Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. Planning Manager Tim Kelly emails a weekly GR Forward update to the project Steering Committee. Here's this week's communication:

Happy Friday Everyone:

I hope you are all surviving the holiday party circuit.

Updates

This week we continued our neighborhood meetings and made visits to our neighbors in Heritage Hill and SWAN/JBAN. Overall, there has been good attendance, but we hope you will continue share the meetings within your networks so we can make sure everyone is aware of the opportunities to participate. Next week we will be at the Disability Advocates of Kent County, Grandville Avenue Arts and Humanities Center, as well as doing meetings with our Southeast and Northwest Region neighbors.

A reminder that we are continuing to hold tours at the Open House for any interested groups until December 19. We already have groups from Spectrum Health and Leadership Grand Rapids planning to come through next week, but we would love open our doors for more groups. Please let me know if you or anyone you know is interested.

Next week we have a lot of GR Forward activity taking place. Out consultant team will be in town, and we will be holding four focus group sessions, one on housing, one on parking, and two on the DASH service. Additionally, there will be another combined Steering Committee meeting on Thursday, December 18. The meeting will provide a first glimpse to the Committees at the responses we have received from our engagement efforts to date, as well as give an overview of the framework to developing a collective vision for Downtown and the River. We are looking forward to closing out 2014 on a strong note, and continuing our progress toward completing our efforts in summer 2015.

Lastly, we are continuing to push for increased survey responses. We have received a number of responses over the past two weeks, so thanks to all that have helped spread the word. That said, if everyone on this email could help circulate the surveys using the links below, that would be immensely helpful (note: both surveys are also available on the GR Forward website). Also, if you live or work within Downtown and have not completed the surveys, please take a few minutes to do so. The feedback is extremely important to the work we are doing.

Live Downtown (Resident):

https://openplans.typeform.com/to/yWWQdL

Work Downtown (Business / Employee):

https://openplans.typeform.com/to/EQ494E

Presentations

Another good week of getting out to give presentations in the community. Again, if anyone has suggestions for meetings that we can attend please let me know.

• WGVU TV “West Michigan Week”

• Greater Grand Rapids Bike Coalition

Web Numbers

As with the previous weeks, the website and our Facebook account continue to get heavy traffic. Instagram and Twitter also saw positive spikes this week. As always, be sure to share the links below with anyone that might be interested so we can continue to promote GR Forward.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/grfwd

Twitter - https://twitter.com/grfwd

Instagram - http://instagram.com/grfwd#

Resources

In the spirit of the holidays, I think this list from Planetizen on the best books in planning and urban design is fitting: http://www.planetizen.com/node/72738/top-10-books-2015

I also enjoyed the attached article from Simon Kuper in the Financial Times on urbanism. It covers everything from using technology to avoid rude waiters, to taking advantage of the left over space in streets that will inevitably arise when there is an abundance of driverless cars. It also discusses about more pressing issues, such as the lack of affordability that is growing in cities across the world.

Hope you all have a great weekend. As always, if you have any questions let me know. Otherwise, I will follow up again next week.