Sometimes, I think it’s hard for people to separate class from race.

I apologize as well for the misunderstanding. I just sought to clarify; I was pretty sure we were on the same page.

@Regine:

I don’t know. I think there certainly is a racial element (the ImagineKC video makes that obvious) but the stronger element is likely to be a class element. The cities portrayed – as Wad points out – are fairly homogenous with respect to class. Ironically, vibrant urban districts should not be. Other commenters on this board, myself included, suggested this class/race homogeneity is problematic because it’s (a) not realistic and (b) because no monoculture is sustainable or resilient. Cities without diversity might as well not be cities at all.

Nonetheless, I share yours and Wad’s concerns. I often fear much of the “New Urbanism” is heavily sanitized and watered down, and thus lacking the diversity so critical to city life. I can’t tell which direction this is going, though: whether New Urbanism and its resulting “gentrification” is an intentional attempt to rid the city of “those people” by subconsciously or blatantly racist elites; or if the New Urbanists know that suburbanites won’t swallow the urban pill unless it conjures vision consistent with their racism. Or if both. Or if that’s how it’s been adopted in mainstream marketing.

It’s just hard to tell which factor is weighing more heavily, and when, I guess.

There is and always has been a large population of “yuppies” in Harlem who happened to be African-American aka buppies (think Sugar Hill). In fact Harlem’s evolution mimics to what happened in Ft Greene/Clinton Hill sections of BK, the presence of buppies sent a strong signal to younger white adults these neighborhoods were safe, cool and hip.

Wad is correct when he says “Starbucks urbanism is the only shared culture among the messenger and its audience. It’s safe, understood and needs little to no explanation.” I commented on this fact on a previous post about the St. Louis renderings that showed one black person. It’s a subliminal message that is easily understood by all.

It’s not really a reverse racism issue – though it’s partly there, too. It’s an issue of perceived future worth. Chinatown is undergoing the same process: while the neighborhood is really poor, and is expanding due to an influx of poor Chinese immigrants, rents have risen due to speculation. The future expectation of gentrification has been priced in.

I’m not exactly sure why you guys keep bringing up the fact that poor people shop at Target when what I’m saying is that community organizations oppose brand-name stores for political reasons. Yes, CVS and Walgreens count as brand-name stores – they’re national chains rather than local businesses.

It’s mighty cynical, but it’s an interpretation nonetheless.

People are generally captive to their demographic profiles.

If the transit videos are showing “Starbucks urbanism”, its more of a reflection on the video producer than it is of the content of the video.

I can guess, with about 90% certainty, that it’s produced by a white person who has a high degree of education and/or high income.

The content itself lends it to be classified as targeting a similar demographic cohort because Starbucks urbanism is generally a sweeple-centric cultural reference point.

Starbucks urbanism is the only shared culture among the messenger and its audience. It’s safe, understood and needs little to no explanation.

There’s also the sentiment that if Starbucks urbanism doesn’t exist, it needs to be created from scratch.

What idealists don’t count on, though, is how much cultural resistance their vision inspires.

And, as Aaron mentions in the post about “the racquet,” the vision creates a unifying force for disparate demographics to rally against.

The Starbucks urbanism video will detract as much as inspire. Detractors would include: low-income and racial/ethnic minority communities who see any attempt at civic improvement as a movement to uproot them from their neighborhoods; anti-tax groups who dogmatically believe only private, for-profit economic transactions are legitimate; and in most communities it would reveal racial fissures in the community.

For every one Starbucks urbanism video view, there is exponentially more who think the reality will be more like transit’s equivalent of the Willie Horton ad: the infamous “MARTA girl” video. That has become the cultural reference point for transit-hostile and transit-skeptic communities.

I don’t know of any effective means of getting everyone to re-examine and free themselves of cultural blinders, but I think any plan should include amounts of idealism and reality seasoned to tastes of the community.

We now have enough mass transit investment and results to make real-world inferences than by promising a Starbucks with high-end condos on top.

You don’t need to out-New York, New York in order to have a successful system.

Here’s another success story in a place where you would least expect a transit success story: Phoenix.

Granted, Arizona is a sprawling mess that loved sprawl so much it built its entire economy around it.

In terms of public transit, though, it has a terrific story and one that most cities should look to as an example.

Phoenix built a light rail line in 2008 that had loud, visible opponents but lukewarm-at-best supporters. The conventional wisdom has it that Phoenix has so many destinations with no discernible center that it would be futile for transit to serve them all.

(For those who say that light rail goes nowhere, an independent citizen put together Rail Life, a guide to destinations big and small on light rail, including housing listings for people who wish to live near the line as well. This is one of the finest examples of an open-source transit website out there.)

Valley Metro realized that no light rail line could ever serve everyone, but if it had to build it, it might as well go to the places that matter most.

It’s a 20-mile line carrying about 30,000 — but in Phoenix, that is a huge deal. Phoenix probably went through the fastest “For Real” period in modern transit history. It got to “For Real” (as in, answering the “will people ride it?” question to the point where its place in the urban landscape is no longer in doubt and it is “For Real”) within the span of a weekend.

Before light rail, there was a bus line that mimicked the train’s current route. It was Valley Metro’s busiest line, but it carried somewhere around 10,000 a day. Plus, there wasn’t enough bus service cut to get that remaining 20,000 on the train. The biggest improvement came in travel time: the light rail line takes 70 minutes to go from Central Phoenix to West Mesa. The predecessor bus took 2.5 hours — one way.

That may sound like a slam-dunk case to build light rail, but that’s not the entire story. Phoenix spent a decade building up its bus system before light rail. It was only in 2000 when Phoenix added Sunday bus service! It raised taxes to bring most bus lines to run at least every 30 minutes and past sundown to about 10 p.m.

That’s the less glamorous aspect, but the success of light rail wouldn’t have happened without priming buses first.

I’m not talking about Wally World and Tar-jay as brand-name stores. I’m talking about smaller footprints like the drugstores (CVS and Walgreen’s) and especially Foot Locker, Urban Outfitters, Apple, Sprint/Verizon/AT&T, etc. “B” tenants in suburban strip malls, in other words.

I agree with Regine’s arguments (slightly modified): where there is high demand for housing in “upscale districts”, people begin to nibble at the fringes. Ultimately, the perception of formerly-bad neighborhoods evolves from “fringe” to “okay” then “mainstream”. It’s Economics 101 (high demand chasing limited supply), not reverse racism or gentrification.

—
Matt, sorry to come off as if I were disagreeing with you. I took your comments to mean exactly what you said in your clarification, and tried to run with it. “Mixed use buildings” HAS become new planning dogma.

And I agree on the concept of externalities, and on maintaining areas for commerce and industry within cities. I frequently argue for “industrial/commercial reuses” of shut-down industrial sites on local Indy discussion boards. For instance, a major Navistar factory and foundry in my neighborhood is closing this year, and I jokingly threatened anyone who suggested turning it into greenspace or an arts venue…Starbucks Urbanism or extreme “garden city” planning in my book.

The site is adjacent to a CSX railyard and two major arterials that lead to the Interstate. It is a perfect place for an intermodal facility: substitute clean(er) commerce (and some truck traffic) for a dirty old industrial facility, and keep some semi-skilled and management jobs in the area.

The City/State also invested billions into building new affordable housing like the projects on Madison Ave in East Harlem. Another factor was the dearth of available land except along the rivers for new development and the loss of Mitchell Lama subsidies as well as the many years of work by several Harlem CDC’s to redevelop 116th and 125th Streets.

Poor people are just like their more affluent counterparts. Have you been in the Target on Atlantic Ave in Bk?

And while poor people like to shop at national brand-name stores, they may not like to have those stores in their neighborhoods. Urban community leaders are usually against such chains as Wal-Mart and Target opening local branches, on the grounds that they’d displace small business and only provide low-income jobs.

I think where we might agree is that there’s a significant danger in the fact that “mixed use buildings” has become a new planning dogma like “single use buildings” was before it, and that too makes little sense. In a lot of cases, mixed use buildings are one effective way to provide a mix of primary uses – but in many cases, they will not be. Nor should we expect a neighborhood of commercial/residential on the caliber of “Starbucks condos” to provide adequate “mixed primary uses” to insure vibrancy. I see a lot of cities getting frustrated that they’ve added a train and mixed-use buildings but find that urban vibrancy remains elusive. In the meantime, blocks remain large and nothing in the neighborhood is more than 10 years old…

I guess I think the latter is the bigger danger; but the former is of consequence as well.

Anyway, all that being said, I think single-use zoning emerged out of the externalities of the industrial city. And it worked: suburban neighborhoods are mostly free of the overcrowding and pollution that afflicted the early industrial city. They’re also, in large part, free of the vibrancy that inspired cities in the first place. And further, it actually increased pollution overall by necessitating more transportation between products and markets, and markets and consumers.

A better idea might have been for polluters of the industrial city to have had to factor the full costs of their production into the price of their products – and thus, be incentivized to reduce the pollution that was externalized onto central cities and elsewhere. And despite single-use zoning, this externality problem persists unabated.

Now, we’d like to get some urban vibrancy back, but somehow leave industry out of the picture. This is sort of similar to the problem Patrick alludes to: “urbanism sans diversity,” or “sanitized urbanism.” Even here, in Portland, the Port and the Bureau of Environmental Services were called out by a Planning Commissioner at a meeting when he noticed them at war over how to protect fragile ecosystems, created urban vibrancy, AND have land for the employment centers afforded by industrial operations. To date, the approach is to push the industry out to the hinterlands – sort of a Garden City ethic – where it need not been seen, smelt, or heard. This, of course, shoves it off onto ecologically sensitive lands, and the Sierra Club – who has significant sway over policymakers in Oregon – comes knocking.

The weirder part, which no one has really talked about, is that many of the most vibrant and storied Portland districts – say, the Pearl, or the Alphabet District – still have a close proximity to industry. The Pearl is still, though maybe not nearly as much as it was in its past, a functioning industrial district. There are ball-bearing dealers still supplying manufacturers from locations next door to trendy coffee shops, and auto salvagers operate in buildings right alongside interior designers. Even the lauded “microbrewpub” is a classic example of a mixed commercial/industrial use (I think the Deschutes brewpub shares a corner with one of the aforementioned ball-bearing dealers).

So, anyway, when I see this manifestation of “mixed-use” that means “Starbucks over condos, maybe with a train that comes every day,” I can’t help but cringe a little bit: no monocultures are ever very resilient in nature.