URBAN DIRECTION

A Forum on the Future of Bus Shelters and Street Furniture

2009-11-13T13:54:00.000-05:00

By Ariel

On Monday October 26th over 70 people attended A Forum on the Future of Bus Shelters and Street Furniture sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities. The forum began with a presentation on the City’s intentions to issue an RFP for bus shelters and street furniture by Deputy Mayor Rina Cutler. Joe Minott of the Clean Air Council and the Next Great City Coalition shared his perspective on how a well structured bus shelter and street furniture contract can increase transit usage and improve the visual appeal of the City. Mary Tracy, who leads SCRUB: The Public Voice of Public Space Spoke about limiting the role of advertising in public spaces. Representatives from the leading street furniture vendors: CBSOutdoor, Cemusa, JCDecaux and Clear Channel spoke about their work in cities around the world. All answered questions posed by the audience.

Background
While various different types of street furniture have dotted city streets for centuries, the development of large scale “Street Furniture Programs,” (SFP) where cities install an array of bus shelters, benches and kiosks in a coordinated and strategic fashion is something relatively new. They are more important than they used to be too. Since the early 1990’s the City of Philadelphia has earned about $10 million from the advertising that is part of Philadelphia’s bus shelter contract. There are 260 shelters managed by CBS Outdoor on behalf of the city, 27 “Arts in Transit” shelters in Center City managed and maintained by the Center City District, 12 sculptural shelters along Chestnut Street in Center city and non-advertising shelters maintained by CDCs and private institutions.

The release of a Request For Proposals (RFP) for a bus shelter and street furniture program presents an opportunity to markedly expand the amenities offered and the revenue generated for the city. Boston, Chicago and Washington have made similar deals in the last decade. Boston (with Wall/Decaux) installed approximately 400 bus shelters and a variety of newsstands, information/advertising kiosks & automated public toilets (APTs) and is on track to receive an estimated $21.3 million dollars over a 20 year period (~$1 million per year). Chicago (with JCDecaux) has around 2,000 bus shelters, with assorted newsstands, information kiosks and the like and expects to bring in nearly $300 million over twenty years (~$15 million per year). Washington DC (with ClearChannel) is installing 700 bus shelters as part of a 20 year contract that is estimated to return to the district $150 million in revenue. Several factors influenced these SFPs and are important to keep in mind in Philadelphia.

Just from comparing Chicago and Boston we can see several of the factors affecting their respective SFPs. It is little wonder that with 4.2 times more bus shelters and back-lit information /advertising panels, Chicago makes far more ad revenue than Boston. However, there is no direct relationship between the number of shelters in a city and the amount of revenue made. Chicago makes around 14 times more money than Boston because its market is worth more. Research by PriceWaterhouse Coopers suggests that more money is made and consumed in the Chicago metropolitan region ($460 billion) than in the Boston region ($290 million). Philadelphia does slightly better than Boston, with a regional GDP of around $312 billion, but does not come close to Chicago. The market, however, does not determine everything. Cities may require different levels of maintenance or the distribution of shelters in neighborhoods that do not draw in as much advertising revenue. These demands come at a cost. Companies do not measure their profit in simply the amount of money they earn, but the percent return on the investment, and the more they invest in both the short and long term, the less the amount of their profits they are willing to share with the City.

Perspectives Heard at the Forum
Joe Minott and Mary Tracy (SCRUB) both emphasized that a new Street Furniture Program must, in fact, increase the number of bus shelters in low income neighborhoods, have a proactive maintenance schedule, be well integrated into SEPTA and be well designed. This approach met with little resistance from the attending vendors (CBS Outdoors, Cemusa, Clear Channel and JCDecaux). JCDecaux noted that 30% of their bus shelters earned 75% of the revenue, and it was clear that vendors have experience providing street furniture in all kinds of neighborhoods. More importantly almost all vendors noted that the cleanliness of their shelters was in their own best interest. Vendors, in the end, cared most about clarity in the RFP and making sure that all rights and responsibilities were clearly articulated.

The public who attended were concerned about three different issues, all of them specific to Philadelphia. Many who showed up cared deeply about supporting the arts through discounted advertising. The Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Utilities, Rina Cutler, noted that the City is committed to continue what is popularly known as the Arts-in-Transit program. There will be new guidelines and local non-profit arts organizations will be able to continue to promote their shows at

A representative of the Newsstand Association noted the concern of newsstand owners to keep the revenues from full-scale exterior ads on their stands. Newsstand owners frequently pay mortgages on their newsstand. The association requests that newsstands not be part of the RFP, but if they are to be included, the association wishes to work with the administration. The Deputy Mayor noted that she would be happy to meet with the association. The outcomes of such discussions will have real consequences on the value of other advertising in the city, and how much vendors are willing to pay. In fact, currently the City’s contract has a non-compete clause. If the City must compete with newsstand advertising, the value of the City’s advertising is likely to diminish and less revenue will come to the City.

Several noted that cities across the US have used SFP’s to fund bicycle amenities and bike sharing programs. These audience members hope that the upcoming Philadelphia SFP would provide an opportunity for the same in Philadelphia. Additional amenities such as bike racks and benches come at a cost and require additional revenue or a reduction in the revenue returned to the City. The addition of a bike-share system is even more complicated. In Montreal, each bike must generate over $1,000 of revenue per year to cover its costs. In Boston, each advertising panel brings in $888 dollars of revenue to the city per year. A bike share system in Philadelphia is not impossible, but the questions of how big must it be to work and how much less revenue the City is willing to accept, still looms large. The City has a study underway that outlines the market for a bike-share system in Philadelphia. It should be completed by the end of the year. It is not expected to be part of the street furniture RFP at this time.

So far the City has received over 1,000 responses to our online survey regarding street furniture and what respondents would like to see in the next contract.

• A majority of respondents suggested that real-time / next arrival schedule information should be an integral part of the next generation of bus shelters, followed by route maps and clear panels to be ale to see what is around the shelter. We will work with SEPTA in order to provide this information.
• Over 91% of Philadelphian’s think it is important to generate advertising revenue to support the City’s general fund and 66% are willing to add more advertising to generate additional revenue.
• Philadelphians are most excited to see Bus Shelters, Bike Shelters and Benches

As the integration of a Bike-Share system reveals, providing the amenities that citizens want within the context of a public-private partnership is complicated. The City sees an opportunity to inject non-tax revenue into the General Fund. All of the other issues such as low cost add space for arts and culture related non profits, a bike share system, and allowing advertising on privately owned newsstands has a cost to the city. Finding the right balance between revenue and amenities will largely dictate the amount of revenue the City will realize from this program.

Food Access Event a Success

2009-11-11T07:56:00.006-05:00

By Greg

Last night's forum on Food Access and Community Development, hosted by the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy was a success! We filled the room, had a fascinating discussion about important policy issues, and enjoyed wine and local cheese. What more could you ask for? Many thanks to the panelists Tracey Giang, Vanessa Briggs, Don Hinkle-Brown, and Beth Miller.

Here are some photos:

A Dangerous Precedent

2009-11-06T10:38:00.001-05:00

The following is from a guest blogger, Matt Crespi and is an interesting perspective on the transit strike.

With hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians affected by the TWU 234 strike, it’s not hard to find good reasons to be angry. Traffic jams, expensive cab rides, and other delays are irritating; hourly workers struggling to make ends meet being kept from work is heartbreaking; and students from kindergarten through college being kept out of school is appalling.

The disruption to daily life is rightfully getting a lot of attention, but there’s a larger, though less personally urgent, issue raised by the SETPA workers’ surprise strike, and it deserves consideration by both ordinary citizens and our highest ranking elected officials: a crippling transit strike took the city by surprise four hours before the polls opened.

This is no small matter. How many fewer votes were cast because of the strike may never be known, but it’s hard to imagine the number was not substantial. Though some voters rely on SEPTA to get to their polling places, they’re not the only ones were prevented from voting because of the strike. Major disruptions to routines and plans certainly make citizens less likely to vote, and the lack of warning ensured that creating backup plans would be as difficult as possible. Any parents who rely on SEPTA to get the kids to school and themselves to work woke up to two enormous problems, and any intention to vote would have taken a back seat to the immediate concerns of daily life.

Thankfully for the integrity of the election, most of the races were won in landslides, and it seems likely the strike made little difference. Were any of the major races close, the city might have seen apoplectic candidates tossing accusations of election tampering at union leaders, even demanding criminal investigations (perhaps not without cause).

Nine years ago, a few dozen inconvenienced voters here and there in Florida raised suspicions. A few hundred turned into court cases and questions of legitimacy. A transit strike on a busier election day could prevent thousands, even tens of thousands, of voters from getting to the polls. We shouldn’t wait for a transit strike on the eve of a closer election for a more visible office to realize this is a problem; public officials should eliminate that possibility immediately.

The citizenry wouldn’t stand for a strike designed to keep voters from the polls, but how is unintentional election tampering significantly better? And what’s to stop potentially immoral union leaders of the future, in Philadelphia or elsewhere, from orchestrating strikes for hidden political reasons? The current union leaders are already seen by some to be exercising too much power on their union’s behalf.

Police and firefighters aren’t allowed to strike because it would be a threat to public safety. Transit strikes on Election Day, especially surprise strikes, are a threat to democracy itself. Keeping voters from the polls undermines our entire political system, and doing so purposefully on a massive scale should be unconscionable to any American.

Transit strikes on Election Day should be made illegal, and the irresponsible union leaders who orchestrated such a strike this week owe the city a huge apology, if not their resignations.

How Goats came to LA

2009-11-02T13:10:00.001-05:00

By Ariel

Len Betz of the Community Development Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles (CRA/LA) first thought of using goats to manage the undergrowth of a vacant property on Bunker Hill based upon an NPR story he heard, where goats helped manage marshy waterways in Vermont. The animals were able to operate in a delicate environment, manage vegetation, and they had the added benefit of hooves that can gently break up the soil, plus droppings that are good fertilizer. Bunker Hill is not a marshy environment; it used to be a premier residential location in the 1800s and is now a thriving downtown office core. This dense cluster of office buildings is the result of the efforts of the CRA/LA and its redevelopment of a previously ‘blighted’ urban core. However there is one empty lot left, a 2.5 acre parcel of land which the CRA/LA maintains, and which Betz’s office over looks.

Betz’s project falls under the purview of the property management department for the CRA/LA with support by the CRA/LA chief executive officer, Cecillia Estolano, because it coincided with goals of investing in sustainability and clean technology. It didn’t hurt that as Betz puts it, the “setting was a pretty spectacular view.” The project, which utilized a goat herder an hour-and-a half outside of Los Angeles, was a significant public relations win, with five channels covering the project, one even from Japan. The goat herder, Ranchite Tivo Boer Goats, came with recommendations from Caltrans who used them to manage hilly land around their tracks.

Ranchite Tivo brought in 100 goats for a contracted five nights, though the work was done in two days. In addition to the permanent fencing surrounding the CRA property, portable electric fences were added as a precaution to kept the goats safely penned up. To that end a guard spent the night, and the local area Business Improvement District patrol kept a special eye out for the goats. But nothing happened, and this year no one is even spending the night.

Generally, Betz spends approximately $7,500 on clearing the lot, a price that is a function of how many weeds and how many people it would take to clear those weeds. It usually “takes a crew about 2 to three days to clear the hillside,” but the goats did it in just under half the cost and had the added benefit of being a hit with the office crowd. Not only were the goats very easy to get along with, “they [just] eat and sleep... and follow the leader” but they left it (having trimmed 98%) looking like “someone has manicured the property.” All the CRLA had to do was sweep off their droppings from adjoining sidewalks and staircases. They were so popular that neighboring Angelus Plaza senior citizen center hired them shortly thereafter to clean up their community garden.

Imagining Philadelphia

2009-10-30T22:02:00.005-04:00

By Greg

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a new book out called "Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City," in which I have a chapter. The premise of the book is this: Ed Bacon, Philadelphia's famous former city planner wrote an article in 1959 called "Philadelphia in the Year 2009," imagining his hometown 50 years hence. Bacon has been referred to as a visionary countless times, still there are few writings where he predicted the conditions of a future date in this way.

Now that it is in fact 2009, the book looks at how effectively Bacon's vision matches the reality. The original article is the first chapter of the book. The rest of the chapters use the article as a jumping off point to look at Philadelphia's historical development, where we have come since 1959, and where we may take Philadelphia over the next 50 years. The book is edited by Drexel University professor Scott Knowles, who also has a chapter in the volume. Other chapters are by Guian McKee (University of Virginia), Eugenie Birch (University of Pennsylvania); Harris Steinberg (Director of Penn Praxis), and me.

Even if my writing were not included in the book, I am sure I would feel this was a pretty cool project. I hope you will order a copy and give it a read. As a teaser, here is the text from my talk the other night at the book launch event during the Design on the Delaware Conference.

Remarks at Design on the Delaware – October 28, 2009

By Greg Heller

I want to thank Scott for putting this book together, and thank you all for the opportunity to be here this evening.

To chart Philadelphia’s future we need a firm grasp on how we got here. Considering the significance of Philadelphia’s post-World-War II era of planning and development, there is shockingly little written about it. Thanks to Scott’s leadership, we are beginning to change that. This book is not a definitive work. It is the tip of a massive iceberg that many Philadelphians did not even know existed.

Ed Bacon’s 1959 article, “Philadelphia in the Year 2009” – the basis of this book – is a snapshot in time. My chapter puts the article in context, telling the story of Bacon’s life experiences leading to the writing of the article and giving a brief description of the 46 years of his life that followed. The chapter contains a synopsis of a long and fascinating life story that I tell in greater depth in a forthcoming biography that I have authored.

Bacon’s early life is characterized by his Quaker family, conflict with his overbearing father, and a childhood split between city and country life. He went to college at Cornell, then embarked on world travels ending up in Shanghai. Returning to Philadelphia, Bacon worked briefly for a local architect before being accepted at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, under the tutelage of the Finnish architect-planner Eliel Saarinen. Bacon’s stay at Cranbrook was brief, however; Saarinen sent Bacon on assignment to the industrial city of Flint, where Bacon worked for several years.

Bacon was highly influenced by some new friends: Oskar Stonorov, Lewis Mumford, and Catherine Bauer – who were important figures in shaping the future federal priority on subsidized housing. Bacon began to believe that neighborhood design and housing could impact social conditions.

In Flint Bacon delved into local politics, mobilized grassroots organizations to lobby for better housing conditions, and was instrumental in gaining a federal earmark for housing funds. It was in Flint that he met and married his wife, Ruth. However, the powerful establishment thought little of the tenacious Bacon and his quasi-socialist ideas. In 1939 Bacon found his position eliminated, and no hope for a future in Flint.

Bacon returned to Philadelphia where he got a job as director of a nonprofit housing advocacy organization. He also became involved with a new young people’s group called the City Policy Committee. Through a long process that established the Committee’s legitimacy, the group successfully influenced City Council to create a modern city planning commission in 1942.

With World War II raging, Bacon quit his job and joined the Navy, where he was part of the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Upon returning home, Oskar Stonorov convinced Bacon to work with him on designing a massive city planning show – the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition.

To work on the exhibition, Bacon was brought onto the City Planning Commission’s payroll, where he remained after the show was over. After one director left and another died in office, Bacon was invited to become planning director in 1949. He accepted. In 1951, largely thanks to the work of the City Policy Committee’s members, Philadelphia gained a new charter and Joseph Clark was elected Mayor, marking the beginning of the reform era in Philadelphia government.

Bacon’s focus early in his tenure as planning director was on building communities with sound planning and better housing to improve the neediest areas of the city. The 1949 federal housing act presented cities with massive resources for urban renewal. However, Bacon rejected the popular notion of wholesale bulldozing of slums – arguing for a more sensitive approach that valued neighborhood preservation. Working with designers like Stonorov and Louis Kahn, Bacon tried to apply a philosophy of urban renewal that Architectural Forum characterized as “Clearing Slums with Penicillin, Not Surgery.”

Through the 1950s, Philadelphia proved successful in attaining substantial funding and attention, attracting the eyes of the nation to projects such as Society Hill, Eastwick, and Penn Center. However, research reveals that Bacon’s role in these projects was surprisingly limited. Bacon is often compared to development czars in other cities, like Robert Moses in New York, and Ed Logue in Boston. However, except for a brief period in the late 1960s when Bacon served in a dual capacity, he was not a development czar; he was the planning director.

Philadelphia had a development coordinator in the 1950s named Bill Rafsky, a man known for his skill in lobbying for federal funds, and his close relationship with the mayors. Rafsky steered the city’s redevelopment program in ways that Bacon disagreed with, but had little ability to change. Why then when Philadelphia gained international acclaim, was it Bacon who became the face of an era? This is a principle question that I seek to answer in my chapter.

When we study Bacon’s actual role we see that functionally Bacon was a department head with limited power and access to funds. However, through his own initiative he was continually putting himself in the spotlight to sell the media on Philadelphia’s progress. He sought out businessmen and high-level government officials, to convince them of certain ideas that he wanted to see realized.

I argue that Bacon’s success was rooted not primarily in his skill as a physical designer, but in his abilities as a salesman of ideas. He learned to market planning ideas effectively to powerful decision-makers, gain buy-in, and make the ideas resonate in the public consciousness. This was a tremendously powerful skill that other planners and designers of the era lacked or never knew was necessary. I state in my chapter:

Renowned Philadelphia-based architect Louis Kahn said, “If your ideas are right, they—the businessmen and the politicians—will come to you.” Bacon, in contrast, believed that an effective planner had to sell his ideas actively in a persuasive way. Kahn called Bacon “A planner who thinks he is a politician.” Kahn was largely right. Bacon spent his career taking new or existing ideas, filling them out into compelling concepts, and marketing them to key decision makers.

Bacon’s ability to work with governmental and private-sector players can be traced back to his days in Flint, where he carried out forays into politics that turned out disastrously. However, he learned from his mistakes, and after his experience with the City Policy Committee, Bacon was thoroughly familiar with how to work with powerful decision makers. The Better Philadelphia Exhibition taught Bacon how a strong visual image, marketed the right way can change people’s perceptions and expectations.

The evolution of Bacon’s skill as a salesman of ideas is a major thread of my chapter.

Penn Center – one of the projects for which Bacon is most famous – presents a strong example of Bacon’s salesmanship strategy. By the early 1950s Philadelphia west of City Hall was divided by the “Chinese Wall,” the Pennsylvania Railroad’s massive viaduct. Ideas for removing the wall and building a new civic space went back decades.

It is important to recognize that the City did not have jurisdiction over this land. It was the private property of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Bacon saw that in order for the Railroad to develop a major civic project – rather than selling off the land piecemeal – someone would have to convince the conservative executives that it was in their best interest to do so. While it was not in Bacon’s job description, he took on this task.

Initially Bacon worked with a committee of the American Institute of Architects chaired by Louis Kahn to conceive a vision to present to the Railroad. However, Kahn left for Rome, and Bacon decided to abandon the committee and find a new partner. He selected a young architect named Vincent Kling, who was experienced in working with corporate clients, was friendly with several members of the Railroad’s board of directors, and had already been hired for separate work with the Railroad. These factors were no accident. Bacon chose a partner who could help him reach the right people and sell his concept.

With Kling’s help, Bacon engaged in negotiation with the Railroad and its real-estate broker, and in 1952 when the Railroad announced that the Chinese Wall was coming down, Bacon followed with a presentation of what should replace it. However, while Kling and Bacon gained a certain amount of leverage through the power of persuasion, their efforts only went so far. As it turned out, the Railroad hired a New York developer and New York architect who created a design that was criticized universally in Philadelphia, including by Bacon. It was a major cohesive project, but few of Bacon’s design ideas made it to the final product.

Penn Center is but one example of how Bacon’s major role was selling ideas, and attempting to reach powerful decision makers. He took a similar tact throughout his career, marketing concepts to the business community that controlled the interests in what became Market East and Society Hill. Bacon ended up becoming associated with these projects, but other players, whose names we rarely hear, were arguably much more instrumental in actually carrying them forward.

I argue in my chapter:

Bacon’s strength, and the key to understanding his successful initiatives, was his ability to comprehend the power structure and work through the right channels to advance his concepts. Bacon promoted his ideas to decision makers and then (if he was successful) stepped away as others carried out his visions. Through this tenuous process, it is apparent how easily development projects evolved differently than Bacon planned.

In the late 1950s, Bacon assembled a Center City Plan for Philadelphia. Using vibrant images and diagrams, the plan connected disparate projects and visually showed them interlocking, forming one complete vision for Center City. This too was Bacon’s salesmanship at work. Society Hill’s Greenways ran into Independence Mall, which flowed seamlessly into a vision for the Market East shopping center, traipsing all the way to Penn Center. Center City was not a collection of projects; rather a single, cohesive vision.

This complete image of Center City was one that Bacon started to sell to the media, to audiences when he gave speeches, and in his own writings, including the “2009” article. Eventually Bacon landed on the idea of a major celebration of America’s 200th birthday as the greatest venue of all for selling Philadelphia on a massive scale. The 2009 article is the first significant instance of Bacon publicly articulating this total concept. Through the 1960s Bacon would hone his pitch and sell it through presentations, articles, and a film to venues across the globe.

In 1964 Bacon was highlighted as the key player of Philadelphia’s renaissance, with his face on the cover of Time magazine. While Philadelphia’s revitalization had a long ways to go, with still unproven results, Bacon had succeeded in selling Philadelphia to the nation, and selling himself as its lead figure. As his recognition grew, so did his local influence.

Ironically, Bacon largely failed at selling himself. Case studies of his work, his writings and speeches show a man obsessed with developing a successful methodology for empowering communities and helping citizens plan for themselves. Yet, Bacon is often recalled as a dictatorial, top-down planner. Perhaps due in-part to Bacon’s high profile and his forceful and argumentative demeanor, he was not able to effectively practice what he preached.

Another goal of my chapter is to tell parts of Bacon’s story that have not been well told. For example, as expressed in the 2009 article, Bacon’s focus on housing and community development never waned. Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s he wrote and spoke prolifically about the need to build mixed-income, mixed-race communities. He despised high-rise public housing projects, and in the 1960s spearheaded a concept for America’s first scattered site public housing program.

Yet another side of Bacon that is not well known was his crusade to rid the world of automobiles, and his vision for a Post Petroleum City. Bacon started but never finished a book on this topic – imagining a world where people travel only by foot, bike, or transit. In 1966 he explained, “there is a ‘revulsion’ against the automobile and the destruction it does to cities and the countryside. The car is losing its luster as something worth sacrificing for.” Later he attempted unsuccessfully to organize an international conference on the post-petroleum city.

Bacon certainly had his faults, and they were substantial. He was intensely focused on physical design, and paid little attention to policy areas like education and workforce development. He could be unapologetically stubborn in his approach. Bacon did not foresee the extent of American urban decline that would occur in the 1970s and 1980s, and failed to prepare for this period.

Still, in the 2009 article, Bacon imagines a future Philadelphia that invests in a world-class downtown, has thriving neighborhoods, and slowly attracts back the middle class. Today, while cities like Detroit seem headed for the grave, Philadelphia appears on track for the kind of rebirth that Bacon envisioned in 1959. Clearly modern individuals and institutions play an important role, but it is hard not to wonder whether the 1950s and 1960s era actually laid a stronger framework for eventual success than we often give it credit.

Bacon’s role in Philadelphia was hugely significant. However, he was not a power broker, enabled to build physical projects at his whim. In many of the projects of the 1950s and 1960s Bacon was a much more minor player than we have come to believe. To appreciate Bacon’s contributions, he should be recognized as a planner who masterfully understood the dynamics of how society makes decisions – the art of getting things done. I will end this talk the way I end my chapter:

Edmund Bacon’s fame and his lasting influence largely stem from his ability to forge the link between planning and implementation, creating a new role for the city planner as both an active civic participant and salesman of ideas. This was just as rare a feature for planners in 1959 as it is today. The challenge for planners in 2009 is to understand and excel at this subtle art of selling ideas, inspiring decision makers to adopt ideas and transform them into a vivid reality.

Philadelphia Street Furniture Survey

2009-10-28T16:27:00.002-04:00

By Ariel

By the end of the year the City will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) to provide, maintain and sell advertising for bus shelters in Philadelphia. The RFP will also invite proposals for additional pieces of street furniture. Street furniture is the collective term referring to objects and pieces of equipment installed on streets and sidewalks that are intended for public use. Transit/bus shelters and newspaper boxes are examples of street furniture currently in use in Philadelphia. Let the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities know what you think by completing this survey.

Shop SEPTA

2009-10-25T13:35:00.002-04:00

By Ariel

Recently Greg advertised a forum he will be speaking at regarding access to healthy food in cities. Food systems planning is a really important issue, one that is incredibly important to ensuring a healthy city; check out Amanda Wagner’s article in the spring 2009 edition of Context, the journal of the AIA Philadelphia, for a fantastic exploration of food system planning.

While food system planning tends to focus on the development of grocery stores, farmers markets and community gardens, it does not often make the link between transportation, shopping and food systems. In Europe, and across the world, where communities are more walkable and fresh local produce is more accessible, stopping by a Shouk or a Bazar after work to pick up a few vegetables is a way of life. In America our shopping habits are more concentrated and require more support: we shop for groceries once or twice a month, load up our cars and hope we finish our vegetables before we go shopping again. But when 36% percent of Philadelphians' don’t own cars and when car ownership imposes a significant burden on low income families, then you have a growing realization that there is a critical link between food systems and transit planning.

According to the latest American Community Survey, 26% of Philadelphians commute to work via transit. While they may use transit for work, far fewer use it for such things as shopping. According to a 2005 Econsult on commercial corridors, only 10% of trips to commercial corridors were taken via public transit. More over 52% of all trips to commercial corridors in areas where thirty percent of the population is below the poverty line were via car. However, only 37% of people in those areas actually own cars. Philadelphians with lower incomes have significantly less access to fresh and healthy food and everybody from The Reinvestment Fund, to the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition and State Representative Dwight Evans have been fighting to bridge that gap. Over 125,000 people shop at local farmers markets, and 167,695 Philadelphians live near commercial corridors without grocery stores. By partnering with supermarkets and the Food Trust (which oversees Philadelphia’s 27 farmers markets), by out-fitting buses with simple shelves, and targeted routing changes it is possible to “move the needle” and bring the number of people who shop via SEPTA closer to those who commute via SEPTA.

Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City

2009-10-25T10:08:00.003-04:00

By Greg

There is a new book coming out this week published by University of Pennsylvania Press called "Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City."

The book starts with an article by Bacon (Philadelphia's famed city planner) written in 1959, envisioning Philadelphia in the year 2009. The following chapters put the Bacon article in context and interpret its themes relating to Philadelphia's post World War II planning history. The final chapter talks about the promise of Philadelphia in the year 2059.

My chapter is the second in the volume, entitled "Salesman of Ideas, The Life Experiences That Shaped Edmund Bacon."

I invite you to come to a reception, panel discussion, and book signing this Wednesday, October 28th at the Design on the Delaware Conference. It costs $15 ($10 for AIA members and $5 for students) and you have to register online at www.designonthedelaware.com.

Here is the blurb from the conference program:

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2009

Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City - 1.25 AIA/CES LUs; CEU Eligible for PA Landscape Architects

In the fall of 2009 an edited book will be published—Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City—that seeks to add context and analysis to Edmund Bacon’s ideas and his works. Though many of the changes Bacon predicted for the city have come to pass, few of them arrived in the way he imagined. In this program, several of the authors in Imagining Philadelphia will give short readings from their respective chapters followed by audience questions and discussion of the book and its arguments.

Presenters: Eugenie L. Birch, FAICP, University of Pennsylvania; Greg Heller, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission; Scott Gabriel Knowles, Drexel University; Harris Steinberg, FAIA, PennPraxis

Cocktail Reception in Exhibit Hall – 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm (complimentary)

PROGRAM AND BOOK SIGNING - 5:30 pm to 6:45 pm in exhibit hall

TOD works

2009-10-23T09:45:00.004-04:00

By Ariel

If there is a problem with planning in general (and there are surely more than one) then it is the fact that plans or developments themselves cannot quickly respond to the market feedback. When New Coke debuted and sales plummeted, Coca Cola had very clear feedback, and could tell if its product “worked.” It took decades for planners to realize that Corbusian ‘plinths in a park’ didn’t work. As Professor Michael Larice often notes, there are no “post occupancy studies” of plans.

Recently The Oregonian featured an article titled Residents of transit-oriented Orenco Station still driving cars to work. The author notes:

"About two out of three Orenco residents drive to work in cars, slightly less than some other suburbs but hardly the car-free utopia many idealists expect of the transit-oriented area. Even as the neighborhood has grown closer, block by block, to the MAX light rail station"

At first glance this “post occupancy study” would suggest that transit oriented development does not work.

However, no matter how damning the headline or lead sentence may be generally one can find far more interesting data further along in a report. For one, it would appear that most people who live in Orenco tend to:

"...walk to shopping and use mass transit for nonwork trips – to the zoo or symphony, for example – at rates that beat other suburban communities… Orenco residents are five times as likely as [nearby neighborhood] residents to walk to shops and stores more than five times a week."

As Jennifer Dill director of the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium notes, only 20% of trips are journeys to work trips. The fact that their journey to work (JTW) still exhibit high car mode share is a function of where they are going. After all, every trip is determined by origin and destination, and if the origin is walkable but the destination isn’t, well, you will simply have to drive there. That is clearly evident when people in Orenco prefer to move around their neighborhood via foot and bike but still drive to work.

Ultimately this a reminder that any single TOD is only as effective as the entire region around it. TOD is not about specific projects here or there, but the rules by which we allow our entire region to be built.

Forum on Food Access and Committee Development

2009-10-17T11:29:00.005-04:00

Previously I posted on the issues surrounding food access in urban areas and how these policy topics intersect with community development. You can learn more and become part of the discussion at an upcoming forum hosted by the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy. I will be moderating the discussion. Hope to see you there!

Food Access and Community Development

A Panel Discussion Hosted by The Philadelphia Committee on City Policy

Tuesday November 10, 2009

6:00-8:00 PM

The Center for Architecture (1218 Arch Street, Philadelphia)

Free for PCCP members, $5 for non-members

Light food and refreshments will be provided

Please RSVP to: suzydrinan@philcommitteeoncitypolicy.org

Panelists:

Yael Lehmann, MSW – Executive Director, The Food Trust

Vanessa Briggs, MBA, RD, LDN – Executive Director, Health Promotion Council of Southeastern Pennsylvania

Donald Hinkle-Brown – President, Lending and Community Investments, The Reinvestment Fund

Elizabeth Miller – Executive Director, Community Design Collaborative

Moderated by:

Gregory Heller – Managing Director for Economic Growth and Community Revitalization, The Enterprise Center Community Development Corporation

Food access is one of the most important public health issues facing inner city communities today. Many low-income, urban communities lack access to grocery stores and produce markets. Yet food access is not a stand-alone issue; instead it is indelibly connected to local community development, economic growth, and urban planning and design. Philadelphia has recently been recognized as a national leader for efforts to bridge the food access divide, while also working to make the nexus to empower communities and provide assets that can increase neighborhood vitality. Please join the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy for a panel discussion featuring some of the leading experts and practitioners shaping Philadelphia’s nationally recognized achievements on addressing these issues.

Historical Memory

2009-10-12T19:36:00.006-04:00

Image Source

By Greg

I finally got up to New York to see the High Line. As expected, it is pretty cool. It was packed with people sunning themselves, walking, eating at a café – all experienced at an elevation to which we are not quite accustomed.

The High Line has some interesting features that attempt to retain the site’s historical memory as a an abandoned railroad bed, like overgrown vegetation and railroad tracks emerging out of the ground in some spots. I found these elements particularly important to the experience. No matter how expensive the park’s finishes (it cost $150 million so far) or the luxury buildings that abut the High Line, its designers want us to remember a period when this viaduct was abandoned and overgrown – a ghost of a vibrant industrial past.

Looking out over the edge of the High Line, it was clear that this linear park was the most recent addition to the living urban museum that is Chelsea. The surrounding neighborhood has similar features of industrial infrastructure captured in a semi-blighted state, adorned and modernized with expensive materials, made relevant through modern uses. Former industrial warehouses hold high-end restaurants, couture shops, and art galleries. Places like Chelsea Market relish the trendy aesthetic of crumbling brick contrasted with expensive lighting and modern art.

Later, from the ground looking up at the High Line I realized something; when there are gaps in the people walking upon it, there is no indication from the street that this modern floating park even exists. From below it still looks like an overgrown and blighted railroad viaduct. And that’s the point. Reusing historic infrastructure is trendy, but surely for the High Line’s designers the viaduct’s reuse was about retaining the historical memory of a less vibrant past.

Like many postindustrial urban areas, there was a time not too long ago when Chelsea’s fate was considerably more uncertain. In a story of urban revitalization that has become well known, Chelsea was rediscovered by artists in the 1980s and 1990s, then by main-stream New Yorkers. Today it is hypergentrified as the High Line floats above a Vera Wang boutique, and runs beside a new Frank Gehry building. Modern-day Chelsea has the privilege of recalling its darker days, while celebrating its affluent success. Many urban areas are not so lucky.

Staring up at the High Line, while eating lunch at an outdoor restaurant where beers cost $7, I thought about my hometown of Philadelphia and our own Reading Viaduct that some hope to turn into the next High Line-esque park. However, unlike in Chelsea, there is no Vera Wang or Barneys in Philadelphia’s Callowhill and Chinatown North neighborhoods. Instead Philadelphia still has postindustrial areas suffering from physical blight and urban decay.

No matter how neat a floating park could be in Philadelphia, the Reading Viaduct’s context makes this reuse inappropriate just now. Its surrounding neighborhoods are not in a position to memorialize the history of a blighted past; that blighted past has not yet become history. Those who feel that the Reading Viaduct is ready to become the next High Line are missing the underlying symbolic meaning of the High Line and its context.

I don’t mean to say that the Reading Viaduct should not be preserved and at some point transformed. However, if this happens, it must be part of a larger strategy that focuses on true neighborhood revitalization, rather than a standalone project.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a few years ago a group of community organizations came to the table and cooperated in developing the Chinatown Neighborhood Plan. The plan charts a course for a comprehensive approach to building physical connectivity, attracting new residential and commercial growth, addressing issues of affordable housing and local economic development, as well as adding new recreational sites (including restoring a major portion of the Reading Viaduct as a floating park). It’s a good plan that was developed through a consensus building process. The City and neighborhood groups should agree to put their weight behind it and make the plan a reality.

Urban revitalization is not about picking and choosing physical projects from other cities and sticking them into one’s own. Building a Reading Viaduct park in Philadelphia without the other investments included in the Chinatown Neighborhood Plan simply misses the point. In contrast, a focus on restoring the community around the Reading Viaduct, with a floating park as an eventual goal to celebrate the community’s resurgence, shows a more thoughtful view of how we rebuild cities, preserve the past, and connect our past to our future.

One final note: While Chelsea is gentrified to the point of no return, the areas around the Reading Viaduct maintain the potential for an equitable revitalization. If Philadelphia can figure out the formula for transforming neighborhoods while retaining diverse, livable, and affordable communities, then we have truly landed on something worth celebrating.

Why Community Planning Belongs in School

2009-10-04T15:50:00.014-04:00

Image of community planning models designed by Philadelphia
public school students, displayed at the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition.

I was recently invited to participate in a Philadelphia public high school class where students engage in planning a community-based project (in this case a community garden, seating area, and food stand just a few blocks from the school). Each time I go to class, it strikes me how engaging this project is for building commitment to community, while using a physical neighborhood space as the means of teaching academic subjects and life skills. As part of the class, students are learning about planning, urban design, market analysis, business planning, and community involvement.

Teaching planning in schools is not a new concept for Philadelphia. During the fall of 1946, an experimental city planning course was introduced into the curriculum at sixteen public schools across the city. Staff of the City Planning Commission and the independent Citizens’ Council on City Planning spent months in the classroom working directly with the students, helping them learn about planning concepts, and ultimately guiding them to create their own plans, models, and drawings of the future of their communities.

The first round of student models, drawings, and plans were put on display at the Better Philadelphia Exhibition – a massive showcase of Philadelphia’s city planning work that attracted 385,000 visitors in 1947. Reports on the show praised Philadelphia’s foresight in preparing the next generation of citizens to plan a bright future for their communities. The program was a huge success and was subsequently permanently added to the Philadelphia schools curriculum. I don’t know when or why this planning course was dropped. However, the class I’m involved with today is not a standard feature for Philadelphia’s public school students.

If planning is such a great framework for teaching basic skills and building community values, why don’t we bring it back as a permanent element of the public school curriculum? A few years ago, I suggested this idea to some of my colleagues in education policy. The feedback was resoundingly negative. Their argument was that most public school students in Philadelphia lack adequate reading and math skills. Who has time for something superfluous like planning?

In a recent article Michael A. Rodriguez, a Bethesda, Maryland-based transportation planner, argued for the importance of teaching planning in school. In his article, Rodriguez notes, “To the nay-sayers who do not think schools have time to teach planning concepts, or worry more about 'core' curricula in math, science, and reading, I say that teaching planning concepts is fun and complimentary to teaching other subjects. They are not mutually exclusive.” He notes that teaching planning involves math, geography, and writing. I have seen this overlap with core subjects in the class I am involved with. The community planning element is a way to teach core subjects through an interesting and engaging subject that directly affects that place where the students live.

Rodriguez also adds another argument to the mix: “Planners often encounter ineffective public participation because of the fact that citizens often are not taught planning skills in school.” In other words, if kids aren’t taught the need for planning their communities, how can they become active community participants down the line when it really matters?

Going back to my previous post, it is clear that in order to build stable and thriving communities, we need to focus on developing engaged, concerned, and committed citizens. By teaching planning in schools, we are giving children the opportunity to understand that they can become engaged in their community, and that this engagement can be truly rewarding.

Some of my education policy friends may disagree with me. But ultimately I hope that these students – the parents of the future – will stay in their Philadelphia community (for some I hope this means returning after college). I hope they will become strongly involved in their community, and provide a better environment for living and learning than existed for them during their formative school years.

Education cannot be viewed as simply a process to get kids to a certain level of preparation in math and reading. It must be viewed as our major avenue for preparing the next generation of committed citizens. Otherwise we are missing a critical element of what school is intended to do. Without this element we may help a handful of students to escape and move on to better lives, but we do nothing to solve the underlying issues that afflict their under-served schools and communities in the long-term.

Internal and Political Development Set the Stage for Waterfront Development

2009-09-24T08:28:00.002-04:00

By Ariel

In his latest post Greg briefly notes that both Camden and Chester are cities on former industrial waterfronts. Greg is correct in his prioritization of investments needed to ensure that Chester’s Stadium and Casino actually act as agents of revitalization, however (by nature of his focus) he glosses over an important feature of urban redevelopment, the agencies doing the redevelopment. These public authorities have their own internal dynamics, that combined with the unique circumstances of every city provide a distinct local flavor to urban redevelopment.
On Monday September 21st, Peter Hendee Brown spoke at a lecture arranged by the Penn Institute for Urban Redevelopment about his new book titled America’s Waterfront.

The lecture provided an excellent analysis of the changing nature of Port Authorities and how their response to transportation trends and changing municipal landscapes has changed waterfront development for cities from San Francisco to Tampa.
Brown notes that the development of the shipping container (those large metal boxes that now float stack atop boats many times the size of football fields) spelled the end of the traditional dock: no longer were scores of laborers need to unload boats, cranes could just lift them onto trucks. Oakland invested heavily in these cranes, while San Francisco did not. It was that decision, and the resulting dilapidation which lead to the redevelopment of the waterfront into the retail district it is today: the development potential of many such waterfronts is related to the failure of those ports to keep up with the times, eventually letting their land go “fallow.” Other places, such as Tampa and Miami became the home of cruise lines. There both the shipping boat owners and the ports, realized the need to change with the times: the boat operators changing their ships to cruise lines while the Port Authorities invested in destination redevelopment to make their ports more attractive to the tourists getting on and off the boats. As federal and naval bases closed and opened even more land became available for redevelopment and San Diego built their convention center along the waterfront. These changes required a serious change in the Port Authorities’ staff, they suddenly had to become savvy developers, not just transportation operations officers.

Philadelphia’s waterfront has faced a few key obstacles, detailed by Brown, that inform the current state of unrealized potential. And no its not simply the fact that is cut off by I-95. For one, while the Delaware River Port Authority has been around for years, funded and built bridges spanning the Delaware between PA and NJ, it has never had joint control of the two ports. It wasn’t simply the railroads which blocked the periodic attempts to unite the port, the separate ports themselves did so. The latest attempt to “bridge” the ports was in 1992, and while that was defeated, one small sentence gave the DRPA was given the ability to fund economic development.

By the time they finally got around to it (it being economic development) the presence and the design of the impacts severely limited what could be done on the Philadelphia side of the river. 676 ventures further into New Jersey, leaving over ten blocks between the highway and the river, while Philadelphia is lucky to have two between I-95 and the waterfront. (676 was also built long after I-95 and by the time it was built the DOT required the highway to be connected to the bridge where it touched down on the shore, in Philadelphia people exit the Ben Franklin Bridge around fifth street). All of which is to say, by the time there was a mechanism to develop the waterfront, in Philadelphia there was little waterfront controlled by the DRPA (or by organizations particularly friendly to the DRPA) for its economic development money to go towards. It’s one of the reasons that the DRPA funded Chester’s stadium, there was simply little land, and even less vision, as to what to do on the waterfront.

If anything, this story reiterates the importance of the Praxis Plan / Civic Vision. The Philadelphia waterfront is divided among numerous (far too numerous) entities, few of whom under the leadership of a single entity. The Plan / Civic Vision provides a coherent goal around which partners gather (sometimes, whether they want to or not). In the absence of the institutional building blocks for waterfront development, civic visions have ever more importance.

Déjà vu?

2009-09-22T19:15:00.010-04:00

Camden, NJ's recent urban reinvestments

By Greg

The Philadelphia Daily News ran an article last week about the changing tides of Chester, the long-beleaguered Pennsylvania city near the Delaware border. The article noted Chester’s former industrial golden age, its recent reputation for drugs and crime, and a number of recent investments in the city that give hope for Chester’s future. These investments include the new Harrah’s casino, the soon-to-be-built Major League Soccer stadium, the University Crossing project (including a hotel, apartments, and a bank), a new recreation center, and the city’s planned river walk.

The article argues that in the midst of a recession, all of this construction is not just welcome, but highly encouraging for “Pennsylvania’s dark horse city.” Of course that progress is relative considering the above-mentioned bank will be the city’s first in 15 years, and Chester still lacks a supermarket. Much of the new construction is and will be highly subsidized by taxpayers. The question: Is Chester truly turning around or is this just the latest futile attempt to shock life back into an abandoned and dying city?

As I was reading the article I felt pangs of déjà vu. The language of the article and the types of investments seemed remarkably similar to another struggling small city near Philadelphia – Camden, NJ. Certainly Camden and Chester are very different cities, but they also have many things in common:

They are both small cities (Camden is 8.8 square miles with 79,000 residents, while Chester is 4.8 square miles with 37,000 residents).
They are both waterfront cities along the Delaware River.
Both are home to a university (Rutgers Camden and Widener University).
They were both old industrial cities that sunk so low that they were taken over by the state.
In both cases highways speed travelers past their borders, giving just a glimpse of the city’s face.
In both cities local police have been recently lobbying to remove residency requirements for the force.

And now they share the commonality that state and local officials are favoring the same general strategy for their revitalization. Camden built a baseball stadium, aquarium, and a major outdoor music venue, lined with a river walk – much of it built with major public subsidy. Nearby some private developers built a modest amount of new housing and retail. All of it was surrounded by a sea of parking lots so that out-of-towners could easily find a space and would not have to see the real Camden.

Today in Camden, the riverfront is bustling with activity (when there is a game or concert), but there are few promenaders on the river walk, and almost none of the visitors venture into the city. The downtown streets, just blocks away, are as depressed as ever, separated from the development by a moat of parking lots. Last I checked, Habitat for Humanity was still Camden’s biggest housing developer.

Chester’s reinvestment seems suspiciously similar. In place of the aquarium and music venue is a casino. In place of the baseball stadium is a soccer stadium. Granted, the casino and MLS stadium are going to attract more dollars from patrons than their counterparts in Camden; however, the basic equation is the same: stand-alone projects, plenty of parking, no connection to the heart of the city.

In a city like Camden or Chester that seems to be bleeding to death, some may argue that there is little room for pushing the envelope on urban reinvestment. To many it probably seems that any means justifies the end of attracting outside visitors and their economic development dollars. However, I would argue that this investment strategy of attracting visitors to auto-centric destinations, cut off from the city, is a shortsighted approach that will end up bringing in some revenue, but very little in the way of true urban revitalization.

With all of the money thrown in by the public sector and local charities in Camden, the city has seen too little improvement outside of the tourist-laden waterfront. I fear Chester’s foray into the spotlight will similarly stall in a few years unless the city takes a different track. Some could blame Camden’s unimpressive comeback on the current housing market. However, that is a relatively small piece of the puzzle. The main reason that Camden is not doing better is because the new developments did not follow the basic equation for reviving a city and its neighborhoods.

Presumably the ultimate goal is to restore the city and its neighborhoods so that Chester is no longer reliant on major state support. If this is the case, then projects that attract tourists to come for the day and leave will not cut it. Investments need to be targeted at restoring neighborhoods and supporting local business. This is a much tougher equation than building a stadium on vacant land, but it is necessary.

Rather than building stand-alone projects surrounded by parking, Chester should build linkages to connect these new projects to existing commercial streets. Stadiums in cities like Pittsburgh and Denver abut neighborhoods with new businesses serving as gateways, rather than parking lots. Even if there are few businesses now, these physical connections will allow entrepreneurs the chance to capitalize on the new projects, allowing the revitalization to eventually spread.

On-site parking must be consolidated and reduced as much as possible. If tourists can walk from their car right into the stadium or casino then there is absolutely no hope for spillover economic development. We cannot plan for how the city looks now – rather how it can look years down the line. Physical connectivity between the investments of today and the thriving neighborhoods and corridors of tomorrow is key.

Community investments can start in areas around assets like Widener University or the new waterfront developments, and work their way inward. These investments should focus on building new economic opportunities while restoring the physical plant of neighborhoods so that they can ultimately attract outside development and individual homeowners. Public investments must be made in ways that trigger a larger private reaction.

From the public side, investments can include elements like special services districts to clean and green; targeted, high-visibility projects like neighborhood parks; grants or low-interest loans for business owners; incentives for developers and for individual homeowners. To make an impact, all of these investments must be focused on a shared geographical area, rather than spread out across the city. That geographical area cannot be a tourist-only zone, rather neighborhoods targeted for revitalization.

Chester has two SEPTA rails stops and a transportation center. The City should utilize these assets to build new commercial corridors through transit-oriented development. Patrons will be arriving to the soccer stadium by train as well as by car. Their journey from the train station to the stadium should be lined with shops and restaurants. Once this corridor starts to transform, it is a key location for new housing near the station. The City is currently working with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission and SEPTA to look at the possibilities in this regard.

As the state and city invest, it is critical that local residents guide the revitalization, and do not feel like their elected officials are trying to attract newcomers to push them out. The public sector should empower and work with local community groups to plan for their communities and to implement these plans. Programs should be put in place to protect existing homeowners and make them feel comfortable that they will be able to enjoy their neighborhood’s future. The public sector should invest in programs to build entrepreneurship, and provide residents with access to capital and resources to benefit through new business opportunities.

Investing in planning and development is not enough. Public safety, education, and recreation are critical pieces of the urban revitalization puzzle. Major investments in these areas can payoff only if the other investments are coming as well. The idea is that over time crime will reduce and the schools will improve as the city’s neighborhoods rebound. Again, it is important to invest in these areas focused geographically. A comprehensive set of investments in a shared physical area has the best chance for making meaningful impact.

This complex mix of strategies and programs is certainly more difficult to implement than a few new single developments on the riverfront. Their impact takes much longer to be realized. However, if Chester does not want to share Camden’s fate of a half-baked revitalization that barely touches the city’s residents, then it should do things differently. Both of these cities have tremendous assets and potential to tap into a new national interest in downtown living. It’s up to Chester’s leadership to get it right. Urban reinvestment is expensive, and second chances can be decades in between.

Investing in Schools and Communities

2009-09-15T08:06:00.003-04:00

By Greg

Since Ariel brought up the topic of schools, I would like to expand on this discussion. There are few policy areas that influence each other as profoundly as education and community development. Yet, rarely do policy makers in these areas really sit down together to craft comprehensive solutions. Too often community development folks ignore schools as islands in our neighborhoods, and too often education folks only focus within the school walls.

A recent report by the Urban Institute looked promising in this regard. Its title is “Vibrant Neighborhoods, Successful Schools: What the Federal Government Can Do to Foster Both.” Unfortunately, the content of the paper hardly addresses the promise of the cover. The basis of the paper is the concept that “low-income children do better when they attend schools with middle- and upper-income children than when they attend schools where most of their classmates are poor.”

Thus the paper is predominantly dedicated to strategies for economic integration. Much of the paper discusses strategies for building affordable housing in wealthier areas, and for transporting poor children to better performing school districts. While improving the opportunities for some lucky students, neither of these approaches fixes the underlying problems of high-poverty neighborhoods with underperforming schools.

One short section deals with strategies for attracting families with means to impoverished areas with underperforming schools. This is the only piece of the paper that actually addresses strategies for re-investing in disadvantaged areas – thereby rebuilding neighborhood vitality. However, the paper never addresses the negative impacts of gentrification or other elements outside of housing, and after citing examples of this phenomenon by Georgia Tech, the University of Pennsylvania, Atlanta, and St. Louis, the paper concludes, “there is no single strategy for success.”

In all, the greatest failing of this paper is that it confuses vibrant neighborhoods with affluent neighborhoods. Additionally, it seems to imply that housing is the sole factor in determining neighborhood quality. There is no discussion of the many other factors that contribute to neighborhood vitality, like jobs and economic development, cleanliness and safety, recreation and open space, arts and culture, diversity and quality of retail, access to goods and services, the strength of local institutions, or transportation.

Needless to say, focusing only on building income diversity through housing policies is a short-sighted approach. Certainly, income diversity is important, but there are many other equally, if not more, critical neighborhood-based goals for impacting successful schools. Neighborhoods present the support structures that students experience daily. Tight-knit, livable and nurturing neighborhoods create an environment that is necessary for learning.

In some communities where I have worked, I have seen students go to school daily in neighborhoods littered with trash, with abandoned storefronts, and dilapidated homes. It is challenging to expect students to learn in a place where they see little hope in their own community for advancement and fulfillment. As such, many of the brightest students aspire to leave their old community behind – if they are lucky enough to be able to get out. The problem is, each child who makes it out of the community and never returns is one fewer parent of the future who could help transform the community into a vibrant and supportive environment for the next generation.

As the Urban Institute paper reminds us, “it is possible to provide quality education even when many students are poor and the surrounding neighborhood is distressed.” This has been one of the main arguments of the education policy folks, focusing on teacher performance, school administration, learning models, and merit pay. In many ways this argument is correct. However, with a strategy that uplifts communities while investing in schools, the struggle would be much easier, and the progress much accelerated.

The struggle to improve schools will be much aided by a focus on investing time and resources both inside and outside the school walls. However, communities will also be aided by investing in our schools. This issue is truly a two-way street. Just as vibrant communities are important for building strong schools, strong schools are also critical for creating vibrant communities. Neighborhoods serve as assets that attract homebuyers (as Ariel discussed in his last post, and as the Urban Institute article notes). However, more importantly, schools can provide the basis for building stronger communities.

Teachers are some of our most important community role models. School programs and after-school activities are critical community assets. School buildings can and should serve as physical centers for their surrounding neighborhoods. By reconnecting our school buildings and programs to communities we can provide greater opportunities for students, parents, and for neighborhood growth. Schools can become centers of community learning, not just student learning. At the same time, vibrant communities can offer the supportive environment, resources, contacts, life skills, internships and service opportunities that students will need.

We need a new paradigm where urban neighborhoods and schools are seen as a single unit – where they succeed or fail together. We need innovative federal, state, and local programs to invest in communities and schools at the same time – not just in terms of housing. This new paradigm should view the school not as an island, but as a critical part of the community life, with programs and opportunities flowing both ways between school and community. At its core, this is an issue of education folks and community development folks sitting down together and realizing that ultimately they need each other to succeed.

We're #100!

2009-09-13T19:51:00.003-04:00

By Greg

News Flash: Recently Wikio named Urban Direction the #100 ranked English-language architecture and design blog on the web! To all of you out there, thanks for reading, linking, and emailing!

Investing in Schools

2009-09-12T16:28:00.003-04:00

By Ariel

A community (real estate) development professional in Philadelphia notes, that the steadiest indicator of whether a family will move out of her stable and popular neighborhood, is the year their child must enter fifth grade.

In the 1990's the (in)famous School District Superintendent David Hornbeck tried to get the Philadelphia School district to shut down the city's magnet schools: he thought the schools segregated the brightest children from the peers which meant that students in neglected schools never had bright peers to learn from and with. He was unable to do this because it is popularly believed that doing so would have driven the last of the middle-class out of the city. I myself went to a magnet school and I am not sure what my parents would have done, not being able to afford a private school, had they not had one (Masterman) to send me to, other than move out of the city. The link between housing values and school districts is one that is well established in the literature. Of course you probably know that, if you yourself (or your parents)have not moved into a suburban school district because of the better schools, you know plenty of people who have.

While it is well known that we are willing to "vote with our feet" and buy more expensive houses and pay more expensive taxes to make sure our kids have access to better schools, a new report published by the Wharton School suggests that we are underfunding our schools, not only in terms of what it takes to make sure they have adequate funding, but in terms of what we are actually willing to pay for them.

The study examined the general obligation bonds that California voters agreed to float to finance school facility investment. These bonds meant that tax payers were required to pay higher real estate taxes in order to build more and better schools. As the authors note

"We find that passage of a bond measure causes house prices in the district to rise by about six percent. This effect appears gradually over the two or three years following the election and persists for at least a decade. Our preferred estimates indicate that marginal homebuyers are willing to pay, via higher purchase prices and expected future property taxes, $1.50 or more for an additional dollar of school facility spending, and even our most conservative estimates indicate a willingness to pay of $1.13."

This investment in schools is critical. Nearly 100,000 of our public schools are in need of renovation, expansion and repair. As the study notes "A third of public schools rely on portable or temporary classrooms and a quarter report that environmental factors, such as air conditioning and lighting, are “moderate” or “major” obstacles to instruction." One can only imagine what the statistics are for large urban school districts such as Philadelphia. According to the historian George Thomas, quite a few of Philadelphia's schools, designed during the 1920's were built by architects known more for designing prisons than schools.

However, as education policy analyst Claire Robertson-Kraft, editor of A Grand Bargain for Education Reform notes, the educational increases measured in the study "are pretty marginal compared to other academic interventions, like teacher quality." Which naturally leads to the question, could the Alhambra Unified School District spend the $85,000,000 in its bond issue on teachers instead. However not only does that amount to only $1,000 per student, but there are significant legal and policy constraints on spending bond revenues on operations.

What this points to is a mismatch in how we fund our education, Californians (and by extension probably most of us) are willing to pay more, and we have to finally fess up and start paying more for our education. It certainly pays us back, not only in housing values, but in our own future.

An Urban Sustainability Design Challenge

2009-09-09T23:03:00.005-04:00

The Ed Bacon Foundation and The Philadelphia Center for Architecture announce...

THE 4TH ANNUAL ED BACON STUDENT COMPETITION
"Brown to Green"
A design competition open to college and university level students in North America.

Pre-Registration Form due September 30, 2009.
Entries due Friday, October 30, 2009.

"Brown to Green" challenges students across North America to create a new vision for South Philadelphia's Grays Ferry Crescent. With the industrial DuPont Marshall Laboratory complex closing down and the Schuylkill River Development Corporation extending its riverfront park trail along the edge of the site, this area offers strong potential, but also great challenges. The competition gives students the opportunity to push the envelope on cutting-edge ideas for transforming brownfields of an industrial past into sustainable environs for a green future.

More info here

Beaux's Arts come and gone, and come again...

2009-09-01T22:12:00.006-04:00

By Ariel
The following is an unabridged version of an article that is scheduled to appear in Context Magazine, the AIA Philadelphia's journal of record.

While Philadelphians await the arrival of the Barnes Museum, they have been eagerly attending the Academy of Natural Sciences Urban Sustainability Forums. Though they have been mourning the loss of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s (PMA) free Sundays, they have also embraced its new Perelman Building and its more than 150,000 square feet of exhibition space that display costumes, textiles, prints, drawings, and photographs collection and are waiting for the expanded new underground galleries designed by Frank Gehry. As advocates push for a skate board park along the Schuylkill River Park and Philadelphians continuing to flock to the annual Welcome America festival it is worth reconsidering the role of the Parkway in Philadelphia’s life. And as Philadelphians its worth asking if this ever evolving public works project is worth the money we continually pour into it generation after generation. Will the vision of the Parkway as a grand boulevard first imagined in the mid 19th century and itself conceived as a work of art ever be complete?

The first proposal to create a parkway was floated in 1858, when what was wanted was a connector between the center of the city and the soon to be created Fairmount Park. The idea, however, did not gain momentum until the 1890’s and the beginning of the City Beautiful movement. Inspired by the sense of grandeur, order and civilization they saw in the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, civic boosters across the United States advocated large scale transformation of their cities that included the creation of boulevards, the erection of grand libraries, and the making of impressive civic spaces.

The City Beautiful movement was founded on aesthetics but filled with moral and capitalist ideas. Industrial and corporate leaders claimed that beauty was an investment in middle class values and culture, and that it also was good for business. Finally in 1907 construction began on the Parkway, designed by Jacques Greber and Paul Cret, and was capped in 1924, by the instillation of the still popular Swann Fountain. The making of the Parkway required the destruction of an entire industrial neighborhood, its factories, and homes replaced by museums, parks, and boulevards. But mourning the loss of that old urban fabric only gets you so far, after all Philadelphia is no longer the workshop of the world. However one of Philadelphia’s biggest businesses is tourism and the Parkway, whose institutions draw upwards of 3 million visitors a year and contribute more than $385 million dollar a year to the city economy. And it is still the heart of thriving neighborhoods, Logan Square, Spring Garden, and Fairmount. The last census counted 6,922 living in the row houses to the south and north of the Parkway, interspersed among the apartments and condos that flank it; and that was before the neighborhood experienced significant growth starting in 2003.

Yet users of the Parkway are in conflict. On an average day the Parkway sees nearly 5,000 average cars per lane, and Eakins Oval in front of the Art Museum sees almost twice that. At 21st street, one has to walk over 250 feet to cross from one side of the Parkway to another. However, making the area more walkable is not
simply a matter of changing road width, it’s a matter of making the area more interesting to walk through. Andy Toy of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association thinks that the area “need[s] more density” and that with “more people moving into our neighborhood” retail opportunities, activities and foot traffic will grow.

Since its inception, the Parkway has been the focus numerous studies, projects, and interventions, many aimed to bring more pedestrians to in an attempt to make it look more like the famous Champs Elysees, its Parisian model. This “dream” of the parkway as some sort of arena for the display and inculcation of culture lives on. This Parkway ideal, with people strolling up and down its sidewalks, visiting the museums and other institutions, is limited by the design of the Parkway itself and by Philadelphians’ habits relating to where and how often they choose to expose themselves to the arts.

Since the mid 1990’s planners have been trying to tame the Parkway, conquer its notorious traffic volumes and make it easier to walk along. In 1999 the CCD produced a plan that would have consolidated traffic lanes and create a raised plaza between Eakins Oval and the Art Museum. Though that plan never saw fruition, other work spear headed by the CCD has transformed the Parkway. The CCD built the new Cret Café on 16th Street and is planning a “discovery garden,” community center and café in front of the Cathedral. For over nine years, the CCD has also managed the Phlash, a short shuttle loop bringing tourists to institutions’ front doors. Its recent expansion to the Please Touch Museum in Fairmount and Franklin Square has extended its reach bringing Philadelphians and tourists all the way from Old City directly to the Parkway and beyond.

In 2004 new crosswalks were placed along the Parkway’s diagonal, making it easier to reach the restored Swann Fountain in Logan Square, and two years ago the CCD installed significant informational signage and just last summer, a consortium of foundations and non-profits such as the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society joined the state and the city in announcing $19 million to enhance lighting and green space along the Parkway.

Getting people into the museums themselves and “exposing them to culture” takes much more than simply building new buildings or galleries or sidewalks leading to them. It means making the art itself far more accessible to modern audiences. This July’s suspension of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s “pay what you will” Sundays (due to fiscal constraints), is an unfortunate step in the wrong direction, but initiatives at a variety of institutions might pick up the slack. The Moore College of Art has seen as 264% increase in gallery visits in the past two years (it doesn’t hurt that they are free) with such innovative exhibits as Bicycle: people +
ideas in motion on display now. Additionally, the Fairmount Park Art Association will be debuting the Museum Without Walls, a project that the FPAA’s executive Director Penny Bach describes as making “Information about the sculptures along the Parkway… accessible by cell phone, and the stories behind the sculptures will be told by people with direct connections to the sculptures.” Such a project is critical for helping people have a better understanding of the over 35 statues already lining the Parkway, without the need of a sheltering museum.

However as Dr. Happy Fernandez, former city councilwoman and current president of the Moore College of Art notes, to truly connect Philadelphians to the art along the parkway “you need to build the audience,” and that requires significant outreach to schools and community groups, not only by the institutions themselves but through arts education in our schools. It does not necessarily matter how many works of art are now more readily accessible if there is not a market and appreciation for the art in Philadelphia in this and the next generation.

Bach notes that the FPAA was founded in 1872 by people who were spurred by the thought that “art could be an antidote [for] industrialization.” The Parkway, built by people who felt similarly and who thought that architecture and grand urban vistas could do the like, remains a grand turn of the century monument to the City Beautiful movement. Built to express a specific sense of grandeur, it easily turned into an auto-dominated concourse that injects people straight from the Northwest straight into Center City. However, it is also the site for huge public gatherings, from Live8 to the 4th of July celebrations. The Parkway is built for capacity, be it for museums or festivals, and its actually something uniquely suited for the 21st century and the new over-riding imperative of “economic development.” In the 19th Century cities were racing to create grand, sweeping vistas; in the 21st century they are racing to capture tourist dollars.

But is it worth it, and will it ever be “finished? Yes and no, respectively. Judi Rogers, the Executive Director of the Parkway Council Foundation argues that “The Parkway is the iconic vista that many people think of when they think of Philadelphia.” Having the Rocky steps and Swann fountain indelibly imprinted on both Philadelphians and our visitors’ minds is no small thing: such symbols have civic and economic value for our collective imagination and wallets.

This is not to say that this continuation of a 19th century ideal is not problematic. Some of the Parkways most visible visitors, its homeless, are an affront to our idealized notion of what the Parkway should be and a threat to its marketability. However they are also a reminder that the Parkway not only belongs to all Philadelphians, but that our efforts to improve the lives of all Philadelphians extends beyond simple landscaping.

The problems that bedevil the Parkway are likely to stay, and our attempts to correct or mitigate them are as much part of the character of the Parkway as the flags that line it are.

Monopolies of Violence and the Politics of Infrastructure in Albania

2009-08-17T21:28:00.003-04:00

By Ariel

A few years ago I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Albania. I often sent dispatches home from my time there, and will occasionally post some of those dispatches which I think are still timely and will hopefully be of interest to our readers...

People newly arrived in Albania often remark on two things, which those of us who live here often over look; the fact that cafes are always filled, regardless of work hours, and the constant state of construction. Buildings are raised continuously throughout this country, little one or two story buildings in the country side, and massive apartment buildings, colloquially known as ‘pallati’s or “palaces.” These buildings sprout in cramped quarters and in fields, and around them ripples the not so faint signs of their construction, mounds of trash, and an ever present haze of dust and dirt. In a country with no other means of investment real estate is the preferred depository of choice for the nation’s capital. In Vlore especially, they are convinced that there is a market for these apartments, the usual suspects of people in other cities, Kosovar and Macedonian Albanians. They would rather not consider the possibility that a good portion of that money comes from people laundering dirty cash (though to be fair, I doubt that the new generation of buildings are built for that purpose).

All of this is background to one of the more unusual aspects of the politics of infrastructure which pervades Albanian life, which is the constant tearing down of illegal buildings. Such buildings are everywhere in this country, cropping up in the middle and at the outskirts of major cities. There is an entire police force devoted to monitoring and destroying illegal buildings (not that this is saying that much, there are far too many police forces in this country, Water police, Electricity Police, Building Police, Road Police, and City Hall Police, to say nothing of the normal police). The problem, in many ways, is what constitutes legal or illegal. This is not to dispute the fact that people here do build completely with out permit, its just that often there are so many jurisdictions that they got one permit, and didn’t bother with the rest, assuming they were ok. That or they pay off the right person. After all they never destroy the veritable fleet of hotels which illegally occupy, like large colorful blocky concrete meek-rats all staring out, row upon row, out to see, stretching along a good a good kilometer of beach front around Durres, and down the coast from Vlore. All too many buildings are legal, stamped and approved, despite large gaps between their existence and what is called for in the zoning code.

TV news stations, national and local, salaciously cover the destruction of illegal buildings, sometimes prior to the actual tearing down. In many ways this destruction is the only way that the government, on any level, can prove that it is enforcing the rule of law. Max Weber calls government “a monopoly of violence” and here where the country is governed by a politics of infrastructure, the destruction of buildings has not so much to do with the maintaining of any specific building code, but of the validation of governmental authority.

Let's Talk About Gentrification

2009-08-10T20:08:00.007-04:00

Source

By Greg

One morning in early June, neighbors around 48th Street and Baltimore Avenue awoke to find the Gold Standard Restaurant defaced. Paint-filled balloons had been thrown at the restaurant, and the word “Gentrifier” (or some more vulgar derivation thereof) was sprayed onto the new façade. In early July the anti-gentrification vandals struck again, pasting signs onto the bases of the lamp poles, newly installed by University City District. The vandals’ signs encouraged passersby to deface the banners hanging from the poles. In the coming weeks a number of the banners were, in fact, torn down.

For at least a half century there has been tension between West Philadelphia communities and institutions accused of trying to change the neighborhood. However, gentrification is a complex topic – a set of mysterious forces, often misunderstood. Cedar Park resident Ray Murphy wrote a post pointing out the irony of the Gold Standard vandalism. The restaurant is the latest iteration of a business run by 30-plus-year residents. Similarly, just a week before the vandals posted their signs, dozens of long-time residents and community leaders gathered with Mayor Nutter in Cedar Park to applaud the unveiling of the lamp poles and banners.

In the coming weeks I heard a number of views on the lamps and banners from neighbors. Most people I spoke with felt that they were a positive addition to the community, but some had suspicions about the motives of University City District. In addition, there was plenty of speculation about the profile of the vandals – how long they had been in the neighborhood, and whether they really represented the community’s voice. Their naiveté regarding the Gold Standard’s ownership seemed to indicate that they did not.

Still, in Cedar Park and elsewhere in Philadelphia, I have seen plenty of wariness from older residents about new community investments. Concerns about gentrification are being felt all across the city. As such, it would serve us well to look deeper into what this mysterious force is, and what it really means. Ultimately the underlying concerns have nothing to do with lamp poles and new restaurants; people are afraid of losing control of their communities. They worry that upgrading a community leads to residents being priced out, and cultural shifts that make old timers feel unwelcome in their own neighborhood – legitimate concerns.

However, what has evolved in many communities is a state of affairs where some residents feel the need to choose between improving their neighborhood, and being able to afford their home or feel comfortable in the communities they helped shape. A letter in the University City Review a few years ago voiced this opinion, that the community should say no to the then-proposed new lamp poles, because they would lead to gentrification.

However, it seems to me that this cannot be an either/or equation. It simply does not make good sense that the only way to maintain a community is by halting any new projects. We have to find a way to make it possible to improve our communities while also avoiding the negative impacts of gentrification. Gentrification is a real issue. It has to do with people’s ability to afford to stay in their homes, maintain their businesses, and enjoy the culture of their community. However, often what gentrification foes attack are the cosmetic elements that have nothing to do with these concerns.

The fact is that communities are not powerless. Far from it. There are effective policies, programs, and strategies that can be employed to combat the negative impacts of gentrification, while allowing new investment to improve the quality of life in our communities. However, community members need to know that these policies and programs exist, and they need to push their elected officials to put them into place. I have written extensively about some of these policies. Here are a few:

Incentives for developing affordable housing in transitional communities.
Linking community-created plans to real implementation tools.
A targeted community reinvestment strategy. Here’s another article about this.
A tax freeze or deferment for low-income homeowners, to allow residents to stay in their homes when taxes rise. Here’s a blog post on that strategy. And here’s another one.
Transition counseling to link communities with knowledge and resources to understand and benefit from new investment.
Strategies for making historic preservation a positive tool for low- and moderate-income communities.

There are plenty of other strategies that I have not written about for allowing communities to benefit from redevelopment, and allowing new investment to create jobs, equity, and opportunity for existing residents and business owners. Change can come, but it is critical that residents and business owners feel control over that change, rather than being swept up in it.

Reaching this goal is more challenging than pasting signs to lamp poles. It requires honest dialogue about what various members of the community want to see, followed by a proactive approach to linking those ideas to policy and practice. This means residents, business owners, institutions, and elected officials working together. If we take on gentrification the right way, everyone will win, and it will be worth the effort.

Art Works

2009-08-09T19:01:00.002-04:00

By Ariel

In a recent article in the New York Times the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, discussed his vision for the agency. Insisting that “Art Works” this former mutual fund manager and theatre producer will pursue an agenda that not only invests in high quality art, but the arts economic development potential. This is a commendable approach. As the NYTimes reports, Rocco wants to invest in a program “called “Our Town,” which would provide home equity loans and rent subsidies for living and working spaces to encourage artists to move to downtown areas.

“When you bring artists into a town, it changes the character, attracts economic development, makes it more attractive to live in and renews the economics of that town,” he said. “There are ways to draw artists into the center of things that will attract other people.” The program would also help finance public art projects and performances and promote architectural preservation in downtown areas, Mr. Landesman added. “Every town has a public square or landmark buildings or places that have a special emotional significance,” he said. “The extent that art can address that pride will be great.”

It is wonderful to see an NEA director not only understand the economic development potential of the arts, but the role it can play in revitalizing neighborhoods. More impressive however is his understanding of the role of NEA funding; not simply to pay for art exhibits or programs but to provide developers a stable rent stream, one that dramatically reduces operating risk. That kind of investment not only increases the likelihood that a developer can get funding, but it also reduces the artists' risk as well. As Philadelphia arts entrepreneur Matty Hart noted in a Young Involved Philadelphia forum about North Broad street’s revitalization a year ago, “artists are entrepreneurs, small businessmen.”

However I was concerned when Mr. Landesman suggested, in contrast to “Dana Gioia, his immediate predecessor, [who] made a point of spreading endowment funds to every Congressional district… [that] he expected to focus on financing the best art, regardless of location.” I would argue that by doing so the NEA misses out on an important opportunity to do something federal agencies often have a problem doing, which is think regionally. Artists chose to live based not so much on political boundaries, but on proximity to transit and cheap rent. Moreover I suspect that, arts and their impact grow not on the basis of the quality of the art but on their proximity to other artists and more importantly, the art market.

A regional focus on arts funding, one that prioritizes access to arts markets and institutions would seed artists up and down the Philadelphia / New York corridor and help Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York. Hitting many states is actually very important for the very health of the NEA itself. Any institution that wants to grow a paltry (on the federal scale) $155 million budget needs to create as many allies as possible, in as many states as possible.

Finally, Mr. Landesman did not mention education. I am not about to digress into a discussion that is being seen more and more these days, about how the nature of our education system and larger society makes it harder and harder for young people to be creative problem solvers, that over programming of children’s lives and a focus on test scores destroys creativity. That is the focus of books, and another blog entry.

However I would argue that there is, for the health of our society, an ever greater need for arts to be creatively integrated into education, and that the NEA and the Department of Education should, like the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development in their Sustainable Communities initiative, combine forces and deliver arts programming that are good for schools, students, the arts and the economic development of communities.

Be it loan forgiveness for Art teachers or apprenticeship programs, there are critical links that must be filled between areas and between regions.

Should We Fight the Height?

2009-08-06T18:24:00.023-04:00

Source

By Greg

Philadelphia is no stranger to the phenomenon of community groups opposing developers who are trying to build tall buildings. I have seen numerous community groups and civic associations hold up or kill projects in the entitlement process, on the grounds that they are too tall – out of character with the surrounding neighborhood.

Many Philadelphia neighborhoods do not have very tall buildings, and in some cases proposed buildings would introduce a new typology to low, residential communities. Whether or not that is a bad thing can be (and often is) debated. However, even in Center City Philadelphia, where tall buildings abound, community groups often oppose proposed tall developments.

This phenomenon is being played out on a whole different level in New York right now. Hines, the Houston-based mega-developer, is proposing an 82-story tower (shown above) designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Jean Nouvel, for 53rd Street next to the Museum of Modern Art. The new tower would include condos, a hotel, and substantial new gallery space for MOMA. Despite great reviews from the critics, some neighbors have come out strongly against the project, due to… you guessed it: the height.

Granted this would be one of the tallest buildings in Manhattan. And also granted there are some reasons why tall buildings could create undesirable impacts for communities. Depending on the siting and massing they can create shadows and contribute to a wind tunnel effect. They alter the skyline, and can block people’s views. On the flip side of the coin, tall buildings also have the power to create stunning works of beauty that define a city and capture the imagination.

However, is height really the biggest worry for communities? Has height just become the standard offensive element selected by neighborhood groups wanting to protect the status quo? Or is there something about a developer coming into a neighborhood with a tall building that seems naturally imposing, offensive.

The problem comes when this opposition to height ends up killing projects that are actually quite good – especially ones that succeed at the ground level, or that provide important community assets (like the Nouvel tower that incorporates 50,000 square feet of art museum floor space).

Even more problematic is the issue of community groups focusing on height, while ignoring more important aspects of the project – such as gaping parking garage entrances, dead ground-floors, lack of pedestrian accessibility, and few neighborhood amenities. I have seen a number of contentious projects in Philadelphia end up with developers compromising on the height, while leaving much more offensive elements intact.

The bottom line is that in cities across America, from Philadelphia's rowhouse neighborhoods to sky-scraping Manhattan, community groups and developers alike exhibit the trend of looking toward the sky – though with very different intentions and outcomes. More complex are the questions of why, and how this trend will shape our urban landscapes.

Wawa Redux

2009-08-04T17:03:00.004-04:00

By Greg

I'm not sure why now, but the Illadelph blog reprinted my letter to the Inquirer from several months ago, discussing Wawa's policy of suburbanization. Anyway, I'm not complaining. Check it out.

The High Line, the Reading Viaduct, and the Future of Chinatown

2009-07-23T19:18:00.008-04:00

Source: Chinatown Neighborhood Plan

By Greg

The first section of New York City’s long anticipated High Line – the abandoned 1930s rail viaduct transformed into an elevated park – is now open. And the response has been impressive. According to The New York Times, after having been open for a month now, the park draws up to 20,000 visitors daily. When all sections are completed the High Line will be a mile-and-a-half-long park, floating over several West Side Manhattan neighborhoods.

Although still under construction, the High Line has already captured the imagination of New Yorkers. According to the Times, the High Line has organically developed its own “economy” and “arts scene.” A friend of mine recounted running into a crowd on one section of the High Line, just in time for a makeshift “cabaret,” performed by neighbors from the porch of a nearby apartment building. This kind of unusual park, cityscape vista, and opportunity for quirky urban culture is compelling, surely making some folks in other American cities with abandoned railroad viaducts green with envy.

Case in point: In Philadelphia, architecture critic Inga Saffron recently wrote about the High Line, including praise for the work of the University of Pennsylvania’s James Corner, who was part of the High Line design team. Saffron lauded the High Line, calling it “a delightful new way to experience the city,” and asserted that it “should be a model for Philadelphia’s unloved Reading Viaduct.”

Saffron is referring to Philadelphia’s own abandoned elevated rail bed, constructed about 100 years ago, and used until the mid-1980s. Today the abandoned Reading Viaduct cuts through the “Chinatown North” neighborhood, branching off to the west for about .35 miles to Broad Street, and to the northeast for about .6 miles, terminating at Fairmount Avenue and SEPTA’s active regional rail tracks.

Some Philadelphians have been interested in reusing the Reading Viaduct as a park, for more than a decade. In 2003 a diverse group of locals formed the Reading Viaduct Project to drum up support for preserving the viaduct, transforming it into a High Line-esque park. In 2004, design studios at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University focused on re-imagining the viaduct in this way.

However, all Philadelphians are not in consensus about the viaduct’s future. This disagreement surfaced from 2002-2004 during the process of creating the Chinatown Neighborhood Plan. This planning process was coordinated by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), and developed by the design firm Kise, Straw & Kolodner (KSK), involving seventeen different stakeholder groups, including Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC), Asian Americans United (AAU), and Callowhill Neighborhood Association.

In the “Chinatown Neighborhood Plan,” published in December 2004 the Reading Viaduct is just one element, but it is clearly an important piece of the Chinatown puzzle. For those not familiar with Philadelphia Chinatown’s political and historical context, here’s some quick background: Since the 1960s the Chinatown neighborhood residents and businesses have been in the streets fighting major development projects that have encroached on their community. These include the Vine Street Expressway, Gallery I & II, and the Pennsylvania Convention Center. All of these projects were built.

As such, the 2004 neighborhood plan describes a community that has slowly been hemmed in to the south, encouraged to look north for future expansion. Additionally, Chinatown has seen rapidly rising residential prices, creating a stated need for affordable housing in the community so that it can continue to serve as an ethnic and cultural gateway.

This background explains some of the controversy over the Reading Viaduct issue. Some in the Chinatown community see the land under the viaduct as dark, dirty and unsafe. At the same time, some see it as prime real estate for the public sector to gain control, demolish the viaduct, and redevelop the land as much needed affordable housing. Some also see the viaduct’s diagonal northern spur as a hindrance to positive growth, creating a swath of small, triangular parcels that cut through the neighborhood.

Yet, others in Chinatown and Callowhill see the potential for an elevated park as a very positive element. The Chinatown plan clearly shows this diversity of opinions and apparent lack of consensus. It includes statements like: “This massive structure is viewed simultaneously as both an obstacle to redevelopment in Chinatown North and as a potential elevated ‘rails to trails’ linear park space.”

Through a multi-year process, the plan’s creators worked hard to build consensus and compromise. The published plan offers such a compromise solution: “Initial thinking on the future disposition of the viaduct has traditionally focused on an ‘either/or’ scenario: complete removal or complete preservation. An alternative scenario is the possibility of selective demolition and the retention of certain segments of the viaduct.”

The images in the plan illustrate how this solution could work. The quarter-mile, masonry-supported spur west to Broad Street would be retained and transformed into a park. The northern spur would be retained for about .2 miles, up to Ridge Avenue, where it would ramp down to the surface and connect with a planned new “town square” park, surrounded by mixed-use development. In this compromise solution, the remaining .4 miles of the northern spur of the viaduct would be demolished. This compromise would allow Chinatown to develop its own “dramatic downtown overlook or ‘sky park’” while also clearing some land for redevelopment.

The viaduct compromise is just one element of the Chinatown Neighborhood Plan. Others include capping a portion of the Vine Street Expressway for a new community park, the aforementioned town square, mixed-use development, affordable housing, and streetscaping. In addition to the viaduct park, the plan also calls for substantial surface park construction.

Also in 2004, the Philadelphia Commerce Department commissioned an environmental study to establish cost estimates for the potential demolition or reuse of the viaduct. When it came out, just after the neighborhood plan, the study showed that demolishing the whole viaduct would cost about $36 million. Demolishing the sections identified in the neighborhood plan would cost about $11 to $13 million. Meanwhile remediation and capping would cost about $5 million. The plan does not assess the costs of building a true park on the viaduct (New York spent $152 million on just the first two sections of the High Line). So the short of it is that demolition would be expensive, remediation and building a park would be much more expensive.

Cost and feasibility aside, after the 2004 planning process, it seemed that the various factions had found some common ground. Keep part of the viaduct for a park, and take down other sections for community development. However, a meeting in Chinatown last night, revisiting the 2004 plan, showed that such consensus has not yet truly occurred. The meeting at Holy Redeemer Church drew a crowd of over 100, featuring John Gibbons of KSK, John Chin of PCDC, and Laura Spina from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Barry Seymour, DVRPC’s executive director, was also on-hand.

The audience members, aided by Mandarin and Cantonese translators, asked questions about a variety of topics. However, the viaduct seemed to steal the show. After John Gibbons described the neighborhood plan, including the viaduct compromise, Sarah McEneaney of the Callowhill Neighborhood Association stood up and explained that the Reading Viaduct Project is still committed to saving the “entire” viaduct and that there were petitions at the front of the room.

She was followed by Andy Toy, past chairman of PCDC, who explained that the vision in the neighborhood plan is “a compromise that allows the viaduct to stay in place.” The rest of the audience remained fairly quiet on the issue, and one resident had never heard of the viaduct – showing that it had not yet gained the mass public awareness of New York’s High Line. There was no resolution to this issue, and so far as the viaduct is concerned, clearly more dialogue needs to happen.

For those focused on turning the viaduct into a park, it is critical to realize that this vision does not currently have the political support to move ahead. The community stakeholders who are still at odds need each other to achieve their desired ends. As such, a success for the viaduct and for Chinatown North will rely on compromise, with stakeholders bridging their differences, acting in concert around a shared vision. As Andy Toy said at the meeting, “We can’t move forward in any way if we continue to disagree.”

At its core, this issue is not just about the viaduct, but about the historic dynamic between Chinatown and the rest of the city and region. The Chinatown residents and business owners must be empowered to determine their neighborhood’s destiny. At the same time, it is important for the community stakeholders to recognize the potential significance of the viaduct as a powerful regional asset.

The Chinatown Neighborhood Plan lays out a strong vision for a physical compromise. Whether the stakeholders can agree to rally around it will determine their ability to convey a shared vision – necessary for generating political support and funding. Whether the stakeholders can find common ground will ultimately determine the fate of this neighborhood’s urban landscape, and Philadelphia’s shot at getting its own floating park.