Tag Archives: sidewalks

THE CULTURAL CONTRADICTIONS OF MINNESOTA

An ensemble of modern office towers

Minneapolis and the Minnesota Orchestra

There is a loft apartment for sale for over $2 million in an adaptively reused industrial building in the Mill District with a river view, near but not in, downtown Minneapolis (https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/700-S-2nd-St-W70-Minneapolis-MN-55401/61624273_zpid/). Just try to wrap your mind around that, my elite, coastal friends. Let’s unpack this a bit. First, this means that some broker, who presumably knows the Minneapolis market thinks they can get over $2 million for an apartment, not a McMansion, not even a house – but an apartment in a dense-ish urban neighborhood in the mid-west. It also means that there are likely at least a couple of dozen people in the metro who have the capacity to come up with, let’s say $450,000 cash and the income to support a monthly mortgage payment (without taxes and operating costs) of roughly $13,000!!!!! And those are people want to live in a loft and not a single-family home. And, not in New York, or even Chicago. This is true, in a city where the conventional wisdom has given the downtown up for dead in the wake of the pandemic and the reaction to the murder of a Black citizen by a white police officer that became national news. At the same time, walking around the Nicolette Mall, once the 100% location in Minneapolis (and only a few hundred yards from that expensive loft), it is obvious that it is no longer the city’s commercial center.

What, my friends, is happening here?

The Mill District

It’s nuts. The forces of 21st century capitalism have arbitrarily abandoned the traditional downtown, while market preferences have moved slightly, and only slightly, elsewhere. This is the destruction of hundreds of billions of dollars of real estate value on what can only be described as a post-pandemic whim. The action has moved only blocks away – with a couple of adjacent neighborhoods booming with activity. Some of this is as a result of work from home – with bobos (bourgeois bohemians) not wanting to get out of their pajamas and go to work in proximity with other people. Some of it is racism, in the wake of the George Floyd reckoning – a modern incarnation of white flight.  What’s particularly interesting about downtown Minneapolis is the havoc real estate capitalism has wreaked on the historic downtown. There aren’t many office buildings downtown that date to before the 80’s. Most of the office building stock is quite modern (glass and steel). There are very few early 20th century masonry commercial structures left in the downtown. I would imagine part of the current market rejection of downtown is the characterlessness and soullessness of the efficient international style of commercial architecture from the period of 1980-2000. That emptiness of the exterior envelope is also reflected in the working environment contained inside these buildings – with most people employed in cubicles or open spaces. You certainly can’t blame middle management for wanting to abandon those white-collar industrial working conditions. Continue reading

A Walk in the Rain in Downtown Detroit

Detroit has received lots of positive attention in the urbanist community for a wide range of positive developments. On my first overnight trip to the city post-pandemic I found lots of evidence of good thinking — but at the same time not many people. Yes, it was Friday and the weather was cold and wet, but the streets were empty

Here are some photos I took on my walk.

Yes, Detroit remains car-centric.

Walking down Woodward Avenue, there was no easy way to get to the Riverwalk. You came to a hardscaped park, with few amenities.

Continue reading

A SUCCCESS STORY IN DALLAS

The park is full of people on a Friday afternoon.

Clyde Warren Park in Dallas works. A recent visit, more than ten years after its opening, showed it to be heavily used and reasonably well managed. On a weekday afternoon the park had quite a few visitors, including lots of children. The park has most of the elements that make public spaces successful:

  • Shade – essential in the southwest
  • Playgrounds. The one here is very cleverly designed and attractive – including fun water features
  • Lawns
  • Food kiosks and restaurants
  • Water features
  • Regular programming
  • Movable chairs
  • Adequate maintenance

As we have written ad nauseum, there are so many new public space projects, and so few of them are successful. Clyde Warren was built over a highway culvert – a category of assignment that has proved particularly challenging for public space planners over the last couple of decades.  Building over a highway cut can be an essential move in re-knitting a downtown together. But doing it right is a tough assignment. The designers of Clyde Warren, The Office of James Burnett, got what animates a public space on a deep level that seems to elude almost all landscape architects and public officials. After ten years, Clyde Warren is still performing well – attracting a broad swath of users. On the day we visited a large portion of the park was closed for a private event – but there was still quite a bit of space available to the casual visitor.

A good contrast with Clyde Warren is another public space in the southwest, Santa Fe’s Railyard Park of about the same vintage – which remains virtually unused, despite quite a bit of interesting development around it. The arts district of downtown Dallas is not the most promising or hospitable of environments for a public space. Downtown Fort Worth is way more walkable, human scaled and attractive. The surrounding streetscape to Clyde Warren is towers and institutions set back from the street – essentially bleak, unwalkable and car oriented. Prominent among the high design structures of the arts district (Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster) are a large number of parking structures. But somehow, pedestrians find their way to the two large blocks that constitute Clyde Warren — most likely from the offices and residential towers that overlook the park.

The nonprofit that operates the park, The Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation, has an operating budget of around $15 million. The biggest challenge for public spaces with water features is keeping them running. And the features at Clyde Warren are complicated and fun to watch. The Foundation seems to have the resources to keep things running. The water features are open for kids (and adults) to splash around in – which is just great, and unfortunately not standard practice. These water features are complex and they work. Kudos to the park’s managers.

That not-withstanding, the Foundation appears to contract out for the park’s maintenance, and it shows. Outsourced maintenance is never as detailed oriented and perfectionist or as highly motivated, well-compensated internally managed staff.  The park demonstrates a lot of wear from high use and is not kept to the high standards of Bryant Park. The lawn panels are need aeration and reseeding. The horticultural elements are designed for low maintenance and aren’t well maintained even given that. They don’t have the kind of visual pop that a public space of this caliber really ought to have. Some of the arts institution facilities in the district have much more imaginative and appealing plantings nearby.

Big Belly trash receptacles are in use – which are a bête noire of mine. They are a mark of managerial laziness. The design is awful – they are a squat box. The labor they supposedly save, is labor that the park really needs. Staff dumping out the trash bid are a visible mark of social order. Visitors want to see people working in the park – maintaining the horticultural elements and emptying the trash bins. It contributes to the perception of public safety.

But those issues aside, Clyde Warren Park, is a clear model for others to follow as to what makes a park lively and attractive. The built environment in downtown Dallas makes creating lively public spaces a challenging task, and so the park’s success is even more a particular achievement.

The hostile environment of a highway overpass, makes the success of Clyde Warren even more of an achievement.

The fabulous water feature amidst the forbidding neighboring towers. One of them was once famous for hostile reflection of the Texas sun into the neighboring sculpture park.

A close up of the water feature.

Contract worker — looking disconsolate.

The lawn is beat. Needs aeration and reseeding.

Low maintenance shrubs. Boring.

The dreaded Big Bellies. Ugly and bad.

And…movable chairs.

A shade structure. Essential in the southwest — along with the trees.

Signs of consistent programming. Probably not enough though to really contribute to the space’s animation. In a space in a downtown of this size, daily programming is essential to energizing the park.

Fantastic playground, even though its play equipment is liability lawyer-proof in design.

Wonderful climbing structure.

An adjacent dog park. A great move!

Shade and movable chairs contribute to the attractiveness of the space.

ROCKIN’ THE CANADIAN ROCKIES

Olympic Plaza with no skaters

It is truly wonderful how many beautiful and great places there are in North America. Calgary, Alberta sits an hour from the Rockies and enjoys spectacular mountain views. Calgary is a little like Dallas, after having morphed into Houston. It started as a cow town (and I had a fantastic shell steak during my visit) and became an oil and gas city – the fourth largest city in Canada with a population of well over a million. It has eight buildings of over 40 stories in the downtown. The city was very much built around the car – with numerous parking structures in the center. You can drive downtown from the suburbs, park downtown and as a result of the extensive skyway system (called locally the “+15”), your feet never have to touch the ground in getting to and from your office.

My visit was sponsored by the downtown business improvement area (BIA), Calgary Downtown Association (CDA), as part of an exercise to revitalize Stephen Avenue, one of the city’s principal shopping streets. Several blocks of Stephen Avenue have been pedestrianized and are mostly made up of low-rise late 19th and early 20th century buildings. The street is shadowed by the surrounding office towers – which, at present, have in excess of a 30% office vacancy rate. The street abruptly “Ts” smack into the superblock containing City Hall.

Continue reading

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

02-crossing-brooklyn-ferry

This blog only represents the views of the author and does not reflect the policies of the City of New York or its Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. 

Is urban “revitalization” a mere expression of cultural preference – reflecting white, upper-middle class predilections? Was the pre-revitalization 42nd Street somehow a more authentic expression of something before it, and Bryant Park, became “Disney-fied.” Essays in “Deconstructing the High Line: postindustrial urbanism and the rise of the elevated park,” edited by Christoph Linder and Brian Rosa (Rutgers, 2017), suggest that prior to its re-visioning as an urban public space, the High Line of gay cruising and wild, invasive plants was authentic, organic and more correct. In an essay in Deconstructing the High Line, Darren J. Patrick even argues that the pervasive and self-seeding, but non-native, Ailanthus altissima, had more of a right to live and thrive in the along the abandoned elevated rail line than the artificial more native, highly curated plant selection that distinguishes the High Line now.

When we were working at Grand Central Partnership and Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, we were occasionally surprised to learn that there were academics, like Sharon Zukin, who thought that we were engaged in a misguided attempt to destroy the complex, authentic social ecology of “The Deuce.” We couldn’t understand how someone might prefer the porn theaters, prostitution, unpicked up trash and three card monte of 42nd Street of the 70’s and early 80’s to what we were envisioning. Continue reading

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

BP After

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 Real Story of Sleepy Hollow

 

vintage-art-of-sleepy-hollow-paintingassociates

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

Placemaking as Policy: Gloversville, New York: A Laboratory for the community impact of public space revitalization

IMG_1291

Main Street with the Co-op Market

Gloversville, New York is about fifty miles northeast of Albany at the edge of the Adirondacks. For 150 years it was the center of American glove manufacturing and a thriving commercial hub. Being Gloversville was not unlike being, say, Buggy Whip-ville, and by the last quarter of the twentieth century its classic “Main Street” was hollowed out, with limited economic activity. Today, Gloversville has a population of about 15,000, with a median household income of about $35,000. The downtown has a dollar store and a large number of social service providers – and a lot of empty space. There are a few small industrial firms outside of the downtown, and several long time retailers on the main street. There are more than a half-dozen empty multi-story former glove factories in or immediately adjacent to the downtown.

Glove making must have been a highly lucrative endeavor for many, many years because the architecture and design of the commercial buildings are of very high quality; and most of that built legacy remains – waiting to be reused. The elegant, private Eccentric Club (http://www.eccentricclub.com/wordpress/) looks to be well maintained and is in the middle of the downtown – evidence of the wealth that was generated, and at least some of which, remains there. Continue reading

Improving Suburban Downtowns

IMG_0596The Village of Larchmont has two downtowns. One is focused around the commuter train station and the other along a six lane state road. Last week, working with my colleague, David Milder of DANTH (http://www.ndavidmilder.com/), I was asked to make a presentation about improving the downtowns to a group of local residents. The group was engaged and thoughtful. The talk was as much about improving the experience of living in this highly regarded commuter suburb (where the quality-of-life is already quite high). The catalyst for our being asked to present the talk was the number of empty storefronts along the main shopping streets. The link to our presentation is here: Larchmont Power Point

The commercial center at the transportation hub has excellent “bones.” It was interesting to think about and attempt to analyze why it has the number of empty stores that it does. What struck us in walking around was how many cars and how few people we saw on a Saturday. The downtown has a number of municipal lots and quite a bit of curbside parking. Both are unmetered and have a two-hour limit. While most of the spaces were full, there were enough empty ones to be able to say that anyone coming to the downtown could reasonably find a space. But where were the people? Continue reading

Vending: The Platonic Form

Cart 6

What’s Possible

Despite the doom and gloom of my last post, the possibility of improving the regulation of vending does exist. In the most recent session of the City Council, Intro. 1301-2016 was proposed (http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=2858236&GUID=EFEAD05C-4A4E-47E3-ACDA-ADEAA0FB3F2A&Options=ID%7cText%7c&Search=vending), a report was issued and a hearing was held. The Council’s press release summarized the bill’s provisions and the Council’s objectives in proposing it (http://labs.council.nyc/press/2016/10/11/124/). The upshot of the legislation is to double the number of food vendor permits. No action has yet been taken by the Council on the bill. The precatory language of the bill, and the language of the press release reflect the substantial interest on the part of Council members in promoting vending and the limited recognition of or interest in the negative impact vending has on downtown revitalization efforts. Continue reading