Tag Archives: The Place Master

Great Places Thrive

Among American cities, Charleston and Santa Fe have unique characters – and not surprisingly are both important tourist destinations, as well as significant housing markets for second and retirement homes. They are in such high demand because they have maintained a remarkable sense of place, in a country with a limited number of great places urban places. As I have been maintaining, American needs more great places in order to attract people from more expensive locations to less expensive ones – lowering housing costs while at the same time promoting economic development and equity. What can be learned from these two attractive places?

I have been going to both cities annually for decades. Charleston, which had a population of 70,000 in 1980, now has 154,000 people. It hosted 2.2 million visitors in 1976 and 7.25 million visitors last year. Of course, Charleston had the benefit for more than two decades of one of America’s best mayors in Joe Riley, who skillfully leveraged the city’s substantial assets to make it both a desirable place to live and a favored destination. At the heart of those assets is a dazzling collection of well-preserved and restored 18^th Century homes, a large number of which are available for tourists to visit. Those homes are physical evidence of Charleston’s place as a successful port and agricultural and religious center in Colonial America, one of the colonies’ largest cities. Charleston is also an important site for Black America, being a hub of the slave trade, a home for successful plantation and slave owners and the location of the opening salvos of the Civil War. It is also the location of the recent racially motivated mass shooting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church.

Charleston is the site of the Spoleto Festival USA, the largest arts event in the South, with dozens of performances of music, theater and dance, with the adjacent Piccolo Spoleto adding scores more of smaller performances and art displays for several weeks in June each year. Charleston is also, perhaps, the country’s fourth most interesting dining destination (after, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago), punching well above its weight in eating excellence. The dining scene was established by the late, great Louis Osteen, initially at the restaurant at the then new resort, Charleston Place, and later at his own establishment. That legacy was continued by Sean Brock at his Macready’s and Husk – who has recently decamped his principal operation to Nashville. Add to that the adjacency to wonderful beaches and historic plantations, and you have an unparalleled number of authentic attractions. This has generated a huge tourist draw, a luxury housing market (a house in downtown Charleston goes for around $1.4 million. Here is a typical “single” style house on the market for $4.5 million: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13-Church-St-Charleston-SC-29401/10904815_zpid/), and most recently a great deal of new multi-family housing development.

The Santa Fe Opera. Photo may justify the cost of upgrading to an iPhone 14

I spent the summer of 1977 living in Santa Fe. At the time it was a quiet, dusty town of old adobes, with a long history of artists and galleries of Western Art, a noted market for the arts and crafts of local indigenous people (particularly pottery, weaving and silverwork) – and the more recent establishment of a major opera company and chamber music festival. The city had a laid-back, counterculture, hippie-ish vibe, with a large highly visible white clad and turbaned group who called themselves “sikhs.” Ten Thousand Waves, a former marijuana farm, turned Japanese style spa was (and continues to be) a major attraction (with nighttime hot-tubbing a blissful experience). The opera performed during the summer in an unusual outdoor theater and was led by the remarkable John Crosby, one of our greatest cultural entrepreneurs. Santa Fe is also located in a region of incredible natural and cultural richness. Day trips can be taken to a number of notable pueblos of tribal nations, including Taos and Acoma – which provided the inspiration for the unique local adobe-based architectural style. The Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains provide a spectacular backdrop for both walking and driving adventures. Particularly unusual is the drive from Toas to the pilgrimage village of Chimayo, the famous High Road to Taos (actually, better driven from Taos, to get the best views as you drive downhill), with unparalleled vistas and fascinating small hamlets with a unusal religious observance, along the way. Distinctive about North New Mexico is a rich cultural history of native peoples going back centuries, with settlements like Bandelier and Puyé available for visits, over-layered with Spanish colonization dating to the late seventeenth century. There are few more interesting places in the US. The population of the city grew from 40,000 in 1980 was to 87,000 in 2020, with the number of tourists at 2.25 million in 2022.

As in Charleston, at the center of Santa Fe’s appeal is the preservation of historic structures – both commercial and residential. The Santa Fe style is an international phenomenon, with the construction and decoration of distinctive homes a major local economic generator. As in Charleston, standards for historic preservation are stringent. In addition, new development is required to conform to the prevailing architectural context. The downtown is chock-a-block with stores selling stuff to ornament an adobe home with appropriate accoutrements – as well as to adorn oneself with regulation western wear – boots, silver necklaces and belt buckles, along with the essential hats. When in 1977 I stood in the Plaza, which is the center of Santa Fe and looked out towards the deserts and mountains, I saw stars. Today one sees a myriad of lights from the thousands of homes built in the former quiet landscape and rising up rugged mountain slopes.

When I later became a regular visitor, our home base was Rancho Encantado, a kind of scruffy Ralph Lauren-esque ranch, with a horse corral and trail rides at its center – way outside of town. The rooms were in casitas (small houses), which were rustically decorated with locally made blankets and wooden crafts. The cuisine was that of New Mexico, for example enchiladas with either red or green chili – or both, washed down with a Margarita. The local New Mexican cooking is different than that in Mexico and Texas, and a treasured tradition. We were heartbroken when the Rancho was sold by the family who were it long-time owners. It was empty for a number of years, and then torn down a replaced with what is now an ultra-luxury Four Seasons resort.

We’ve hopped around among hotels since then – including a long stretch at Bishop’s Lodge, also outside of town, but closer to the Plaza, and on the historic hacienda (also with a stable) of Archbishop Lamy, made famous by Willa Cather in “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” But it ultimately met a similar fate to Rancho Encatado – being substantially upscaled. This past summer we stayed at the Eldorado, once the premier luxury property in Santa Fe, built by the Zeckedorf family in the 1986, when the Bill Zeckendorf Jr., whose spouse, Nancy was closely associated with the opera, found that there was no modern, comfortable place to stay. The property is now owned by a local group called Heritage which advertises itself as being in the “cultural tourism” business. With the creation of a number of other higher end hotels in Santa Fe, Eldorado has been repositioned. But it has the best pool in the downtown (a major feature given New Mexico’s consistent hot, dry weather), and large comfortable rooms. The property features displays of local art – pottery and weaving— sourced directly from native people. Heritage’s business model for its ten New Mexico properties is to feature the art and food of the region. A magazine available to guests describes the chain’s local sourcing of pottery and weaving for display. The magazine had eye catching graphics and quality writing about some of the most worthwhile destinations in New Mexico. One fascinating article was about the importance of plazas as places in New Mexican towns. Heritage appears to have built its business on the distinctiveness of New Mexico places.

Both cities’ appeal is built on a foundation of historic preservation – and the creation of a sense of cultural authenticity. While the programs to preserve these assets is unusual in these places, many places across the country have the potential to make the most of their special cultures – if they were to choose to take that path. It seems to me that foregrounding the authentic distinctiveness of cities is a far more stable and cost-effective endeavor than building a convention center or sports stadium to attract visitors and new, economically valuable residents.

Building on the historic character of Charleston and Santa Fe, a local food culture was created, based in the one case on historic southern cooking and on the other on the wonderful Spanish colonial food culture. This isn’t necessarily about haute cuisine or Michelin starred restaurants, but more about high quality, unique local places. Although, fancy, expensive places can become the capstone of places with rich offerings based on local produce and traditions.

It’s also not about building grand hotels to attract visitors. Santa Fe has a number of mid-century modern motels (with matching neon signs) that attract both families and hipsters, as well as small, distinctive places without a lot of amenities in historic buildings. The grand dame of Santa Fe hotels is La Fonda, just off the plaza – which has lovely, atmospheric public spaces and small, simple charming rooms. Charleston did kick-start its status as a premier destination with Charleston Place, a large mid-rise property, with extensive ground floor retail. While originally developed as a mid-price hotel, with the popularity of Charleston as a destination, it has been repeatedly been repositioned and upscaled with changes in ownership.

Both cities have also promoted distinctive retail with a local flavor. The historic centers of both cities have small structures and small spaces – unattractive, for the most part, to national retailers. Lower King Street in Charleston, though, has both Ben Silver, a local haberdasher and probably the most high-quality retailer of traditional men’s wear in the country, and the recent influx of more of the usual national suspects – resulting in a dynamic mix of both well-known brands and local offerings. North King, long neglected, and long ago the area center for home furnishing and appliance retailers, attracted quirky restaurants in the 00’s, and has become something of a victim of its own success, with a rowdy night-life scene, that the City is now working to bring under control.

Santa Fe’s downtown has moved more and more upscale over the years, with local art galleries, jewelers, purveyors of native American art and jewelry, and western wear – driving out most sellers of tourist trinkets and similar shlock. Large format national retailers are relegated to shopping strips and centers outside of the historic downtown.

Public spaces in both places are something of a mixed bag. Charleston sports the recent large and impressive Joseph Riley Waterfront Park as well as the small and near perfect Theodora Park. But generally, its Parks Department is underfunded, and places like the Battery & White Point Gardens are insufficiently well maintained and programmed. Santa Fe has one of the country’s most ill-conceived new public spaces, the Railroad Yard Park, which is lightly used. The Plaza, the city’s historic zocalo, right in the center of the old town, is extremely popular and hosts near continuous spontaneous programming (buskers, food vendors) – but appears over-used and shabby. One might conclude that these small cities have such strong identities and generally excellent built environments that high quality public spaces don’t need to be a part of their brand.

The character of Santa Fe and Charleston make them great places to visit. Because of its easy access to outdoor recreational activity, Santa Fe is particularly attractive to families. Both cities have brought historic preservation to the forefront, and have created formal and informal, public and private structures to maintain their characters and enhance their brands with significant results. Part of their success is no doubt due to the uniqueness of their historical appeal and the scarcity of other cities with similar strengths. But I have no doubt that the over-tourism of certain locations about which there is substantial and justifiable complaint (Venice being the prime example) is a result of there just not being enough great places to visit. Most other cities around the country, both large and small, have historical and/or cultural assets that they should be able to foreground. But getting there takes serious, comprehensive, thoughtful leadership. It is not just putting up a few signs or having a cute trolly running around town (and certainly not building a huge hotel or conference center). A historic district of character needs to be identified, preserved, maintained and expanded over time. The more authentic and unique, the more likely it is to become successful. The brand needs to be leveraged with appropriate cultural activities that create critical mass (not the occasional folk concert or once a year parade). But anyone visiting Santa Fe can see that the demand is there both among tourists and second/retirement home buyers for the kind of experience the city has carefully curated.

BARCELONA – LA MODERNISMA CON UNA DIFERENCIA

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What if “modernism” was:

“characterized by the predominance of the curve over the straight line, by rich decoration and detail, by the frequent use of vegetal and other organic motifs, the taste for asymmetry, a refined aestheticism and dynamic shapes;”

rather than this:

“an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form should follow function (functionalism); an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament.”

The first describes “modernisma,” a design practice present in Barcelona from about 1890 to about 1920, very similar to Art Nouveau in France and Belgium, Jugendstil in Germany, Vienna Secession in Austria-Hungary, but deeply intertwined with Catalan nationalism. The most famous practitioner of moderisma was Antoni Gaudí, whose work from photographs prior to my traveling to Barcelona never spoke to me. In addition, the use of the term modernisma is confusing, as it has little to do what Americans call modernism.

A recent trip to Barcelona, however exposed me to the work of Lluís Domènech i Montaner, something of a predecessor of Gaudí, whose work I found beautiful and engaging. His spectacular Palau de Musica, Barcelona’s concert hall, got me to thinking about the humanism invoked by the foregrounding of natural materials and high craftsmanship. The Palau wows you with its masterly use of highly worked stained glass, tile, woodwork and plasterwork. It radiates the sense that sophisticated culture happens in this place. It speaks of the labor and skills of the many masters who shaped that plaster and carved the wood.

How different this is from what became the International Style, which eliminated craftsmanship from its vocabulary, and backgrounded materials to the big ideas of its designers. Glass, steel and concrete were reduced to their basic functions, and manual working of materials was made to disappear into the overall design. At the same time, the contemporary backlash to modernism has been a regressive promotion of a return classical orders – as evidenced by the controversy created by the Trump appointment of a retro-classicist to the position of Architect of the Capitol. That politization of design seemed political and degenerating on its face. But what about looking back to an architectural style that highlights the human elements in the details of the implementation of design.

The Palau is filled with color, shape and elegant forms. It draws the interest of the viewer into its details. It creates a welcoming and comfortable atmosphere. It promotes a sense of calm, civility and ease. Also significant is that must have employed scores of highly trained and skilled crafts people who contributed to its success and could take pride in their work. It speaks of place, rooted in that Catalan nationalism.

What’s interesting is that while Gaudí gets all the attention, Domènech seemed to me the greater artist. Gaudí’s works are among the principal tourist attractions of Barcelona. Most famously his massive church of Sagrada Familia, but also his Güell Park, Casa Batilló and Casa Milà, among others. But while Casa Batilló includes many beautiful details of wood and plasterwork and Casa Milá has some fascinating structural elements (particularly catenary arches in the attic space), a funky roof space and an undulating façade, Gaudí appears to have fallen victim to his celebrity and created overwhelming, chaotic designs. The Sagrada Familia in particular is gigantic in its crazed ornaments and abundance of novel architectural details. The whole business is exhausting. It is far from a contemplative, spiritual space.

Domènech seems to have quietly stayed true to his craft and sense of place. While the Palau is a jewel box, his Hospital de Sant Pau, is a graceful campus that speaks deeply of healing. It is a collection of 12 pavilions, connected by underground galleries and surrounded by landscape. Not all of the buildings have been fully restored. Some are in use as offices. Others are open to the public. All are decorated by extensive tile work and are flooded with light and color. Both the interiors and exteriors display the kind of hand work that marks modernisma. Everywhere there are facets to delight and engage the eye.

Domènech’s work was a revelation. What if New York’s essentially new $500 million concert hall were more like the Palau de Musica, bathed in colored light and couched by curvilinear, floral wood and plasterwork and less like a modern Hilton? Yes, Carnegie Hall is a 19^th Century plaster box – but it is a relatively simple, inornate auditorium, with cramped public spaces. But what a pleasure it would be to attend concerts in a space like the Palau that emanates human warmth, art and culture.

We did also go to the Liceu Opera while we were in town. The auditorium, located on La Rambla, is a conventional European 2,300 seat one from 1864, embedded in a 1999 renovation following a fire in 1994. I found the sound surprisingly hollow and unflattering (thought it should be noted that the show we saw featured a small on-stage orchestra, rather than one in the pit). The programming is comparable to opera houses at the highest international level (with respect to conductors, directors and casting). It does have a tony adjacent opera club, which we were delighted to be able to visit.

Barcelona itself is overwhelmed by tourists, who are drawn by Gaudí and a lively street and night life. It has very attractive mid-rise residential neighborhoods, some of the streets of which are being pedestrianized. Barcelonans live life outside, and as in the other cities in Spain which I have visited, there is eating and drinking on sidewalks and streets everywhere late into the evenings. Even the residential side streets have ground level retail. A good many of the stores in Barcelona (and not just the high-end ones) are elegantly presented. Barcelona was designed with broad avenues, some with wide pedestrians walkways down the middle (like the famous and tourist infested La Rambla). Many of the blocks were designed with shared green space at their center.

Barcelona is a seafront city, with broad Mediterranean beaches making up its entire Eastern edge. Those beaches as well were jam-packed (but with locals) on the weekend we visited. The city has an active cultural life, with a major orchestra and the opera company, as well as galleries and art museums. It is the home to two universities. It is famous for its public markets (which have also, unfortunately, turned a good deal of their attention to the tourist trade). It is clearly a desirable place to live – what with the attractive built environment (particular the many, many solid midrise buildings of substantial residential flats – the best of which are influenced by or the product of modernisma), the climate, the many places to eat and drink and the beach.

The attractive, oldest parts of town are particularly crowded with tourists – and the draw is clearly eating, drinking and partying – which is remarkable since Barcelona was regarded as a failing post-industrial city at the time of Franco’s death in 1975. Locals attribute the city’s rather recent turnaround to the hosting of the Olympics in 1992, which is unusual since Olympic programs have generally been regarded as economic development failures. Barcelona, though, has been a remarkable success, of which it is to a certain extent now a happy, overwhelmed victim. And there is much to be learned from its distinctive, high profile design history and its place-based, human scale successes.

More interior details:

THE SOUL OF PLACE – INDIANAPOLIS/COLUMBUS, INDIANA Part II of II

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The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra

While in town, I attended a concert of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra did a program of Beethoven, Bartok and Schumann, conducted by Markus Stenz, with Zoltán Fejérvári as soloist. Neither of those performers are box office draws, and only the Beethoven Leonora Overture No. 3, is a known crowd pleaser. It was ambitious of the symphony’s management to put on such a program and selling it to any audience would be challenge. But it was a splendid concert, and it was disappointing that it drew so small a crowd – filling less than half of the seats. Fejérvári was entirely new to me, and while I didn’t at first recognize Stenz’ name, upon reading the program biography, I realized I had heard him excellently conduct Kurtág’s “Fin de Partie” last year in Paris.

The orchestra plays twenty classical programs a year in a restored movie palace on Monument Circle – so right in the center of the downtown. The auditorium is very much like the one I recently visited in Pittsburgh –with classical allusions in its decoration. The room is large, and the sound is neutral – making it a fine place to hear a full orchestra. The concert appeared to be something of a love fest between the conductor and the players, and it may have been a try-out for the orchestra’s open music director position for Stenz, Krzysztof Urbański having left the orchestra during COVID. Stenz is a pro. He conducted from memory, without a baton and doesn’t feel the need to beat time, but instead indicates cues, tempo and volume changes, phrasing and articulation with gesture. While the playing of the orchestra was a little, shall we say, enthusiastic during the Overture, the remainder of the concert was compelling – particularly in quieter passages. The violin section work in the second movement of the Bartok was especially beautiful.

Fejérvári is tall and gangly. He was in full command of the technical challenges of the concerto. He coaxed a sweet sound from the Steinway in Bartok’s 3^rd concerto. Bartok is conventionally thought of as a percussive, “modernist” composer, but in this performance the lyricism shone through. The orchestra listened carefully to the musical lead of Fejérvári and followed suit. It was a moving, handsome performance. His lovely and unusual encore was the third movement of Jancek’s In The Mists. The performance of Schumann’s 2^nd Symphony was straightforward and engaging. The orchestra’s playing, while perhaps not the most nuanced or precise, was fresh and fervent. There was a lot of smiling going on the part of both Stenz and the players (many of them young), and that sense of pleasure was contagious. The audience was equally enthusiastic, occasionally applauding, apparently spontaneously, between movements, and with a standing ovation at the concert’s conclusion (which seemed genuine, as opposed the now routine standing response at Carnegies Hall at every performance). It was an altogether satisfying musical evening, particularly impressive from a part-time band, in a city without a major music conservatory from which to draw (although Indiana University, about an hour away, does have one of the country’s leading music schools).

St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, Gunnar Birkerts, 1988

Columbus. Indiana

Columbus, Indiana is not to be confused with Columbus, Ohio. It is a town with a population of 50,000 about an hour south of Indianapolis. The town is famous among architecture buffs for its collection of structures designed by leading architects of the last hundred years. Wikipedia provides a good summary of what Columbus is all about:

“Columbus is a city known for its modern architecture and public art. J. Irwin Miller, 2nd CEO and a nephew of a co-founder of Cummins Inc., the Columbus-headquartered diesel engine manufacturer, instituted a program in which the Cummins Foundation paid the architects’ fees, provided the client selected a firm from a list compiled by the foundation. The plan was initiated with public schools and was so successful that the foundation decided to offer such design support to other non-profit and civic organizations. The high number of notable public buildings and public art in the Columbus area, designed by such individuals as Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Robert Venturi, Cesar Pelli, and Richard Meier, led to Columbus earning the nickname “Athens on the Prairie.”

In a word, I was underwhelmed. A map sold at the visitors center lists 97 buildings and public art works located in this town of 50,000. The best work is mostly that which was commissioned by Cummins for its own use. The rest is generally not the most outstanding work of their designers. Often this appears to be the driven by limited funding resulting in inferior finishes and craftmanship. Some it seems like the starchitect didn’t take seriously a commission in the boonies. The projects are spread out around a large area – some a twenty-minute drive from the middle of town. All of the projects stand-alone – none are knitted into the small town’s fabric. They’re not urbanistic in any true sense of the word. The landscaping by the likes of Dan Kiley and Michael Van Val Valkenburgh was private, and mostly parking lots, or public, and not particularly well maintained.

The downtown reminded me a bit of Corning, New York, another company town with a philanthropic, design-oriented family in charge – but the main commercial street was not as well curated as in Corning. I had a tough time finding a place that was open for lunch on a Saturday afternoon. None of the work by renowned architects is on the main drag, Washington Street. The Miller family has been much celebrated for its patronage of high-end architecture (presumably using the money of Cummins shareholders to fund the Foundation). But the commissions seemed performative and attention seeking, despite all the blather in promotional materials about inspiring creativity and making Columbus a great place to live. The whole business felt like something of a stage set and not baked into the town’s planning and social fabric.

Actually, there seemed to be a lot of disinvested housing in the center of the town, and the adjacent areas were populated by tract house development and McMansions. Notably, just outside of downtown were the usual mid-western strip malls and regional malls featuring the standard national brands. As in Indianapolis, there just didn’t seem to me to be a deep commitment to making Columbus a vibrant place. As much as I love the work of William Rawn, a Bill Rawn boxy, conventional brick recreation center, is still a boxy, brick recreation center – even if his name is attached to. A Deborah Berke bank in a shopping mall – was just a drive-in bank branch. And I went hunting for the Hugh Hardy designed health center and found a grassy lot. Was it torn down? Was Hardy not famous enough to have his work preserved (his elementary school project for Columbus was far from the town’s center and I didn’t get there). A gigantic Robert Stern designed hospital complex was just plain odd – and was likely over-built for local needs – the extensive parking lots were empty on a Saturday afternoon. There was altogether too much banal Kevin Roche work done for Cummins facilities for my taste, the conventional modernism of which is not holding well up over time.

Was there anything I liked? The most impressive spaces I saw were actually interiors – in the stunning, elegant Sanctuary of Gunnar Birkerts St. Peter’s Lutheran Church and the light filled reading room of the Hope library branch, some distance from downtown Columbus. But interior designs do not directly impact public spaces. There is a Charles Gwathmey multifamily affordable senior project that struck me as quite elegant, and an effective use of a narrow site. The Dan Kiley Irwin Conference Center Landscape somewhat anachronistically makes use of the Bryant Park FERMOB tables and chairs – but how could I not like that? However, on the day I was there they were effectively props – no one was sitting in them, like in the Cummins commissioned public space in Indianapolis.

Indianapolis and Columbus place in high relief the difficulty in making great places – even with the most favorable local conditions. They both seem to have had progressive-minded civic leaders who wanted to ensure the future of their towns, and who commanded the resources to implement their plans. But plans and capital projects don’t make great places. To oversimplify, placemaking requires operating rather than capital funds (generally, much more difficult for government to come by). Activating public spaces is the result of the aggregation of many small interventions over a moderate period of time.

The Dan Kiley landscape adjacent to the Eero Saarinen Cummins Conference Center, added to by Kevin Roche

Indianapolis certainly has a lot of the right elements to create a vibrant downtown – by supporting a critical mass of street level activity – through outdoor eating and drinking, markets (the downtown City Market is just a rather forlorn food court needing substantial attention), pedestrianizing a few streets, presenting a consistent schedule of public events, foregrounding its historic structures (toning down signs for national retail) and encouraging modestly scaled mixed-use projects – all the usual moves.

There is a serious question as to why the city might want to do that. It is the state capitol, with all the activity that generates. It is a regional office center. It in an in-demand convention venue. Very few people live downtown. The creative class certainly has the option of living in a number of close in neighborhoods – if those are the people employers need to attract. Who would benefit from a walkable downtown with actual walkers? Living in such a place, is certainly my preference. There is something to be said philosophically for places with unique identities, that is that have soul. I’m of the view that in our polarized culture, drawing people together in attractive public places engages them in civic life and can provide an important unifying social force. Americans across the country need to be less atomized, drawn away from their screens and more engaged with each other. Quality public spaces (including elevating cultural events), with distinctive interesting programming (broadly defined) can provide that kind of collective experience.

But are there enough Hoosiers interested in that (or in attending the symphony) to make it a viable policy (or a sustainable orchestra)? A lot of people like, P.F. Chang’s – but that is not to be confused with the benefits of visiting a vibrant Chinese-American community.

Interior of the Deborah Berke Hope, IN library 1998

THE SOUL OF PLACE – INDIANAPOLIS/COLUMBUS, INDIANA Part I (of 2)

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What is one to think about a state capitol city where the streets have the names of other states? What comes to the mind of a non-Hoosier when he or she thinks of Indiana or of Indianapolis. Yeah, probably not much. Also, what is to be made of a Potemkin Village of high-end architecture, much ballyhooed by the architectural cognoscenti, that has a dull main street, many of the high design projects are far flung, and most are, to be truthful, pretty pedestrian? This card-carrying member of the Eastern elite’s teeth were set on edge by a sign at the edge of the town of Columbus, Indiana bragging that former Vice President Michael R. Pence is a native son. That, notwithstanding, I think I was able to maintain an open mind. There certainly is much to like about Indy (not including the dopey colloquial shorting of the name, which does the city no service). Not the least of which is a truly excellent symphony orchestra, which put on an interesting program during my visit, albeit to a far less than half full house.

Indianapolis

The city is bigger than you might think, with one million inhabitants and a metro of twice that size. That, though, is still only about a third of the state’s population. Indianapolis is a geographically large, sprawling urban center in a deeply red, rural state. Sources I checked indicate that there even remain quite a few farms within the city limits – and that isn’t exactly what urbanists are thinking about when they discuss urban farming. The downtown is quite compact, with only a few skyscrapers. But it is easy to see that the 60’s through the 80’s were not kind to downtown Indianapolis. With many soulless, indistinctive midrise office buildings having replaced the city’s historic fabric – which dates back to the early 19^th Century. There are some architecturally interesting structures left amid the brutalist colossi – but there aren’t many intact blocks of vernacular design. Oddly, the older, more distinctive buildings seem backgrounded by the newer additions.

It appears that the city fathers wanted to make sure that Indianapolis was up to date with the latest trends – both good and bad – right up to the present. Today, the city has a downtown management organization, a fancy schmancy system of bike paths (called the Cultural Trail), wayfinding signs, extensive scooter and bike sharing options, the modern street amenities for a walkable neighborhood downtown. But here’s the rub – there is nowhere worth walking to. The people in charge have made the moves, but don’t seem to get the essence of placemaking. There aren’t many of the features of a downtown that draw people to the center. It’s a city that made a big bet on the car and is organized around that. It has a huge parking structure on many blocks downtown. Like Kansas City, it is a place you drive to, to go to work, and drive out again at night. You’re also likely to drive to shop, dine or party. Because of the parking garages and the brutalist mega developments, there is little continuity of activity along street walls.

The Omni Severin. To the left is the original structure. To the right is the addition.

My hotel, the Omni Severin is an interesting example. I booked it because it is a member of the Historic Hotels brand of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is a classic early 20^th century property, built adjacent to the old intercity train station. Modern additions were made when Omni bought and renovated the structure in the 00’s – leaving some of the historic façade visible. But the additions obscure a good deal of the exterior character. The modern port cochere, on the rail station side of the building, appears to have moved the original main entrance away from the downtown facing side of the building, which is now locked from the outside. The public spaces and rooms in the older parts of the building are entirely characterless. Why bother with the adaptive reuse when the resulting project is drab? Little is left that makes the hotel distinctive, other than a few historic photographs and prints. Surely the National Trust can find a more interesting member in Indianapolis (perhaps Le Meridian around the corner, which seems more stylish).

The restored waiting room of the former Union Station.

The train station, just across the plaza from the Omni has been adaptively reused as a Crown Plaza Hotel – much in the spirit of Union Station in St. Louis, with windowless rooms built into the interior of the elevated former train station. It has considerably more historic character then the Omni, but is odd. The former grand waiting room of the station, which has a splendid rose window, has been turned into an event space. Part of the project has been made to recreate the atmosphere of the track waiting areas. There are even sleeping rooms in an old train (or a replica of one). The whole thing is very cleverly designed, but the lack of external windows and sunlight in the sleeping rooms probably makes it a hard sell. And the impressive waiting room is difficult to access from the rest of the project or the street. The whole place seems kind of dark and peculiar. One piece of advice to management – light up the rose window at night. It’s bad enough you can’t get into the waiting room directly from the street, but the window could be a beacon, activating the area around it.

The Cummins HQ, the garage to the right, the plaza in the center, and the Deborah Berke office buildings to the left,

Emblematic of the issues of Indianapolis is the most appealing piece of architecture I visited in either Indianapolis or Columbus (more on Columbus’ famous collection of architectural projects in my next post). Like the buildings of Columbus, the Indianapolis standout was commissioned by Cummins (formerly The Cummins Engine Company). Cummins is probably the most publicized and prolific patron of high-end architecture in America. Its downtown Indianapolis HQ was commissioned from New York/New Havener, Deborah Berke (who also did bank branch and a library in the Columbus area), with landscape design by local firm, David Rubin Land Collective. The Cummins HQ is a knockout. It’s an elegant, distinctive addition to the Indianapolis skyline (except that it is responsibly mid-rise). The landscaping around it is a combination of undulating greensward (incorporating all the mod cons of water management and native species) – and even utilizes the Bryant Park/FERMOB chair. The greenspace is adjacent to the Cultural Trail bike/pedestrian path. The ensemble is spirit lifting.

But. The tipoff is the bespoke garage, connected to the office building by a skywalk. The office building was not made to be walked to. It was meant to be driven to. The Friday I was there the lobby and the park were empty (it was admittedly cold and raining). The project sits by itself, with its front (which nobody is going to walk up to) facing the landscape, and the back facing the street. It sits at the edge of the downtown and doesn’t connect to anything else. I suspect that the tables and chairs in the park are used on the occasional nice day for lunch by Cummins employees (but how many warm, sunny days are there in the Mid-West – and shouldn’t public spaces be designed so that they can be used even dicey weather). It is unlikely that anyone will walk there (other than this crazy New Yorker). Adding insult to injury, there is no indication of the identity of the designers (true also in Columbus on the many significant structures there). When I asked the building staff about the architect, they didn’t know and had trouble accessing the information (kudos to the kind man at the front desk who came out to me in the rain, while I was walking around the park to identify Berke). There were informational signs lauding Cummins’ forward-looking commitment to sustainability and respect for local landscape conditions. But I have to suspect that Cummins’ decades of art and architectural patronage are more about demonstrating the taste, sophistication and generosity of the Miller family that has run Cummins for a few generations, then actually being committed to improving life for the people of either Indianapolis or Columbus. This theme runs through both places.

A mixed use hotel/office/retail project in the downtown.

There seems to be only a very few downtown residentials buildings – and why would you want to live downtown, when there is so little street life? There is not much that makes for an interesting neighborhood – little local retail (or dining), few art galleries, not even a department store. The garish signs for the national retailers and restaurant chains overwhelm the street and give it a honky-tonk feel – obscuring the handsome historic facades. The near-in northside residential neighborhoods of one family homes are leafy and attractive. The housing stock is from the first half of the 19^th Century – mostly wood construction (with plenty of gay pride flags flying from neighborhood porches). While the lots seem narrow, many of the homes are larger than 3,000 square feet. Prices appear to be between $500,000 and $750,000. Not inexpensive by any measure (southside neighborhoods, with similar housing stock, seem substantially less well kept). If you can live in a four bedroom, 3,000 square foot house a five-minute drive from downtown, why would you want to live in a downtown loft or tower? Only if it was a real mixed-use neighborhood, which, right now, downtown Indianapolis isn’t.

The fundamental question is raised: what makes a great place – a place where people want to be. It seems that the hard part about placemaking is understanding that’s it is not about great design and spending on capital projects. It’s about igniting the spontaneous generation of human activity – the release of creativity and the stimulation of connections. That is, the creation of a community that celebrates its inherent uniqueness and strengths. Building stuff doesn’t make that happen by itself. Successful placemaking requires humility and careful observation of how people behave in public space and supporting and catalyzing connective activity. This is generally the opposite of what local grandees are about. They want to be adulated and eulogized. Humility and understanding the needs and desires of other people, and patiently and carefully programming public spaces, just isn’t in their DNA.

Two other connected, wrong-headed projects also stand out in Indianapolis as grandiose failures. One is something called the Arts Garden. It is a social/performance space built over a major intersection. It is a glass winter garden with a high ceiling connected to the city’s skywalk system (almost never a good idea – diverting activity from street level) set up as a performance space. It must have cost a fortune – and why is it there? It also dominates what otherwise would have been a main downtown intersection. In order for such a thing to be successful, it has to be constantly programmed with high quality events. I’m talking every afternoon and evening, just about 365 days a year. That is management intensive and expensive. That didn’t seem to be happening – and the venue appeared to be underused for public events.

Attached by the skywalk to the Arts Garden is the Circle Center Mall (Monument Circle being the 100% location in Indianapolis) – which appears to be deeply ailing, with many empty stores – and few visitors on either a Friday or Saturday. Some mall passageways were literally dark – without stores or light. The mall includes some adaptively reused buildings and massive parking operations. Simon sold out its interest in the failed project last year – and someone is losing a bundle of money on the development (likely a good deal of which is the taxpayers’ of Indianapolis and Indiana). The project is too big, off the street and generally ill-conceived. It is no substitute for creating a real place.

[And while we’re mentioning Monument Circle, may I respectfully suggest that whoever is responsible for the music piped out of loudspeakers around the monument turn them off and take them down. I love Mozart as much, or even more, than the next person, but recorded music does nothing to contribute to the attractiveness of a public space, and its canned nature contributes to a feeling that the people managing the space are desperate for a good idea.]

The handsome Columbia Club on Monument Circle. Membership is down from 3000 to 1000 members.

Clearly, there is lots of cash around in Indianapolis to execute ambitious projects – some of which likely because it is the state capitol and has access to state funding. This is clearly a wealthy, successful community. Indianapolis has a huge convention center, with a dozen big convention brand hotels (Westin, Conrad, a couple of Marriotts). There’s an entertainment district near the center that on a Friday night was drawing a lively crowd to bars and music joints downtown. The City and the BIDs attention needs to be drawn away from capital projects and towards public space activation, if they are serious about making the downtown more livable. The place needs more outdoor food service designed for three plus season use (space heaters, enclosures). They need to foreground their landmark structures with more imaginative lighting and better controlled retail signage. They need to highlight local retailers. Leasing brokers and building owners likely think that national brands like McCormick & Schmick’s, Ruth’s Chris and P.J. Chang, with their garish signs, add to the profile and pizazz of the downtown (and are a draw for conventioneers). Here’s a newsflash – they make the downtown generic and indistinctive. That creates a downtown like everywhere else, without a distinctive sense of place – without a soul. Indianapolis needs to take pride in its identity and individuality – beyond the mass market products of the Pacers, the Colts and the 500 – if it wants to be a great place. On the other hand, civic leaders may be happy with what it is – a successful 5 day a week generic office district and convention destination. I should make clear that there is no shame in that. But the question is definitely raised, why have an extensive system of bike paths, an outstanding (if underappreciated) symphony orchestra and distinctive building and public space architecture? They have created an economically successful, but grey, one-dimensional state capitol, commercial and conference center. Many people (residents, business leaders, real estate owners) are likely happy with just that. But, there is certainly something important missing.

More on the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Columbus, Indiana in next week’s post.

The Cummins plaza — with the FERMOB chair.

THE CASEY JONES CONUNDRUM

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Heavy rail investment in the 21^st Century

The new Grand Central Madison Train Station is a success. The Moynihan Trail Hall is not. Why? Because GCM is a useful, efficient train station. Both had the challenge of fitting new railroad equipment in between decades of development of urban infrastructure – a near impossible task.

Moynihan is an inconveniently located facility, with clunky access to the western end of the former Pennsylvania Railroad train platforms. By contrast, GCM can be accessed to the street from a number of nodes between 42^nd Street and 48^th Street. There are somewhat squirrelly passageways that lead both to Grand Central Terminal and the Times Square Shuttle Platform. There is a huge amount of space in the new station to accommodate commuter movement. The new GCM track cleverly goes to an East River tunnel through two double decker tubes, creating four new platforms with service to Jamaica Station in Queens, where one can make the proverbial “change at Jamaica.” It should be a boon to Long Island commuters, once they figure out how to use it, and overcome their innate resistance to change. It greatly expands access for Long Island commuters to Manhattan transit centers.

It’s a stroke of brilliant engineering that much of this thing has been squeezed in underground to the WEST of the current Grand Central. I had always assumed that the East End Access project would be EAST of Grand Central. But, no, the engineers have put the concourse deep under Vanderbilt Avenue. Given that the track tunnels were dug into the Manhattan schist, there is no sunlight to the concourse, mezzanine and platforms – unlike the skylit Moynihan, which is that facility’s best feature. But the station is decorated with a number of mosaics and other displays from the MTA’s essential and successful Arts in Transit program – which pop and contribute greatly to the bright, active atmosphere of the project (as they also do somewhat less visibly at Moynihan).

And, no, it does not take a long time to get to the platforms – which is the first comment I heard from early users. I clocked it at nine minutes from the information booth in Grand Central to the platform, including the time to purchase a ticket from a concourse machine. That’s probably less than half the time it takes walk from 7^th Avenue to Moynihan (the worst feature of which is the cumbersome need to go down and then up stairs to get under 8^th Avenue to reach the train hall). GCM is smack in the middle of town. And the corridors and vertical transportation have been designed for relatively easy access to the capacious and well-lit platforms.

The problems: there are quite a few. First is that after years, actually decades of delay, the project was delivered on the tail of the COVID pandemic which has decimated commuter rail ridership. Was this $11 billion investment wise given the changes in commuting patterns? It’s impossible to predict the trends in future LIRR customer use, so we can’t know now (and couldn’t have known about the pandemic before). Given, that social patterns tend to regress to the mean over time, and the likely population growth in Queens, Nassau and particularly Suffolk counties the answer could be “yes.” We’ll have to wait it out. $11 billion is a big number.

As in Moynihan, there is almost no place to sit. That is a mistake. Public spaces should not be designed around an inability to program, maintain and police them. Adequate resources should be expended on programing, maintenance, social services and public safety sufficient to make waiting comfortably for trains possible. It’s just not that difficult – and is essential to make this gigantic investment successful.

Grand Central Terminal and Grand Central Madison are run by two different railroads, which should be invisible to the commuter – but it’s not. When I asked a Metro North ticket seller in Grand Central Terminal how to get to Grand Central Madison, he told me that there was no such place. The wayfinding signs and nodes of interconnection between the two stations are not obvious or seamless. There are many street entrances to GCM, but to get from Metro North Grand Central to LIRR Grand Central, you go down the stairs on the west side of the Terminal to the food court. You do a 180 back behind the stairs you just came down, down a shortish escalator and through a set of the kind of skanky doors that one finds at Penn Station and Atlantic Terminal to get to the GCM Concourse under Vanderbilt. The big drop in depth is on the escalator from the Concourse to the Mezzanine and Tracks deep below Park Avenue.

The lame entrance from the subway to One Vanderbilt

Another, personal gripe, is the small, hard to find entrance from the subway (and GCM) to S.L. Green’s new One Vanderbilt skyscraper adjacent to GCT on 42^nd Street, which was locked when I tried to use it. I reported same to the excellent MTA boss, Janno Lieber, who was very kind to look into it. Once, it was considered an amenity to have direct access from the subway to the Greybar, Chrysler, Chanin, Pershing Square and Lincoln Buildings – but I guess not to the asset managers of S.L. Green, who don’t want the hoi palloi in their cold, quadruple height, 30’s Italian design lobby. Of course, one change in the world due to Zoom and COVID is that very few people are visitors to office buildings they don’t work in.

As I write, the ever predictable, but factually unreliable New York Post, has stirred up complaints about the transfer situation in Jamaica. Commuters to Brooklyn have been quoted to be incensed about the changes in service between Brooklyn Terminal to Jamaica and points East. The new service is something former LIRR President Helena Williams called “The Scoot.” The idea was a frequent shuttle between Brooklyn and Jamaica’s downtowns to a dedicated platform in Jamaica, replacing more occasional service to Far Rockaway and a couple of other LIRR eastern terminals from Atlantic Terminal. On my visit to Jamaica from GCM, the Scoot system didn’t seem to yet be fully operational on the new platform serving tracks 11 and 12 (at the south of Jamacia Station near AirTrain), which are devoted to only Brooklyn service (there is also an art installation next to the stairs down to the new platforms. I had a great experience as a member of the committee that selected the artwork [about ten years ago!]). Brooklyn service was still leaving from track 3 going west-bound. Once this change is fully implemented it should be yet another improvement for LIRR riders with no downside; like the new Midtown East option at GCM.

So far the “Dashing Dan’s” of the LIRR (a long retired moniker) seem to be a pretty inflexible, change resistant and crabby bunch. Billions of dollars have been spent to ease their commute to Manhattan, including on the not yet completed third track of the main line, on top of their highly subsidized daily ride (more per ride than on the NYC subway). Long Islanders – talk less, smile more!

The big issues arising out of the billions spent on East End Access, Moynihan Station and the Second Avenue Subway (among other mega-projects) is what to do about heavy rail projects in the 21^st Century, given that heavy rail is a 19^th Century technology that has become absurdly expensive to build. An old friend of mine, one of the country’s leading railroad attorneys, coined the term “FRN” – fucking railroad nuts – to describe a species of human being with an irrational attachment to heavy rail. These people think that trains are the solution to every human problem from curing cancer to solving who killed Judge Crater. They want to build high speed rail from LA to San Francisco and solve upstate New York’s economic problems by expanding passenger service on old New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad rights of way. The numbers never work, mostly because squeezing new rights of way and tracks in between existing development faces tremendous (even overwhelming) political, cost and engineering challenges in a world that is already built out. They point to Europe which has great inter-city train service where there are dense networks of in-place rights of way that have either never existed in America or were replaced with highways decades ago. And they point to China, which has built out extensive systems of high-speed rail in recent years. The Chinese projects have been built without much regard to pre-existing property rights, sensitivity to environmental issues or concern about the welfare of construction workers. They have also experienced calamitous issues of construction quality once operational. Rightly, those circumstances will never fly here. Personal idiosyncrasy doesn’t make for good public policy – no matter how often and articulately expressed by otherwise “serious people.”

Heavy rail projects in the United States, particularly in the dense Northeast, seem to make sense either to maintain existing routes (like the Gateway project, replacing antiquated rail tunnels under the Hudson) or to efficiently expand on in-place assets (presumably like the LIRR third track). The decisions to proceed with such super-expensive service expansions need to be made with care after serious analysis of their projected economic (as opposed to political) benefits. Does Grand Central Madison pass this test? I, for one, don’t know. But that decision was made at least two decades ago, and the engineers for the MTA have made the best of it. Long Islanders, show a little gratitude, will ya?

IMPROVING THE PUBLIC REALM

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Bryant Park — the *ne plus ultra* of public space

The Adams Administration recently announced the appointment of a “Director of the Public Realm,” a newly created position. The idea for this post was advanced in recent years through the advocacy of civic groups concerned about public design, like the Municipal Art Society and the Design Trust for Public Space. The creation of the office became something of a (quiet) rallying cry during the last Mayoral election. The Mayor has appointed Ya-Ting Liu to the job, who, while not someone I know (not that it matters), seems well qualified for the role, with degrees from Berkely and MIT, and time spent at Transportation Alternatives and City Hall. Presumably, in the eyes of the public design and placemaking communities this is a professional who is both for the right things and is knowledgeable about the workings of city government, reporting directly to a Deputy Mayor. As someone who has worked on improving public spaces, streets and sidewalks in New York City for 30 years, including as the long-time chair of the Streets and Sidewalks Committee of the MAS, I can only wish her well.

Unfortunately, though, having a Director of the Public Realm probably isn’t a particularly good idea. It’s unlikely to contribute much to making public spaces better. It does give the civic groups (which during the Bloomberg Administration became quiescent) someone they can talk to in City Hall, and who would presumably be receptive to their ideas. However, based on my experience in City government, the office has a low probability having much impact, and over time will add to the bureaucratic dysfunction of city government as senior officials in City Hall lose interest in the initiative and/or are replaced by people who don’t see it as the priority Mayor Adams and Deputy Mayor Joshi presumably do.

The news rack designed by Ignacio Ciocchini for Grand Central Partnership. Ciocchini has designed most of New York City’s best street furniture

I experienced this firsthand in my time at the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT, now Office of Technology Innovation, OTI). DoITT was a relatively new City agency, established as a home for the once important city cable franchises (after the elimination of the discredited Bureau of Franchises as a result of a charter change) and the new and growing in importance technological support functions for other City agencies. It grew into a sizable bureaucracy that included the City’s 311 service, its procurement of hardware, software and telecommunications services, with its own capacity to code software to meet the City’s routine needs and with the capacity to house and support redundant servicer capacity for data and software.

A parallel Office of the Chief Technology Officer was created during the Bloomberg Administration. A key strategy of Mayor Bloomberg in accomplishing his administration’s goals appeared to be working around existing bureaucracies, by setting up offices in City Hall focused on the Mayor’s policy priorities, like sustainability and technology innovation. I speculate that Bloomberg and his staff decided that working through the existing agencies would frustrate their initiatives, and that life was too short to attempt to reform the deep dysfunction in City operations, particularly with respect to procurement and human resources.

While the CTO might have had some viability when it was first established in driving new ideas in municipal technology, it became just another bureaucratic power center. After Bloomberg, in the De Blasio Administration, it was staffed by smart, committed advocates dedicated to closing the digital divide (I have previously written here about my skepticism as to whether there actually is a digital divide https://www.theplacemaster.com/2022/07/31/expanding-the-reach-of-the-internet-in-new-york-city/). The Bloomberg priorities became orphans. The De Blasio CTO announced lots of grand plans that never came to much. But more significantly, the CTO spent much of its time sparring with DoITT over turf, credit for accomplishment and the Mayor’s attention. All three of the Commissioners whom I served made clear that the CTO was an adversary and encouraged ignoring them and engaging in parallel projects. There was much energy wasted in sniping at each other. Personally, I tried to leverage the resources available at the CTO, swiping my best staff member from them and trying to improve the CTO’s work product when and where I could (including spending two weeks editing and rewriting the Internet Master Plan, which when it came to me was drafted by a consulting firm the City had hired in a language that only remotely resembled English). Recently, that Master Plan, a signal achievement of De Blasio CTO’s office was abandoned by the Adams Administration (in my view no great loss, despite, or maybe even because, of my contribution).

Ciocchini’s proposed design for the telecommunications kiosk. Far superior to the design approved by the design commission

In my experience, there is simply no substitute for hiring talented, dedicated, well-trained, right-thinking officials in the relevant agencies and empowering them to take risks and make decisions in order to enable the bureaucracies to “get stuff done.” Setting up offices in City Hall to coordinate policy and spearhead thoughtful new initiatives isn’t a thing that actually functions in the real world. It just doesn’t work, and over time because of the fighting over turf, makes the bureaucracy worse. Over time, the managerial vectors have moved in the wrong direction, with decision making power drifting up and being centralized in the Mayor. The order of the day in the agencies has become avoiding making mistakes and waiting for direction from City Hall.

In the design and public space realm in City government there have been agency staff who have had a positive impact on in making good design in public space a priority from both the top and middle management of agencies, some over and some under the radar. As Design and Construction Commissioner, David Burney created a Design Excellence Program, which has become partially embedded in the agency’s DNA – employing a wider range of architects and engineers, some of whom have established high design credentials. At the MTA, Wendy Feuer and now Sandra Bloodworth have made its Arts in Transit program a huge success. They created a gold standard selection process for artists that has produced outstanding results – most recently in the Times Square/Sixth Avenue subway connection and in the new Grand Central Madison. Wendy took her design sensibility to the City’s Department of Transportation’s Urban Design group, and, working with Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, successfully inserted design and public space management interests into DOT’s day to day work.

In my time at DoITT I sought out others in City government concerned about quality design in public projects and on the streets and sidewalks and tried to create an informal network of like-minded bureaucrats. At the same time, I attempted to imbue our DoITT team with a sensitivity to design issues and the impact of telecommunications infrastructure on public space. The first two commissioners for whom I worked were technologists who didn’t have design top of mind, and I was able to work under the radar. Later, we rammed through a number of utilitarian objects of streetscape, the implications of which are only now being realized (and resisted) and my ability to influence policy went to nil. Newly installed larger mobile telecom 5G transmitter enclosures on light and signal poles and very tall, utilitarian LinkNYC 5G structures (about which I have previously written) are now beginning to appear on the City’s streetscape.

A decrepit dining shed removed by the City

Best case, Ms. Liu seeks out those with design sensibility and expertise in public space programming in the agencies and provides support for their efforts, works to encourage the agencies to create centers of good design (and I can’t think of any agency that doesn’t have an impact on structures and streetscapes) and creates programs encouraging the incorporation of design and placemaking sensibilities in all of the City’s endeavors in public spaces and City facilities. To advance my own hobby horse, creating a striking, distinctive purpose-built telecommunications structure to replace the eyesores now going up all over town, would be a lay-up and great place to start. I’d also suggests securing resources to program DOT’s Open Streets initiative. The Administration’s excellent New New York Action Plan would be a good place to start to find worthwhile ideas for revitalizing commercial corridors and improving public spaces.

Ms. Liu’s initial assignment will probably to come up with rules institutionalizing the tremendously successful Open Restaurant and Open Streets programs created during COVID. As is typical with New York open space issues, there are loud voices seeking to shut those programs down, and to heavily regulate commercial activity on streets and sidewalks. Those forces need to be boldly resisted. My suggestion is to get rid of the dining sheds in the roadbeds, which have outlived their COVID pandemic usefulness, some of which have become derelict. Putting chairs and tables on sidewalks should be made as streamlined as possible – with the City getting a license fee per square feet occupied – calibrated by borough and neighborhood. Economic actors who use public space to generate revenue should pay for the privilege (that includes you, broadband providers!).

THE COURSE OF EMPIRE/CONSUMMATION IV (of IV), SCHENECTADY AND TROY

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The downtowns in Schenectady and Troy are both success stories. They are similar-sized small cities, with commercial centers that developed in very different ways, likely because of the different periods that proved to be their hay-days. Both have populations substantially below their peaks (Schenectady, now 70,000, peaked at 95,000 in 1930; Troy, now 50,000, peaked at 76,000 in 1910). Both have anchor institutions of higher education. Union College, founded in Schenectady in 1795, and now with 2,200 students. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institution was founded in 1824 and has 8,000 students in Troy. Neither particularly has the feel of a college town, though. They are certainly archetypes of what the downtown of a post-industrial Mohawk Valley city can be—even despite a one-third decline in population from their largest. What signifies that these places are successful? They are busy and lively, they have few empty storefronts, their buildings are architecturally interesting and well maintained, and they have an interesting mix of ground floor uses.

What is particularly impressive about Schenectady is the harmony between old and new buildings along State Street, its main commercial corridor. All down State Street the street wall is continuous, the building heights are consistent and the facades of the new developments, several of them mixed-use retail/residential and others retail/commercial, are respectful of their context. None of these new developments draw attention to themselves, and all are knitted into the urban fabric, while clearly marking themselves as someplace interesting and new. It appears that several of these structures were designed by a local firm. State Street has to be one of the best main streets in the country, by most measures. For example, it feels more substantial and more modern (less like a stage set), than Corning’s famous downtown.

A new, mixed-use structure that fits right in

Schenectady was the corporate home of General Electric (before it veered away from manufacturing to become a brutally managed ponzi scheme of financial services), which retains a small presence in the town – but is nowhere near what it once was. GE had both corporate offices and manufacturing facilities in the town. A large historic factory structure continues to bear a gigantic sign for the company. A fun fact is that because of GE’s presence, it had the country’s second commercial radio station. Railroading was also a major factor in Schenectady’s economy. The New York Central stopped in town, and it continues to have Amtrak service. But, at least equally important, it was the manufacturing home of the American Locomotive Company, a major American builder of steam, and then diesel, engines for trains. That company no longer exists.

The city mostly has the feel of a leafy suburb with an attractive downtown and a self-contained, traditional college campus. One of the features of the commercial district is a very good looking and interestingly tenanted pedestrianized alley that leads from State Street to the near the train station, called the Jay Street Pedestrian Mall. It is clearly well managed and maintained. State Street also features a 1926 Proctor’s Theater that remains active and in use. The beautiful homes lining the residential streets are very much the result of the cadre of well-compensated GE executives who once made their homes in Schenectady and a community planned by the company to attract them.

It seems pretty clear from walking around that Schenectady’s is a planned, managed success. Civic leaders focused their efforts on State and Jay Streets and created and enforced smart zoning and design standards. No doubt it was just as devastated by the GE’s downsizing and ALC’s demise, as Amsterdam was with the collapse of the local carpet manufacturing business. But use was made of its in-place social infrastructure to produce what is likely a very, very nice place to live, work or shop.

Troy is different. It has more of a downtown area than a main street. Troy was a major commercial center very early in the history of the country. Located on the Hudson River at the point where it ceases to be navigable, it was already a locus for transportation before the construction of the Erie Canal, which met the Hudson near Troy and super-charged the local economy. The railroads, similarly, used Troy as a center, where the Hudson could be bridged to connect them to the West. If you were traveling west from New York City, you either had to take a ferry across the Hudson to Hoboken or Jersey City, or a train which turned to the west at Troy. This was true, and mostly remains true, for both passengers and freight. The Amtrak station in Rensselaer, just south of downtown, serves the city of Albany and is a major link between the state’s capital and its largest city.

With its access to coal and iron via waterways, canals and ultimately railroads, Troy was also an important, early steel manufacturing center. As a commercial center beginning around 1800, it is interesting to note that Troy’s population peaked before then that of other Mohawk Valley cities, but began to decline at around the same time.

Today you can get a sense of Troy’s history by watching “The Gilded Age,” Julian Fellowes American version of Downtown Abbey, where some of exteriors are filmed, and are easily distinguished from the scenes with absolutely dreadful computer-generated backgrounds (the CGI exteriors being the worst part of an otherwise enjoyable entertainment). The downtown retains its early 19^th century character and charm. Troy is also known for the concert venue in a (now former) downtown bank, with renowned acoustics often used for recordings during the gold age of the LP. Troy’s historic downtown is made up of many full blocks. It is more of a neighborhood than a commercial strip, I would imagine this reflects its early 19^th century origins and development patterns from that period. It has the kind of vibe that you find in New York City’s Greenwich Village or Brooklyn Heights, developed at around the same time, and now are among New York’s most desirable and visited places. While Troy had a number of major 19^th Century fires, the blocks of the downtown remain remarkably well preserved. Venerating these blocks isn’t simply historic preservation idolatry or some kind of return to a romantic ideal, but a recognition of the importance of human scale and the centrality of a mixture of uses to creating the kind of places where people want to be. There certainly are people who spent millions of dollars to live on high floors in Hudson Yards, but I would venture to say that those are people who have values that are in the very skinny end of a bell curve in terms of their distribution.

Troy is a little different, in having a commercial area, rather than a commercial corridor. That makes it less of a model for many other small cities. But like Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati, a vibrant commercial district can be an ever more powerful driver of urban vitality, and is certainly a place worth looking at for examples of success.

The Mohawk and Hudson valleys are places that continue to stop human beings in their tracks with their beauty. The construction of the Erie Canal was a critical milestone in every aspect of the growth and development of the United States. The area has an abundance of natural and social assets, including a large number of important educational and cultural institutions. It also has access to water (not a given in many places today) and a climate that, for better or worse more globally, has grown more temperate as the climate changes. Some of the cities whose growth was fostered by the canal have not yet recovered from the post-World War II deindustrialization. While others, like Schenectady and Troy are thriving. They are models for what is possible. What places like Syracuse and Amsterdam (as well as Utica) need are most importantly a desire to change and a willingness to accept new people, new ideas and new forms of economic and social activity. We know how to do downtown restoration, and we have the cities that demonstrate that. Where an old guard clings to the remnants of the dregs of former expansive wealth and power, desolation remains.

The Consummation of the Empire, Thomas Cole

THE COURSE OF EMPIRE/DESTRUCTION – II – AMSTERDAM, NEW YORK

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The Standard Approach to Economic Deevelopment in New York State

Amsterdam is an object lesson in how downtown revitalization and economic development strategy might be better implemented in New York State. Replacing a project-centered and economic sector strategy with a place-centered approach to improving conditions in Amsterdam would likely make a substantial difference in outcomes. A number of expensive, major initiatives implemented in Amsterdam to revive its economy over the past half-century have been failures.

This small city, located on the Mohawk River between Rochester and Albany, was for decades a major center for the manufacturing of carpets. In addition to access to the transportation advantages of the Erie Canal, the Chuctanunda Creek, running through the middle of the city drops three hundred feet during its last three miles, provided the power that drove the many mills that became central to Amsterdam’s development. With the carpet and other mills running at full production, by 1930 the city’s population grew to 34,000. With the transfer of mill operations away from the unionized north to the lower cost south beginning in the 1960’s, the population has dropped to just over half that. The mill buildings have now either been demolished, abandoned or are lightly tenanted. Nothing approaching the economic vitality of the high value-added textile business has replaced them.

The New York State Thruway, the major transportation corridor across the state, runs by and has an exit hundreds of yards from the city’s center. This has been less than a blessing for Amsterdam, as the street though the downtown that became the access road to the bridge over the Mohawk leading to the Thruway (built in the 50’s), Route 30, appears to have been widened to increase its capacity, while bifurcating, and effectively obliterating the downtown.

The Amsterdam RiverFront Center facing Route 30.

Two major traditional economic development projects in Amsterdam illustrate clearly the problems with traditional capital intensive, large scale, “silver bullet” redevelopment thinking. Adjacent to Route 30, just as you drive over the bridge is the RiverFront Center (formerly, the Riverfront Mall). It is a 250,000 two-story, grim structure that appears to sit directly in the middle of what used to be Amsterdam’s main street. The Center has a rather small presentation to the street but stretches way back. It is about half leased, poorly lit and poorly maintained (including non-operating escalators). Most of the tenants are government agencies, social service organizations or health care providers. This project had to have cost tens of millions of dollars and is a net negative for the city, not only because of its utilitarian design, but also because of the sense of failure about it.

The Mohawk Valley Gateway Overlook crossing the river

By contrast, the Mohawk Valley Gateway Overlook, is beautifully designed and well maintained. The Overlook, completed in 2016, is a pedestrian bridge over the Mohawk leading to a well-landscaped riverbank park, principally designed for occasional outdoor performances. However, access to the bridge and park are very difficult to obtain – making any positive contribution the project might make to Amsterdam’s vitality clearly minimal. The bridge can be accessed from a parking lot across the river from downtown, a few hundred yards from Route 30. We had a difficult time finding it. The greenspace is on the same side of the river as the downtown but is cut off from downtown by the former New York Central Railroad tracks (now used by Amtrak). I saw a bridge over the tracks from the RiverFront Center to the park, but a rather thorough investigation of the Center yielded no access to the bridge – which leads to a very substantial stair structure (with a non-working elevator). As a result, in order to get to the park, one has to drive across the river, find the parking lot, and then walk back across the river on the pedestrian bridge. In addition, in my experience, having a few outdoor concerts during the season provides little economic benefit to the vitality of a downtown. In order for cultural programming to generate the kind of activity that makes a difference, it has to be on a daily, or near daily, schedule. There was no one else visiting the park or the bridge on the day I was there. It’s a shame, because walking across the Mohawk on the pedestrian bridge is a lovely experience, and the riverbank park also provides attractive views of the river and its surroundings. The location between the tracks and the river provides a sense of the richness and importance of the location in the state’s commercial history (even if it is an obstacle to access). There is also an unusual view of the Chuctanunda pouring through an arched viaduct into the Mohawk from the Overlook – providing a tangible idea of the energy of the water that powered the mills.

The bridge over the railroad tracks and stair tower at the Overlook park

No doubt both of these projects provided local elected officials and civic leaders with a sense of pride and a great opportunity for media attention when they were completed. But then what? Downtowns are rarely revitalized by “projects.” And it is obvious that these two aren’t contributing. Big projects often involve extensive planning and large capital outlays, and if they have problems are difficult to improve or correct. The same is true about industrial parks and multi-million-dollar industrial plant subsidies, often the go to strategy for local economic development. At their best, those kinds of traditional economic development projects are viable for only as long as government hands them money. They rarely become self-sustaining. For example, projects like the RiverFront Center (and, for example, the former NYC World Trade Center) usually rely on government tenants to fill them up, when the market demonstrates its lack of enthusiasm for a development that isn’t market driven.

Much better is the iterative process of making incremental changes and providing continuous programming, which has worked in successful downtowns (like Corning, Schenectady and Troy). The placemaking approach takes time (and patience) and rarely provides for photo ops, but they generally involve much less money. I did notice one interesting center of activity in a former mill in Amsterdam, a company called “Sticker Mule,” which does internet printing and claims to have an international customer base, seemed to have a full parking lot. I’d certainly want to know a lot more about how they ended up in Amsterdam, what they see as it’s benefits and try to build on that.

I also wonder whether the kinetic energy of the Chuctanunda continues to have commercial value? Would it be economically possible to install micro-turbines to generate electricity in the old mills built on the banks of the creek? Those mills were designed to use its power to turn the spindles driving the mills, and so might be relatively straightforward to retrofit. Are there other efficient uses of that sustainable source of energy? Gravity has been pulling water down that 300 foot drop of the Chuctanunda for centuries, and will continue to do so without further investment.

The Castle hotel in Amsterdam — ready for Halloween!

I should also note that while in Amsterdam we stayed in a former National Guard armory that had been converted into a hotel and event space called The Castle. The armory was built in a neo-Gothic style and has all the external attributes of a castle perched on a hill overlooking the river, on the opposite bank from the downtown. The drill hall has been turned into a feasting hall, with suits of armor, heraldic banners and period paintings covering the walls. It’s a total trip. And the rooms are modern and comfortable. It was close to the parking for the Overlook, and equally out of the way, but a find. It is an usual resource that has been turned into a civic asset. The kind of creativity that went into buying and restoring it is what Amsterdam needs more of. It was an obsolete government-owned structure, that rather than being demolished and redeveloped using subsidies, was repurposed into a viable business.

I note, with a considerable sense of irony, that the Member of the U.S. Congress for Amsterdam is Mega-MAGA Elise Stefanic. It is not a sense of victimhood, nationalism or xenophobia that will improve the quality of life of the people of Amsterdam. It will take some risk taking, creativity and hard work. New York State’s economic development agency ought to make Amsterdam into a laboratory for exploring a range of placemaking initiatives through its underfunded Main Street program. In addition, given that it is half the size it once was, it is another place that might benefit from an infusion of energetic refugees and other immigrants. Clearly, what has been done in Amsterdam over the last century hasn’t worked. It needs new people and new ideas.

The Course of Empire, Destruction, Thomas Cole

THE COURSE OF EMPIRE – ROCHESTER

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The Rochester Philharmonic in Kodak Hall

The cities that flourished as a result of the construction of the Erie Canal during the first half of the 19^th Century are great places, blessed with abundant natural beauty around them. I took a recent driving trip to Rochester, Syracuse, Amsterdam, Schenectady and Troy (with visits to Auburn, Seneca Falls and Corning in the Finger Lakes region as well). Rochester, the state’s fourth largest city by population has a tremendous depth of anchor institutions, and a downtown with great potential for a mixed-use 24 hour downtown. Schenectady and Troy have beautiful, active downtowns. Syracuse and Amsterdam have serious, but solvable, problems. Over the next several weeks I hope to share my thoughts about these visits – my first to all of these places – a trip which I have long wanted to make. This week I will focus Rochester and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

Over the distance of almost two hundred years, it is difficult to appreciate the historical significance of the Erie Canal to New York City, New York State, and, in fact to the country as a whole. The Mohawk River Valley, which more or less encompasses the geography between Lake Erie and the Hudson River, is the only flat body of water that crosses what is otherwise the transportation obstacle of the Appalachian Mountain range. The Appalachians, running from Maine to Georgia, served as a barrier to commerce and communications between the eastern and western portions of the early United States (before railroads and the telegraph). When completed, the canal enabled the shipping of commodities from the all over the Midwest to the East, utilizing the Great Lakes, the Ohio River and the Mississippi as feeder routes. At the same time, it permitted manufactured goods to be shipped from the industrial states of the North and the cotton growing states of the South to the growing Western states. At the fulcrum of this commerce was New York City, and its deep and sheltered harbor at the end of the trade route at the mouth of the Hudson River; between east and west, and between the US and Europe as well. It is hard to imagine today, but the rise of the New York City as the financial and commercial center of an empire was nearly entirely originally based on commerce supported by the canal.

The canal was built over about seven years beginning in 1825, in an effort led by Governor DeWitt Clinton. While it used the water and geography of the Mohawk River, much of the canal had to be dug by hand parallel to the shallow, non-navigable river. The canal was a truly amazing accomplishment of human effort – and of engineering. While the canal was used for almost a century, the development of railroad infrastructure came hard on the heels of its completion, with the final leg of what became the New York Central Railroad across New York State finished in 1839. The “Age of the Erie Canal” was short but world shaking.

The canal required 83 locks along its 350-mile route to move freight vertically along its route, in many places enabling the circumnavigation of waterfalls. The vertical drop between the Lake Erie and the Hudson was only about 700 feet. But even more impressive were the 18 aqueducts that were built to cross over other rivers. The idea of building a structure over a river to carry freight loaded barges on water over other bodies of water is hard for the modern imagination to conceive. The longest of these aqueducts went through what became the city of Rochester over the Genesee River.

Over the next 150 years Rochester became the silicon valley of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and Xerox all got their start in Rochester. The huge Gannett newspaper chain was based in Rochester until recently. Rochester, and the region, also played a large role in the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movement. For a large part of his adult life, Frederick Douglass lived in Rochester with his family and published his newspaper “The North Star” there. The level of political and intellectual activity in Rochester and the nearby small Finger Lake towns was truly remarkable (and the number of 19^th century-founded institutions of higher education in the region is reflective of that).

The civic and business leadership of Rochester over the many decades took establishing a major metropolis seriously. They created the University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, and more recently the George Eastman International Museum of Photography and Film. Rochester became an essential part of the US’ art music ecology as the home of the Eastman School of Music (one of the country’s two or three best) and the Rochester Philharmonic.

The RPO is in the second tier of American orchestras by budget size as designated by the League of American Orchestras. Led music director Andreas Delft, however, it plays at a level that matches those of our largest ensembles (his predecessors in that role included Eugene Goosens, Erich Leinsdorf and David Zinman). It plays in Kodak Hall of the Eastman Theater at the Eastman School of Music. Originally built with 3,500 seats, it is a very, very large, high-ceilinged room – although the seating was reduced by 1,200 in 2009. When I stepped into the tremendous mass of space that is Kodak Hall, sitting about halfway back, I was concerned about the sound possibly being hollow and swallowed up. The orchestra, dressed in the now decreasingly used white tie, filled the space with a rich, clear, accomplished sound. I heard a program that included Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28,” Saint-Saen’s “Carnival of the Animals, with duo pianists Christina and Michelle Naughton and Stravinsky’s “Petrushka.” The program was billed as “Orchestral Showpieces,” and that provided a first-time listener a good idea of the group’s musical capacity.

The performances were simply excellent with a warm string resonance and glitch free solos – no small achievement in the Strauss’s exposed wind and horn parts. The Strauss was played in technicolor, with the piece’s humor and theatricality highlighted. The color coordinated and brightly dressed Naughton twins attacked their pianos aggressively, with precise coordination in the “Carnival of the Animals”. So much of this music has worked its way into the heart of the culture and is very familiar, none more so than The Swan movement, beautifully played by principal cellist Ahrim Kim. The soloists’ moments in all three pieces were played with great musicality and skill, but without showy virtuosity. This is an orchestra that clearly enjoys playing together with its music director as an organic ensemble. It was particularly evident in the “Petrushka,” another colorful work with comic moments. “Petrushka” is rhythmically complicated and spare, with much of the exposed orchestral scoring that is so characteristic of Stravinsky’s early music (the piece premiered in 1911). The orchestra made a tight, delightful show of its contrasts of both dark and light moments. I walked out after the concert into downtown Rochester musically contented.

The former headquarters of Gannett Newspapers

Downtown Rochester suffered from the degradations of the now mostly discredited ideas of mid-twentieth century urbanism and design. Its peak population was in the 1950’s, and only in the last decade has the population stopped declining. The downtown is filled with structured parking (and very few parking lots) and has a good number of daunting, tower in the park-like office buildings. The lack of lot parking gives the downtown a feeling of continuity. The city, though, has superficially followed a number of the latest urban trends, with some restored public spaces, scooters and bike lanes (without many people using any of them). Most distressing to me was the empty complex of buildings once occupied by Gannett newspapers in the center of town, before it decamped to a suburban Washington, D.C. office park in 1984 and moved the production of the local paper to another Rochester location in 2016. These are massive art deco and Albert Kahn designed buildings created around now obsolete technologies like the printing press and the typewriter. I am an optimist and have thought that the market will find uses for the post-pandemic half filled, midtown Manhattan, midcentury modern office towers. But walking around the Gannett complex gives one pause about the destructive capacity of modern capitalism and the difficulty of recycling gargantuan 20^th century edifices.

Across the street from the Gannett complex, at the foot of what was the aqueduct across the Genesee, is an 80,000 square foot, mixed-use – loft, office, retail – adaptive reuse development in a former mill that may demonstrate what the future of Downtown Rochester could be like. However, in order to get there, Rochester needs to veer away from both obsolete planning doctrine and the superficial trappings of up-to-date urbanism – a bench here, a planter there, public sculpture somewhere else, and dig deep into placemaking practice in order to become a mixed-use, 24 hour downtown. I even saw a sign opposing the formation of a business improvement district – a thirty-year-old concept, the best days of which have passed, particularly in cities of fewer than one million people.

An unused bike lane on the Aqueduct Bridge over the Genesee. The bridge also has nice, unused benches and planters.

Right now, downtown Rochester is a place designed to accommodate people who drive to work in an office building, and drive home to adjacent neighborhoods and suburbs at night. There is a mindset in Rochester that needs to change to make the most of its substantial social infrastructure. The blank walls and lifeless plazas around the downtown’s major office buildings are a challenge. I even saw a sign on steps leading to what appears to be the city’s leading office building prohibiting sitting on the steps up to its plaza! That is exactly WRONG. Property management ought to be encouraging step sitting and working to animate the baren plazas. The city needs to select a promising central location and build a critical mass of activity around that place. Scattered residential loft buildings throughout the downtown aren’t going to build that critical mass of activity. Especially given the lifelessness around the major office towers. The downtown needs sidewalk activity in the form of restaurants with outdoor seating and public spaces programmed with activity like Bryant and Dilworth Parks. The deep cultural resources of the community, like Eastman School and the excellent RPO, can be leveraged to bring vibrancy downtown, particularly at night.

Steps to the plaza of the Metropolitan office tower

With 100,000 fewer residents than at its peak, Rochester is excellent evidence that we don’t have a housing crisis in the United States and in New York State, but rather we have a lack of great places (and a failure to provide adequate mental health services to our most disadvantaged neighbors). Rochester and its neighbors have capacity. Tens of thousands of people, most recently from Venezuela, want desperately to be in the US. Upstate New York needs those people and their expertise and energy. We need policies that move them from the Southern border to our postindustrial cities. The Erie Canal corridor is a place of great beauty and opportunity. Utica, for example, has been recharged by an influx of Bosnian immigrants. The legacy of the Erie Canal could be more great places across one of New York State’s most naturally stunning locations. More on that when we move on to other Mohawk Valley cities.

THE BEST LAID PLANS FOR FREE WI-FI (Part 2 of 3)

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WI-FI FOR THE PEOPLE

Deployment of the kiosks wasn’t as straightforward as either the City or CityBridge had assumed. First, as it turned out the energy service and conduit for fiber optic cable to the payphone sites turned out to be degraded and entirely useless for purposes of the LinkNYC kiosks. As a result, CityBridge would have to do more trenching than it anticipated and Con Ed would need to be called upon to provide electrical service to all of the Link sites. That became a pinch point in the speed of deployment because Con Ed had a lot of demands on the staff that provided new service to business sties (requiring street openings), and because of the swiftly developed bad blood between CityBridge and Con Ed staff, CityBridge requests for service went straight to the bottom of the request pile.

Con Ed then decided that CityBridge needed to pay its maximize charge for delivery of service because the LinkNYC kiosks were “permanent” (like buildings), and that each kiosks would have to be individually metered and billed (unlike street lights). This was a large unanticipated additional cost to CityBridge, which it challenged unsuccessfully at the State Public Service Commission (a decision incorrect on the legal merits, in my judgement).

Siting the kiosks also turned out to be more complicated than anyone expected – because the kiosks were larger and differently shaped from phone kiosks they couldn’t just be replaced one-for-one. Also, site conditions had changed from the time the phone kiosks were installed, and by the time CityBridge surveyed sites for Link kiosks. Plans for each site had to be review by DoITT staff, and then inspected by DoITT inspectors (who were retrained from having been payphone inspectors for decades) for compliance with various siting criteria – particularly clearances from other street furniture. Pre-COVID outdoor cafes proved to be a significant obstacle to Link kiosk siting. CityBridge never made the deployment targets (each Borough had its own targeted minimum number of kiosks to be deployed each year) required by its franchise agreement.

Most of the publicity about the Link program during its yearly years arose out of concerns that they were a magnet for the homeless. There was widespread publicity that homeless individuals were watching porn on the internet tablets built into the kiosks. The charging ports were also seen as drawing folks looking to recharge their phones (although the question of how it was that apparently destitute people had handheld devices and monthly phone service plans was never raised or explained). In a number of places in midtown Manhattan, homeless people did congregate around the kiosks, it seemed to me for reasons unrelated to their functionality that I couldn’t figure out (we also found people sleeping under derelict telephone kiosks that had no functionality). For a while, we were reasonably successful in working with the outreach teams under contract to the City’s Department of Homeless Services to get services to people congregating around the kiosks. But, fundamentally, the situation wasn’t a problem generated by the LinkNYC program, but by the Administration’s failed multi-billion dollar strategy for dealing with street homelessness (but that is the subject for another long blog). The basic fact was that the LinkNYC kiosks did not cause homelessness.

I spent a fair amount of my time when working for DoITT trying to understand who was using the Wi-Fi and the other features of the kiosks and how they were using them. CityBridge provided data on usage (which is available on the City’s open data portal) which I reviewed monthly. I also tried to spend a couple days a month wandering around city neighborhoods, checking on their functionality (as did our terrific team of six inspectors), and observing, a al my guru, William H. Whyte, how people were using them in real time. I made sure my site visits were in neighborhoods far from the city’s center and were ones I hadn’t been to before.

The system was highly utilized – with millions of users and millions of terabytes of annual downloads. I concluded that the bulk of the use in Manhattan was by tourists and other visitors. Most New Yorkers have data service. That’s not to say that making the service available to that user group isn’t of value – but it wasn’t exactly advancing the goal of closing the supposed digital divide. What was interesting was how the kiosks were being used outside Manhattan. They were becoming a kind of social center. I saw people setting up chairs near them, using the Wi-Fi or charging their phones. Businesses put out tables and chairs in front of their storefronts for Wi-Fi users. I observed people using the telephone functionality – making very long calls, much to my surprise. The data showed that the top websites accessed and phone numbers called had to do with contacting social services – finding out about missing SNAP and other transfer payments. Clearly, the Link kiosks were becoming an important resource in otherwise underserved communities and had a great deal of value there. They were enlivening the sidewalks in commercial corridors in Brooklyn and The Bronx. This is something that should continue to be a focus of the Link program.

At one point I recommended, following the Holly Whyte formula, that we work to place movable chairs and tables near the kiosks, since many of the complaints about their use were about people sitting near them on the ground. My thinking was that this would “normalize” this use and support the vitality of commercial corridors around the city. This suggestion was not well received, despite the near universal acknowledgement among urbanists of the utility of movable chairs to animate public space, as evidenced by their success in Bryant Park.

MORE PROBLEMS ARISE

In 2017, CityBidge began to complain that it wasn’t making its advertising sales targets, in part because of deployment delays and in part because ad sales weren’t living up to expectations. As a result, the franchise agreement was being amended when I arrived at DoITT around that time, to provide a slower roll out of kiosk deployment and a deferment of payment of a portion of guaranteed minimum payments. A forensic audit of the financial records of CityBridge was performed for the City by a highly respected CPA firm to determine its financial condition. All were assured that the terms of the second amendment would solve CityBridge’s financial problems, based in part on representations made by CityBridge and Sidewalk Labs staff, and in part on the audit results.

Immediately after the approval of the amendment to the franchise agreement (by City Hall, the Office of Management and Budget and the City’s Franchise and Concession Review Board, made up of representatives of the Administration, the Comptroller and the Borough Presidents. The FCRC is an interesting vestige of the City’s powerful Board of Estimate, made up of the Mayor and Borough Presidents and which once controlled the City’s zoning and franchising functions until it was found to be unconstitutional on the basis of being undemocratic – given that each Borough President had an equal vote), CityBridge requested of the City permission to amend its privacy policy to be able to collect the Mobile Advertising Identifier generated by peoples’ mobile phones and use it in order to increase the value of its ad panels (and by the way, you can turn off the generation of an MAI by an iPhone by going into its privacy settings).

There was some degree of bad faith in this request, since the claim of CityBridge was that the ability to collect the MAI was essential to the economic successful of the franchise – a success that was supposedly assured by the adoption of the Second Amendment to the Franchise Agreement (the first amendment involved approval of a change in the members of the consortium making up CityBridge). The request caused tremendous ructions within the De Blasio administration which had privacy hard-liners in charge of its electronic privacy policy. The Administration had also gone through a laborious process of gaining the approval of the electronic privacy advocacy groups, like the New York Civil Liberties Union (also ardent privacy hawks) to not oppose the LinkNYC program. The reality of the privacy protections built into the franchise was that the Wi-Fi use of the LinkNYC signal was more secure and had higher standards of privacy than that provided by the any of the cable companies’ internet service to homes. The Link program collected the email addresses of the users in order for them to sign up for using the program, and nothing else about the users. Those email addresses were prohibited to be used for any other purpose or to be shared with any third party. The privacy protections were, as far as I could determine, rock solid.

Much was made of the potential for privacy invasions from the kiosks. They had three cameras. One was for use with embedded tablet for telephonic and emergency communications, and two on either side of the kiosks were for the monitoring and prevention of vandalism of the kiosks. To the best of my knowledge those side cameras were used only occasionally, and the videos generated were kept for a maximum of seven days and then erased. The kiosks also had a range of sensors that, to my best knowledge, were never used. These sensors had the capacity to collect pedestrian traffic, vehicle traffic, weather and seismological data – all which might have been of great value to the city and none of which were ever used. My understanding was that since the data was found by Sidewalk Labs to have little economic value (nobody wanted to pay for it), the sensors were never turned on. There was nothing the slightest bit “big brotherish” about City use of LinkNYC as far as I could tell, and I would have known.

I am actually something of a privacy dove. The MAI had the potential for huge value for both CityBridge and the City. It was anonymized, so it had a very limited impact on user privacy, but it upped the efficacy of the value of the ad panels. Most interesting to me was that the MAI could enable the Link system to relate the passing of an ad by a pedestrian to a sale to that person minutes later through their mobile phone. Let’s say an ad for Brooks Brothers was shown on a panel and an individual walked by it. If within a short period of time that individual went into a Brooks store a purchased a shirt, the Link system could get a commission on the sale. This was the kind of effectiveness/outcome metric that is so difficult to determine in the out of home advertising market – and would have provided the system with a huge competitive advantage. It would also have allowed Intersection to precisely determine how many viewers each ad panel had, something of great interest to advertisers, and would enable a more precise value to be placed on each ad.

Finally, much of the internet advertising sales world is driven by algorisms and a complex computerized marketplace by which ads are sold through instantaneous electronic auctions. Billboards, obviously, unlike internet banner ads, can’t participate in that electronic pricing system and as a result, are limited in their value. Tapping into the MAIs captured by the Link system would enable those ads to be sold through the electronic auction marketplace. The system would know how many people were seeing an ad at a particular location at a particular time and could auction off an ad at that time and place. Without the MAI data, the Link ads were not able to easily participate in this process (although I did argue internally that using data available from smartphones collected by Google without the MAI, such sales were possible, without success).

The City’s Chief Privacy Officer and the DoITT General Counsel were adamant. No way was CityBridge was going to be able to amend its privacy policy to collect the MAI under this administration. This was communicated to CityBridge quite clearly in June of 2017.