· County board of Supervisors

· Volunteer groups: Rotaries, Kiwanis

Get on their public meeting agendas and talk about pairing up to extend matching funding

Media blitz

to get the word out to the public and serve your project partners’ metrics as well

Small business impacts

Marinas and small businesses concentrate butts at the land/water interface.

· Butts are a direct fire hazard to boats

· Butt cleanup is a direct impact to small businesses’ bottom lines

Talking Trash Plenary Session

Handling trash

250 M tons of waste generated per year in the USA

Getting people to think about what happens to the waste beyond the curb, and the workers

New York City has added entire city blocks extending beyond geologic shoreline by building atop dumps

Political and class divisions meant New Yorkers endured disease and trash problems solved long ago by other similar cities (Paris)

The mix of litter and manure was called corporation “pudding”

A colonel (Waring) was put over street sweeping

· White uniforms

o Esprit

o Hard to sneak off to pub

· Standardized horse breeds

· Replaced wood carts with durable metal carts

· Setup curbside recycling

· Permitted women to be employed by the city for gleaning recyclable scrap

· Before/after photos used as PR in Harper’s Weekly

· Staged a parade before a reviewing stand, invited press, awards given

· Trash loaded onto scows

o Families could trim the scows looking for recyclables

o Manure, ash, refuse

Snow removal

· Horse, then ICE powered

· First piled in street

· Then dumped in river

· Now treated as sewage then discharged

· Tandem plowing used to clear entire multilane roads at once using trucks in chevron formation

Disposal of material

· Landfills noted as parks on public maps

· Barges no longer used

· Maxed-out landfills re-contoured into public parks and wetlands(!)

Emergency response

· Sanitation was the first department onsite, last to leave after hurricane Sandy steamrolled New York

· Outpouring of public gratitude for their efforts

Demographics and social commentary

· 7000 workers, several hundred women

· Legacy work, not uncommon to find generations of families working in it

· Much more likely to be injured on the job as sanitation versus being police or fire

· Fatalities receive less press, if any, but draw hundreds of workers in “class A’s” (dress parade uniform).

· Police and fire museums, etc. but no explanation or celebration of sanitation workers

Logistics and deployment

· Still using paper-based and handwritten records

· In the process of being computerized

· Delays in construction of a transfer station near a recently residentialized area, city has won legal cases to continue

Alternatives

· Green markets with organics recycling bins available

· Many restaurants pulled into organics recycling program

· All hard plastics recyclable as of 2012

· Food waste composting, urban facilities

Getting the Most Out of Re-TRAC

Information management platform for recycling and waste management

Gazillions of client orgs big and small

KAB affiliates can use free accounts to report up to KAB; 4000+ already are

Use cases

Walkthrough

Data backs up funding requests, but costs gathering, processing, and presentation time

Re-TRAC automates everything but gathering and transcription

Analytics and reports generated automagically

· Charts

· Graphs

· Comparisons

· Ad messaging

· Sliced any way

BIBB

· Baseline

· Identify

· Build

· Better

Honeybees Collapse

Example of tragedy of the commons

Underlying reasons

· Mites

· Too much/too little mitocide on bees

· Too much/too little insecticide/badly timed application on crops

· Fatigue

· Monoculture diet

Stakeholder meetings

· Big ag

· Small farmers

· Beekeepers

· Chemical manufacturers

· Researchers

· Facilitators

For KAB affiliates, local bee gardens and networking to beekeeping orgs are smart actions

Vibrant Urban Tourism and Leisure Spaces

History of urban shared spaces

WWII created suburbs, which started malls

Then strip malls

Downtowns died.

Vacancy is twice as high in urban vs suburban

But major shift toward European model of carfree plazas and downtowns, street festivals, etc

Visitors don't hang out in downtowns where locals won't hang out.

Shopping dining lounging in downtowns is 80% of tourism economically

This is why Disney built downtown Disney next to each of its parks

Twenty things roger brooks learned by studying vibrant downtowns. The best achieved seventeen

1 Have a plan

Branding, development, marketing, action plan

Not 300 page master plan, do a 50 page action plan

Assessment: secret shopping your downtown

Ask roger for checklist of 60 things

Make my own checklists to give as freebies

2 Clustering and critical mass

in three lineal blocks...

...ten places that sell food

...ten destination retail shops

...ten things open after six pm bars bistros movies

Auto malls do seven times the business when clustered together

3 Have anchor tenants

Like nordstroms or Macy's at the mall

An anchor tenant is the place you go out of your way to visit.

Not the same as big box, gourmet rolls...

4 Lease agreements include defined operating hours and days, usually evening hours

Seventy percent of consumer retail spending happens after six pm

Malls used to be closed on Sunday's

Eating and shopping are shifting later into the night

Farmers market ran from ten to two, five hundred people

Shifted to staying open till p nine pm, went to ten thousand attendance

5 People living and staying downtown in condos and apartments

6 Pioneers with patient money were convinced to invest and wait

The big property owners can themselves cause the beautification

7 Start with one block, a demonstration block

Great lighting, street trees, Garden club took over street corner gardens called bulb outs

Must be with the collection of property owners and businesses most ready to work with you

8 Solve the parking dilemma

Two hour parking is a good way to punish your customers and keep them away

On the two hour parking sign put directional arrow to all day parking

9 Public restrooms

Number one need for people stopping in rural communities

McDonald's never puts a customers only sign up, seventy percent of bathroom stoppers buy something, many out of guilt

Port o let sized single stalls with one way glass

NEVER SAY NO TELL ME WHERE I CAN GO

Relieved visitors spend more money

Info pamphlets right outside the door to provide reading material

Visitors four times more likely to spend once they are out of the car

10 Development of gathering places

The age of third places, home work, plaza

Replacing a single sixty slot parking lot centrally located with a plaza/piazza. Rapid city matched the visitation of mount Rushmore in one year by doing this. Average age of home buyers dropped by twelve years after two years

11 Narrow roads, widen sidewalks, make crosswalks awesome, street trees every ten meters

Alcoves in sidewalks for street musicians

Angle in parking can increase retail sales thirty percent

Street trees increased retail sales 18 percent by itself

12 Create community gateways

Rickety Kiwanis signs scare people away

The entrance is the first impression and sets the norm

gateways create the sense of exclusivity and luxury

Real estate sells faster for more

The sign goes where it makes the first best impression, not at the city limit

13 Unify way finding with classy design, clear branding

Pedestrian maps and way finding, not just street signs

Never more than five items on the sign

14 Gateway to the smaller downtown area

Pole banners, physical arches

Decorative sidewalks can be cut right into asphalt for 6.50$ per square foot, cheaper than pavers and resistant to snow plow blades

15 Blade signs perpendicular from the facade

Consistent height and size

Signage says a lot about you... Misspelling a school sign, crooked sign saying alignment, slow church services

Never use script writing

No lower than seven feet, no higher than nine

16 Outdoor dining as third place after bedroom and office

Convert intermittent parking spots during summer into cafe table seating

Doubles downtown retail sales

17 Verdant shop fronts

We judge the book by its cover

Extend window displays to exterior setups, not outdoor merchandising, which looks cheap

Potted flowers and greenery

Buy out an entire nurserys leftover stock at the end of the year and string along the whole block

Seventy percent of first time sales come from curb appeal

Adding evergreen and blooming plants increase retail sales by thirty percent

Makes women, who spend eighty percent of expenditures, feel safe and welcome

So add benches against facade facing out, not against curb facing in. Flank both side with plantings

18 ??

19 Give the downtown district a name

Names are powerful

Distinguish the place and make it rare

20 Experiential marketing

Deliver on the promise