Albert Lea Journal Features, Events, Opinion and Reviews

I recently customized a WordPress CMS template for the City of Albert Lea. We started with a theme by Brian Gardner called “Revolution City,” which I’m not sure he is distributing at the moment. Anyway, Gardner provided us with an excellent starting point. We also used the Suckerfish plugin for our dropdown menus.

The city requested that, in addition to navigation across the top of the site, they wanted navigation down the left side as well. This was a feature that was especially important to a few of the departments who had a number of pages that they wanted to make available for viewing. The side navigation is visible on all pages except the home page.

It was tricky to get this side navigation because some sections had far too many children pages, and it was important to present only the children who were descendants of a very specific parent. I figured the best way to do this was to create a template for each section that both required their own side navigation and that had a good number of children and grandchildren. (I realize I’m sounding more like a genealogist than a web developer.)

We ended up with a site that appears to be fairly easy to navigate. And the real upside to using WordPress as a content management system is that the administrative interface is remarkably easy to use. Furthermore, WordPress released version 2.7, which allows upgrades to be made automatically. To whomever did the work to get automatic upgrades working, I say, “Thank you!” WordPress rules.

Here’s an article about the project in the Albert Lea Tribune.

A week from last Friday I attended a day long gathering at the Ramada Inn here in Albert Lea. Dan Burden, founder of Walkable Communities, spoke for a couple hours about why making towns and cities more walkable makes property values go up, fosters better health for citizens, and helps businesses succeed. Burden has helped over 2500 communities improve their quality of life simply by helping city planners understand which roadway and walkway features prove most beneficial in the long-run development of their community.

(Photo: Dan Burden, Walkabilty Expert)

Dan Burden is considered the foremost expert in this area of city planning. The day before our Friday meeting, he and a group of city officials and townsfolk took part in a walking audit of Albert Lea, with wintry temperatures well below zero. Burden explained this was the coldest walking audit he’d ever done. The group walked all over town while Burden explained the advantages and disadvantages current city planning practices already in place in Albert Lea.

Among my favorite of his considerations is that our much discussed Bridge Ave. expansion should actually be more of a remodel than an expansion. He argues that turning Bridge Ave. into a four lane speedway will make our town less walkable. He also said that property values along four lane roads tend to decrease. And businesses along four lane routes actually see fewer customers than if those routes became two lane roads with speeds between 25 and 35 mph, not 45 mph. At 45 mph fewer cars can actually move through town because each speedy car requires more of a margin for slowing down. And a car traveling 35 mph is more likely to stop than one traveling at 45 mph.

Visiting communities like ours is Mr. Burden’s life’s work and I’m so excited that he came to Albert Lea to share his wisdom with us. It’s part of our Blue Zone City Makeover, which I’ll write more about in my next entry.

Here’s a link to Dan Burden’s site:
www.walkable.org