Category Archives: The Place Master Blog

The blogging site of Andrew Manshel, the Place Master.

THE RIGHT STUFF: SARATOGA SPRINGS

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Downtown Saratoga Springs

Saratoga Springs, New York seems to be doing all the right things. It has a great mix of local and national retailers. The buildings along Broadway, the main street, are generally of high quality vernacular late 19th and early 20th Century architecture. More recent additions have been designed, for the most part, to be consistent with the existing architectural vocabulary. The city even boasts a major new development by national real estate investor/developers. Broadway sports wide sidewalks and some decent site furnishings and horticultural amenities. It has a lively pedestrian presence both day and night. It has all the things economic development professionals are seeking for their communities. Being there is simply a great experience. It is a place with a distinct identity. It provides a range of options. It feels safe and pleasant. It is simply all the things we want a public space experience to be.

Those of us in public space revitalization frequently focus on whats wrong with places. But Saratoga Springs presents an opportunity to look at what’s right. It would be well worthwhile for those of us interested in downtown economic development to take a close look at the programs and forces that brought this positive turn of events into being. I can’t think of a more appealing small city downtown anywhere. Generally, small town great main streets don’t spontaneously generate.

A lively downtown hasn’t always been the case in Saratoga Springs. We visited the city in the late 80’s and early 90’s and found it run down. During the racing seasons at the historic thoroughbred racetrack, from mid-July through the end of August, hospitality amenities in town were grossly over-priced. On one trip to Saratoga Springs about 25 years ago we stayed in one of the most disgusting hotel rooms in our thirty years of extensive travel. We took a dated, uncomfortable room with a shared bath in a rooming house during the race season for over $400. This year our stay was in a brand new Embassy Suites, which was part of a development including off-street retail adjacent to, but not in, the hotel. Continue reading →

PPS WELCOMES NEW CEO, PHILIP MYRICK

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A huge step forward for placemaking — beginning an era of openness to new ideas, partnerships with all individuals and organizations who share PPS’s mission and kindness. The Board of PPS owes a huge debt of gratitude to Gary Toth for leading us through the transition under difficult circumstances; to Jon Zagrodzky for wise and effective strategic counsel; and to Robert Bass for his unfailing support and leadership. Not-for-profit founder transitions can be difficult, but with a great staff, strong board and committed supporters it is possible. I’m so much looking forward to working with Phil Myrick to expand PPS’ reach in creating great public spaces and revitalizing cities and towns.

Meet Me In St. Louis

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IMG_1635Downtown St. Louis has made as little progress in urban revitalization as any big city downtown I have been visiting over the last twenty-five years, despite a number of high-profile projects, like Union Station, and the continued success in a number of other St. Louis neighborhoods, like the Central West End, Grand Center, Lafayette Park and Laclede’s Landing. It is significant that the Downtown does come alive, to a certain extent, on the nights of Cardinals games. But when there is no game, both at night and during the day, the streets and sidewalks of the Downtown are dead.

There are a number of contributing factors to this, beyond the impact of the car and the “white flight” that affected so many post-industrial downtowns in the 1960’s and after. First is how far apart from each other active uses are in the Downtown. Many of the streets, particularly Market, are quite wide. Those streets have little shade. Building entrances, particularly those of structures built after 1960, are far apart – and those buildings have only one pedestrian entrance, limiting the level of visible pedestrian activity. Ground floor retail is unusually discontinuous. The St. Louis climate is particularly hostile to outdoor activity year round. A high level of heat and humidity dissuades pedestrians from remaining outdoors for about half the year. With a serious lack of shade – even in parks and plazas – as a result of very limited tree cover. The city’s major tourist attraction, The Gateway Arch, is set off from the downtown by an at-grade highway, and the classic Dan Kiley landscape around it (which has recently been extensively restored), tends to preference design over people and is generally forbidding. Finally, St. Louis may continue to be the most racially segregated big city in America. Continue reading →

What’s The Matter With Nebraska?

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omaha skyline

Omaha Skyline

A recent trip to Omaha, Nebraska revealed to me a way in which the United States has changed in the last forty years that hasn’t been much commented upon. Perhaps we might call it “The Kale Effect.” I went to college in Ohio in the 1970’s, and as an active alumnus of my college I made frequent return visits. I used to say that in decades of trips to Northeastern Ohio I had never had a good meal. But I certainly am unable to say that any more. Cleveland has become a Midwestern gastronomic destination (and I have had many a good meal at The Albatross in University Circle in recent years). High quality food culture has reached many, if not most, cities of any size between the coasts – and food journalism frequently focuses on great new finds in both of the Portlands (Oregon and Maine) – and many places in between.

On a weekend trip to Omaha we ate in TWO French bistro style restaurants – both of which served both good food and interesting wines and beers. And yes, kale, the sacred vegetable of Brooklyn was on the menu in both places (a food, the romance of which is lost on me). Even on a recent trip to Gloversville, New York, in the rural foothills of the Adirondacks, both kale soup and kale salad were on offer. The latest food trends have become ubiquitous across a country where in the middle of the 20th century spaghetti and meatballs was considered exotic. Continue reading →

Book Project: Learning from Bryant Park: Placemaking in Bryant Park. Revitalizing Cities, Towns and Public Space

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I have just contracted with Rutgers University Press for the publication of Learning from Bryant Park: Placemaking in Bryant Park. Revitalizing Cities, Towns and Public Spaces in the Spring of 2019. I am so fortunate to be working with the experienced publishing professionals Peter Mikulas and Micah Kleit on this project.

The Success of “Broken Windows” Rightly Understood

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Jamaica Alliance

Original Jamaica Alliance Team

Uneasy Peace

By: Patrick Sharkey

W.W. Norton & Company

It is hugely satisfying for me that Professor Patrick Sharkey’s important new book, “Uneasy Peace” concludes something that I have long suspected: in big cities across the country, violence has fallen as a result of the revitalization of public spaces by non-governmental organizations. Professor Sharkey, the Chair of the Sociology Department at NYU, argues that it has not been aggressive policing alone that produced the urban revolution of 1990’s, but rather the reestablishment of order in public spaces made a major contribution to the perception of public safety downtown.

My sense has long been that our work in the revitalization of Bryant Park (with its sister BIDs, Grand Central Partnership and 34th Street Partnership), along with that of the Central Park Conservancy in Central Park, was at the forefront of changing perceptions about urban public space. What the implementation of the “Broken Windows” philosophy as articulated by George Kelling and William Bratton is really about is high quality maintenance and programming in public space (fixing the broken windows) along with the presence of private, unarmed security personnel, rather than the kind of aggressive policing that produced the deeply intrusive and out of proportion “stop and frisk” policy that came to an end with the return of Bratton as police commissioner under Mayor Bill De Blasio. In my view, that kind of aggressive police engagement with the community is both dysfunctional and a distortion of what “broken windows” is really about. Continue reading →

What’s Planning Got to Do With It?

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The recent release of the Regional Plan Association’s (“RPA”) Fourth Regional Plan (http://fourthplan.org/; the executive summary is at: http://library.rpa.org/pdf/RPA-4RP-Executive-Summary.pdf) (the “Plan”) got me to thinking about the relationship between placemaking and area planning. Places and pedestrians are well-integrated into the Plan: its recommendation 23 (of 61 states): “On city streets, prioritize people over cars.” Arguably recommendations number 57 (“Remake underutilized auto-dependent landscapes”) and 61 (“Expand and improve public space in the urban core.”) also have placemaking casts to them. There is even a page on the Plan’s website for “Places” (http://fourthplan.org/places). This is an a signal of how much placemaking practice has worked its way into planning culture, and there is no doubt that this is a very good thing.

But the nature of regional planning is decidedly top-down and large-scale – particularly when it comes to talking about expanding and/or upgrading the tri-sate transportation infrastructure – and it puzzled me as to how people-oriented thinking about urban revitalization fits in to creating a big scale, long-term vision for the area. Continue reading →

The Real Story of Sleepy Hollow

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The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane (1858) by John Quidor.

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was the Stephen King, or perhaps even the Jay-Z, of nineteenth century American. His book, Life of George Washington, cemented in public memory the iconic image of “the founder of our country.” His Tales of the Alhambra was an international best seller and is still widely sold and read in Granada, Spain. The short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, has created a cottage industry in the river towns of Westchester County, New York – focused on Halloween. Not only was Irving a wildly successful author, but he was also a U.S. Ambassador to Spain, which led to his travel by donkey from Seville to Granada, where he visited the Alhambra and camped out in a room there for several months providing the material for his highly entertaining Tales. My recent trip to Granada persuaded me to download Irving’s collected work and to read the Tales, as well as his ridiculously silly history A History of New York, written under the nom de plume of Diedrich Knickerbocker. Irving was also our Homer – the bard of our national myths.

I crossed paths again with Irving this year when I was invited to be a part of an Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Panel for the Village of Sleepy Hollow, New York. The panel was brought to the Village by Mayor Ken Wray, and ably led by Developer, Kim Morque, President of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, LLC. The panel was made up of eight talented and congenial real estate professionals, from a variety of disciplines, who spent two days in Sleepy Hollow, walking the study area, interviewing stakeholders, and ultimately presenting to the Village Trustees. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and our presentation seemed to be well received by the Trustees. I am grateful to Kim, my panel colleagues, and Felix Ciampa, Mara Winokur and Kathryn Dionne of the ULI staff who organized the panel, as well as to my good friend and colleague, Dave Stebbins, of Buffalo, who recommended my participation (The complete report will finished in a month or so. When it becomes available I will link to it here). Continue reading →

Holly Whyte Resources

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Here is a link to a page I have added to the blog with links to resources about the life and work of William H. (“Holly’) Whyte.

William H. (“Holly”) Whyte Resource Page

Holly was the source of most of the ideas underlying the success of the Bryant Park restoration. After a visit to The Rockefeller Brothers Fund by Vartan Gregorian and Andrew Heiskell (President and Chair of the New York Public Library) in the late 70’s seeking funds for the restoration of the Library, the President of the Fund, William Dietel recommended that a study be made by Holly of the conditions of the public space surrounding the library. The study that Holly produced is uniquely perceptive, fascinating reading and available as a link on the resource page.

There is also an excellent obituary from the New York Times of Holly linked on the page. But an often forgotten part of Holly’s significant impact on Urban Life is that while he was a senior editor at Fortune Magazine, my understanding is that he commissioned Jane Jacobs’ first published work, and he continued to support and encourage Jacobs’ writing.

I would welcome the contributions of others for the page – particularly links to archives of the time-lapse photography that was at the center of Holly’s work. Holly’s thinking was based on careful observation of how people actually behaved in public space; and he used time-lapsed photography to deepen his ability to observe people in public space over time. I’m particularly interested in finding the film observing the almost comically prolonged process of people saying good-bye on street corners. They keep shaking hands, starting to walk away, and then continuing the conversation a bit more. We all do it!