North Coast Online

Why This Runs Counter To All The Theories

The Instapundit theorizes on downtown Knoxville's comeback.

JAMES LILEKS ON DOWNTOWN BEAUTIFICATION: "If you’ve ever visited one of those sad deindustrialized cities with a moribund core, you know how they tried to bring the downtown back: banners and trees. If not trees, then flower baskets hanging from ornamental light fixtures. But certainly banners. If you hang something from every block that says History District or Pennsylvania’s Culture: On the Grow or Home of the 2003 Upper West New York Jazz Festival people will come back."

He's right that that doesn't work.  But downtown Knoxville has gotten better -- the Insta-Daughter and I had lunch downtown on Market Square today (her idea) -- and it was a bustling scene. Knoxville tried the trees, banners, brick-paved sidewalk stuff. But what mostly worked was businesses starting on their own, and people moving downtown. There's now a booming downtown scene, but it's pretty much happened spontaneously, not because of the city's various development schemes, which have been going on since Nixon was President. But one thing has made a difference: Parking! It's easy and cheap to park, and that's key.

It happened spontaneously and there's lots of cheap, easy parking?  The planning class will not be pleased.

 

Be Aware, Be Very Aware

The Anti-Planner alerts us to an upcoming tsunami of pro-planning propaganda.

               

On November 8, the American Planning Association celebrates World Town Planning Day. So it seems appropriate to celebrate Anti-Town Planning Week on the antipodes of November 8, namely the week that contains May 8.

During that week, the Antiplanner will review a number of city and town planning disasters that haven’t previously been mentioned in this blog. If you have any suggestions about what plans the Antiplanner could or should review, please feel free to let me know in the comments here or by sending me an email. It would be helpful if the plans are available on line.

Even as you read this post, Buffalo's pro-government planning enthusiasts are writing and revising the op-eds that will mark May 2007.  Check back here (often) to maintain your sanity.

 

The Plan, Boss, The Plan

Can you really plan a city of 50,000 from scratch?  They're trying in California: Playing SimCity for Real.

Downtown

San Jose and Las Vegas have been trying to reinvigorate their downtowns for decades -- with little success.

Despite its anemic condition, most visitors to San Jose at least know where downtown is. That is not the case in Las Vegas. The historical centre, with its string of small casinos and its neon cowboy, once seemed glitzy. It is now a shadow of the Las Vegas Strip, which has grown dementedly since the late 1980s, building ever larger, more exuberant hotels. Despite offering better odds than their competitors, the downtown casinos took in $630m last year, compared with $6.7 billion on the Strip. And they are the brightest spots in the area. Beside them lie cheap motels, shuttered shops and bail bondsmen.

Local boosters now hope that high-rise apartments will bring life and money downtown. Perhaps, but not soon. A wobbly property market has shaken out several projects. The scale of development at present—120 condominiums built, with another 2,748 under construction or taking reservations—is small stuff in a metropolitan area that added more than 70,000 residents a year in the 1990s, most of them in the suburbs.

Out of desperation, Las Vegas has resorted to the sort of downtown development Buffalo has depended on for years -- the government.

The only reliable way to bring people downtown is to force them. Las Vegas has put federal, county and city courts a few blocks to the south of the original Glitter Gulch, together with a jail. As a result, local offices are filled with lawyers. [Ed., Sound familiar?] San Jose's council has moved downtown into a glass tower designed by Richard Meier. The building is striking, especially as it sits in a fundamentally low-rise area. A city official who needs spare parts for his car need walk only one block.

I don't know that the article proves anything other than that modern cities perhaps don't require a busy central business district anymore.   I'm pleased that ours is showing signs of renewal, but I can't really think how that will improve the area's overall health.  But please, if you're interested in such, read the whole thing.

Why Some Prosper

Why do some cities prosper while others wither away?  Some of it's certainly due to taxes and the local business climate, but there are other forces at work, too.

At least part of the answer stems from their underlying cultures. In his "Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia" (1979), E. Digby Baltzell argued that Boston Brahmins, with their belief in authority and leadership, embraced a sense of responsibility for civic life, while Philadelphia Gentlemen, with their inward but judgmental Quaker ways were deeply unconcerned about their city's welfare. Over the course of the 19th century and well into the 20th, they abdicated their role in government and watched indifferently as Philadelphia became, by the 1960s, the worst run city in the nation. The Brahmins might have been intolerant and unpleasant while the Philadelphians were open and charming, but the Brahmins cared about their city--and so, subsequently, did the Irish politicians with whom they warred and the Italians who replaced the Irish.

Such cultural analysis--long out of fashion as too soft (as as opposed to econometrics) or too racist (who is to say that one culture is better than another?)--is due for a comeback. It starts to explain, in a way that mere fiscal analysis does not, why Miami has become the gateway to Latin America, why Los Angeles rules the Pacific Rim and why Chicago controls the Midwest. And it helps us to understand how New York City moved in 30 years from the humiliation of near bankruptcy to being the dominant city on earth.

Please, read the whole thing.

Killing With Kindness

The rebuilding of Main Street has caused a lot of pain in the University District -- which is supposed to benefit from it it.

It has been three years since the city began its largest and one of its most expensive highway reconstruction jobs on Main Street in University Heights, a stretch of road in North Buffalo that sees 26,000 cars daily.

When the Heights part of it is finished this summer, few disagree it will be time and money well spent. But for the residents who have seen business drop and quality of life decline, the end can't come soon enough.

"It has been significant, highly significant," said Jon Welch, owner of Talking Leaves bookstore. "It's been rough on most of us. I don't think there isn't anyone who hasn't been impacted."

University Heights was already a struggling neighborhood before the reconstruction began.  The loss of the bulk of UB's student housing to Amherst combined with a drop in the drinking age which cut local bar patronage and the general flight of Buffalo's middle class to the suburbs (Charlotte's) were already resulting in the district's worsening outlook.

Throw in a three year construction project and you might just duplicate in University Heights the destruction of downtown during the last major Main Street reconstruction -- the building of the subway.  In addition to reining in New York State's government, someone should lasso the engineers in the DOT who design these projects.

They look lovely on paper but they have the potential to destroy the cities they're designed to help.

Who Owns Jane Jacobs

That an unrepentant right-winger, such as I, would embrace the writings of Jane Jacobs should settle the matter. But many on the left wish dearly to claim her ideas on urban affairs as their own.  And while it would be foolish to think she was a conservative (she did move her family to Canada to spare her sons the Viet Nam draft,) there's nothing in her writings on cities that could be interpreted as approving the left's big-government ideas either.

City Comforts Blog addresses the issue.

Overall a pretty good radio discussion on Jane Jacobs at Christopher Lydon's Open Source Radio. Some of the guests — especially anthropology prof Neil Smith — had a distinct anti-market bias, which was a big weakness, especially as Smith in particular seemed quite ill-informed. For example, he suggested that our urban problems must be laid at the feet of the real estate industry and that housing should be produced by non-market entities, such as "tenant cooperatives."

There are two problems:

1. Non-market entities can and do already take part in the housing market.
2. I defy a group of non-specialists to produce even a single-family house in today's extraordinarily complex regulatory environment.

What some left-wingers don't quite get is that housing is expensive because it is valued. The builder's profit margin is not the difference between a cheap housing market and an expensive one. It is expensive to build, period. Moreover, windfall profits in extremely tight markets are not the creation of the real estate industry but of society at large and of regulation in particular, regulation initially forced on government by liberal neighborhoods. At least that's the story from Seattle.

Oh well, it was still a good show and it was public radio, so what does one expect but a liberal bias? And the show did bolster my point that now that Jacobs is dead, we will see ferocious battles to capture her memory for one or another perspective, which I guess should act as a tribute to her importance. I urge Lydon to follow-up with more shows on Jacobs' legacy in particular and on the built environment in general.

Indeed. And no right-wing ideologue he.

 

Overall a pretty good radio discussion on Jane Jacobs at Christopher Lydon's Open Source Radio. Some of the guests — especially anthropology prof Neil Smith — had a distinct anti-market bias, which was a big weakness, especially as Smith in particular seemed quite ill-informed. For example, he suggested that our urban problems must be laid at the feet of the real estate industry and that housing should be produced by non-market entities, such as "tenant cooperatives."

There are two problems:

1. Non-market entities can and do already take part in the housing market.
2. I defy a group of non-specialists to produce even a single-family house in today's extraordinarily complex regulatory environment.

What some left-wingers don't quite get is that housing is expensive because it is valued. The builder's profit margin is not the difference between a cheap housing market and an expensive one. It is expensive to build, period. Moreover, windfall profits in extremely tight markets are not the creation of the real estate industry but of society at large and of regulation in particular, regulation initially forced on government by liberal neighborhoods. At least that's the story from Seattle.

Oh well, it was still a good show and it was public radio, so what does one expect but a liberal bias? And the show did bolster my point that now that Jacobs is dead, we will see ferocious battles to capture her memory for one or another perspective, which I guess should act as a tribute to her importance. I urge Lydon to follow-up with more shows on Jacobs' legacy in particular and on the built environment in general.

 

A Strong Downtown Doesn't Necessarily Stop "Sprawl"

City Comforts Blog hits on a "truth."

Downtown development does not necessarily reduce suburban "sprawl."  In fact, the two may feed off each other.

Larger buildings with more people & activity in them will (if the street-level is designed correctly -- that's the key) make downtown Seattle more interesting, comfortable etc and will enhance the entire region's overall attractiveness. A truly urban and urbane CBD will increase Seattle's global prominence. It will draw yet more business and people to our region, thus increasing demand for new space of all types in every part of the region.

(And I am not even going to get in this post to the fact that the CBD housing market and the suburban one are very different and serve a different part of the human life-cycle. With rare exceptions, there is no substitution of downtown condo for detached dwelling i.e. the idea of  "family-friendly" housing downtown in a chimera.)

(Mind, I am not aware enough of the specifics of the zoning changes to be for or against them. In general I share the City's goals; I am all for more development downtown, though I think the impact fee aspect is typical cheapskate Seattle ""Who me? Someone else should pay." Subsiding affordable housing is a good idea? Yes.Then why should buyers of high-density housing — arguably doing the right thing from an environmental perspective — have the burden placed on them? Typical sanctimonious Seattle BS: find the nearest target of opportunity and exploit it. If subsidizing housing for defenseless populations — not "affordable" — is a good idea then all of us should take part in funding the subsidy.)

But it is the connection between downtown development and growth elsewhere which is the fallacy. It's dream world to believe that in any but the most marginal & remote way new construction downtown will lessen demand for new construction in other areas of the region, especially when it comes to housing nuclear families. It's good to have a vibrant downtown for many reasons but the major one is simply to have a vibrant downtown.

There is too much pool-playing, looking for caroms and ricochets, and "gaming" going-on. Just do the things you want because in themselves they are beneficial — here a walkable, cheerful, comfortable CBD — and not because of some second, third, and fourth level impacts which you hope to instigate by clever finagling. In this case, as I say, making the core neighborhood of the region — Seattle's CBD — more interesting makes the region more interesting and thus actually promotes development everywhere. Ironic. Some would say a "damned if you do or don't" situation. There is truth to that if you don't like growth. It's Annoying. Frustrating. But it's the way real estate works. Good planning provides (or should) a "context of certainty" within which people can make large investment decisions. "Really good planning" actually makes an area more desirable and hence promotes growth. Ironic indeed. (Btw, I am not suggesting that Seattle has had, though with some notable exceptions, such really good planning.)

Good insight.  Jane Jacobs might be proud of him.  The one does not preclude the other.

Smart Growth and Stupid Tactics

Oregon is looked to as the future for "smart-growth" advocates.  Portland was the first large city in the US to define a city boundary beyond which development could not take place.  And Portland's example has become the rallying call of advocates across the country to duplicate its efforts.

But Oregon's policies have not been as popular at home as they are in other parts of the country.  In 2004, Oregonians approved a ballot measure that would have required the government to compensate landowners for the loss of property value when the government decided it had found a "higher" public use and wished to restrict the owner's options.

The voters' decision was voided in court and has been appealed.  The appeal won.

Oregon's ballot measure, which passed with a mere 61% of the vote, required authorities to either compensate landowners for any reduction in the value of their property, or exempt them from the regulations. This was the second time voters had passed the measure, the first version having been tossed out on a technicality by the state's notoriously liberal Supreme Court.

This time, however, the state's highest court surprised everyone by declaring that its only job was to examine whether the measure contravened the state constitution (it clearly did not), and that whether the measure is "wise or foolish, farsighted or blind, is beyond this court's purview." What brought about this healthy new respect for democracy isn't clear, although it could be the court is weary of intervening on behalf of every advocacy group that loses an initiative vote.

In any case, the decision is especially timely as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court's egregious Kelo decision of last year. Other states are crafting versions of Oregon's law, and a few, such as Wisconsin, had put legislative efforts on hold pending the outcome of Oregon's litigation. This week's victory may well inspire more Americans to continue defending that most basic of Constitutional rights: owning property.

"Smart" growth may indeed be "smart."  But smart smart-growthers might begin to think that the "smart" way to achieve their goals might be to "attract" people to their point of view rather than forcing it through legislation or judicial fiat.

Adaptive Re-Use

Yesterday Smart City discussed the problem facing many cities of finding a use for sports stadiums that no longer have a team.  This was likened to the situation many smaller towns have when left with vacant big-box stores.

It's ironic in a way that in Buffalo we're turning an empty hockey arena into a big box.  It occurs to me that those small towns with empty K-Marts might think about turning them into, well, hockey arenas.

It Ain't the Sprawl, It's The Disconnectedness

City Comforts Blog picks up on the real problem with sprawl, and it isn't the disappearance of farm land.

Geitner Simmons, for example, picks up on London's urban sprawl.

Bruegmann is undeniably correct. Urban growth has been with us for millenia. That's hardly  a debatable point. But what were distant suburbs in 1850 or 1920 etc etc are now treasured "in-city" neighborhoods. The issue is not whether we will "sprawl" — will cities grow — but whether the settlements we build will be treasured by our great-grandchildren.

Much of the criticism of New Urbanism for aiding and abetting "greenfield" development is misplaced. Speaking of Seattle, for example, there is little alternative but greenfield development as the existing developed areas are largely built-up and offer little room for more single-family detached dwellings. The test for new greenfield development is whether it can be readily connected to new adjoining developments to form what will be the city of the future.

Yes!  My problem with the suburbs is not that the houses are sited on too-large lots, it's that each subdivision is consciously designed to be separate from the next.  It's the cut-up nature of the 'burbs that annoys me.  You can't walk anywhere, there aren't any amenities in the 'hood, and the concentrated business-zoned districts are choked with traffic.

Besides encouraging freemarket alternatives to this mess, maybe we should address the fears of so many Americans that make this type of development attractive -- and perhaps even sensible.

Was Marseilles Too 'American' To Experience Riots

City Comforts Blog theorizes.

Smart Shrinkage

Here's an example of what peoplewho trust government planning more than they do the free-market do in their attempts to figure out how to generate economic growth (as if it were complicated.)

The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, is launching a study of the Maine economy that will include a blueprint on how to boost the state's prosperity while retaining its quality of life.

The yearlong project, with a price tag of $450,000, was unveiled Monday at a City Hall news conference involving Gov. John Baldacci, former Gov. Angus King and representatives of business, conservation and foundation interests that are providing most of the study's funding.

The event was organized by GrowSmart Maine, a nonprofit organization in Yarmouth that has focused on the economic impact of unplanned development, or sprawl.

Alan Caron, GrowSmart president, said the study seeks to determine whether Maine can grow economically without losing its essential character and whether it can compete for tomorrow's jobs with a governmental structure fragmented into 450 cities and towns.

Brookings will analyze the state's strengths and weaknesses and propose a series of actions to make Maine more competitive. The think tank, which describes itself as independent and nonpartisan, also will explore governmental inefficiencies that hold the state back.

Bruce Katz, the Brookings vice president who is directing the study, said that in addition to analyzing economic and demographic data, researchers will be looking at how Maine people perceive the challenges facing the economy and the possible solutions.

To that end, Brookings and GrowSmart plan a series of "listening sessions" in all of Maine's 16 counties, with the first to be held Tuesday and Wednesday in Augusta, Bangor, Portland and Lewiston-Auburn. Katz will also be a keynoter Thursday at this year's Smart Growth Summit in Augusta.

Brookings has conducted studies in other states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Missouri and Michigan. The Pennsylvania report, in 2003, led to "significant and ongoing change" and generated broad public dialogue on local governance reform and other recommendations, GrowSmart said.

Caron said the September 2006 target date for completion of the Maine report was timed to make it a focus of debate during the gubernatorial and legislative campaigns. GrowSmart will then work to build an alliance to help implement the plan, he said.

With the track record of growth in Brookings' other client-states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Missouri, and Michigan, it's passing strange to me why Maine would consider hiring them at all.  They're, none of them, exactly examples of prosperity.  And really, re-read the statement of the vice president, "researchers will be looking at how Maine people perceive the challenges facing the economy and the possible solutions."

It's more than likely that it's those very perceptions that keep Maine from growing in the first place.  Mainiacs need some new perceptions, not reinforcement of the old and obviously unsuccessful.  This study is nothing but more feel-good pap commissioned by people who are already well-off and would like to find a painless (don't cut taxes and programs!) way to develop new business.  Almost half a million dollars spent on, well, nothing.  I do love the name of the organizing group though, "Growsmart Maine."

It reminds me of Buffalo's nascent "smart-growth" community which has had the good sense to squelch that term.  Buffalo may be the City of no illusions but we're not immune yet -- completely -- to irony.  We know here that you can't have smart growth while you're shrinking.  The good people down East can't either; it's a shame they're spending $450,000 to continue to convince themselves that they can.

Cedargrove Lives To See Another Day

I can't imagine that it will end here but it looks a bit more likely that Cedargrove won't be stolen from its residents by eminent domain.

East Aurora, Laboratory Of New Urbanism

East Aurora has certainly been successful in maintaining its small-town charm, while at the same time continuing to grow.  It truly is Western New York's great experiment in new urbanism.  It has not resorted to heavy-handed "urban boundary" schemes and doesn't (thankfully) have the population density to insist on economically-foolish mass transit plans.   

It is, though, a very wealthy community.  Perhaps it can afford to sneer at "big box" retailers and drive-throughs.  I do wish it well, but I'd like to see a "double-blind" sort of study; where maybe Blasdell, Sloan, or Holland would attempt the same.  If the resistance to typical, modern development worked positively in those rather less well-heeled villages, we'd know we were on to something.

Conservative New Urbanism

Paul Weyrich suggests a path towards a new urban policy that relies on choice and property rights rather than government control of private land.

Let me say that I am not necessarily against sprawl. Suburbs are great places for families to raise kids. What we need is suburbs and living, thriving cities, not one or the other.

Here is where conservative new urbanism comes in. Conservative new urbanism should be built on property rights. Its basis would be dual codes. At present, virtually every building code in the country mandates sprawl. One developer told me that in order to build a traditional town (something most conservatives like), he had to get 150 variances at immense expense and delay.

The next conservatism should call for dual codes, nationwide. Under one code, a developer would be perfectly free to build a sprawling suburb. But he could also choose to build under a new urbanist code, which would be consistent with the way towns and cities were traditionally designed and built. Obviously, developers would make their choice based on demand in a free market. They would build suburbs where the market wanted suburbs, and towns or even small cities (or redevelopment in existing cities) where the market wanted that.

Good new urbanism should welcome a dual-code approach. Why? Because good new urbanism sells. Sometime when you are in Washington, go look at the architect Andres Duany’s Kentlands development in Montgomery County, Maryland. It is a beautiful traditional town. And houses there are selling for tens of thousands of dollars more than houses with the same floor space in surrounding suburbs.

Here as so often elsewhere, the problem is government interference in the marketplace. The next conservatism should end the monopoly government building codes give to suburban sprawl and allow the free market to restore our cities. That is conservative new urbanism, and I think it needs to be part of the next conservative agenda.

Yes.

Intermodal Transport Centers Revisited

A couple days ago, in a post titled Bringin' Home The Pork, I questioned the inclusion of money in the Federal Highway Bill for an Intermodal Transport Center in Jamestown.

[...] Jamestown?  Jamestown doesn't have passenger rail service.  What modes are we intertwining?  Buses and taxis?  Buses and airplanes?  Will it be built up on Airport Hill? Or maybe it'll be down at the inlet and dinner cruise guests will be able to depart the boat and directly board their tour buses in a lovely terminal -- but I suspect they can do that now (minus the lovely terminal, of course.)

It turns out that I may not have been far from wrong.  Joel Seachrist who writes the excellent Westfield-based Small Town Lawyer blog responded.

The emphasis with federal funds of this type, and to a lesser extent to NYS funds, has become to connect various modes of travel including foot and bicycle, not just automobile and public transit.  A particular emphasis has become improving connections to blueways i.e  paths that connect public thorougfares/places to water, and thereby increase public access to water.   The Chadakoin project is an example of that, but not the only one: the Village of Owego in Tioga County just got a grant of over $1 million for its riverwalk, which runs between the Susquehanna River and the back of its Main Street businesses. The TEA-21 program, administered in NYS by the Office of Parks and Historic Preservation, also emphasizes trails that connect public points of interest. The idea is to encourage people to walk or use their bicycles rather than drive their car. 

I doubt this emphasis will transform transportation in NYS, but it may have some impact on the margins.  And as someone who likes to ride his bicycle and needs to get more exercise, I wouldn't mind more trails here in Westfield. There is a plan being discussed, incidentally, to create a trail along the old trolley right of way that parallels South Portage Street.  On the south end it would connect to the Rails to Trails that connects to Mayville and parts east, and on the north we would create a new trail that follows Chautauqua Creek down to the lake.  The plans are sketchy at this point but we have high hopes, and likely will be looking for "intermodal" funds.  A million bucks would do just fine.

I'd like to thank Joel for his calm response to my ever-cynical opinion.  And it's true that the Buffalo News article I cited did not mention how much money Jamestown had been allocated.  But, you see, my skepticism over Intermodal Transport Centers goes back a long ways.  I first posted on the topic back in 2002, Intermodal Pork. 

Back then, the City fathers (and mothers) were casting about for something -- anything to put in the Aud.  Someone became aware of federal Intermodal Transport money and the idea was hatched to put the downtown train station in the Aud's basement and force Greyhound and Trailways to move over there to qualify for the "inter" part of modal.

Now understand that the Amtrak rail line goes underground for a few hundred yards in downtown. This underground section just happens to run right next to the Aud's basement. So, those looking for a reason to spare the Aud asked, "What if we made the Aud into a train station? Well, that wouldn't fly -- maybe 45 or 46 people a day use Amtrak in Buffalo." (I made those numbers up, it might be 47).

Alright then (the thinking went), maybe there aren't many train passengers, but look at all the bus passengers we have in town. I know that we already have a perfectly good and actually rather attractive bus station (as bus stations go) a few blocks away. But if we could jawbone Greyhound and Trailways to move over to the Aud -- we could make it a train and bus station. No, that sounds ugly. Let's call it an Intermodal Transportation Center.

When Bass Pro showed up, the need for a train cum bus station was obviated until we realized that the thing would need parking and lots of it.  And once again, Intermodal transport came to the rescue.  Under the guise of combining two "vital" modes of transport under one roof, we'll really (wink, wink) be building a huge parking garage for Bass Pro.

I've already compromised my principles by advocating so much government money for Bass Pro; so I guess I shouldn't begrudge the good people of Jamestown the chance to ride their bikes down to the canoe on the Chadakoin.  But le't not kid ourselves up here that we're not greedily consuming pork, most of which came from non-Buffalonians (and non-Jamestonians either for that matter), to fulfill our suspect (based on past results) dreams for the future.

And what's to become of the old bus station, anyway?  Lofts for artists, I presume.

Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle - Big Mistake?

Downtown Pittisburgh is stunning - from a distance.

It's easy to be fooled by the Golden Triangle. Most Pittsburghers have been for 50 years.

We've looked with great pride at Point State Park and Gateway Center, the tidy clump of corporate office buildings next to it. And without thinking too hard about why their never-changing open spaces are so empty of humans so much of the time, we naturally assume they are an example of successful urban planning.

But they're not, as New York Times columnist John Tierney, a former Pittsburgher, so cruelly but accurately pointed out in a recent op-ed piece that embarrassed Pittsburgh by exposing it as a pioneer of eminent domain abuse.

Gateway Center with its "bland corporate towers" and "empty plazas," Tierney wrote, is seen today as "hopelessly retrograde" by today's urban planners, who are desperately trying to re-create the organic street life of cities that earlier generations of planners killed with their grandiose projects and bulldozers.

Mayor Tom Murphy rebutted Tierney last week in a spirited piece printed in his favorite Toledo, Ohio-headquartered local daily. The mayor insisted that despite what Tierney intimated, during the 1950s city leaders did indeed transform a "blighted warehouse district into a beautiful Downtown park and office space."

But that old City Hall-serving claim is a myth, as anyone can quickly see by reading Rachel Balliet Colker's fine 1995 Pittsburgh History magazine article, "Gaining Gateway Center: Eminent Domain, Redevelopment and Resistance."

Colker is a historical archivist who detailed the resistance of the doomed property owners and the court fights they lost. It is true, she wrote, that by 1950 the 36 acres intended for Point State Park contained mostly warehouses and railroad tracks.

But the 23 acres ultimately taken and turned over to the Equitable Life Assurance Co. for what would become Gateway Center, while not Rodeo Drive, were hardly wall-to-wall blight. The four congested blocks and 90-plus buildings included professional offices, small businesses, social clubs and hotels, including the elegant Mayflower Hotel. Some buildings were 100 years old.

Colker's account of the fight between a ruthless City Hall and small property owners who didn't appreciate their land being swiped and given to a big out-of-town corporation should sound familiar. It parallels what happened when PPG Place was built in the early 1980s and what would have happened if Mayor Murphy's diabolical plan for clear-cutting Fifth and Forbes had come to fruition.

Looking back, it's easy to see why we've been fooled into adoring the Golden Triangle. Every Pittsburgh politician, corporate CEO and visiting NFL TV announcer since the days of St. David L. Lawrence has praised our signature metropolitan attraction.

Look how pretty it looks from a Goodyear blimp, they say. Look how perfect The Point looks from Mt. Washington. But looks ain't everything.

Down on the ground, and up close, the 60 acres of Point State Park and Gateway Center are not so becoming. They are a badly aging creation of government, a cold, artificial and people-unfriendly wastleland that looks like it belongs in communist East Berlin, circa 1975. Most of the natural commercial and recreational activities that enliven and enrich cities are outlawed unless they are officially sanctioned or controlled.

The Golden Triangle is not really pretty, and not very useful. It's a half-century-old mistake of urban planning. And Pittsburghers probably will be stuck with it forever.

As we study Pittsburgh's successes, let's not ignore its failures. We can learn from both.

 

New York Dodged A Stadium Bullet

I was pleased that the proposed Manhattan West Side Stadium was sidelined because it was going to cost us billions.  But according to this article, it wouldn't have done much to improve the City either.

The fight over the city’s attempt to build a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan was never about football (other than the political kind) or, for that matter, the Olympics: It was over where to put the stadium and who should pay for it. The West Side project has now gone down in flames because the administration chose one of the worst places available and then asked us all to pay, largely (and transparently) in order to jack up real estate prices in the area for the usual cohort of salivating developers. Not only did construction depend on building a platform—an artificial ground—over an active rail yard, a proposition that would have added as much as a billion dollars to the cost of the project, access to the site is awful. Bringing the number seven subway from Port Authority would have cost additional billions. Automobile access from the West Side Highway or from the avenues would have been nightmarish. Structured parking would have been expensive and could never have allowed the tail-gating so beloved by fans.

The enormous object also sought to extend the blocks-long barrier to the waterfront created by the Javits Convention Center; their combined lump would have obliterated relations to the Hudson River from the island and permanently disfigured the scale of the West Side.

And urban design considerations aside, there's always the supposed "economic development" angle.  In this case I'd say, another bullet dodged.

The wave of projected stadium-building in New York—for the Mets in Queens, the Yankees in the Bronx, the Nets in Brooklyn, as well as for the Olympic bid—is a symptom of a larger phenomenon. Sports stadia have come to be represented not just as premiere emblems of American civic culture (all hail the steroid-bloated millionaires at play!) but as drivers of urban economic revitalization. Here, they join that other instant panacea, gambling casinos, as leading markers of the decline of public planning as the development paradigm shifts decisively to so-called public-private partnerships. What this means in practice is that private business—including such fatted enterprises as sports teams, gambling cartels, and office developers—are given giant public subsidies as an inducement either to come to or to remain in cities. Public benefit from such investments is allegedly returned in the form of jobs, taxes, or other more elusive outcomes of “development.”

In New York, this model has become the virtual default and every major project proposed by the Bloomberg Administration—from Greenpoint to Ground Zero—follows this model.

Ah yes, the old "public-private" partnerships.  That's where power-hungry, frustrated politicians get to take people's land and give it to wealthy developers to the financial benefit of the developers and the political benefit (it's hoped) of the politicians.  Now I'm a pretty business-friendly guy, but I expect business to make its money, not through the skid-greasing of powerful Mayors and Governors, but by taking risks and developing products that the rest of us need.

The article's pretty hard on M. Bloomberg and it, based on what I know of him, sounds pretty credible to me.  He sort of resembles a Robert Moses  for the 21st Century.  And may he, along with his nanny laws, be  long-remembered for it.

Mayor to Fight Pano's

Just a day after the State Supreme Court ruled that Panagiotis Georgiadis could go ahead with his plans to raze the Victorian-era house next door to his restaurant the Mayor has vowed to fight the decision.

Masiello, who opposes the demolition, said his appeal would be based on his belief that the ruling was a misreading of the city code.

"We are going to appeal because we feel as though we have to protect the integrity of the process," Masiello said. "There will be more issues like this in the future, and we think this ruling damages our ability to do what is right for the city."

The preservationists are crying foul.

"This casts an absolute pall on the ability of neighborhoods to protect themselves from unwanted development," said Timothy Tielman, who leads the Campaign for Greater Buffalo's History, Architecture and Culture. "The project goes against everything neighborhood groups have tried to develop in their plans for Elmwood Avenue."

I haven't seen Pano's plans yet so I can't yet agree that "it goes against everything neighborhood groups have tried to develop in their plans for Elmwood Avenue."  There are two clear issues here.

• The house is not a designated landmark and probably shouldn't be.  Pano's owns it, he should be able to dispose of it.
• The City of Buffalo does not have clear zoning regulations that would require new development to follow modern urban design principles.

If we knew for example that any Pano's redesign would require that the expanded portion of the building be built up to the sidewalk and that any additional parking be hidden in behind, then the ambience of Elmwood would likely only be improved.  Several blocks down, Emily's has expanded its patio to include the lot next door left vacant by fire last year.  The addition of a few dozen more streetside tables full of dining and drinking customers has been a wonderful addition to the street.

And it would be the same further north -- much better than the old (and indeed quite attractive) empty house.  But of course, in the absence of proper building requirements, we're left to wonder what the result will be.  Mr. Georgiadis would do well to take a look at the new Lexington Co-op building and adapt his expansion plans to that model. 

He'd still have to contend with the die-hard preservationists who seem hell-bent on keeping the city a sort of dying museum to the past.  But he'd go a long way towards satisfying the rest of us who just don't want Elmwood to start resembling, well, upper Elmwood.

Detroit Attempts An Extreme Makeover

Having failed to fix the true problems facing it, Detroit is falling back on the old tried-and-truefalse -- improving its "image."

The city hopes to reverse its image as stagnant and crime-ridden by hosting the All-Star Game next week, the Super Bowl in February and other sports spectacles after that.

If the national media tells the world about a new Detroit, it could lead to less resistance from outsiders to living and working in southeast Michigan, marketing experts said.

But the image overhaul won't be simple or accomplished overnight, they said. Old perceptions are hard to change and easy to reinforce.

"It's not like you host one Super Bowl and half the world will be clamoring to vacation in Detroit," said Job Nelson, a marketing analyst from San Diego who has studied the impact of the football game on host cities. "Public opinion is hard to change."

The sports-fused quest to re-brand the city and region begins July 12 with the All-Star Game at Comerica Park.

The baseball contest and related events normally attract 1,200 reporters, 30,000 visitors from outside the region and carry an estimated economic impact ranging from $50 million to $70 million.

Detroit would do well to ask Buffalo a thing or two about the success of "sports-branding."  Remember the University Games?  They really put us on the map, didn't they?  And how about those thousands of NCAA fans wandering around downtown last Spring with empty stomachs and nowhere to eat?  Now I don't deny that these events can fill hotel rooms and restaurants (if they're open) but their claimed ability to rebuild a city's  "image" and transform its economy just don't hold up.

But sports fans are nonetheless insistent.

Residents such as Josh Jimerson can be the city's best ambassadors or most damaging critics when it's trying to sell itself to outsiders, said local officials.

Jimerson, 23, a college student from Detroit, is a definite booster.

"We're the sports capital of the world," he said. "It brings a lot of respect to our city."

I think we've finally realized that big stadiums and downtown hockey rinks don't  spin-off any economic benefits (although usually-prudent Jamestown hasn't gotten that message yet), but the fiction that the circuses held in them will -- lives on.  For the belief in the magical economic transformative powers of their particular passion, sports fans have come to resemble, well, artists.

Can a book  be far behind? How about lofts for hockey-players?

Circuses Without the Bread

So why do the politicians love new stadiums and grand public buildings?

It's more fun to pose next to a model of a model of a new stadium than a new water main. Announcing plans for the Olympics gets better coverage than announcing plans for bridge repairs. If you want immediate gratification, there is nothing like a circus, as a moralist named Salvian observed in the fifth century.

By then Rome bore certain resemblances to a lot of American cities. While emperors were investing in monuments, commerce and manufacturing suffered. The population declined along with the port, the roads, the bridges and the water system, but the circuses went on. "The Roman people," Salvian wrote, "are dying and laughing."

Hmm, sounds familiar.