Category: sustainability

discerning successful elements of people, place and urbanism

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views, vignettes12 Comments

Nothing is better for advocates of urbanism than simple immersion in the look and feel of a successful, authentic place.

After a week of observation in the cities, towns and villages of Pugila, Italy, most notable is the age-old, multi-dimensional relationship between people and such places, especially given American aspirations—often rhetorical—for walkable and liveable cities back home.

Here, the people and place dynamic is intrinsic to climate and tradition, and naturally occurs amid commerce and curiosity, along streets, beside buildings and as a component of cross-town strolls. It can be read in faces, the simplicity of child’s play and nearby mealtime banter, often without pattern or prescription.

What elements might be isolated, and extracted for good use elsewhere?

Vignettes abound along streets and in public squares. Does a bouncing ball against a venerable door suggest certain types of urban playgrounds? Do open windows to the wind suggest building orientations that work? Do street vendors have lessons for markets and “street food” back home? What provides a sense of safety in crowds, at all times of day?

These illustrative questions suggest the power of imagery in inquiry about diverse urban settings, and only the beginning of adapting human-scale lessons from abroad to the often two-dimensional world of American urbanism.

Submitted from Otranto, Italy. All images composed by the author.

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retaining sustainable storefronts in the urban realm

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability22 Comments

Vital storefronts are an indicator of urban success, while empty businesses are akin to the ruins of Pompeii.

Even when storefronts go empty, some cities find ways to simulate that all is well. False facades, community art and the look and feel of a vibrant business district often substitute for empty spaces through glass.

That’s all well and good in cities. Elsewhere, it’s a luxury left behind.

In a skeleton of a small Idaho downtown last weekend, I explored the remnants of what we now seek in bigger places: compact, mixed-use blocks with character—the neighborhood grocery and the watering spot next door. Several buildings were proudly engraved “1914” and I concluded that if airlifted to my neighborhood in 2011, they would fit in just fine.

Passersby in a pickup truck—a father and son—saw me amid the storefronts, and stopped and watched me for a moment. “Are you from around here?” asked the father. “Do you know if there is a store in town?” 

I could have said no, but instead I wanted to hint at the irony of their search for the vanished vitality of where we were. “Look around,” I said.  “You’ll find that there used to be more than one.”

The storefront may now be scarcer in the hinterlands, but it has found new life as one of the building blocks of the reinvented, more flexibly-zoned city—a primary contributor to complete streets, social interaction, walkable neighborhoods and transit-oriented central places. The passion for such “first floor retail” has been declared and codified in planning goals and land use regulations alike.

Rockville, Maryland’s town center storefront design guidelines are typical of such emphasis, and further encourage creativity in how storefronts present to the street:

Rockville’s “great urban place” sets the stage upon which the storefronts will be
layered. Because of the investment in quality for all aspects of Rockville Town Center, storefront guidelines encourage creative and well-designed individual expressions of tenant identity. Strong urban storefronts are essential in the creation of an attractive and exciting, dining, shopping, and leisure environment.

Highly evolved cities rise above the status quo by seamlessly implementing a universal urban characteristic in a local context, seizing opportunities that have worked before to create the magnetism of success.

However, the romance of an idea can be offset by the reality of the Great Recession—and risks recreating the unsustainable place where passersby ask pedestrians if there is a store in the neighborhood. Recognizing such risks, in Seattle, a regulatory reform roundtable has recommended that certain street level retail requirements be relaxed, to avoid more empty spaces in challenging times.

Storefronts have always made the city, and as economic challenges continue, more flexibility to create dynamic and interesting street uses should remain at the forefront of city-making—mindful of what businesses need to survive.

All images composed by the author.

assuring sustainable third places in the city

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban administration23 Comments

Last week, while the Seattle City Council gave final approval to more street food vendors in public places, Borders Group Inc. began its liquidation of most remaining Borders bookstores, including locations in destination American downtowns.

This is related news, because both items are about how public and private uses and spaces mix in urbanized areas. Both raise questions of “no net loss” of urban, and downtown “third places” and how to make a more livable city.

In my view, despite the today’s international focus on urban street food vending, the paradigm left behind by Borders leaves bigger questions for back-to-the city devotees.

Some definitions are in order. “Third place” is a decades-old term championed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg for venues which bring people together in the tradition of the American colonial tavern or general store. The idea remains central to urbanist thinking, and describes those places, other than home or work, where we gather, debate and trade. “No net loss” is a term borrowed from the vocabulary of wetland conservation, and allows for replacement of lost assets with equivalent resources.

“No net loss” is the essence of sustainability.

In the last decade, as forms of home and work evolved, conceptions of third places changed as well—from larger footprint commercial spaces such as Borders, to mid-size bookstores (e.g. Third Place Books), to back-to-the-commons public spaces and the pop-up agora. Street food vending is somewhere in the mix as an expanded place of ambience and employment—and to all but certain bricks and mortar restauranteurs—a likely urban benefit.

In response to the Borders news, some pundits, like Josh Stephens in Planetizen, have called for a better, non-Walmartian reinvention of the bookstore. In his view, big boxes—even when urban— destroy Mom and Pop purveyors. Amazon and Kindle aside, he makes a good case for a new, post-recessionary wave of independent urban bookstore startups. For those bookstores, I hope that he is right.

But as to third places—and I am going to assume that “big books” uses can play such a role—there is something bothersome about the final demise of Borders’ urban core locations. While perhaps an opportunity for the independent competitor, what of the potential loss of third place uses in high-value urban downtowns?

Will the prime square footage occupied by Borders have similar, third place potential once reclaimed? Will replacement uses provide the equivalent, fusion business purposes of books, coffee, lecture and song?

Last week, CNN Money was also abuzz with the the re-realized location efficiencies of heading back downtown. In that spirit, let’s hope that downtowns retain dedicated uses of value to those soon to arrive.

Both the private market and public policymakers should work together on the potential prize of livability: assuring the sustainable, no net loss of square footage devoted to urban third places.

All images composed by the author.

saying goodbye to “Leave it to Beaver” urbanism?

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views9 Comments
Cleaver Residence, Universal City Studios

After suggesting last week that policymakers should plan for urban density’s inevitable displacement of less efficient, but important land uses, I began to focus on specific elements of the American city and suburb with a high risk of loss.

So began an exploratory tour of the iconic front yard and lawn. Long protected by cultural position—and zoning setbacks—is the classic Leave it to Beaver lot configuration really part of a sustainable future?

Density advocates would suggest otherwise. Seattle blogger Roger Valdez, who has both entertained and exasperated with his recent, often satirical tour of Seattle’s Land Use Code, wrote yesterday: “Yards should be next on our list after parking in terms of code reform.”

Further exploration provides context.

Last month, Connecticut’s Charlie Gardner provided an outstanding, one-stop analysis of the “addiction” to the American front lawn, complementing an earlier examination of mandatory setbacks and their history.

As an attribute shared by “England’s colonial children,” Gardner argues the front lawn as socially and environmentally wasteful, yet often still required based on an outdated landscape tradition. He suggests that unlike numerous international examples, “alternative single-family residential designs may simply have been scrubbed from the collective imagination” in the United States.

Speculations by Valdez and Gardner are not new to the planning profession or to land use lawyers and developers.

However, Valdez shows us that discussions of what city space is needed for private landholders is now beyond professional debate, and part of the popular urbanist dialogue.

Meanwhile, Gardner has a particularly good range of visuals from across the world, and his examples show that small patios, simple window greenery, hedges and trellises may be the only front yards that people really need.

In those cities where urban density increases, and American “castle grounds” actually redevelop and contract, will anything tangible really be lost to future generations?

My guess is that many will find new forms of functional private space, and their front yard will expand to include the neighborhood, or, perhaps, the city as whole.

All images composed by the author. Thanks to Christopher Leinberger for his occasional contrasts of urbanism between the traditional “Leave it to Beaver” and more recent “Seinfeld” models.

pondering artifacts of displacement in the sustainable city

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, placemaking, sustainability6 Comments
What happens when the bicycles beat the big box?

Last week, George Monbiot of The Guardian sounded the urbanist alarm.

The cause? In order to offset strains on infrastructure, an Australian provincial initiative is offering stipends to Sydney residents who leave town.

Monbiot’s response included a headline which was nothing short of an international clarion renouncing this short-term fix. “Sustainable cities must be compact and high-density,” he said, while arguing for strong planning laws to stay the course.

Monbiot joins a legion of many who embrace the thesis of David Owen’s New York City-based “Green Metropolis“— and aptly suggest that the compact, less auto-dependent city is our necessary, sustainable future.

Monbiot’s tout towards planning is appropriate, but just what does it mean? For one thing, we must ponder the impacts of displacement, because there may no longer be enough room for life—or death—as we know it.

If our cities are to become more dense, what will become of uses and properties which do not present optimal uses of urban land? As the disfavored car dealerships, warehouses and low-rise strip malls reconfigure and yield to more concentrated uses, policymakers should be forward thinking in their prescriptions for the changing city.

Will some positive or necessary, low density urban traditions also be dispossessed? Where will they go in a gradually reshaped, sprawl-free urban system?

My choice of Latin words above— “clarion,” “legion” and “thesis”— are not accidental. In classical precedent, there are thought-provoking lessons, still visible at will.

Consider Rome, and learning from the landscape of an iconic walk in the Appia Antica Park on its outskirts.

Opened in 312 B.C., the Via Appia (the “queen of the long roads” of ancient military transport and commerce) traversed ancient Italy from Rome to the Adriatic port of Brindisi.

All along the walk today, over original paving stones, ruins flank the roadway—remnants of burial monuments, statues, tombs and towers.

Sometime after 200 A.D., burials were banned in the city, because of crowding and land values. Catacombs on the periphery offered mass internments to the growing religious population. Along the main thoroughfares, further beyond the city walls, the wealthy adorned the roadsides with personal and family tributes— now an outdoor museum of bygone sprawl.

In ancient Rome, density drove out the dead, and changed the landscape in unanticipated ways, still visible today. It’s a legacy worth noting after two thousand years.

If our cities must be dense to be competitive and sustainable, we must also look with care to the potential displacement of uses, institutions or traditions—not to mention the artifacts we will leave behind.

All images composed by the author.