..Introduction..Main
Street Rules..Making
It RightBy Roberta Brandes Gratz
Introduction
Is downtown dead? Can it live again? Most accepted rules of thumb about downtown are wrong. About why it died — and how to bring it back. About why retail and manufacturing left — and how to bring them back. About what constitutes rebirth — and how to make it happen. Zoning, building codes, traffic, parking, signage standards, market strategies, financial formulas and economic development strategies tend to discourage or prevent the right things from happening and guarantee that the wrong things will. Doing it right today and tomorrow means shattering the rules of yesterday — especially the rules of city planning and transportation — of yesterday that persist today.
This does not mean breaking or eliminating rules for the sake of it. High-level-official advocacy of eliminating rules usually means making it easier for more of the wrong things to happen in a bigger way. Instead, institutionalized thinking must be dislodged.
Positive change and sustainable growth are occurring in many American downtowns, neighborhood commercial streets, Main Streets and big city business districts. From New York's Corning, to Michigan's Holland, to California's Pasadena and beyond, rebirth is clear. The list is extensive, but this good news is not acknowleged as significant in official circles of influence. Worse, the new, positive downtown life identified in this book is often dismissed by experts as, at best, singular or unique and, at worst, meaningless. We disagree. The public values the innovative change spotlighted in this book. People defying conventional practice are invariably the catalysts. In fact, where citizen initiatives or resistence to official plans occur are precisely the places where positive rebirth takes place. Positive public response fuels gradual expansion. Experts miss it entirely, diagnose it wrongly or acknowlege it belatedly...and reluctantly. The lessons are lost or purposely ignored.
Some downtowns have, in their own way, grown more exciting, from Miami Beach to Denver, from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, Boston to Savannah. Others have just been rebuilt, but not reborn, from Indianapolis to Charlotte, N.C., from St. Louis to Little Rock, from Cleveland to Scranton, Detroit to Atlanta. This book illustrates the difference between those rebuilt and reborn, between what we identify as Project Planning and Urban Husbandry.
The ones rebuilt, but not reborn, have done so according to expensive Plans, bankers' plans, planners' plans, politicians' plans, developers' plans — all Project Plans. The result is a collection of expensive, big activity places — tourist attractions — connected to each other and the suburbs by a massive auto-based network. When the elusive goal is merely tourism, efficiency and big copycat civic projects, little real energy and downtown life follows, just single-activity places. The complex, multidimensional urban fabric has been effectively replaced. A collection of visitor attractions do not add up to a city.
The places that have become more exciting have done so, most often, despite conventional plans, with modest public investment and through the catalytic efforts of creative citizens. We call this Urban Husbandry. When the rules of the excessive visions and overblown Plans have been broken or ignored, new life, excitement and the out-of-the-ordinary occurs. New life spreads to adjacent areas where the cycle can repeat itself organically. The urban fabric is renewed.
Main Street Rules, Not Mainstream Rules
Some city planners and elected officials erroneously insist that anything happening is better than nothing. Headline-grabbing civic projects, from big cultural centers to new stadiums, always requiring huge capital investments which cost taxpayers dearly, detract attention from complicated, fundamental difficulties. Convention centers, stadiums, aquariums, cultural centers, enclosed malls—these are about politics and development profitable for a few, not about developing local economies, enlivening downtowns or stimulating revitalization. Downtowns compete for these headline grabbing, budget-straining projects but overlook the actual, complex city in which they sit.
The list is always familiar, though some schemes drop out of favor as their exaggerated promise fades (Remember the rush on festival marketplaces?) and new ones are hyped. Aquariums are recent favorites. Stadiums are a current craze. Convention centers are longstanding ones. Gambling casinos are the most deceptive recent attraction. Entertainment complexes are a current magic bullet. Enclosed downtown malls, endlessly popular, are a poor urban application of a suburban formula or a semantic replacement for festival marketplaces. Easily, all of these Project Plans still add up to No Place. No economic diversification and growth. No expansion of the local economy. No meaningful opportunity. No excitement. No sidewalk bustle. No serendipity. No intermingling. No street theater. No people contact. No added residential population. No informal gathering or people watching. No complexity that should distinguish a downtown. No life, except during scheduled events or at a limited site. The authentic character of place is forgotten. This book values the essences that enliven. Project Plans don't solve problems. We offer Urban Husbandry as an alternative, a proven rejuvenation approach.
Enduring, positive change evolves...slowly. No big ideas will be offered here. No big new government programs will be proposed. Just the opposite. So much time, money, energy and attention is focused in directions and on projects that are big, visible, simplistic and wrong that few notice or heed the breakthrough.[1] Few learn lessons from unpredicted successes and few revise their attitudes to reflect reality.
As H. L. Mencken wrote: "For every complex, difficult problem, there is a simple, easy solution...and it is wrong."
Between the two of us, we have visited, explored, examined and studied hundreds of downtowns around the United States. We have consulted in some, lectured in others. We have talked to residents, merchants, city officials, planners, designers, preservationists, civic activists, journalists, architects, educators, students, business people, developers, builders, engineers, visitors, shoppers. Seldom do we find opinions, conditions, myths or rules that are unique. There is a sameness and sadness to all the deadened downtowns and a variety and excitement to all the revived ones.
Although the past and present are significant, this is not an exercise in nostalgia. The present points to what the future may hold. But there is nothing more relevant than the past as a building block for that future. The past offers lessons on which future alternatives can be based, alternatives to Project Planning. Often, the innovations presented here are located in a familiar building type and may inspire other places to initiate a similarly catalytic project. Each innovation generated spinoff businesses and stimulated the local economy. Each success offers one answer to the questions posed to us in so many communities, "What can we do with...?" "How do we make use of?" "How can we bring back...?"
Innovation is the common thread. An innovative view of transit stops. An innovative view of farmers markets. An innovative business type exhibiting the unlimited new potential of any locality. An innovative program to encourage new entrepreneurs. An innovative use of existing resources, whether an old building or open space. An innovative entertainment use that stimulates new businesses. An innovative economic activity that is location- neutral but helpful to downtown momentum. An innovative corporation enhancing a downtown effort. An innovative handling of public uses. An innovative developer who prefers rebuilding the existing fabric to replacing it. An innovative planner or architect creatively breaking with the conventional views of his or her profession.
Making It Right By Doing It Wrong
The chapters that follow reveal different approaches to correcting the mistakes of the past several decades. The direction from which a community attacks the issues and the problems does not matter. Everything is connected. Any one piece of the puzzle leads to the next. A farmers' market or a traffic problem may be the first piece. A battle to keep open a library or an effort to revive an open space may start things going. A fight against a proposed superstore can be the catalyst for renewing downtown. A struggle to retain a post office. An effort to stop a highway. All the threads of the downtown fabric are connected.
A downtown is only the synergy of its parts. The pieces can not be isolated. The whole is enhanced by each of its parts but those parts must relate and connect to make a complex whole.
Defying convention or breaking rules begins the process of unraveling the mess we have created. Bad rules and destructive guidelines have accrued during 50 years of automobile-oriented planning. Professions have grown up to perpetuate them. Urban planners. Architects and engineers. Traffic engineers. Retail consultants. Real estate developers. These professionals have a stake in keeping the public believing in their expertise. But the so-called experts too often ignore or deny the legitimacy of local citizen instincts, common sense and accumulated wisdom.
They are so often focused on their own area of expertise that they overlook, ignore, or misjudge the web of interrelated impacts. Experts too often want to "educate" people instead of "learn from" and be "educated" by them. These experts ignore the mistakes of their profession's earlier "expertise”. These experts write and uphold the rules, rules that have produced a dysfunctional form. They are the rules that keep us here. They must be broken.
Downtown can be brought back to life again. In some places it's actually happening. This book celebrates those examples.They are offered as lessons to learn from, not to be replicated.
Information provided by: http://www.change.org/cities/intro.htm