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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 2: Public Sector Investments / Private Sector Response*
June 2007
By Mark Hinshaw, Principal
LMN Architects
Cities have always been about renewing themselves, regenerating, and adding layers of richness that comes with time. It is the ability of cities to span centuries of time and accommodate various waves of architectural fashion that makes them distinct from suburbs.
In my own downtown neighborhood, there are many dignified buildings from the early part of the twentieth century –clad in red brick, with stone cornices and intimate courtyards. There is clutch of tiny, wood frame houses that date back to a much earlier era. There are tall sleek towers of apartments and condominiums and squat, glass-covered office buildings. The streets have seen 75 years of trends in building construction and economic cycles. And the whole neighborhood used to be an imposing hill that was sluiced down to the bay by a cadre of ambitious and aggressive city leaders. Elsewhere in downtown, buildings that used to hold office are now housing or hotels. Structures that were warehouses now are lofts. A group of row houses is lined with a series of small cafes, taverns, and music venues. What was a car dealership is now a live theatre. What had been a big dance hall, is now an office building – although it has come full circle in that one tenant now offers ballroom dancing.
My neighborhood is not unique. Similar places exist in every healthy, dynamic downtown. It is not about wiping out and starting over wholesale, but realizing that the buildings and spaces that make-up downtown are almost infinitely adaptable with respect to their use. They are containers – some stylish, some not so – that can be molded and modified to accept almost any human activity.
In fact, it is the public realm that stays relatively constant. Streets and sidewalks, parks and plazas change at a much slower pace. The public realm provides a comparative constancy and serves to temper shorter term change. That is why making sound investments in these common, shared spaces is so important. For too long we have given the public realm short shift when it is precisely the place where our investments matter the most.
The historic preservation movement in the U.S. laid the groundwork for the rediscovery of downtowns. The fight to keep a stock of solid, elegant structures and bringing them back to their original glory has ensured that downtowns offer a genuine rootedness, with character and ambience that is now greatly prized. Restored train stations, city halls, Carnegie libraries, churches, theatres, hotels and houses have all contributed to urban settings rich with the patina of time.
Parks and Plazas
Open, public space has long been a component of great city centers, with origins that go back at least as far as the Renaissance. In the 1700’s, the notion of infusing urban cores with great green spaces emerged. In Europe, enlightened monarchies – perhaps sensing their eventual demise, dedicated swaths of green to public use. Later, as monarchies fell, palatial estates like the Tuileries in Paris became true public parks.
In the U.S., the roots of public space squarely in the center began with the idea of the town green or commons. Later, figures like Frederick Law Olmstead and his progeny, the Olmstead brothers, gave rise to numerous great parks and squares in urban centers. Finally the City Beautiful movement solidified this idea of creating grand spaces for the enjoyment of people living in higher density places.
Many fine urban spaces were created in cities during that era, from Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia to Union Square in San Francisco. But for several decades during the middle of the Twentieth Century, the notion of purely civic, urban parks filled with trees and grass seemed to fall by the wayside. Perhaps one factor was that many people began to think of parks as also needing to provide space for organized recreation. Expansive ball fields could rarely be accommodated in dense urban locations where land is at a premium.
But in the last twenty years, many cities and inner ring suburbs have come to realize the critical role that green space plays in making centers livable. In the mid 1980’s Yale professor Vincent Scully praised the city of Bellevue, Washington for building a 17-acre civic green squarely in its center. Today, several thousand people live around the park in high density housing – a vivid demonstration of the power of green.
Similarly, recent block-sized parks in Portland, Oregon’s Pearl District have made that former industrial district so popular with urban dwellers that developers cannot build high density projects fast enough. Vancouver, B.C. views urban parks as a fundamental strategy to bring families with children into the heart of the city, a strategy that is enjoying sustained success.
For some period of time, we seemed to be at a loss about how to have urban parks that did not fall into use by people with anti-social or even criminal behavior. Fortunately, research by the late William H. Whyte and his successor organization, The Project for Public Spaces (or PPS) has given us a new set of tools and techniques for ensuring successful and lively urban spaces.
That work has shown us that on-going management and active programming are as important as the initial design. We have learned that the vending of food in public spaces offers a subtle but effective form of monitoring. And that having space surrounded by uses that can keep “eyes” on it throughout the day and night is critical.
In order to attract people to live in downtowns, cities must return to the important business of funding, developing and managing public spaces of all kinds – from true landscaped parks to more formal urban plazas. Already the evidence is in: those cities that have taken this step have seen results in the many new people who choose to live right in the center.
Civic Structures
For most of the history of the United States, we have had a tradition of building fine public buildings. We understood the importance of having libraries, city halls, museums, and schools be of the highest quality and greatest prominence. They served as literal landmarks, allowing people to orient themselves in the layout of the town. And they were symbols of civic pride and local democracy at its best.
However, over the past several decades, we almost lost this tradition. Indeed, we seemed to view public buildings with sort of collective embarrassment. We gave them the meanest of budgets, plopped them down in hidden-away locations, and gave them the most non-descript and Spartan forms of architecture. City halls looked like cheap, generic office buildings. Libraries were little more than bloated ranch houses. Schools sometimes were less attractive than industrial parks.
But this sad state of affairs has, thankfully, come to an end in many cities. In fact, some cities have been engaged in a new “golden age” of building splendid, high-profile civic buildings. Libraries are once again regaining their prominent roles on the urban landscape, despite some incorrect predictions that electronic communication would make libraries obsolete. Just the opposite, urban libraries have become vital community centers, true instruments of learning and socializing.
City halls have started to regain their civic place in communities. Cities and towns of all sizes have built finely designed structures that convey the values of local democracy. Not bombastic symbols of government, these new structures are friendly, accessible and serve as settings for all sorts of public debate, discourse and celebrations. After a period of locating government centers in green fields, they are returning to the center –sometimes in sparkling new structures, sometimes in restored older buildings.
One remarkable trend in the re-discovery of the role of civic buildings is the transformation of the convention center, or in some communities the conference center. Once considered an facility for primarily pulling visitors from out side a community to spend money, these places have taken on both an additional role and a different form. They now serve as venues for a wide range of local events and functions, from flower and garden shows to dances. The Moscone Center in San Francisco, which is largely underground, has movie theatres museums, parks, playgrounds and an ice rink on its roof. The Washington State Convention Center includes a enormous barrel vault over the street which is lined with cafes and contains a living room like space that is used by local residents.
Commitment to Transit
For downtowns to be truly livable, a long-term commitment to providing frequent transit service is essential. This allows residents the ability to forego one or perhaps all private vehicles. Fortunately, densities associated with downtowns – in excess of 40 units to the acre and as high as several hundred – are more than sufficient support frequent transit service.
Even bus only transit service is workable, especially if stops are frequent and buses are reliable. One downside to bus transit is that diesel buses are noisy and produce fumes – effects that detract from livability. To mitigate these impacts, some cities use electric “trolley” buses while others have purchased buses fueled by natural gas.
Nonetheless, rail transit is a critical element in larger, and denser, cities. San Diego’s Red Trolley system has been expanded hand in glove with Transit-Oriented Developments that have “seeded” entirely new neighborhoods like the East Village. Downtown San Diego’s phenomenal boom in housing is surely due in large measure to increased accessibility by transit.
Portland’s recent addition of a sleek, slender European type streetcar to its multi-modal transit system, allows several dense and diverse neighborhoods to be linked together. The streetcars operate within lanes also used by automobiles and trucks and the mutual accommodation has worked well. So quiet is the operation of the streetcars that melodious bells have been added to warn pedestrians at crosswalks of their approach. The overall effect is gentile and serene, as the streetcars glide past parks, shops, and stoops.
Inter-city rail is also a positive contributor to downtown living as it enlarges the accessibility of people who choose to not own cars. Several metropolitan areas, including the Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York have extensive rail systems. Several decades ago, frequent trains running between New York and Washington D.C. and Boston became faster and more convenient than flying such short distances. With the time now required for airport processing, the difference has become even more pronounced.
Other metropolitan areas have followed suit. The Bay Area has an elaborate network of commuter trains serving cities all around San Francisco. Ten years ago, the State of Washington put into service a number of Spanish-made, tilting “Talgo” trains that allow for rapid inter-city service between Seattle, Vancouver, Portland and Eugene.
Rediscovering Waterfronts
The beginning of the Twenty-First Century was marked by a trend that will fundamentally alter the form and function of cities across North America. This is the “re-capturing” of waterfronts – whether rivers or bays – that were formerly dominated by highways, industry, rail and shipping. City after city are creating astonishing new environments that combine public spaces, civic buildings, and residential uses.
Baltimore initiated this movement two decades ago by converting its old piers to a broad promenade anchored by shopping, museums and a convention center. But this early effort did not recognize that value of adding housing to the mix. Boston’s “Big Dig” replaced an elevated freeway with a below-ground tunnel and opened up opportunities for parks and allowed re-connecting the water’s edge and older neighborhoods to that city’s core.
Portland, Oregon replaced its waterfront freeway with a park that has spawn an entire network of shoreline walkways and public spaces, some of which have attracted new housing to their edges and the River District is teeming with new housing. Vancouver B.C. has redeveloped several formerly industrial areas into new vibrant neighborhoods that mix towers with townhouses and waterside esplanades.
Clearly, urban waterfronts are being viewed as a critical element in attracting new residents and new investment. Both Ports and cities are partnering to transform places where mills and manufacturing once held sway to places that are supremely livable.
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*This is the second of a two part Planning Advisor article. In his first installment, “Urban Renewal - Part 1: Painful Lessons and Failed Experiments,” Mark Hinshaw discussed lessons learned from the many failed attempts at urbran renewwal over the past 30 years.
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.