The Urbanophile » Historic Preservation

Subscribe/Feeds

Search

Best Of

Posts By Topic

Posts By City

Posts By Author

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Replay: Preserving Our Mid-Century Heritage

We walk around the hollowed out remnants of our old downtowns and wonder, “How did this happen? How could generations past have done this? How did they tear down all those wonderful 19th century buildings? Didn’t they know?” Yet I also wonder, will we ourselves bring the same thing into being?

It’s common for us to note the moral failings of the past. It’s less easy for us to imagine how future generations might find us wanting. Leslie Poles Hartley famously wrote, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” This betrays an all too common view of the past, a belief that the people who lived there were fundamentally different from you and me, that they are strangers to us, and that they represent a somehow more primitive stage in human existence. But the truth may be closer to George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”

I saw a blog posting about a redevelopment project that gave me pause to consider whether we stand on the edge of another great era of destruction of our architectural and cultural heritage, namely our mid-century modern buildings.

The proposal in question was to redevelop a small office building, in part by replacing the mid-century facade with something more contemporary. The reactions from readers of that post were almost unanimously positive. When I and a couple others suggested, not that the project was bad, but that there was nothing wrong with the old facade, and that we should take care not to destroy our mid-century modern heritage, there was push back even from people who are strong design advocates. The risk of damaging the architectural fabric of the city was dismissed, saying that the building was “run of the mill”. People were excited that there was finally some quality contemporary architecture coming to town.

I think this illustrates all too clearly how that great but irreplaceable stock of 19th century homes and commercial structures came to be destroyed. As one poster put it, “Mid-century modern architecture is now in the same danger zone chronologically that late 19th-century buildings were in during the urban renewal period. These buildings are old enough to be considered dated, but not old enough to be considered ‘historic.’ The exact same was true of all those buildings that got torn down in the 60’s and are now are so lamented by people in this forum.”

Exactly. Those buildings weren’t a hundred years old back then. They were considered functionally obsolete and they were in many cases in need of significant investment to upgrade. They were expensive to operate. They were no longer architecturally in fashion. And there was a large supply of them, most of them “run of the mill” or workaday type structures of little to no standalone significance. For every Penn Station or Marion County Courthouse demolished, dozens of unremembered buildings were razed.

What’s more, our cities were under economic pressure. In the post-war era there was a dramatic exodus from downtown and the traditional urban core, interestingly to new mid-century suburbs. Community leaders rightly were troubled by this and, like today, wanted to do whatever they could to pump new life into their dying cores. The study of downtown revitalization was in its infancy. Urban renewal (wholesale forced demolition of “blighted” areas in order to make room for parking lots or large modern developments such as the infamous public housing projects) was the urban planning orthodoxy of its day, supported by almost all “right thinking” people. The intellectual edifice for it was created by the likes of Le Corbusier and other leading-edge thinkers of the era.

Today all of these same things are true of mid-century modern homes and buildings. I’m not talking about the great signature buildings of the era: the Seagram Building, the First Christian Church, etc. Thankfully, I doubt well see many truly landmark structures destroyed, though probably some (especially Brutalist) ones will get hit. We’ve learned that lesson. No, I’m talking about the average structure: those homes in our aging suburbs, the bank buildings, the small offices. All that infill development that forms the core of the mid-century inventory in many places. These are often production buildings, of little note individually, but of great significance collectively.

Like the 19th century downtown before them, these buildings are obsolete. The homes are too small and require major upgrades. The commercial structures aren’t sexy and are out of fashion. They look dowdy and rundown even when well maintained because they seem dated. They’re expensive to operate, lacking, for example, energy efficient or green features.

And they are under enormous economic pressure. The inner ring suburban areas where these buildings are often concentrated are especially feeling the heat. Residents are fleeing to the boomburgs on the edge, and the businesses are following them. You see this decay in cities across America. I’ve said before this is one of the great challenges of our era. I’d argue that suburban revitalization is a much harder challenge than urban revitalization. And there are no proven strategies yet. It’s not difficult to see how any development, even destructive redevelopment, would be viewed as positive, and that these neighborhoods could fall prey to the next failed utopia designed by “experts”.

When you see your neighborhood commercial district decaying, when houses are starting to show signs of lack of maintenance, when people are scared about the future of their neighborhood, saving “old” buildings, particularly those everyday ones, is simply not a priority. As the problems of inner ring suburbs become more of a national crisis, the pressure will only ratchet up even more and the balance swing even further in favor of destructive redevelopment. Especially as the suburban form is considered obsolete and unsustainable today, just as old small buildings on a gridiron street pattern were once considered obsolete by yesterday’s generation.

As for mid-century infill in the central city, those buildings likewise are not viewed as important and often offer some of the rare redevelopment opportunities because all the older buildings are protected by historic districts or landmarkings. To the extent that the pre-war buildings are protected, this puts more pressure on the unprotected post-war ones.

It is easy to see how, in almost every individual case, the mid-century building in question will be considered expendable due to its lack of individual significance. And then one day we’ll wake up to find they are largely gone or mauled beyond recognition. If you’ve ever seen some of the horrible facade “improvements” done to 19th century buildings in years past, I think you can imagine what that might look like. This is what I mean by the ordinary spaces being as important as the special ones. This is what makes a real urban fabric instead of a few landmarks sticking out of an urban desert.

Today, it is difficult for us to appreciate and see the significance of these structures. We’re prisoners of our own age. It is incumbent for us to be able to step outside ourselves, to see us as people 50 or 100 years from now might. What might they value in buildings? Might they not see the mid-century period as historic in its own right? It’s easy to imagine that they could. Indeed, it seems rather likely.

This is a legitimate conflict of values and an area where trade-offs are necessary. I firmly believe that the world belongs in usufruct to the living. The people of the past have no right to bind us, nor we no right to bind our children. We have to use our own best judgement about the right decisions, accepting that we’re going to get some wrong. Yet part of that means trying to be a good steward, of taking care to try to leave our cities better places for our children and grandchildren than they were for us. This means finding a way to balance the legitimate needs of neighborhoods in distress with the long term goal of preserving every era of architectural and cultural history for future generations to benefit from.

This is where I think we as urban thinkers, architects, economic developers, planners, etc. need to get creative and think hard about how to make these buildings into redevelopment assets and change the perception of them by the public at large. To help resolve that conflict in a positive way. I’ve said that the strategic dilemma facing the inner ring suburbs is that they are selling an obsolete, older generation model of the same basic suburban product as the edge, but with higher taxes, more crime, and worse schools. That’s an unsustainable situation. But invert the world. Figure out how to make those old, “obsolete” buildings an asset the edge sprawl can’t match.

Again, we’ve seen this movie before. It was a handful of passionate supporters who started buying up the old homes and buildings near our downtowns and renovating them, sparking much of the revitalization of our inner cities. Similarly, a new generation of people passionate for mid-century architecture could lead the way in reclaiming these structures for the present, and pumping new life into these faltering neighborhoods as well.

I’ll give one example. Check out the blog Atomic Indy. It’s dedicated to all things mid-century modern in Indy. It’s published by a couple who bought an old mid-century home near 46th and Arlington in Indianapolis for cheap and are renovating it into their dream home. I know at least one other young architect who moved to that area as well. Could this be the start of a more positive trend? We’ll see. Many of these homes are well-maintained today, but are occupied by long time owners who are getting older and there is not a next generation waiting in the wings. If new blood isn’t attracted into them as the current generation of residents disappears, it’s a recipe for ruin in broad tracts of America today. Convincing people of the value of mid-century architecture is a way to not only help preserve the city, but for people get quality architecture and a suburban lifestyle at a reasonable price.

Let us hope that we show that we really have advanced and learned something. Let us hope that we’re equal to the task and ultimately merit praise not opprobrium from our successors.

This post originally ran on January 8, 2009.

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

12 Comments
Topics: Architecture and Design, Historic Preservation, Public Policy, Sustainability

Friday, December 18th, 2009

A Plan for Detroit

The Bookings Institution published their plan for Detroit in a long article called “The Detroit Project: A Plan for Solving America’s Greatest Urban Disaster” in the New Republic. I recommend checking it out.

I’ve got to confess that I found it difficult to determine exactly what it is Brookings is recommending. They talked a lot about what worked elsewhere, but did not lay out a crisp set of recommendations for Detroit. For example, they talk a lot about the turnaround in cities like Turin and Bilbao, and some of the things those cities did. But is Detroit supposed to copy what they did, or are those just inspirational stories? It’s hard to tell.

I have a lot of respect for Brookings. They do some great work through their Metropolitan Policy Program and are one of the key sources of fantastic data about cities. Nevertheless, based on my understanding of their plan, I have some differences from Brookings. Actually, I agree with a lot of it, but have two main areas of disagreement.

1. Economic Development Paradigm. Brookings and I have a major difference of philosophy here. They explicitly call for a government-led industrial policy. I believe you have to improve the business climate. While I believe the government has an important role to play in economic development, the type of explicit direction of investment to business Brookings advocates isn’t going to work. I fundamentally don’t believe in the centrally planned economy and planners could, even if successful, could never have enough bandwidth to create as many jobs as Detroit needs.

2. Need for Bolder, Detroit-Specific Action. Brookings recommends things such as regionalism that they generally tout, as well as other standard playbook solutions. Many of these are good and I’d adopt them, but they aren’t enough for Detroit. We have to go beyond these to come up with additional “only in Detroit” ideas unique to that city.

I took a more complete look at the Brookings plan and how I would improve it in a two-part series for New Geography.

Part One: Detroit Needs a Bolder Plan. My analysis of the Brookings Plan
Part Two: The Urbanophile Plan for Detroit. I lay out my alternative view of what should be done.

I was also featured this week in a segment on the future of Detroit on the “Detroit Today” program on WDET-FM. The audio is embedded below. My segment starts at around 31:00. If the player doesn’t show up here, you can click through the episode home page to listen. (If anyone wants to edit out just my segment for easy access, I’d welcome getting the MP3.)

In my Brookings take, I didn’t think Detroit was much like the other places it was compared to. I’m not the only one. The Overhead Wire, for example, takes issue with comparing Detroit to Turin.

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

16 Comments
Topics: Civic Branding, Demographic Analysis, Economic Development, Historic Preservation, Public Policy, Regionalism, Strategic Planning, Sustainability, Talent Attraction, Transportation, Urban Culture
Cities: Detroit

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

Midwest Miscellany

The Other Side of the Tracks

If you like Midwest Miscellany and would like to have more good links, I suggest subscribing to Reconnecting America’s daily email blast called “The Other Side of the Tracks”. It focuses on transit oriented development and is an interesting collection of 6-12 of the best pieces from around the web that day. To subscribe, just email info@reconnectingamerica.org and ask to be added.

The Lake Wobegon Effect

A reader emailed me an interesting response to my open thread about the best and worst Midwest characteristics. It was about my personal pick of the active discouragement of the pursuit of excellent as the worst characteristic, and some of the reactions that spawned. Here’s an edited version of the note:

I subscribe to Salon.com, and yesterday there was a little essay by Garrison Keillor, who, as you may know, had a stroke recently [he's fine]. Point being, it made me reflect a little more on the Midwestern mindset and how close he gets to capturing it. It’s the place where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Don’t know if you’ve been a fan of “A Prairie Home Companion.” I read “Lake Wobegon Days”, which was and is to this day, IMHO, the best description of the best and worst of the Midwest mindset I’ve ever found.

The point is the “Lake Wobegon Effect“. Wikipedia describes it as “the human tendency to overestimate one’s achievements and capabilities in relation to others.” The article, with citations, goes on to say, “The effect has been found repeatedly by many other studies for other traits, including fairness, virtuosity, intelligence, and investing ability, to name a few. It is similar and may be related to in-group bias and wishful thinking.”

Got me thinking about this in terms of Midwestern cities and the Midwestern mindset — under the surface modesty, there is a quiet smugness and complacency — arrogance, even — the Lake Wobegon Effect — that overestimates the quality of Midwestern life. As you and some other commentators have pointed out, Midwesterners are quick to blame external forces for the demise of their cities, which is entirely consistent with a core conviction that we in the Midwest secretly feel ourselves JUST FINE — maybe not quite as smart or modern as the coastal folks. But certainly better than average. Yes, we have our problems, always have, always will. But don’t focus on the negative. We never claimed to be PERFECT — just above-average. Whatever our problems, we’re better off than most, and, when you come right down to it, things are, basically JUST FINE. We get Gentlemen’s C-pluses.

Which, when you think about it, is all anybody should want, because if you get too big for your britches or think TOO BIG, you’re sure to get a comeuppance. Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered. Pride goeth. Etc. We’re not show-offy, always drawing attention to ourselves like the over-achievers. The quarterbacks, prom queens and class valedictorians all must have “something to prove.” They’ve got to be over-compensating for something we have that they’re missing. Only logical explanation. They’re the type who gets all worked up about things instead of appreciating what’s right under their noses. They’re belly-achers with Bad Attitudes who won’t ever accomplish anything because they don’t respect how Things Get Done Here. Why, they can barely hide their scorn for their neighbors, the rest of us. With such a superior attitude, their subscriptions to the New York Times (don’t think we don’t know) and their worrying about things going on in places that don’t affect us at all, who’s going to vote for them? Who do they think they are, anyway? Or, they’re day dreamers who come up with Big Schemes rather than do what everybody else does, which is Work Hard — Work Hard and Save. The ones who sing “Over the Rainbow” instead of feeding the hogs. You know what they lack? COMMON SENSE. They don’t understand that if this new idea of theirs was any good, somebody would’ve already figured it out and put it in place. They just don’t get it, that, in this town, IF YOU BUILD IT, PEOPLE WON’T COME; They’ll stay away to make a point — or maybe show up once, just for a good laugh. And you know what? The prom queens and valedictorians, the know-it-alls with the superior attitudes who want to change things just for the sake of being different — they usually come to a bad end. They’re never satisfied, they get divorced, they lose their business, their kids get dangerous ideas and end up on drugs or pregnant. Or they move away (another form of coming to a Bad End), which is fine with us. They never really did belong here. Probably best for all if they do move somewhere else.

And yet, these are the people who are going to show up with casseroles and jello molds when somebody in your family gets sick. They’re the ones who can spot a phony a mile away, and are There When You Need Them. Aargghh. These are the people whom Dorothy missed so much that she clicked her heels and gave up Oz and Technicolor to return to. (Wish the “Wizard of Oz” had been one reel longer. Would love to know if Dorothy lived to regret her decision. Wonder if she settled down happy, tried to challenge Miss Gulch and start her own broom factory, or ended up trying to conjure Glinda nightly and pray for another cyclone.)

If you haven’t read “Lake Wobegon Days”, think about doing so. In it, Minneapolis figures as Sodom [read: NYC]. The tension that gets set up between the good decent, hard-working people in Lake Wobegon, and those who leave for Minneapolis and return from time to time with foreign uppity strange ways, dubious morals, get-rich-quick schemes and all the rest of it — good and bad — you’ll really get a kick out of it, and, perhaps, get a better handle on articulating what it is that makes us love this region enough to get so damn exasperated by it.

Also brings to mind the lyrics of the great ode to the Midwest — Professor Hill’s “Mothers of River City” number in “The Music Man”, using the pretext of the pool table in the community as a basis for starting the boys’ band (for which Hill will provide uniforms and instruments) — “List’nin’ to some big out-a-town Jasper, hearin’ him tell about horse-race gamblin’. Not a wholesome trottin’ race, no! But a race where they set down right on the horse! Like to see some stuck-up jockey’boy sittin’ on Dan Patch? Make your blood boil? Well, I should say!”

Of course, “Music Man” is the success story that your blog keeps rooting for — out-of-town slick salesman comes in ready to fleece the locals with some fancy, useless ideas. Local intellectual dissident, the librarian, with her Dangerous Books is naturally seduced by the guy, too foolish to see through the scam. City Fathers and Mothers set out to expose the the rip-off and protect the populace. So far, not looking good. But, somehow, miraculously, the good values rub off on the outsider, Marion the Librarian is exonerated, and the town ends up with the damned marching band and a parade. Template for your happy ending. Toledo is saved!

The Next Youth Magnet Cities

The Journal ran an article this week that made the rounds asking six experts to pick the next “youth magnet” cities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was an utterly conventional wisdom list: DC, Seattle, NYC, Portland, Austin, San Jose, Denver, Raleigh, Dallas, Chicago, Boston. Did the Journal really need to convene a panel of experts to come up with this list? Why not ask six random people off the street if you aren’t going to go off the menu, as it were.

Are these really the big stories of tomorrow? As we see from bubble mania and other things, humans have an incredible tendency to simply project present trends indefinitely into the future. The reality of change has a way of sneaking up on us, however. Jim Russell is right to call this “yesterday’s news”. What matters is where the hockey puck is going.

I’m not surprised, but also not discouraged, to see so little Midwest representation on the list. I happen to think the future is one of wide open possibilities. Tomorrow’s winners are yet to be chosen.

Wisconsin Bio-Tech Boom

Wisconsin is doing so well in bio-tech that Minnesota is very concerned about falling behind. This prompted the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to do a two part series on it. Part one is called “A bio border battle“.

Wisconsin has become the regional biotech equivalent of traditional high-tech powerhouses like Boston, Silicon Valley and Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, thanks to strong political support, an influx of investor capital and what is arguably the most formidable university technology transfer program in the country.

“Wisconsin is a very exciting place,” said Peter Bianco, a former executive with Nerites Corp. and a current scientific advisory board member at Flex Biomedical in Madison. “You just get this sense of forward motion. Wisconsin is doing something right.”

The article gives a slew of facts, including noting that since 2007 three biotech spinoffs from UW-Madison sold over over a $1 billion – more than the combined total of the 107 spin-offs from the University of Minnesota in the past 25 years – and that the UW research park currently houses more than 115 companies.

The second part is “Badger state’s biotech boom“. It talks all about the streamlined and entrepreneur friendly IP policies and processes of the University of Wisconsin. Definitely worth a read.

Detroit to Demolish Lafayette Building

Perhaps there is something wrong about valuing the fate of buildings over that of people. Yet most of us cannot helped but be moved by grand expressions of the human spirit, often given corporeal form in the great buildings created by civilizations of all ages. Often our grief is greater for lost architecture than for lost peoples.

Detroit has one of the best and largest collections of pre-war skyscrapers anywhere in America. It is simply one of the 2-3 most important. Yet so many of these buildings have fallen victim to neglect and demolition, as they are functionally obsolete and market demand will not support renovations.

The latest victim is the Lafayette Building, scheduled for demolition soon. It is the twin tower structure in the background:

Here’s a shot of some roof detailing:

Yes, this building is in terrible condition. There are actually trees growing on the roof which led to much of the damage. This interior shots will give you a sense of how bad a shape the building is.

If you want to see more, just click this flick search link.

I understand that in a place like Detroit hard choices have to be made. But the loss of historic structures like this isn’t just a loss to Detroit, it’s a loss to America and the destruction of a piece of our shared heritage. And for the city, this isn’t just a loss of the past, but of the future as well. As we look across America at where urban revitalization has happened, it is often historic areas. Detroit is facing a challenge unlike any other. But I’ve got to believe that the answer doesn’t lie in demolishing precious historic buildings like these.

More coverage on this demolition is available over at Detroit Blog.

Time: Assignment Detroit

Time Magazine is already filing stories from their new Detroit bureau. Here is a link to their series home page. And here are some selected pieces to give you a sense of what they are up to:

The New York Times took a look at Time’s effort in a piece called “Time focues on Detroit, a city sicker than journalism“

More Detroit Agriculture

The Toronto Star has a major piece on urban agriculture in Detroit called “From Motown to Hoetown“. Here’s an excerpt:

“Detroit might seem an unlikely champion of urban agriculture, as the birthplace of the automobile and its farm-devouring offspring – urban sprawl.
But, it has become ground zero for North America’s local food movement.

Last year there were roughly 550 gardens in the city’s urban farming network. This year there are more than 850.

Driving around the city, you can see everything that will make up your dinner – chickens, goats, mushrooms, plum trees, honeybee hives. I passed a whole block growing shoulder-high corn. A horse grazes outside a barn behind a high school. Edith Floyd parks her tractor behind her house – 12 kilometres from city hall, where bureaucrats are scrambling to catch up with the collard greens sprouting on street corners.

Here, a locavore doesn’t eat food that’s travelled 100 kilometres. She eats food that’s travelled 10.

“I picked these this morning,” Floyd says, carrying a laundry hamper filled with watermelons to her stand at the Wayne State University farmers’ market. The chalkboard propped in front reads “Grown in Detroit.”

The article also talks about a person who is looking to do full blown industrial agriculture in the city, though he is running into neighborhood opposition. I think again goes to show that there are some possibilities for the future that exist moreso in Detroit than in any other city.

I’m also interested to see the intersection of urban agriculture with more traditional inner city concerns like food deserts, neighborhood empowerment and social justice. When you look at it through this lens, it is not hard to imagine agriculture as a catalyst for bringing together whites and blacks in a city where racial healing is a prerequisite to civic renewal. You think of terms like local agriculture often in terms of upscale whites buying their organic regional produce at Whole Foods and farmers markets. But in Detroit we also see it as a vehicle for African American empowerment. Can these two very diverse groups somehow find ways to collaborate and start building relationships? It will be interesting to see.

“We’re not just into farming. We’re into community self-determination,” says Malik Yakini, one of the leaders of Detroit’s nascent farming movement. The self-described “social architect” runs an Africentric school and chairs the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. He talks about food justice – where the community reaps both the nutritional and financial rewards of the food it buys.

His D-Town Farm spans two acres of city parkland on Detroit’s western edge, where little bungalows with rusted awnings still line wide streets and a faded ice cream truck does laps of the yellowing boulevard. The volunteer team running it sells its leafy greens and radishes to local restaurants and farmers markets. Next year, it plans to hire two permanent employees.

“We’re trying to create an economic model, to show how agriculture could contribute to the economic recovery of Detroit,” Malini says, pushing into the brush to reveal a plastic greenhouse where oyster mushrooms will soon grow.

Stay tuned. (h/t @gosner)

Kansas City Arena Turns Profit

Here’s one you don’t see every day. Kansas City is about to get a check for $1.8 million in profit sharing from the Sprint Center arena. The arena was built with the idea that KC would attract an NBA or NHL franchise, but that has proven elusive. Interestingly, the lack of such an anchor tenant actually means the arena itself is profitable. As the article puts it:

“When it comes to visitors, concerts and gross revenue, the building, from that standpoint, is an overwhelming success,” he said Tuesday.

Leiweke said the strong, concert-fueled profits at the arena during the fiscal year that ended July 31 means AEG can be more selective about pursuing an NHL or NBA franchise for the facility.

Any professional team would likely demand big chunks of the facility’s revenues from luxury suites, concessions and sponsorships. That would cut the arena’s ultimate profits.

“The economic model of this building is quite successful,” said Leiweke, who was in town for a preseason NHL match Tuesday night between the Los Angeles Kings, owned by AEG, and the New York Islanders.

“The last thing we or the city want to do is throw away that model and make the arena a loss leader with another tenant,” he said.
“It’s a tougher scenario with a professional team,” he added. If there were a team there now, “I’m sure we wouldn’t be able to write a check to the city for $1.8 million.”

While landing a professional sports team as an anchor for the arena remains the ultimate goal for AEG, Leiweke said the presence of a team also could diminish its popularity as a concert venue. Now, the arena has an abundance of options to offer concert promoters.

The team’s games at the arena would remove up to 50 dates from the calendar and also would likely put much of May and June on hold because of potential playoffs, Leiweke said.

“We want an anchor tenant, but the right tenant and the right time,” he said. “We’re going to have to be patient.

“There’s a lot going on with both the NBA and NHL … I think it’s best for us now to stay focused on keeping this a great arena, and the leagues will sort themselves out over the next two years, and when the time comes, we’ll seize the opportunity.”

It’s rare that you ever hear anyone publicly state that an arena is designed to be a loss leader for a community. Kansas City already has two professional sports franchises, which for a city of its size is probably enough. They already get the branding and entertainment benefits of pro sports. It is worth it for them to go for the trifecta? Is there another region as small as KC with all three major leagues?

National and International Roundup

GOOD Magazine has an interesting look at rethinking cities.

Sid Burgess gives us his “7 Blunders of Sidewalkdom“

Six key lessons from Portland’s urbanism.

Squeeze on tax rolls set to tighten in Atlanta. (via @OtisWhite) and Atlanta Beltline feasibility rises to the forefront.

Oklahoma city MAPS out big plans. Yes, OKC too wants to build a downtown mini-Millennium Park.

The Guardian asks whether California will be America’s first failed state.

Long Island’s Changing Face (NYT). Article on immigration to Long Island.

In parched Los Angeles, the streets suddenly run wet (NYT)

Here’s an interesting piece on the high percentage of non-natives in Seattle. This is a huge difference versus the Midwest and explains a lot. (h/t @OtisWhite)

The Guardian: Gordon Brown signals commitment to high speed rail

Unplanned cities could be the future of urbanism (via @GenslerOnCities)

More Midwest

The Columbus Dispatch has a database of Ohio stimulus projects.

Midwest Home takes a look at Lustron homes. (via Worth Your Attention)

A Louisville blogger compares his city’s biking infrastructure with Indianapolis. (via The Indy Cog)

Chicago
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra: America’s Finest Orchestra (The Telegraph)
Architectural review of the Trump Tower (Blair Kamin @ Tribune)

Cincinnati
About Cincinnati and how I ended up there (Walking Green) via VisuaLingual

Cleveland
Cleveland Orchestra to establish New York residency (NYT)
The Gay Games are coming to Cleveland in 2014 (Plain Dealer)

Detroit
More minorities leaving Detroit (Detroit News)
Michigan is singing the white collar blues (WSJ) – via Rust Wire
In defense of Detroit (Forbes)
Five one way tickets to Michigan please (Jeff Bocan @ Huffington Post)
Detroit mayor’s tough love poses risk in election (NYT)
Can Detroit stop the bleeding? (Jeff Gerritt @ Free Press)

Kansas City
Kansas City has lost top three convention (KC Star)

Milwaukee
Milwaukee lands federal grant to develop water cluster (BizTimes)

Pittsburgh
What’s at stake for Pittsburgh? (Bruce Katz)
Google CEO: Pittsburgh’s economy a model for others to follow (Post-Gazette)

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

3 Comments
Topics: Architecture and Design, Historic Preservation
Cities: Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Mega-Regional Reputation and Other Midwest Miscellany

NCR Leaves Dayton for Atlanta

There was terrible news for Dayton this week as the city’s last Fortune 500 company, NCR, founded locally in 1884, announced it was moving its headquarters to Atlanta. The Dayton Daily News is the place for complete coverage.

This is bad news not just for Dayton, but for the state of Ohio and the entire Midwest. Firstly, it illustrates the plight of the smaller cities of the Midwest, the ones below one million in metro area population that I usually don’t write much about. These cities, including places like Dayton, Youngstown, and Toledo, are often struggling. Unless they are a state capital and/or home to a major state university, they just don’t seem to have quite the scale necessary to operate in the globalized economy. These cities have special challenges and I won’t profess to have answers for them.

Secondly, this is further damage to the economic reputation of the Midwest as a whole. Loyal readers know that I’ve been skeptical of cross-regional collaboration as a panacea (though I’ve also written some positive things about it). However, there are clearly issues that affect the Midwest as a whole. It has, for example, a collective reputation as the Rust Belt that probably only Chicago is able to overcome.

This reputation creates formidable brand headwinds in trying to attract the talent needed to compete in the 21st century. The Atlanta Business Chronicle had an interesting take on the NCR move, with one anonymous source attributing it to talent issues with Dayton. “They [NCR] can’t recruit talent to move to Dayton, Ohio.”

So what, you might say. It’s Dayton. But my town is way cooler than Dayton. Well, the problem extends well beyond Dayton. Consider Ann Arbor. If any city in the Midwest can claim to be a winner in a the knowledge economy, it has to be the home of U of M, the best public university in the Midwest. But according to an article in the Journal, “Despite Ann Arbor’s educated work force, employers here find Michigan’s reputation as a failing manufacturing economy can deter potential hires from moving to the state.”

In short, this thing affects everybody. Even the best regional performers will be fighting horrible brand headwinds as long as the region in which they are embedded continues to fail. It’s like a larger version of what I’ve long said about the Hoosier State, that there can’t be a long term prosperous Indianapolis without a prosperous Indiana.

The lessons of Dayton and NCR are not being lost on people locally and around the state at least. Local blog Dayton Most Metro asks, “Are we ready to wake up yet?“

And a columnist in the Cleveland Plain Dealer chimes in with a call to arms for his city.

When Ohio cities lose storied corporate birthrights to the likes of Beijing, Calcutta, or even the green fields of Ohio suburbia, I understand potentially insurmountable market forces at work.

But when we continue to lose to the likes of Georgia, I only recognize underperforming leadership and a criminal failure to anticipate market realities.

In trying to understand the meaning of it all, we should reflect on the somber and lonely sentiments of a Dayton Daily News editorial that noted Wednesday that the city is now on its own.

Closer to home, Cuyahoga County continues to inch closer to its civic funeral. Not only do we continue to bleed off population and shutter what is left of our industrial base, we continue to act in a predictable political fashion that hastens our day of reckoning.

The inability of Cuyahoga County officials to agree on government reform tells the world that Northeast Ohio continues to be no place to do business. Like Dayton, our region remains a corporate cherry-picker’s fantasy.

Soon there will be nothing left to govern in Cuyahoga County.

Technology Rankings

The Milken Institute this week released their “tech pole” study of which metro areas are technology hot spots.

Ed Morrison over at Brewed Fresh Daily put up this nice map:

This study operates on something called “Metropolitan Divisions”, which for some places is the same thing as the metro area, but some big cities like Chicago and Detroit are split into multiple of them. That explains constructs like Lake County-Kenosha. Here are how my Midwest cities stacked up on the top 50:

#14 – Chicago
#17 – Minneapolis-St. Paul
#31 – Kansas City
#33 – St. Louis
#41 – Indianapolis
#45 – Columbus

Milwaukee, Louisville, Cleveland, and Cincinnati did not make the list. Detroit’s core region didn’t either, though the north suburban Warren MD clocked in at #30.

On a related note, Joel Kotkin asks if your city is safe from the tech bust.

Cities Where It’s Good to Be Goth

Even Gothic Beauty magazine is getting into the ratings game, publishing their “Dark Cities 2009″ survey in the most recent issue. Here are where Midwest cities came in on the top 25:

#4 – Chicago
#6 – Detroit
#9 – Cleveland
#12 – Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Columbus, Ohio got an Honorable Mention.

Downtown Kansas City ROI

Seeking to determine the results from its downtown redevelopment efforts, Kansas City measured its increase in in city income taxes downtown between 2001 and 2008. According to the study, tax revenue is up by 69% downtown versus only 18% city wide. Also up, business license taxes by 49%, as well as major increases in sales, restaurant, and hotel taxes. The article doesn’t say whether rates increased on any of these, but I’d be shocked of they hadn’t on the hospitality side. Overall, revenue is up 46% downtown vs. 33% city wide.

Among the drivers of this are a new IRS headquarters with 3,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 seasonal ones, and a new H&R Block headquarters with 1,600 employees.

Hat tip BlogKC for this article.

Indy and Indiana Get Nice Profile in The Economist

The Economist has an article profiling Indiana this week. It praises the state’s transition process to to knowledge economy while acknowledging the major challenges it faces. It is pretty good at talking about various regions of the state. Here is what they had to say about Indianapolis:

Unlike blighted Detroit, Indianapolis is a lively centre, with sports stadiums and a fine symphony orchestra. Each year the Indy 500 car race draws 300,000 visitors. Mr Daniels, meanwhile, is an excellent manager. He earned the state its first AAA credit rating and has sought new firms by keeping taxes low and investing in infrastructure. Though every state wants to be a hub for life sciences, Indiana really is one, home to pharmaceutical giants such as Eli Lilly and medical-device manufacturers such as Zimmer. Life sciences accounted for 23% of all job growth from 2001 to 2007.

Zoo Interchange Price Tag Shocker

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation wants to rebuild the Zoo interchange in Milwaukee at the astonishing cost of $2.3 billion. That’s not a misprint.

I’m all in favor of investment to improve our highway infrastructure, but something seems out of line here. To put this in perspective, INDOT is widening 11 miles of I-465 on the west side of Indianapolis, including full pavement reconstruction, and full interchange redesign and reconstruction, including two freeway-freeway interchanges. The price tag on that project is a much more reasonably $550 million. Other than the underpowered I-70 interchange, which was reduced to an inferior option to keep the project on budget, this is a pretty much first class project, with very nice, beautiful overpasses, ped/bike infrastructure, etc.

I’d say some a lot more detail is required to explain why this project is so out of sight pricey.

Over the Rhine

Over the Rhine is a neighborhood just north of downtown Cincinnati that has an amazing intact stock of historic buildings in an incredibly dense urban fabric. If fully developed, this area would equal many thriving Chicago neighborhoods in density. It has been decayed for many years. For at least the last 15 it has been predicted to be the next hip neighborhood in town, but has suffered many setbacks, not least of which was a high profile race riot in 2001. The area appears to be on an upswing today, so we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, here’s a five minute video Urban Cincy points us at talking about the neighborhood, its history, and above all the community and people who live there today.

For those of you who don’t have time to watch the video, here are some teaser pictures that Urban Cincy took of the area recently:

Another Impossibility City

This time it is Evanston, Illinois, which wants to clamp down on the Latino dominated industry of alley scavenging. This is where people in trucks roll through alley looking for scrap metal or other recyclables that people have left out for them.

This is like the ultimate win-win. People get rid of trash for free. Entrepreneurs who may not other wise have good options for earning money get paid. And stuff gets recycled. All done on a profitable, economic basis. What’s not to love?

Apparently the city doesn’t like competition to its monopoly trash hauling service. They feel they are missing out on revenue from the special fees they impose on residents and businesses to get rid to special items. Color me unsympathetic. The city is raising the specter of theft, but as someone who lived in Evanston for 3-4 years, I never once had a problem like this. Everybody knows that in the city you put something out in the alley when you don’t want it anymore and it either gets taken for reuse or recycling, or the city picks it up. It’s clearly a smoke screen. Let’s hope sanity prevails here.

Selling Transit

The Overhead Wire posted three commercials that were used during a referendum campaign to repeal a transit tax in Charlotte. These are extremely effective and demonstrate that a good sales job is a probably one of the reasons Charlotte got its rail system built. These are 30 seconds each. If the embedded videos don’t show up, click here

Perspectives of Denver

To see what a non-Midwest city is doing, let’s check out this outsider’s view of Denver by Greg Heller.

He’s very impressed:

I spent the past few days at a conference in Denver, Colorado. And, I’ll tell you, that city impressed the heck out of me. It’s a medium-sized city (just under 600,000 residents), and you can walk across its downtown in about twenty minutes. While the scale is much smaller than my hometown of Philadelphia, Denver seemed to be doing things other cities are only dreaming of.

Denver has a beautiful and efficient light-rail and bus system. The 16th Street pedestrian mall is vibrant, beautiful, and well-used. A free (!) two-way bus system runs every few minutes to take passengers across the fifteen blocks of stores, restaurant, entertainment, benches, trees, lamps, and chess tables. They also have bike sharing!

Cherry Creek and the Platte River run along the west side of the downtown with an extraordinary set of walking and biking trails. At the confluence of the creek and river, one encounters beautiful Commons Park and a stunning vista of the skyline. The gorgeous Millennium Bridge takes pedestrians from Commons Park to the pedestrian mall. The scenery is beautiful, all the while, surrounded by the Rockies.

The architecture definitely impresses. I am not usually a Daniel Liebeskind fan, but his Denver Art Museum is stunning. The new, edgy buildings of the civic center mix well with the historic architecture of the state capitol and other older government buildings. The Denver Convention Center is also a pretty exciting building (yes, that’s a big blue bear pushing against the wall).

Everywhere I looked there was major public art. This is a city that clearly cares about creating a beautiful place for its citizens and visitors. Meanwhile, a host of new condo and apartment buildings are filling in the landscape, bringing more residents downtown.

But he also notes the challenges:

As I walked for hours around and outside Denver’s central business district, it was clear that despite its stunning success stories, Denver has a long way to go. The landscape quickly transforms from urban to suburban. Walking east out of the downtown, I saw the thriving center morph into a landscape of check cashing and fast food restaurants. Even downtown there is not all that much there yet. Parking lots still dot the urban landscape.
…
As is true anywhere, all is not sunny in Denver. The city has seen new challenges arise over the past 15 years. The city’s foreign-born population nearly tripled from 1990 to 2000. However, only about 8% of Hispanics in Denver hold a bachelors degree, and the city’s poverty rate is about 18% for individuals. Meanwhile, the state of Colorado had major job loss in the beginning of the 21st century. Denver is facing serious issues of inequality between the minority and white populations, a need for more jobs and affordable housing.

More Midwest

Chicago
City losing war against sight blight (Tribune)
A nice profile of CTA president Richard Rodriguez (Red Eye)

Columbus
Small enhancements can make a big impact downtown (Dispatch)
Chase to add 1000 jobs (Dispatch) – Remember what I said about Midwest BPO?

Detroit
Day of infamy (Daniel Howes @ Detroit News)
GM bankruptcy is epic fall (Daniel Howes @ Detroit News)
Ford gives model for recovery (Daniel Howes @ Detroit News)

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

37 Comments
Topics: Economic Development, Historic Preservation, Transportation, Urban Culture
Cities: Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Chicago: East Chicago’s Industrial Past

“My family worked at U. S. Steel. It’s humbling to see this video. I miss home. I’m in Iraq.” – LANC1982, commenting on this video

“I am 19 years old and have worked in the East Chicago Inland Steel plant for over a year now… my family has worked in this mill for 3 generations and this video pays tribute to those that have worked here and all steel workers everywhere…Stay safe guys!” – v8stangugy, commenting on this video

If you want to understand the industrial Midwest, this four minute film by East Chicago artist Thomas Frank and the quotes above tell you everything you need to know. Last I looked this video only had 500 views. It should have more like 500,000. I think it’s as good as the original music video. Please pass it along. If the embedded video doesn’t show up for you, click this link.

Normally I’d add extensive commentary, but this video speaks for itself.

Thomas also runs a blog you might want to read.

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

10 Comments
Topics: Historic Preservation, Sustainability, Urban Culture
Cities: Chicago

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Midwest Miscellany

How many people want to move to the Midwest? Not many, according to a new study from the Pew Charitable Trust. Among the 30 largest metros in the Midwest, the eight least favorite in the country were all in the Midwest. The only Midwest city not in that group at the bottom was Chicago, and it has nothing to write home about, coming in at #18, well down the list. Usual suspects like Denver, San Diego, and Seattle top the league tables. I haven’t digested this fully myself. When did they survey people, for example? If it was in the winter…. Anyhow, I don’t think this will surprise anyone. And it goes again to illustrate the long road ahead even top performing Midwest cities have. Cincinnati was second to last on the list, and UncleRando over at UrbanCincy posted his response to that finding.

I know many folks won’t care for Wendell Cox, the pro-sprawl, anti-transit gadfly, but his group recently published their annual survey on housing affordability. The Midwest scores well here, with Indianapolis once again topping the list of most affordable markets. Of course, the story above might have something to do with the low prices, but you can’t dismiss the benefits of flat, wide open spaces.

Big news out of Chicago this week as an Illinois appeals court struck down the city’s landmark protection ordinance. Loyal readers of this blog know that I am not a fan of historic districts. The court struck down the Chicago ordinance for much the same reason I don’t like them: overly vague criteria that more or less give officials the right to make totally arbitrary judgements and historic commissions that are stacked with activists of one type or another. You can read reaction from Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin here and from noted Chicago architecture blogger Lynn Becker here.

I would like to stress that I am a big fan of historic preservation (see “Preserving our Mid-Century Heritage” for an example). I actually don’t have any problem with narrowly tailored historic preservation ordinances that are designed to protect exceptional, bona fide significant sites. In fact, I think at least part of the Chicago approach, landmarking of individual structures, is the best way to go versus districts in most cases. The big problem I have is that there has been an extreme proliferation of historic districts around the country of dubious merit, almost entirely driven by upscale neighbors who are mostly interested in achieving land use control that is more properly the province of zoning. The fact that unlike zoning, historic districts are totally arbitrary, with no objective standards, is part of their appeal. Often the neighbors don’t even disguise that this is their real reason for wanting one. They say that want to “preserve the character” of their neighborhood. That’s exactly the same argument people made against fair housing laws. Indeed, I think there’s an argument to be made that historic districts should be invalidated on fair housing grounds. Where ever you find historic districts, extremely high home prices that render the district unaffordable to much of the community are often found right along with them. When I was living in Evanston, Illinois some years back, a group of neighbors promoted a historic district with the explicit intention of preventing Northwestern University from establishing any facilities in their neighborhood. They were quite transparent about this in the media. These types of arguments – over use types, density, etc – are more properly the province of the normal planning and zoning process, where neighbors do in fact have a seat at the table, if not the dictatorial power they would love to have.

The Chicago Sun-Times profiles new Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman. In this, Huberman acknowledges in the media for the first time what was already widely known, namely that he’s gay. (hat tip Chicago Carless).

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP – the region’s MPO among other things), has published some uber-cool maps of traffic congestion. Read ‘em and weep. I’d love to see other cities produce great graphs like this. Here’s a sample from the Kennedy Expressway:

On, and it a bit of blog craziness, it seems the developer of the north side Wilson Yards project is suing to uncover the identity of bloggers who have criticized the project. Classy.

And here’s a great blog entry from a guy who walked 23 miles of Kedzie Avenue. Great stuff.

The Twin Cities are usually considered among the top cities for life sciences, particularly medical devices, in the United States. But an interesting report out this week suggests that Minnesota is in fact falling behind in medical technology. I always find these types of studies interesting. There are usually two flavors. Flavor one is designed to showcase how great a region is doing. Flavor two is designed to show that a region is falling behind, usually as part of a call to action for some type of public policy response. It would be interesting to see the dynamics of how these get produced. Nevertheless, I do find it interesting that Minnesota is doing a “type two” study. The BioBusiness Destination 2025 study web site is here. The report isn’t online. I’ve emailed to ask for a copy so stay tuned.

There’s a really awesome thread over at DetroitYES with a pictures of historic street lights. Incredibly, many of the street lights in operation in Detroit are a century old or so. One advantage of having a city that is broke, I guess, is that so much really old stuff just gets left in place. Again, these things appear not to just be old, but actually still in service. This perhaps points to an asset Detroit has that no other city can match. Remember how I said we should invert the world? How many other cities have such a genuine collection of historic artifacts in their town? Take your weakness and make it into a strength somehow.

Nuvo Newsweekly in Indianapolis reports that they were the only local mainstream media outlet to cover the Pride of Indy band playing at the Obama innauguration. Can we imagine this happening for any group other than gays and lesbians? I’ll say it again, Indy will never reach its potential as a city if it treats its LGBT community like second class citizens.

Let me put the argument in terms of pure self-interest. Indy can build the best airport in the United States, can have the greatest branding campaign out there, can spend a billion on first class stadiums and convention centers, but if it actively denigrates its gay and lesbian population, all of that hard work and money will never take the city where it wants to go. I showed before that people glom on to anecdotes that reinforce what they already believe. People around the country think Hoosiers are socially backwards retrogrades. Look at the top of this post for what people think of the Midwest. I don’t happen to agree with that, but stuff like this only let’s people feel good about their stereotyping.

Like it or not, the fact is that LGBT acceptance is going mainstream in America today. Heck, as my story above about Chicago appointing a gay schools chief shows, in lots of places, it is already here. You can treat this fact like all too many Midwest cities treated globalization – by sticking your head in the sand and pretending it doesn’t exist because you don’t like it – but we’ve seen where that gets you. I am not saying that Indianapolis needs to try to be a gay mecca or do anything whatsoever special for gays and lesbians. But the city’s LGBT community cannot be singled out for second class treatment. It is impossible to conceive of a local high school band, or African American band at the inauguration not getting coverage. Now let me say that the Star did give coverage to the Indy Pride parade last year, and did a nice story on the local gay library. So I don’t think this is actively malicious. But I do believe the local media needs to be sensitive to things like this, and, as they say in the business world, set the tone from the top about how things need to be.

Now, since I’ve often argued that following trends isn’t always the best approach, let me just say that if you think there’s a way to profit from slighting your gay community, by all means make the case. But I don’t think there’s a good one to be made. Maybe there are people out there that feel so strongly that homosexuality is wrong that they are willing to go down with the ship, so to speak, just as we’ve seen so many old manufacturing towns fall into ruin as their residents refused to change. I certainly hope, however, this is a view held by only a small minority.

On a more positive note, the IBJ covers the formation of the Central Indiana Transit Task Force. This is a huge positive development in Indianapolis transit. The MPO has studied rail lines and done great work in getting ridership figures and such accepted by the FTA. But this group is going to take a more holistic look at transit locally. What’s more, these are people who can build concensus in the community around actually moving forward with a system that is likely to cost a significant amount of local dollars to implement. I’ve said it before, but Indy has one of the strongest “civic sectors” in America. When the local armada gets into formation, watch out. Because when Indy decides it is going to do something, it does it. We’ll see what emerges from this, but I’m very optimistic. Oh, and right on cue, Mayor Ballard adds his support with an op-ed in the Star.

Over in Ohio, Governor Ted Strickland is calling for a massive overhaul of schools. I haven’t looked at this in specifics yet myself, but it definitely appears worth study.

From the “Simply Unbelievable” department comes the high profile story from Brandeis University, which wants to close its campus Rose Art Museum, and sell off all the art works to raise general funds for the school. This is simply unconscionable. The worst part is not what just floating this idea does to Brandeis, namely deservedly turn its name to mud, but the chill it sends across museums nationally. Expect that donors are going to be demanding ever greater ironclad legal strings on their donations, which only will hamper the mission of museums over time as more and more encumbrances are piled on. In the long term, even the most well-intentioned strings lose their meaning and come to hinder rather than help or preserve. The challenge is that when you can’t trust museum administrators, this is what you get. Terrible news indeed.

A group called The Transport Politic has a proposal for a national high speed rail network. Their Midwest segment differs significantly from the Midwest high speed rail association proposal.

Remember that fantastic “Bird’s Nest” stadium in Beijing? Apparently it now sits empty, with paint peeling off, and is planned to anchor a shopping center.

More News Briefs:

Chicago:
South Shore reject cooperation on buses. (Times of Northwest Indiana). Hello???????
When CTA drivers runs light, you pay (Tribune – Hilkevitch)

Cincinnati:
Delta Queen to become hotel in Chattanooga. (Business First of Louisville). Thank you Congress.
Orchestra falls $3.8 million short (Enquirer)

Indianapolis:
Master plan for IUPUI (Circle and Squares)
City’s grades on snow have a long way to go. (Indy Star – Tully).
Snowbound streets have residents fuming. (Indy Star)

Louisville:
$20 million gift to fund UofL energy center (Courier-Journal)

St. Louis:
Billions of dollars blown in regional development subsidies (Post-Dispatch)

Twin Cities:
Minnesota road/bridge projects could get green light (Star-Tribune)
Noblesville ready to start $20 million road project (Indy Star).

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

8 Comments
Topics: Economic Development, Historic Preservation, Talent Attraction, Transportation
Cities: Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Minneapolis-St. Paul

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Preserving Our Mid-Century Heritage

And they are under enormous economic pressure. The inner ring suburban areas where these buildings are often concentrated are especially feeling the heat. Residents are fleeing to the boomburgs on the edge, and the businesses are following them. You see this decay in cities across America. I’ve said before this is one of the great challenges of our era. I’d argue that suburban revitalization is a much harder challenge than urban revitalization. And there are no proven strategies yet. I spoke with a neighborhood group in just such a place that was very eager to be put in touch with good examples around the country of how to improve areas like theirs, but I wasn’t able to help all that much. (Stay tuned to this blog on that matter, however). It’s not difficult to see how any development, even destructive redevelopment, would be viewed as positive, and that these neighborhoods could fall prey to the next failed utopia designed by “experts”.

When you see your neighborhood commerical district decaying, when houses are starting to show signs of lack of maintenance, when people are scared about the future of their neighborhood, saving “old” buildings, particularly those everyday ones, is simply not a priority. As the problems of inner ring suburbs become more of a national crisis, the pressure will only ratchet up even more and the balance swing even further in favor of destructive redevelopment. Especially as the suburban form is considered obsolete and unsustainable by “progressives” today just as old small buildings on a gridiron street pattern were once considered obsolete by yesterday’s generation.

Let us hope that we show that we really have advanced and learned something. Let us hope that we’re equal to the task and ultimately merit praise not opprobrium from our successors.

Here are photos of the development proposal I mentioned. The new renderings aren’t bad. The old building isn’t anything noteworthy. The facade changes could probably be changed at some point. In fact, someone tells me that’s actually a 19th century building with a mid-century facade tacked on. It’s not my intent to criticize the specific proposal. In fact, redevelopment on that block is very welcome. But the tragedy could be that, while in each individual case the decision is in favor of demolition or destructive redevelopment, but taken as a whole those individual actions lead us to a place we’d rather not end up.

First, the building as it. It’s the one in the middle. Ask yourself what your reaction to this building is. Imagine how people 50 years ago might have reacted to this building when it was yet another 19th century generic facade.

Even I would probably suggest that the ground level needs some work.

Here’s the proposed rendering. While not a super-star project, it seems like a solid design.

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

21 Comments
Topics: Architecture and Design, Historic Preservation

Sunday, October 26th, 2008

More Louisville Transit Goodness

In my Pecha Kucha presentation and my list of quick, easy, and cheap improvements to Indianapolis transit, I suggested a better “How to Ride” guide and video. Well, Indy may not have done that, but Louisville did. Here’s a cool rap video on how to use a TARC bike rack on the bus.

I actually think this video could be improved. There’s too much focus on the performers rather than the actual content of how you are supposed to actually use the bike rack, but still it’s a great entry. I particularly like the use of rap to make it interesting and not just a dry instructional video.

Moving on, my previous posts about Louisville’s historic rail systems (see here and here) created some controversy. A commenter named “timecruncher” said:

“People, people! Louisville did not have an ‘el system.’ There were some grade separations on existing steam rail lines that were built to separate rail main lines from street crossings where lenghty delays were problematic.

“The abandoned Baxter Avenue station was built by the L&N Railroad and served its trains between Louisville, Cincinnati and Lexington (and points in eastern Kentucky). The CCC&StL bridge — also known as the ‘Big Four’ bridge, did, indeed, carry electric interurbans of the Indiana Railroad and its predicessors across the Ohio River, but it was not in any way an elevated passenger railway in the sense of Chicago or New York systems. By the same token, streetcars of the Louisville & New Albany Electric Railway (The Daisy Line), used to operate over the K&IT bridge between Portland and Vincennes Street in New Albany. These streetcars were wide-guage to operate on Louisville Railway trackage on the Kentucky side of the river. This was streetcar service, however, and simply operated on a freight railroad river bridge!

“Steam (and later diesel) – powered passenger trains used all of these bridges at one time or another, but commuter rail service in and out of Louisville on the major rail lines never amounted to more than a couple of ‘accommodation’ trains out to LaGrange or Bardstown.

“Baxter Avenue station is no more than a sad testament to the loss of good intercity rail passenger service. This was once a convenient boarding spot for north and eastbound trains that did not require driving downtown to Union Station. L&N ceased using it in the early 1960s.”

This got David Schooling’s authorship juices flowing. He sent the note and photos below to make his side of the case.

“Louisville did indeed have an elevated electric train system. This was the Kentucky & Indiana Bridge Company’s ORIGINAL 5.5 mi. elevated from Louisville to New Albany IN. In the downtown Louisville the El segment was 15 blocks along with three elevated stations, stretching primarily along the Ohio riverfront wharf area. The trains upon it were three cars or longer and multi-unit, NOT TROLLEYS.

“This is an indisputable, concrete historical fact. Sources are vast and deep and far too numerous however here’s a short list; Kentucky Historical Society, Louisville Board of trade, Harpers Weekly News, the Encyclopedia of Louisville, Local Libraries, University of Louisville.

“From the 1880’s forward not only grade separations, but lengthy elevated rail projects and structures were completed in and around Louisville, not just downtown, from the 1880’s till the late 1930’s. The end result of 50 years left Louisville with numerous sections of elevated rail. These were done by The K & I, Ill. Central, New York Central, C&O. and Pennsylvania Lines.

“Due to a quickly mushrooming population, early in Louisville’s history when it was the nation’s 12th largest city, there were repeated calls for a metro system and or subway. Neither was accomplished, instead one entrepreneurial group installed in 1886 an elevated commuter train system with operations starting simultaneous to the opening of their newly built rail and horse drawn conveyance bridge. That train went from a steam operation to being electrified in 1893.

“Some get confused on several points. The Baxter El and The Baxter El station which never saw electrification. It was primarily an in-city elevated boarding station for numerous long distance passenger trains. No freight was ever handled only baggage, mail and parcels. It was a passenger station only. Commuter trains to Bloomfield did run from this station as well as other noted stops and stations on this line such as; Crescent Hill, St. Matthews, Long Run, Simpsonville, Scotts Station and Shelbyville as commuters took advantage of the close-city portions of the numerous long distant trains scheduled to and from this station.

“No one ever insinuated that the Baxter line was electric, and conversely not being electric does not negate the fact that it was an elevated line crossing five major streets, with an elevated station and an elevated line running over one mile in length that also happened to serve commuters also. It functioned indisputably an elevated commuter and passenger line.

“The Big Four bridge and attendant elevated approach lines, is an interesting item. First of all, the original 1895 version had perhaps the highest elevated station in the world at an amazing 60 ft. in the air. To deny the fact that elevated structures with trains atop them were elevateds is non-sense.

“They were over three miles of long elevateds in three different sections, each elevated segment had rail still over 50 ft in the air in the air well over a mile from the actual Big 4 bridge, all manner of trains steam, electric, diesel, passenger, local passenger commuter, freight were atop these elevateds and some even stopped disgorging and picking up passengers at the one of the highest elevated stations in the United States, in Jeffersonville Indiana. The 2 1/2 story station elevated over 60’in the sky was locally dubbed ‘Sky station’.

“No the Louisville’s elevated system was never equal to – ‘the Chicago or New York’ systems. I have never taken such a position, but it is simply a fascinating look back a history and comes as total shock to many that we ever had such things not because they weren’t there or didn’t exist, but because they are very ethereal and almost totally unknown, even to some rail fans. In the plainest terms, no one has ever heretofore systematically documented and organized a coherent presentation of Louisville’s elevateds and electric trains.

“However the long and especially the early sections Louisville’s elevateds actually do bear striking physical, structural and photographic resemblances to systems in those huge metropolises.

“Admittedly our buildings aren’t as impressive but neither are we an enormous mega city like those megalopolises either.

“Here are also some really quirky, historical facts that do indeed tie into to Chicagoland. The early ‘L’ third rail electric train that exhibited in that city in 1893 for 8 weeks was packed up and shipped directly to Louisville. Here it ran at grade level for four years around Central Park, with many more passengers here, than there, many hundreds of thousands rode the 3rd rail trains here in Louisville. Who knew Louisville had a ‘THIRD RAIL ELECTRIC TRAIN’ and had it for years?

“Below is a K & I Bridge Co. elevated commuter train, was rolled out the concurrent, the same day the bridge opened in 1886.

“In 1893, that early steam commuter line converted to electric equipment. Thereafter the steam equipment was restricted to freight trains.

“The first electric elevated train in the United States ran over the ‘Daisy’ line elevated trackage between Louisville KY and New Albany, IN. The Chicago elevated ‘L’ trains converted from steam to electricity in 1895. This is also absolute historical fact. Check in with the University.

“Years later in 1908 when a new operator bought the bridge trackage rights, and equipment, and decided they were smarter than the K&I, and would henceforth start running single electric cars, not trains (excepting peak/rush hours) and furthermore negated the wonderful totally intersection and traffic free elevated route, by deciding to down ramp immediately over the bridge to fight 30+ blocks of traffic, and switched gauge to match street car gauge, and discontinued running on the elevated system, THAT’S when the trolleys ran.

“Was the new owner’s strategy successful? Yes and No. The new scheme certainly worked, but two car train units (broad gauge) consisting of power car and trail car equipment were still very necessary, due to the immense patronage the Elevated trains had racked up. The original K&I elevated trains had over 1.5 millions in ridership by 1907 by 1908 it peaked at 1.8 million.

“The downside was the longer transit times and commuters suffered in a staggering fashion. The direct and traffic hassle free elevated route of the elevated delivered passengers from New Albany to any of the downtown stations at Seventh, Fourth, or First Street elevated stations in 10 to 12 minutes. Ostensibly the idea was surely that by mixing single cars along with the trains, the Ridership would surely soar exponentially, Right? Wrong. Given over 30 blocks of street running to reach downtown, the new formula didn’t have a prayer of further exponential growth.

“That particular route was known as the ‘Daisy Line’ in various forms and iterations however lasted from 1886 until 1945 and even an afterlife as ‘Daisy Line’ bus transit up until the 1960’s. There was at some point single car movements over the K&I bridge, but timecrusher just did not know the entire story and focused only on a single facet of history.

“Louisville additionally enjoyed a thriving commuter train network, with minor and major rail lines providing that network.

“Railroads of the K & I, L & N, Louisville & Northern, Interstate, Indiana R.R., Louisville & Interurban, B & O, Ill. Central, Southern and Pennsylvania all provided inner city as well as suburban commuter trains with over 250 stations and stops on transit maps from 1910.

“Here the last electric train over the Big Four Bridge into Louisville, on Oct. 31st 1939, runs 50’ high on the Butchertown elevated.

The 16 car B&O Commuter trains served the Indiana Army Ordinance plant in Charlestown, Indiana, located 16 miles north of Louisville. The WWII train commuters arrived on three different shifts, as the plant was open and operating round-the-clock, or as we would say in today’s terms 24/7.

“Commuter trains also ran between Louisville and the Armor Center a Ft. Knox, 30 miles to the southwest.

“Over a long time span and certainly NOT just during war time, there was a tremendous amount of commuter train activity in, through, and all around Louisville and its surrounding bedroom communities.

“Other commuter trains, steam and diesel, ran from Louisville to: Prospect, Harrods Creek, Shepherdsville, Bardstown, Beuchel, Jeffersontown, Fisherville, Crescent Hill, Anchorage, Buckner, LaGrange, Pewee Valley, Eastwood, Simpsonville, Shelbyville, and in Indiana: New Albany, Clarksville, Jeffersonville, Charlestown, Sellersburg, Memphis, Scottsburg and many more.

“In 1910 there were more than 250 local and suburban stops and stations that had regular daily commuter service, some 3 or 4 times daily, others hourly. However, the exceptional and original El, ran from 5 am to 2:30 am, with 15 or 20 minute frequencies, until 9 pm after which it was on 30 minute schedules. This was not an interurban rather it was an inner-city train, transiting thru total cityscape, albeit it did cross state and municipal boundaries. When the original electric equipment was ordered for the El train in 1893, the owners specified they wanted the latest, modern and ‘exactly the same equipment as on the New York City roads’.

“Oh Yeah!!! We had commuter AND actual elevated trains – in spades.

“Another unique feature not to be forgotten or taken lightly, the original El also connected with pass thru trackage directly within one of the cities large Rail Stations at Seventh Street or ‘Central’ Station and at the next stop, the El station was atop the very center of the Steamer Ship Wharf.

“In other words it was a rapid, elevated connected to multi-modal travel, with train connections, via the Southern, C&O, B&O, Illinois Central, New York Central, to all cities North and East and some West and Local Steamboat excursion trips plus actual Steamship Line transit to Evansville, St. Louis, New Orleans, Southern Ill., Cincinnati, Wheeling & Pittsburg – multi-modal connections, long line rail & steamship via a single elevated commuter line.”

More great stuff. Thanks to timecrusher and David.

One correction on a previous post. One of the pictures I had posted of the Louisville freight subway system was actually the Chicago system. It should have been labeled as such, but I missed that. To avoid confusion, I deleted that photo. But Louisville did indeed have a freight subway system. Here’s a blowup of the pic.

Here’s another modern day Louisville tidbit. The Louisville Water Company is building a long, underground tunnel through bedrock to serve as a natural filtration tunnel. During construction, this has a rail line running through it. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

3 Comments
Topics: Historic Preservation, Transportation
Cities: Louisville

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

Nashville: The Next Boomtown of the New South?

I traveled to Nashville for the first time in 2007, spending most of my time in the downtown area. I posted my impressions here, noting the high growth and high ambition level as well as the fantastic freeways, but also the generally unimpressive development and built environment.

I did another fly-by in April of this year. I made a conscious effort to try to get out and see different areas this time around. My tour guide was an Indy native who had spent the last decade or so in the northeast. He’d moved to the city about a year previously, so was seeing some of this for the first time himself. But it worked well, I thought.

I believe Nashville is an extremely important case study for metros in the Midwest to examine. Here is a city that was a sleepy state capital for many years while other southern towns such as Atlanta and Charlotte took off. Then it began heading on an upwards trajectory. It is not yet at such a high growth rate that it appears to be a completely different sort of place than the Midwest. It’s population growth is only 1.9% per year, for example, not much higher than Midwest growth champion Indianapolis at 1.5%. But all the trend lines are accelerating. Corporate headquarters are flocking, in city development is booming, transplants from the north are arriving. It would not surprise me to see this city pop into a higher gear when the economy turns upwards again.

Nashville is a great case study because we can observe the inflection point in growth more or less as it happens. And also try to make sense of what is driving it. And to understand why Midwestern cities aren’t seeing it. I look at Nashville and ask myself: what does this place have on the Midwest? Compare it to Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, Kansas City, and Milwaukee and see if anything jumps out that would explain it. Some unique factor of Nashville. Consider:

Nashville is smaller than most of those places today, so it isn’t size
It can’t be just because Nashville is in the south. Memphis in the same state and is hurting. Birmingham remains a sleepy place.
It’s college degree attainment of 28.3% is below many comparable Midwest cities
It has no particular unique industry or assets. It can cite its Music City USA image, which certainly drives tourism and money. But Midwestern cities have other equivalent things they can counter with. Plus, it was Music City USA all the time it was a sleepy state capital as well.
Just being the state capital doesn’t explain it. Indy and Columbus are both in that role and are getting out paced by Nashville.
Having a consolidated city-county government is not unique. Indy and Louisville are both consolidated, and Columbus is quasi-consolidated because of the ability of that city to annex most of Franklin County and even parts of several adjacent counties.
There are mountains, but the geography does not appear to be particularly compelling.
There are not fabulous historic districts in every region. In fact, while there are some nicer neighborhoods, much of the city is built out exactly like most Midwestern burgs of equivalent size. A lot of it is outright dumpy.
There’s additional “culture shock” for northerners to get used to when the transition, the southern drawl, smoking in restaurants, etc.
It’s cultural institutions are not as advanced as Midwestern ones. The Nashville Symphony isn’t going to take on the Cincinnati Symphony any time soon, that’s for sure.
It doesn’t have some fortress home growth companies that are driving it.
It has Vanderbilt University, but most Midwestern cities have a good school in them too.

I compare Nashville to the top performing Midwest metros and just scratch my head. Nashville’s arguably got nothing on the Midwest and in many ways is playing from an inferior position. So what is going on?

I’ll take a shot at explaining a few things I’ve noticed. I’m not saying these are necessarily the answers. But they are things to consider. If I were head of strategy for a Midwestern metro, I’d be conducting an extensive peer city comparison of Nashville to try to figure it out in more detail. But here are some thoughts:

First, as I previously noted, is the extremely high ambition level. These guys are clearly looking at places like Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte, etc. and saying “Why not us?” Their mission is to become one of America’s great cities. There’s no “era of limits” in Nashville. You see this come through, for example, in their convention center plans, which call for 1.2 million square feet. It comes through in their highways, which are being built 8-10 lanes with HOV lanes, as if getting ready to become the much bigger city they plan to be. It shows in the numerous residential high rise and midrise projects. It shows in how Nashville, unlike every comparable Midwest metro, already has a commuter rail line in service. Midwesterners recoil from change, and would view becoming the next Charlotte or Atlanta with horror. But Nashville is eager to move up to the premier league, so to speak.

Second is the unabashedly pro-growth and pro-business stance. Every development in the Midwest is opposed by some group of NIMBY’s. Densification, even in downtown areas, is often anathema to influential neighbors. Not in Nashville. Huge tracts of inner city are being rebuilt from vacant lots or single family homes into multi-story town houses or condos. There are midrises all over the place. It does not appear that development has any problem getting approved there.

Third is low taxes and costs. Tennessee does not have a state income tax. Electricity from the TVA is dirt cheap. Property taxes cannot be increased without a public vote. It remains to be seen if this environment can be sustained, but for right now, cost appears to be an advantage.

Fourth is that they’ve embraced instead of rejecting their heritage. Rather than saying that country music is for hillbillies and an embarrassment to their new ambitions as a big league city, they’ve proudly embraced it. They updated the image with a glitzy, “Nashvegas” spin and made it the core of what Nashville is all about. Most Midwestern elites seem to view their existing heritage negatively. But great cities have to spring from the native soil in which they are born. Their character has to be organic. Import all the fancy stores, restaurants, sports teams, transit lines, etc. you want, but it won’t distinguish your city. Nashville learned this lesson well, probably from Atlanta. The southern boomtowns took their existing Southern heritage, dropped the negative items that needed to be changed, updated the core positive elements, and created the vision of the “New South”. This is something that can be embraced by the masses, unlike the elitist transformations that are often promulgated.

Fifth is that, again, they appear to have studied the lessons of places like Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, etc. They’ve seen the need for freeways. They’ve looked at the style of development and the neo-traditional urban form. I was very impressed to see that there while most condo developments and such were fairly undistinctive, I did not note any that exhibited poor urban design form. When I consider the poorly designed projects that are frequently implemented in, say, downtown Indianapolis, it is easy to see who gets out more. Nashville has done its homework.

Sixth, Nashville is realistic and open to self-criticism without being self-flagellating. I posted my previous take on the city on a discussion forum dedicated to that city. Given the modestly negative tone contained in much of it, I expected to get crucified. Surprisingly, most of them basically agreed with it. Too many cities in the Midwest either engage in naive boosterism or wallow in woe-is-us. Perhaps because of the large number of newcomers, there’s a more realistic assessment of where Nashville stands. And this enables rational decisions about where it needs to go.

If anyone else has observations to share, I would love to hear them.

Here are some photographs I took while there. First, a view of the Tennessee capitol building across a green space I believe is called the Bicentennial Mall.

A street scape in Hillsboro Village, a small commercial district near Vanderbilt University.

The Pancake Pantry in Hillsboro Village, a breakfast place of high local repute. I was initially skeptical but the food was actually pretty darn good. This place is huge and there was still a line out the door at 10am on a Friday morning. Pretty crazy.

The storefronts are a nice urban touch, but if you look behind this building you see a gigantic parking lot. This is perhaps an example of faux-urbanism. Putting the parking lot in the back doesn’t make it any less a strip mall. It is a difference in form, not function.

One of the many vacant lots with a “condos coming soon” sign.

The main road heading west of out downtown, West End Avenue, is developed at very high densities. I haven’t seen much in the way of this in most Midwestern cities. Midrises line both sides of the road basically from downtown to the interstate loop. It’s a six lane mega-street that moves tons of cars, but appears to have great bus service as well.

Here is another one under construction.

A proposed, but I believe not yet funded, high rise development. Indianapolis readers will no doubt recognize one of the towers as a clone of the proposed Intercontinental hotel for Pan Am Plaza that lost out as the convention center anchor hotel.

If you continue out to the west from here, you run into neighborhoods like Green Hills, which is where the most premier shopping in the area is found, and the suburb of Belle Meade, which serves as Nashville’s mansion district. Unlike traditional Midwestern mansion districts, this one is more rural in nature, with large estates that wouldn’t be out of place in a plantation. I did not take pictures of these areas, however.

Back closer to downtown is a nearby area known as the “Gulch”. It is not too far from Nashville’s Union Station.

This appears to be some seedy industrial district that is being transformed all at once by a series of large developments. It also has several clubs and restaurants. I ate at a seafood place called Watermark that was surprisingly good. I believe most of the places are upscale chains, though I’m not sure if Watermark is or not. Here’s a picture of some of the development.

More development

North of downtown is a small historic district called Germantown. This was rather unimpressive if you ask me. I didn’t see much that was German about it. It sure isn’t Columbus’ German Village, that’s for sure. There were some restaurants there. I had lunch at one of them which, fortunately for them, I can’t remember the name of because it was terrible. This area is mostly older single family homes.

The amazing thing about this area is that almost every vacant or industrial parcel was being redeveloped as condos. This really brought home to me the difference between Nashville and the Midwest. Were this, say, the Cottage Home area in Indianapolis, the local neighborhood association would use their historic district status to keep developments like these out. In Nashville, they are seen as a positive. Here are some examples.

More condos

More condos with retail space. Sorry for the very blurry pic but it was raining as you can see.

More condos being built, and still more proposed.

You get the picture. Also, note from all these photos the lack of design disasters. These are all workmanlike structures. The challenge for Nashville is that while there is a ton of new development, all of it is in a relatively generic, undistinguished style that could be in the downtown of almost any city. I did not get a strong sense of any type of vernacular style emerging. That is something I’d be looking for if I were them.

Lastly, here’s one suburban example that shows something I pointed out last time. Namely that even in brand new, upscale subdivisions they aren’t putting in sidewalks on both sides of the street. I find this very odd. While I noticed some bike lanes this time around, Nashville’s definitely got a long ways to go when it comes to pedestrian and bicycle friendliness.

Nashville is definitely a city that is on an upward trajectory. The volume of urban development and the business attraction success are impressive. It is exceeding even the best performing Midwest metros in that regard. However, it still lags the top southern and western metros. The current rate is very healthy, but probably isn’t sufficient to realize the civic ambitions. It remains to be seen whether Nashville can put it in another gear and take its place among the boomtowns, or whether it will merely stay on its current growth path. Either path is possible or a valid civic choice. While always possible, the likelihood that Nashville is going to take a major downtown does not appear high in the short term.

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

33 Comments
Topics: Architecture and Design, Civic Branding, Economic Development, Historic Preservation, Public Policy, Urban Culture
Cities: Nashville

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Louisville: An Identity Crisis

Following on from my article on Cincinnati, I’ll now take a short 100 mile trip downstream to another old river city, Louisville. Louisville came of age in a similar era and traditionally viewed itself as a sort of little brother to Cincinnati. However, while Cincinnati was once the Paris of the west, Louisville never held so lofty a position, so it lacks Cincy’s grandeur. Luckily, it also appears to be missing some of the dysfunction.

See here the river city tradition as the Belle of Louisville steamboat fires up. There were obviously no emissions standards back in the day.

Straddling the Ohio River, which serves as a border of sorts between the South and Midwest, Louisville has always had a bit of an identity problem. A recent article in Leo, a local alt weekly, highlights this.

For some reason for which modern science has no accounting, the subject of Louisville’s identity keeps coming up — in bar conversations, coffee shop summits, Chamber of Commerce meetings, at church, at shows, in this newspaper — and nobody knows really what to say about it. We are a city of naturally prideful, boasting people who are, to some degree, unsure about what we’re pitching. In some ways, we grate against our inferiority complex by offering wildly optimistic comparisons: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Austin. It’s hard to just be Louisville.

Louisville is a jumble. It’s got that genteel Southern feel at the Derby. It’s also the place that was “strike city” in the 1970’s, a bastion of hard core unionism and industry more befitting a Rust Belt burg than a southern metropolis. It retains the legacy of Kentucky and its rivertown heritage as a traditional haven for vice. Old school leading industries have included tobacco (Brown and Williamson cigarettes), booze (Brown-Forman and other distillers), gambling (Churchill Downs), and freon (DuPont). It has extremely low educational attainment levels, but has also been home to a large number of influential creative types, especially in the indie rock world, with people like Will Oldham, Janet Bean, Slint, Rodan, VHS or Beta, and others. It is comparatively lacking in corporate headquarters. It has been a home to innovative architecture. It’s heavily segregated by race and class, but has an comparatively large number of thriving in-city neighborhoods. It is a hotbed of evangelical Christianity and also home to a large regional gay entertainment complex. It’s too small to be a true big city, but big enough to force itself into the conversation. It has a phenomenal selection of local independent restaurants.

Here is some of that innovative architecture. The Michael Graves designed Humana Building is on the right. This mid-80’s structure was one of the buildings that really created his reputation as an architect you’d actually hire for a structure you planned to build.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Louisville is that the locus of civic identity is not downtown, but rather in the neighborhoods. Louisvillians have an immense attachment to their native soil. I’ve never been to a place where it is so frequently stated as a point of pride that “I’ve live here my whole life.” People who move away are viewed a bit strangely, as if, what’s wrong with this person?

For those in Jefferson County, what matters first is the segmentation by class and race. The West End is almost totally black, the South End working class whites, and the East End the home of the white upper classes. This class consciousness is highly pervasive and permeates people’s vision in a way I’ve rarely seen in other places.

At the next level down, Louisville has many distinct and thriving neighborhoods in the city, mostly spreading to the east and south of downtown. And one of the things that is really different about Louisville from Cincinnati is that these neighborhoods are basically still connected to the downtown. It is possible to walk or bike from downtown through Old Louisville and out to the University of Louisville, for example, without passing through a bunch of slums to get there. Similarly to the east end there is a chain of more or less intact neighbhoods extending all the way from downtown to the eastern burbs. Louisville experienced in city decline and population loss to be sure, but is never had the central city implosion that hit so many other places. The one exception is the West End, where one finds the unfortunately standard impoverished black neighborhoods. The river cuts off the West End, leaving it as an isolated island of blight in an otherwise surprisingly strong inner city, it’s residents largely ignored and forgotten.

Unfortunately in my view, the city has overly fixated on building up downtown as the heart of the region at the expense of investments in neighborhoods. As the Leo article would suggest, Louisville has a major inferiority complex and so feels compelled to invest in the trappings of big city downtowns so that it doesn’t appear to be “falling behind”. This is misguided in my view. Louisville does not have the population base, corporate base, or financial heft to compete in this game at the level it would take to build a distinguished offering.

That’s not to say Louisville doesn’t have a nice downtown. It does, including some great architecture that includes, for example, a large cast iron storefront district on west Main St. I also think that judicious investments in downtown are a good thing. It shouldn’t be left to whither on the vine, that’s for sure. But disproportionately investing in downtown ignores Louisville’s greatest strengths in favor of a game where it is not well positioned win.

Buildings along Main St.

The Kentucky Center for the Arts, also on Main St. The concentration of attractions on Main St. is one of the nicer elements of downtown.

Louisville has always self-consciously viewed and promoted itself as a city with a great arts community. Some of this is overblown, IMO, but that’s not the important thing. What’s important is that Louisville is a city where the arts are taken seriously, and where having a strong arts scene is something that is core to what the city is about. I do think this is something that should be played up and leveraged for the future.

The Louisville Science Center, a sort of children’s museum, also on Main St.

The cheesy 4th St. Live entertainment complex occupies what was once a failed downtown mall called the Galleria. Louisville bought into the dubious trend of pedestrianizing its traditional principal shopping street, in this case 4th St. While I guess having a downtown bookstore like Borders is a good thing, I can’t believe investing in cheesy bars downtown is really the key to having a great city.

Since I’m saying that it is Louisville’s neighborhoods that are so great, I probably shouldn’t spend too much time on downtown, though I must confess that’s what I mostly have photos of. In case you were wondering, downtown Louisville does have its share of classical architecture, such as this example.

Just south of downtown is a neighborhood called Old Louisville. This was actually an earlier suburb where the moneyed folk build their mansions. 2nd and 3rd Streets and awesome for just walking around and leisurely enjoying the architecture under a canopy of trees.

The Filson Club, a local historical society.

A streetscape, I believe along 2nd St.

I noted that three of the things that are great about Louisville are its neighborhoods, its great independent restaurants, and its funky arts scene. All of these are on display in the Highlands. Now the definition of the Highlands is fluid and depends on what real estate agent you are talking to. But the popular conception of its spine is the major commercial district extending outwards along Baxter Ave. and Bardstown Rd. This is an area that doesn’t photograph well, but to me has a very college town type of feel to it.

A yuppie running store across the street from a tattoo joint.

Seviche, one of those great restaurants I mentioned.

Not to be missed if you are on Bardstown Rd. is a quick visit to the legendary Ear X-tacy record store. Pick up a bumper sticker and slap it on your guitar case.

One of the other great assets Louisville has is a great park system designed by the firm of Fredrick Law Olmsted. Places like Iroquois Park and Cherokee Park are just lovely. You can experience a slice of Cherokee Park for yourself by driving east from downtown on I-64, where you almost don’t know you are in the city.

Louisville currently has a first class, ambitious initiative ongoing called City of Parks, which is designed to add thousands of acres of parks and trails, mostly in the outer county area. While I’m all in favor of this, it also illustrates the Savitch and Vogel theory that city-county consolidation in Louisville, which occurred recently, would lead to the center city tax base being exploited to build suburban infrastructure. I’ve written before about Louisville’s big plans. I’m not so sanguine on all of them, but really like City of Parks.

Speaking of big plans, that reminds me that one of the more innovative proposals floating out there is one that would tear down this:

That idea is called “8664“. Proponents want to tear down I-64 along the riverfront near downtown in order to reconnect downtown to the river. It is touted as a cheaper and better solution to traffic problems than the $4.1 billion Ohio River bridges plan. As financing prospects for the bridges become ever more bleak, 8664 continues to gain supporters. The establishment doesn’t even want to evaluate it, fearing it will shatter the fragile consensus around the bridges that took nearly 40 years to build.

The bridges project is an interesting case study because it highlights a problem that has long bedeviled the region: civic strife. It has proven extremely difficult to gain consensus on any major local project because of in-fighting between the various parts of town and various interest groups. The various ends of town area all suspicious of each other. Indiana and Kentucky have poor relations across the river. Mayor Jerry Abramson has long been outright hostile to any development of any type occurring outside the city limits.

The bridges project had this in spades. Indiana demanded an east end bridge to complete the I-265 link across the river. Abramson, then mayor in the pre-consolidation age, saw this as a threat and demanded a new downtown bridge instead. Wealthy residents of the east end hated the eastern bridge too, as did various environmental groups, some of which were east end fronts. In the grand spirit of political compromise, ultimately it was decided to build everything, leading to a crazy price tag and opening the door to 8664. I think it is still fair to say that nobody trusts anybody on this project, even to this day.

Fortunately, the situation generally is much improved post-merger.

Before I go too far astray, I should probably complete my neighborhood tour with this shot of Crescent Hill. This is a small commercial district along Frankfort Ave., another one of Louisville’s fantastic neighborhood arteries. It is well worth a drive out from downtown along through this, as you see the transition from Louisville’s established neighborhoods, to the older suburb of St. Matthews, and out into the full metal burbs. Heine Bros. coffee is money, by the way.

One other unique characteristic of Louisville is that it has not experienced a collar county boom. This is probably partially due to its smaller size versus places like Cincinnati. The vast bulk of people and commercial development is still inside Jefferson County. I don’t believe there is any significant Class A office space outside its borders for example. This gives Louisville the opportunity to get ready for the future before Jefferson County is full and the suburban counties really explode. Places like Oldham County have gained people, but are still largely rural in character and without a significant population or commercial base.

The key challenge facing Louisville is what to do about the transition to the 21st century globalized world. It was traditionally a manufacturing center and has a workforce and education levels with that orientation. But its manufacturing base is significantly eroded and continues to experience significant threats. Ford, which manufactures the Explorer here, has downsized considerably. General Electric’s appliance division is based here, employing 5,000 people, including a large number of white collar employees. But GE is planning to dispose of that division, and it seems likely Louisville is going to experience significant job losses, and perhaps the near total disappearance of that business.

So what should Louisville do?

I’ve long argued that Louisville should focus on being a Geneva-like jewel of a city, not a “big league city”, whatever that means. That is, focus on having the best quality of life, the best neighborhoods, etc. Strengthen the traditional city assets such as the park system, the local restaurant scene, unique architecture, and the arts community. Louisville has long appealed to offbeat, funky types of characters. It is sort of reminiscent of a college town in that respect, so taking a page from the Austin playbook and self-consciously cultivating this would be a great thing. The clear focus of civic development should be the neighborhoods, with downtown in a supporting role. This is a reversal of current priorities.

I don’t believe 21st century jobs are going to rain down on Louisville like manna from heaven, so the onus is on the city to principally drive its economic future through organic growth. I’m not totally sold on the creative class concept, but Louisville is definitely well positioned to attract that sort of person and indeed has traditionally attracted it. The question is how to turn that creative firepower into economic growth.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention Museum Plaza. This great proposal was vintage Louisville. It was innovative, unique, and would really show the world the differentiated character of the place. However, this project appears to be on life support, and likely not to secure financing. If it fell through, that would be unfortunate, but as with bridges, arenas, etc. Louisville has always seemed to find an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Share on Facebook Email This Tweet This

22 Comments
Topics: Architecture and Design, Arts and Culture, Civic Branding, Economic Development, Historic Preservation, Strategic Planning, Talent Attraction, Transportation, Urban Culture
Cities: Louisville

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »

Telestrian Data Terminal

A production of the Urbanophile, Telestrian is the fastest, easiest, and best way to access public data about cities and regions, with totally unique features like the ability to create thematic maps with no technical knowledge and easy to use place to place migration data. It's a great way to support the Urbanophile, but more importantly it can save you tons of time and deliver huge value and capabilities to you and your organization.

Try It For 30 Days Free!

About the Urbanophile

Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker, and writer on a mission to help America’s cities thrive and find sustainable success in the 21st century.

Full Bio

Contact

Please email before connecting with me on LinkedIn if we don't already know each other.

Urbanophile in the News

The Wall Street Journal: New York City Explores Private Deal for Meters

The Washington Post: Will the exurbs ever make a comeback?

The New York Times: Are Some Buildings Too Ugly to Survive?

The Washington Post: Is DC Becoming America's True Second City?

Richard Florida/Atlantic Cities: Why Some Cities Lose When Others Win

Twitter Feed

Latest blog post: Downtown Cincinnati is Rising - http://t.co/b6clGyHl - even the TV news gets it

Bruce Katz: Mastering the Metro - http://t.co/LkmgwFU4

Bicycling: Why Johnny Can't Ride - http://t.co/RO5wyEJo

The Atlantic: Indiana's Plan to Steal California's Jobs - http://t.co/Iomi5oYJ

Latest blog post: Can Liverpool win a place back on the global stage? - http://t.co/bXmRmB1N

Subscribe/Feeds

Recent Comments

Search

Archives

Best Of

Posts By Topic

Posts By City

Posts By Author

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Friday, December 18th, 2009

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

The Other Side of the Tracks

The Lake Wobegon Effect

The Next Youth Magnet Cities

Wisconsin Bio-Tech Boom

Detroit to Demolish Lafayette Building

Time: Assignment Detroit

More Detroit Agriculture

Kansas City Arena Turns Profit

National and International Roundup

More Midwest

Friday, June 5th, 2009

NCR Leaves Dayton for Atlanta

Technology Rankings

Cities Where It’s Good to Be Goth

Downtown Kansas City ROI

Indy and Indiana Get Nice Profile in The Economist

Zoo Interchange Price Tag Shocker

Over the Rhine

Another Impossibility City

Selling Transit

Perspectives of Denver

More Midwest

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Sunday, October 26th, 2008

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Telestrian Data Terminal

About the Urbanophile

Contact

Urbanophile in the News

Twitter Feed

National Blogroll

World Blogroll

Midwest Blogroll