A Downtown Toolkit
From the American Downtown Revitalization Review
The Way We Live Now
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Tag Archives: revitalization
Why Is This So Difficult?
Why haven’t there been more successful placemaking projects?
Pershing Square in Los Angeles remain under-populated as a result of been insufficiently well-maintained and programmed
A trip upstate to Gloversville last week brought into focus issues I have been thinking about since completing the manuscript for “Learning from Bryant Park” two years ago. I’ve been wondering why there are so few successful public space and downtown revitalization projects across the country, given that several ventures employing similar strategies have been widely publicized for effective public space improvement. The demonstrated key ingredients to downtown revitalization are neither expensive nor complicated. And yet they are not often actually used or well executed. A number of knowledgeable, talented people and organizations have made themselves available to towns and projects as consultants – and while they certainly add value to the places they work on, there still aren’t dozens of success stories. Pershing Square in Los Angeles is the most visible blemish among failed urban public spaces and was the object of my thinking about this issue since completing the book. I wrote the book, in part, as a tool for public space managers to use with stakeholder sceptics of the approach – and a couple of downtown managers have reported buying multiple copies for board members (those people know who they are and have my sincere thanks).
Before the collapse of Pershing Square Renew, working with the gifted Philip Winn of Project for Public Spaces, I made myself available to the various Downtown LA stakeholders to help advance the project. At the request of former local Council Member Jose Huizar, I flew out to LA at my expense to meet with him and his staff. He didn’t show (Huizar was indicted and removed from office in June). I also contacted the newly appointed Chief Design Officer of the City of Los Angeles and asked if we could persuade the Mayor to get involved, without success. Again, flying out at my expense, I met with a very interested local BID leader to attempt to persuade him and the BID to take Pershing Square on as a project. While this individual clearly got what I was trying to communicate to him and was very sympathetic (and has said some very nice things to me about LFBP), the BID remains uninvolved. Most startlingly, using my professional network, I got in touch one of the highest profile real estate and civic leaders in LA. The person who made the connection for me, said that the civic leader would be pleased to meet and talk with me by phone – and then listed for me the actions the civic leader said would be non-starters – these were most of the important things that I felt needed to happen in order for the park to be successful; including wresting control of the space from the Department of Recreation and Parks. The civic leader conveyed that if I wanted to talk about those things, I shouldn’t bother calling him. I sent him a long e-mail explaining what I thought were the key elements to turning Pershing Square around and didn’t hear back. What was up with this? Why has this proved to be to be so hard? Continue reading
ROCKIN’ THE CANADIAN ROCKIES
It is truly wonderful how many beautiful and great places there are in North America. Calgary, Alberta sits an hour from the Rockies and enjoys spectacular mountain views. Calgary is a little like Dallas, after having morphed into Houston. It started as a cow town (and I had a fantastic shell steak during my visit) and became an oil and gas city – the fourth largest city in Canada with a population of well over a million. It has eight buildings of over 40 stories in the downtown. The city was very much built around the car – with numerous parking structures in the center. You can drive downtown from the suburbs, park downtown and as a result of the extensive skyway system (called locally the “+15”), your feet never have to touch the ground in getting to and from your office.
My visit was sponsored by the downtown business improvement area (BIA), Calgary Downtown Association (CDA), as part of an exercise to revitalize Stephen Avenue, one of the city’s principal shopping streets. Several blocks of Stephen Avenue have been pedestrianized and are mostly made up of low-rise late 19th and early 20th century buildings. The street is shadowed by the surrounding office towers – which, at present, have in excess of a 30% office vacancy rate. The street abruptly “Ts” smack into the superblock containing City Hall.
CHANGES ALONG THE MOHAWK
The depth and breadth of social capital that exists in Utica, New York is astonishing. When down-staters and policy makers generally think about the string of industrial cities along the New York Throughway from Albany to Buffalo they/we envision hopeless, dark, hollowed-out downtowns and empty factory buildings. Because of the wealth generated in Utica from the late 19th Century to the mid-20th Century it has the cultural and social resources to meet the needs of a city of more than twice its size. Utica has an impressive collection of downtown commercial and civic structures by major New York architects (including Carrère and Hastings, Thomas Lamb and Richard Upjohn). The town has a City Beautiful era, 600-acre park system, that is way more than a city of 60,000 people could ever use, or even properly maintain. It also has an actively used, well equipped, professionally run public library. Utica boasts one of the country’s most recognized art museums, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, in a Phillip Johnson designed building. Like so many American communities that had periods of great economic expansion during the industrial age, among Utica’s legacy institutions is a significant community foundation. Utica’s has assets of around $150 million. The city also is situated in the Mohawk Valley, an area generally under-recognized for its incredible scenic beauty, and which is only minutes away from the foothills of the Adirondacks and their vast recreational opportunities. Continue reading
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
This blog only represents the views of the author and does not reflect the policies of the City of New York or its Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
Is urban “revitalization” a mere expression of cultural preference – reflecting white, upper-middle class predilections? Was the pre-revitalization 42nd Street somehow a more authentic expression of something before it, and Bryant Park, became “Disney-fied.” Essays in “Deconstructing the High Line: postindustrial urbanism and the rise of the elevated park,” edited by Christoph Linder and Brian Rosa (Rutgers, 2017), suggest that prior to its re-visioning as an urban public space, the High Line of gay cruising and wild, invasive plants was authentic, organic and more correct. In an essay in Deconstructing the High Line, Darren J. Patrick even argues that the pervasive and self-seeding, but non-native, Ailanthus altissima, had more of a right to live and thrive in the along the abandoned elevated rail line than the artificial more native, highly curated plant selection that distinguishes the High Line now.
When we were working at Grand Central Partnership and Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, we were occasionally surprised to learn that there were academics, like Sharon Zukin, who thought that we were engaged in a misguided attempt to destroy the complex, authentic social ecology of “The Deuce.” We couldn’t understand how someone might prefer the porn theaters, prostitution, unpicked up trash and three card monte of 42nd Street of the 70’s and early 80’s to what we were envisioning. Continue reading
A Memo from Brooklyn to Queens: Re: Amazon, HQ2
Giorgio de Chirico, Piazza d’Italia.
This blog only represents the views of the author and does not reflect the policies of the City of New York or its Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
The original New York City highly incentivized corporate center was MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn. MetroTech was built by Forest City/Ratner (FCRC) as back office space for Chemical Bank (now JP Morgan Chase), Bear Stearns (now defunct, as some may recall), Brooklyn Union Gas (now National Grid) – with some New York City government offices thrown in to sweeten the pot. Having worked in Queens for a decade, with an office now in Brooklyn at MetroTech, feel I have some credibility in bringing something to the spirited discussion now taking place about the advent of Amazon to the Queens waterfront.
The first point to get out-of-the-way is that no Governor or Mayor could ever let a project like H2Q slip through their hands without making a major effort to win the competition. It would be a political disaster to be seen as not having made a maximum effort to attract Amazon – even given the outcry now taking place on the part of some local elected officials. No one wants to be seen as the “the Mayor who let the Yankees move out-of-town.” In addition, these kinds of negotiations of necessity have to take place without publicity and with a minimum number of people involved. Complex economic development deals can’t be negotiated in public. For the deal to close there has to be a level of certainty to the outcome – hence the use of the Empire State Development Corporation to avoid the normal public review process. Putting the process behind closed doors and circumventing public review are political risks the Governor and Mayor took to get the deal done. If the electorate truly objects to the terms of the deal and the manner in which it was accomplished they have a remedy – vote them out of office at the next opportunity. That’s how democracy works. Continue reading
Landing in Flyover Country
A Cirrus SR 20
Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America
By: James and Deborah Fallows
432 Pages
Owning and being able to fly your own plane creates a tremendous opportunity to learn about what is happening in communities across the country. There are thousands of landing strips outside cities large and small, and while a small plane is highly subject to the vagaries of the weather and only travels at a speed of about 200 mph, it sure seems to beat driving – and the views can be both amazing and illuminating.
James and Deborah Fallows have a Cirrus SR 20 (retail price $329,000, in case you’re asking), and Mr. Fallows knows how to fly it. The SR 20, a reader learns from the book, is the most popular single engine propeller plane on the market – and it comes with its own parachute – for the plane. They took advantage of this resource to travel around the United States, from northern Maine to southern California, to explore non-gateway cities and their progress towards revitalization. The largest of the places visited was Columbus, Ohio (now the largest city in the state). But most of the towns were much smaller: Duluth; Greenville, South Caroline; Bend, Oregon.
I’ve often heard speak of James Fallows as a fellow traveler of the placemaking movement, and his writing for the Atlantic and its City Lab reflect that. The book’s acknowledgements cite Fred Kent, Bruce Katz, Amy Liu and Richard Florida, names we know. But James and Deborah Fallows bring a particular perspective to their odyssey. First they are people who can afford to buy and keep that plane! Second, it’s clear from the text that they are members in good standing of the “inside-the-beltway” establishment. Not only does Mr. Fallows write for the Atlantic, but he was, early in his career, a White House speech writer (for President Jimmy Carter). While an SR 20 can’t fly much higher than 10,000 feet, and generally flies at lower altitudes, the D.C. native perspective tends to be from 30,000 feet. Indeed the Fallows’ attempt to take the same approach in gathering information about each of the two-dozen towns they visit (starting with visiting the editor of the local paper) and try to draw out patterns among what they find. Continue reading
The Prophet of Micropolis
Vince DeSantis
Vincent DeSantis, the author of “Toward Civic Integrity: Re-establishing the Micropolis,” published eleven years ago, works in the spirit of Holly Whyte: quietly, carefully and with great acuity. Vince was my host, at his B&B, on my trips to Gloversville, New York. He is a Gloversville native, an attorney, served as the City Court judge in town for years and is now the at-large member of the city’s Common Council. He’s the moving force behind many of the good things happening in Gloversville. What I didn’t know, I suppose because of his reserve and modesty, is that he wrote a book that was years ahead of its time and that even today should be essential reading for everyone involved in placemaking. Back in 2007, Vince was conclusively making the case for small cities and how to revitalize them.
The book is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Civic-Integrity-Re-establishing-Micropolis/dp/1933994258/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529418592&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3AVincent+DeSantis or here:
http://shoptbmbooks.com/toward_civic_integrity.html.
A Ted Talk by Vince on the topic can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1qEpNWJGSk.
“Towards Civic Integrity” describes why the small city is a rewarding place to live and how it provides a fruitful medium for supporting an enriched civil society, using Gloversville as an example. Vince discusses how the economies of small cities work – how they add value to raw materials by making things and selling them to the world beyond, thereby creating wealth. He describes the social bonds that are created among citizens of small cities – and how small cities promote civic engagement and simple neighborliness. The book identifies the problems created for localities by capital markets and large corporations driven by lowering the prices for manufacture – and both their utility and their indifference to localities and human impacts. His vision for the future for Gloversville, articulated a decade before I came to similar conclusions after a couple of visits, was of a relatively low-cost, high quality of life for creative people (in the broadest sense) who engage in small-scale manufacture of high quality goods and delivery of unique services. This is economy made possible by the internet and efficient modern delivery systems – and replaces the manufacturing economy.
THE RIGHT STUFF: SARATOGA SPRINGS
Downtown Saratoga Springs
Saratoga Springs, New York seems to be doing all the right things. It has a great mix of local and national retailers. The buildings along Broadway, the main street, are generally of high quality vernacular late 19th and early 20th Century architecture. More recent additions have been designed, for the most part, to be consistent with the existing architectural vocabulary. The city even boasts a major new development by national real estate investor/developers. Broadway sports wide sidewalks and some decent site furnishings and horticultural amenities. It has a lively pedestrian presence both day and night. It has all the things economic development professionals are seeking for their communities. Being there is simply a great experience. It is a place with a distinct identity. It provides a range of options. It feels safe and pleasant. It is simply all the things we want a public space experience to be.
Those of us in public space revitalization frequently focus on whats wrong with places. But Saratoga Springs presents an opportunity to look at what’s right. It would be well worthwhile for those of us interested in downtown economic development to take a close look at the programs and forces that brought this positive turn of events into being. I can’t think of a more appealing small city downtown anywhere. Generally, small town great main streets don’t spontaneously generate.
A lively downtown hasn’t always been the case in Saratoga Springs. We visited the city in the late 80’s and early 90’s and found it run down. During the racing seasons at the historic thoroughbred racetrack, from mid-July through the end of August, hospitality amenities in town were grossly over-priced. On one trip to Saratoga Springs about 25 years ago we stayed in one of the most disgusting hotel rooms in our thirty years of extensive travel. We took a dated, uncomfortable room with a shared bath in a rooming house during the race season for over $400. This year our stay was in a brand new Embassy Suites, which was part of a development including off-street retail adjacent to, but not in, the hotel. Continue reading
Meet Me In St. Louis
Downtown St. Louis has made as little progress in urban revitalization as any big city downtown I have been visiting over the last twenty-five years, despite a number of high-profile projects, like Union Station, and the continued success in a number of other St. Louis neighborhoods, like the Central West End, Grand Center, Lafayette Park and Laclede’s Landing. It is significant that the Downtown does come alive, to a certain extent, on the nights of Cardinals games. But when there is no game, both at night and during the day, the streets and sidewalks of the Downtown are dead.
There are a number of contributing factors to this, beyond the impact of the car and the “white flight” that affected so many post-industrial downtowns in the 1960’s and after. First is how far apart from each other active uses are in the Downtown. Many of the streets, particularly Market, are quite wide. Those streets have little shade. Building entrances, particularly those of structures built after 1960, are far apart – and those buildings have only one pedestrian entrance, limiting the level of visible pedestrian activity. Ground floor retail is unusually discontinuous. The St. Louis climate is particularly hostile to outdoor activity year round. A high level of heat and humidity dissuades pedestrians from remaining outdoors for about half the year. With a serious lack of shade – even in parks and plazas – as a result of very limited tree cover. The city’s major tourist attraction, The Gateway Arch, is set off from the downtown by an at-grade highway, and the classic Dan Kiley landscape around it (which has recently been extensively restored), tends to preference design over people and is generally forbidding. Finally, St. Louis may continue to be the most racially segregated big city in America. Continue reading