Calendar notes for the week of February 24, 2025.

Monday, February 24 (tonight!) - Petaluma City Council - Among other agenda items, the Council will conduct the first hearing on the Final Environmental Impact Report and draft Ordinance for the proposed Downtown Overlay.

The meeting will be convened at 5:00pm.  Further details, including the agenda and Zoom link, are on the Urban Chat calendar (link above).

Wednesday, February 26 (this week) – Petaluma Urban Chat – With the Film Festival complete but many more Urban Chat events on the horizon, the board will have another monthly board meeting.  There will be discussions about all Urban Chat’s planned 2025 activities.

The meeting will be convened at 5:30pm.  The agenda and location will be on the Urban Chat calendar (link above) as the date nears.

Continue reading the weekly update here.

Calendar notes for the week of December 30, 2024.

We’ve reached the final calendar email of 2024.  The entire Urban Chat team appreciates your readership over the past year.  We also appreciate those who have offered thanks for how these emails make the public land-use process a little less daunting.  Our door is always open to ideas about how we can do even better.

There are zero additions to the calendar this week, not surprising for the heart of the holiday season.  In keeping with the short week, this update will also be short, with only a single story from me.

Continue reading the weekly update here.

Calendar notes for the week of December 23, 2024.

Greetings and Thoughts –  An Apology, Urban Renewals, Urban Travels, and Holiday Wishes

We’re now truly into the holiday break.  The next meeting on the Urban Chat calendar is the January 6 new Councilmember reception before the first meeting of the new City Council.

Urban Renewals: Urban planning, particularly the creation of walkable places, is a continually evolving field.  To keep up, I maintain membership in several cutting edge urbanist advocacy nonprofits and read much of their material every week.  An end-of-the-year task for me is renewing my memberships.  I feel good about supporting the advocacy and research work that informs much of what Urban Chat does.

The memberships that might work for you is up to your interests and budget but here is my list:

Congress for the New Urbanism: Among the original organizations to push the idea of walkable and lovable places as an antidote to sprawl, CNU continues to break new ground with their regular webinars and their heavily attended annual Congress.  (I'm the incoming treasurer for the California chapter of CNU.)

StrongTowns: Originally founded around the concept of financial resiliency, StrongTowns has expanded into traffic safety, housing policy, and much more.  While CNU is often considered the grey-haired conveyors of learned wisdom for the urbanist movement, StrongTowns is the young guard, eager to pound on the lectern insisting on change.  Plus, they’re successful at creating local affiliates, with 252 as of…

Continue reading the weekly update here.

Calendar notes for the week of December 16, 2024.

New SMART Station, Film Festival Team, and Connecting the Dots Around Parking

The pre-holiday calendar remains ever lighter.  But the growing list of 2025 community activities draws closer.

New SMART Station: The public has been invited to the January 10 grand opening of the Petaluma North SMART station.  This station, which was previously dropped from the initial construction schedule when the SMART finances became constrained, will be a welcome addition to the Petaluma and North Bay transit options.  More information on the grand opening is below, under Upcoming Events, and on the Urban Chat calendar.

In case of any lingering confusion, the Petaluma North station, which will be at the intersection of North McDowell Boulevard and Corona Road, is the same station previously known as Corona.  When the renaming occurred, some of us were irritated.  We had a long history of advocating for the Corona station to move toward construction and not to be relocated as proposed by the owner of an alternative site.  We weren't eager to surrender a name around which we’d rallied…

Continue reading the weekly update here.