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MRSC has joined with Phil Olbrechts, Attorney, Ogden Murphy Wallace, Pat Dugan, Dugan Consulting Services, Mark Hinshaw, Director of Urban Design, LMN Architects, Arthur Sullivan, Program Manager of ARCH (A Regional Coalition for Housing), and Anindita Mitra, founder of CREÄ Affiliates, LLC, to bring you the "Planning Advisor" article series on planning and growth management issue affecting Washington Local Governments. The "Planning Advisor" will feature a new article each month with timely information and advice you can use.*
Urban Renewal - Part 1: Painful Lessons and Failed Experiments*
January 2007
By Mark Hinshaw, Principal
LMN Architects
In the decades following the Depression and World War II, American cities disinvested in their central cores, either by intent or by neglect. It took several decades to see the effects but by the mid 1970’s, many central cities across the United States were dilapidated, abandoned, or eviscerated.
Worse, some cities took attempts at remedies that were weak, misguided or blatantly classist or racist. Whatever the motivation or lack thereof, the result was downtowns surrounded by “rings” that were barely tolerable as places to work during the day and hardly livable around the clock. This state of civic impoverishment was evident in both physical and social terms well into the 1980’s, despite efforts to revitalize many urban centers.
In order to counter the decay of central city areas, many jurisdictions tried a “silver bullet” approach – a massive, singular action that was intended to turn whole districts around in short order. In spite of many billions of dollars being spent, these efforts rarely succeeded.
Of course, the ravages wrought by urban renewal have been well documented. It was almost as if urban policy was directed to creating ruins like those produced by the bombings of European cities in World War II, just to have a clean slate to start over again.
Pedestrian Malls
Pedestrian malls were invented by architect Victor Gruen who saw downtowns as needing to mimic suburban shopping malls, a form of development that he helped create in the 1950’s. Hundreds of cities shut their main streets to traffic and tried to establish green “oases” among the deteriorated surroundings. Such a fundamental lack of understanding of how cities work and the critical and deeply rooted role of vehicular circulation did little more than hasten the virtual demise of downtowns. Thankfully, now, three decades later, most of those cities have “de-malled” their main streets and are seeing commerce return.
Sky Bridges
It was as if the era of the 60’s and 70’s was obsessed with re-creating downtowns in the image of safe and sanitized, middle-class suburbs. Sky bridges became so wildly popular that they were installed in places where climate control – ostensibly their purpose – was not even an issue. So many cities developed this insane rationale for sky bridges – the region was too cold in the winter, or too hot in the summer, or just too rainy.
As William H. Whyte pointed out in many of his writings, sky bridges were simply ways of allowing middle class consumers to avoid contact with other, less fortunate people in society. And their presence once installed virtually destroyed any street-level activity. No city, even ones with very high density, has enough demand to sustain two levels of retail. Accordingly, the street level became even worse. In some cities that installed them, even today some street-level storefronts are empty or walled over.
Big Parking Garages
Big parking garages – also a favorite device of architect Victor Gruen – were built to answer the claim that downtowns did not offer plentiful and low-cost parking – as did suburbs. Today it is not possible to count how many block long behemoths of stacked concrete dot cities across the country. No salvation was found in such outright ugliness; central cities began to appear like bunkers. Unfortunately, some downtowns like Denver’s still project this “bullet” where massive, multi-story parking decks loom over too many blocks.
Superblocks
Wide streets and superblocks were popular in city planning and engineering textbooks of the 1950’s. Thankfully, the actual implementation of this dreadful concept was seen in only a few cities - mainly those that were not fully formed until the 60’s.
The Combat Zone
Surely one of the worst ideas for downtowns was the “combat zone,” an approach developed in Boston for concentrating and, thereby controlling, “adult” businesses. Although other cities might not have used this precise term, there was an era of at least two decades in cities from New York to Baltimore, from Washington D.C. to Seattle that had almost continuous aggregations of strip joints, x-rated movie houses, adult toy stores, and magazine shops lining many blocks of their downtowns. Even today, San Francisco’s Tenderloin carries forward that atmosphere.
Festival Markets
Finally, the 1980’s brought us another silver bullet: the “Festival Market.” Advanced by James Rouse for the downtowns of Boston, Baltimore and New York, it quickly became a “must have” for mayors and city councils. Beyond the three original cities, few have been sustained over time. The problem is that these building types often follow a suburban model in that they face inward, only carry national brands, and encapsulate the customer in an environment that could be anywhere. The original urban shopping centers – the “passages” in Paris, some of which still exist today, actually connected parts of the city and were filled with small, locally-owned stores—a far cry from the branded, sterile, heavily programmed and policed downtown shopping centers.
Back to Basics
All these urban “solutions” have at their core an insidious and intense disdain for cities. They try to encapsulate, sanitize, and suburbanize the public realm. There is no room for messy vitality, spontaneous commerce, and idiosyncratic, home-grown businesses. It’s all about mass marketing, market share, and capturing upscale disposable income. Cities that have used these methods have in a sense destroyed their own history and robbed themselves of an authenticity that comes from respecting long standing patterns and behaviors. In real cities everything is not tidy. Downtowns have many kinds of people, many choices, and some things that are simply not photogenic. That is what has always made great cities great. And thankfully, many people are now seeing the value of such places and are voting with their feet, if not their mortgages.
After all these failed and discouraging experiments with urban
form and function, we have “discovered” that we simply
need to invest in the places and networks that have always served
cities well. These are the basic components of downtowns and inner
cities that have worked well for centuries; they are “classic”
in that they have met the test of time. Investing in them works,
investing in other things generally does not. Cities that continue to
seek out singular easy fixes and magic solutions do so at their
peril. Far more reliable are the essential building blocks that have
always constituted good, humane, and dynamic urban
places.
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*This is the first of a two part Planning Advisor article. In his next installment, Mark Hinshaw discusses the importance of investing in the public realm and how cities can renew themselves simply by restoring, reusing and recycling the good things they already have.
Mark Hinshaw has over 32 years experience as an architect, city planner, and urban designer. He has provided urban design and community planning services to local governments, prepared master plans for public facilities, developed design guidelines and streetscape improvements for public agencies, and created comprehensive commercial district plans.
Pat Dugan has a unique combination of experience in both planning and public finance, spanning 35 years. As a planner, he has been a planning director in two cities (Auburn and Burien), and two regional planning agencies in Oregon and Washington; and was a planning manager in Goleta, California. In public finance, Pat has served as the chief financial officer in four public agencies including the Cities of Auburn and Lynnwood, and the Snohomish County Public Works Department. He has written extensively on financing capital facility programs and on public finance for planners. Pat now offers planning and public finance consulting services and in his own firm, Dugan Consulting Services in Everett and can be reached at consult.dugan@verizon.net.
Anindita Mitra, AICP is the Founder of CREÄ Affiliates, LLC a planning and urban design consultancy that focuses on creating awareness of unsustainable practices, and offers a platform for affected parties to openly communicate and collaborate to arrive at creative sustainable solutions. She is also one of the Co-Chairs of the Climate and Sustainability Initiative of the Washington Chapter of the American Planning Association. Anindita's current interests include the development of sustainable master plans and streetscape designs; establishing sustainable community indicators and their integration into comprehensive plans and governance; identifying creative solutions directing communities towards energy-independence; preparing communities for the challenges potentially brought upon by the Climate Change phenomenon; and advancing the integration of transit and non-motorized travel solutions into community land use planning. She has worked throughout the United States for both the public and private sectors.
Phil Olbrechts is a member (similar to partner) and elected member of the board of directors of Ogden, Murphy, Wallace, LLC. Phil focuses his practice on land use law and currently represents seven municipalities as either City Attorney or Hearing Examiner. He has taught over a dozen credits of land use law at the University of Washington, has taught numerous land use continuing legal education courses and has made over 200 land use presentations to elected and appointed officials throughout Washington State. Phil has served on the Seattle Planning Commission and in the past served as the Planning Director for two municipalities.
Arthur Sullivan is the Program Manager of ARCH (A Regional Coalition for Housing). ARCH is a coalition of 16 public jurisdictions located in East King County. Its purpose is to facilitate efforts of public jurisdictions to create a full range of housing, with an emphasis on affordable housing. In 2004 ARCH was the winner of the inaugural Ash Institute / Fannie Mae Foundation Innovations in American Government Award in Affordable Housing. Previously Arthur was a Senior Manager at BRIDGE Housing and planner for Environmental Impact Planning. He holds a B.A. in Planning from the University of Washington, and a Master of Planning from UC, Berkeley.
*The Articles appearing in the "Planning Advisor" column represent the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Municipal Research & Services Center.