My graduate student, Laura Baird, and I have just returned from Keep America Beautiful 2014. Truly enjoyed a well-organized conference and the chance to translate some complex research topics into useful tools for local executive directors. Below, I reproduce my notes for anyone who wasn’t able to make the conference. Hope they help you!  I have linked the Word .docx version Keep America Beautiful 2014 Notes here. –Dr. Logan Park

 

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

 

o  

 

·      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