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It was early in the day for an hour-long lecture about ways to make downtown more vibrant, but you wouldn’t have known it by the audience as they listened attentively to City Planner Jeff Speck at the Lowell Plan breakfast this morning. Speck visited Lowell this week and presented his thoughts as part of the Lowell Plan’s 30^th anniversary celebration. A “private, non-profit economic development organization” comprising many of the city’s top business leaders, the Lowell Plan can point to many contributions to the city’s re-invention over the last three decades. Add this morning’s breakfast to that list.

Speck was one of those speakers we hope our children get in school: inspiring, entertaining, and educational. Some of his points about Lowell: It has a unique and timeless architecture, the canals are an under-utilized resource, and the high school’s downtown location brings a huge benefit of humanity and energy to the city. Other observations: Our downtown is not walker friendly or enticing to pedestrian traffic, there are too many one-way streets and not enough street signs, we have the least bicycle-friendly city he has ever seen (this point especially resonates as someone who loves to bike and is afraid of cars). Speck showed how a four-lane street downtown doesn’t encourage safe walking or biking, but by reducing it to three lanes—the middle for turning—there is room on either side for bicycle lanes. His point about traffic in general: You don’t want people speeding by your downtown; you want them to stop, walk, and shop. For that, you need parallel parking, interesting things to see as you walk, and lots of other folks around. His final message to the group: the Lowell Plan needs a plan, and it should be one that doesn’t make the mistake of duplicating suburban sprawl, but instead builds on the urban beauty and history that is already uniquely ours.

I’m not an expert on the health care issue, only a consumer who fortunately has spent most of her life with health insurance without ever really needing it—until recently—which has certainly changed my perspective on the whole debate. The primary reason opponents give for not supporting universal care is the expense. If it’s true, as I’ve heard, that health care premiums have gone up 119% over the last 10 years, while payments to doctors have remained fairly stagnant (rates set by private insurance companies), who is getting all the money? An article in Sunday’s Boston Globe got me thinking about cost from another perspective, such as how U.S. spending on health care compares to France:

“…the outcome is relatively cost-effective in comparison with the situations in other industrialized nations, according to tracking by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. France spent about $300 billion for the health needs of its 64 million people in 2007, the last year for which reliable statistics are available, the organization reported. That amounted to about 11 percent of gross domestic product for a system covering an estimated 99 percent of the population, well below what Americans pay for a system that leaves out tens of millions of people. On a per capita basis, France also ranked well below the United States in health expenditures. It was eighth on the organization’s list, while the United States ranked at the top. Despite the lower spending, French people have for years had a longer life expectancy than their counterparts in the United States, currently at 80.98 years compared with 78.11.”

In Lowell, rising health-insurance costs continue to be our biggest budget buster despite efforts to reduce expenses by encouraging employees to switch to less-expensive plans. During these tough fiscal times, the need for health care reform has never been stronger.