In Conversation With an Expert: Erik Bootsma

Erik Bootsma (left) and his design for an urban village in Detroit (right). (Source: Erik Bootsma.)

As an architect with a portfolio of ecclesiastical projects, Erik Bootsma understands the finer points of designing and building a place that’s special and safe. He tries to apply those same keen eyes to the built environment, which has led him to become more involved with both his city and Strong Towns. 

Bootsma recently participated in two Crash Analysis Studio sessions, serving as the technical advisor for a crash in Meridian, Idaho, and helping compile data on a crash that happened in Richmond, Virginia. Strong Town recently caught up with Bootsma and asked about his efforts as an advocate for safer streets. (The following conversation was edited for clarity.)

What did you see in the Virginia and Idaho crashes that inspired you to get involved?

The Richmond one is where I live. It's an area of town that I pass through often, and I'm particularly interested in trying to do things to improve traffic safety and street design in the city. I serve on the city's Safe and Healthy Streets Commission, which is responsible for Vision Zero. I helped gather some of the evidence that we were looking at with Sharon Shaw, who had nominated the Richmond crash. She and I became friends through our Local Conversation. And in this one, in particular, as an architect, I'm  very much just about measurements and numbers and that type of thing in the design. How do we come up with ways to actually improve the design? Then after this crash, we had another where another pedestrian was killed, only about four blocks away on the same street. 

With the crash in Idaho, I was actually on the panel and that one's close to me, too, because I grew up in Eastern Oregon, close to Idaho. My brother lives in Boise, and citizens there have been really alarmed with the growth and mismanagement in that area. It's all basically become California-style sprawl. The whole area is very difficult because it's so auto-oriented. So, I’m interested in looking at the ways that we could address traffic there. 

Richmond city officials have said they're going to try to address the area around the two crashes. What's your response?

The city has put in speed bumps and speed tables, and, to me, those are just their Band-Aids to say the street’s way too fast. They also said they were going to step up enforcement. But my main thought is, “If enforcement is your answer to it, it means the design is bad.” Which means everybody's speeding on it. And a Band-Aid solution really can't address that in the long term, because you can't have 24/7 enforcement without a lot of cameras and that sort of thing. 

So, I’m interested in trying to advocate for the city to get rid of this pair of one-way streets that we have running through that neighborhood. And they run right through the heart of (Virginia Commonwealth University) campus, and the densest pedestrian area in our downtown. So we've got good examples where we've gotten rid of one-ways and improved the value of land, but also just made it a lot safer for pedestrians to cross there—and we've been continuing to advocate for a number of different things. I've done designs on my website for different street configurations that are around just to try and help look at ways that we can improve streets and look at things from an attitude that cars are secondary, rather than the primary thing.

What do you think are some of the biggest challenges in fixing our built environment?

I think one is that engineering mindset of expertise that says, “We know what we're doing here. You're out of your element in talking about this.”  When really, a lot of these solutions are not hard, they don't require calculations or a traffic study. They just require us to look at other examples, and apply them and see where it works. So I think there's a hesitancy to try new things, in really radical ways, in a lot of places, and there's a hesitancy in elected officials wanting to get behind things and do things because they feel like if they get too much resistance, they'll get voted out. And so we end up with staff and elected officials who don't like new things. 

So, I tell people that I think we need to have more people who just stand up and offer their opinions and actually do things where they can. That auto-oriented mindset is a big challenge, and the fact the pipeline for auto-oriented funding from the federal government to state governments on down is streamlined, whereas projects for alternatives—for traffic slowing, for transit, walking, etc.—tend to have a longer path with community involvement. And that can be a good thing, but in other ways we go through endless hearings and endless feedback, instead of just doing them and then seeing how it works out.

What are you seeing either in your own work or what you've observed that gives you hope?

Well, I think one of the things that gave me a lot of hope was being down at the Strong Towns National Gathering and CNU. The last time I went to CNU, about 18 years ago, it was mostly staffed or attended by architects, planners, and new urbanists. And this time, just about every other person I met was either in economic development or a planning department or transit department, or mayors or elected officials in other places. I've seen a growth in that people are starting to recognize that we've got to do something different for things to turn out better. Certainly, it's not everywhere, but I'm hoping that it filters up to all levels of government. I'm seeing encouraging signs, with younger planners and younger engineers interested in looking at older, traditional ways of laying out cities that aren’t sprawl-oriented.

How would you advise people who see pain points in their own communities to start to address them?

It's important for people to talk to their neighbors and know their neighborhood. It can be difficult sometimes, but when you do that, I think it makes a big difference. Also, getting involved locally with your city government, from serving on commissions or even running for city council. Often, the news loves national stories that cause a lot of controversy, and they generally cover local stuff when something tragic has happened. So I think people have a tendency to know every single person who's running for president, but we have no idea who's running for city council. And oftentimes, you can go to lunch with them and talk to them. Just talking to city council members as a concerned citizen, we can get something done. With that, and with a few other people, it starts to be heard.

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