Old School Vs. New School
I’m beginning to get a greater understanding about why planners from the past did what they did. The problem is a solution to a 1920s problem was not only the solution at the time but for decades to follow — passed down from one generation to the next without anyone questioning why or if the problem being solved still existed.
The original problem has long since decanted to the suburbs yet the solution remains and itself becomes the new problem to be addressed. An example is removing on-street parking from the CBD due to the morning & evening rush hours. In 1950 when St. Louis had half a million more residents, tens/hundreds of thousands more jobs were in the cbd rather than the burbs, and downtown was the region’s retail center removing on-street parking had some logic. But now, to insist on the same old policy even though the conditions 50+ years later are vastly different is just not logical. Each time period warrants evaluation of current problems and brainstorming on current solutions, not just adaption of half century old solutions just because that was how someone was taught by someone else (who was born in the 19th Century).
Sometimes the past solution will still be applicable, most often it will not. Frequently the best solution for today is to do the opposite of the past solution. To that end I’ve compiled a chart with some examples:
The above is in no way all encompassing. It just represents a few issues that come up in cities and how perspectives can be vastly different depending upon your school of thought. Sadly too many at city hall, from bureaucrats to aldermen, hold the “prior” school of thought.
Is it easier to get them all to understand a new approach or simply replace them? Neither seems an easy task.
Otherwise intelligent people argue for the status quo (old school thought) not because they examined the issues and possible solutions but because that is how they were taught and that is what they have advocated for the last 20-50 years. To do a 180 would be to acknowledge that what they had been doing was wrong.
This is only partially correct. I think that many things done to save cities in the past were destructive and we’d be better off today had solutions not been attempted. That is the beauty of hindsight. The past solutions were the best they had at the time. People were doing what was considered the best solution at the time.
But must we stick with these decisions half a century later? When does it become OK to take a fresh look at our urban policies? Just because a zoning regulation is still on the books doesn’t mean it is permanently etched in stone. Granted, most of the old school of thought now exceeds 50 years so it qualifies as historic.  But like the Century Building, just because something is historic doesn’t make it safe from from destruction.
Encouraging on-street parking would discourage if not destroy the possibilities of offering healthy and inexpensive alternatives to the car culture. These areas for street parking are obvious first choices in providing bike lanes. Parked cars along these routes also increases the chances of cyclists getting doored. Agree with many of the other suggestions but this constant promotion of on-street parking has proven to be a killer of smart urban planning, especially in prosperous cities and livable communities.
Bravo! Bravo! That sentiment needs to be hammered home constantly: why maintain out-dated rules? It’s a simple matter of analyzing what actually is – right here and now – vs. the way someone in 1945 said it should be.
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I can understand the people in charge cringing at the thought of having to come to consensus on a new set of standards and rules, but they should concentrate on how much cheaper and effective that would be. If they fix the foundation, the structure will quickly – and seemingly miraculously – start building itself back up.
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I wonder if this concept completely escapes City Hall because it’s so simple?
A couple of thoughts. One, in the end, to most drivers (which 90%+ of us are, directly or indirectly), good urban design is primarily just a local concern and of secondary concern to good traffic flow / being able to get where we want as quickly and easily as possible, followed by free, adequate, safe and ideally, covered, parking at the other end. We care, often passionately, about our own neighborhoods, embracing the urban characteristics that make them special. To a similar degree, we embrace the urban qualities of our institutions and certain other neighborhoods that we like / aspire to / would like to see our current ‘hood become. After that, most of us have become too lazyy / complacent / brain-washed about the blandness of suburbia, and we just deal with it – we rarely fight it, and many of us shop and work there because it’s what/all we have to work with. In many ways, it’s simply become too overwhelming, and it’s too daunting to even think about changing it.
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Two, on Building Height, I disagree that 3 stories is the maximum for fire fighting. Most departments can easily handle fires in buildings up to 6 stories. The two big reasons for a 3-story limit is avoiding having to provide elevators (pre-ADA) and to protect access to sunlight. One big issue in residential areas in Denver experiencing an influx of McMansions is the loss of sunlight and privacy that neighbors, especially those to the north, experience when that 1200 sq. ft. bungalow gets replaced with a 4000 sq. ft., three-story box. “Old school” thinking in this area comes from the tenements of NYC, where sunlight was a scarce commodity and that the single-family home in the ‘burbs offers/offered a “more healthy” environment. In “my world”, we’d continue to have both, with multi-story, mixed-use structures confined to urban nodes and major arterials, with single-family available further from the major activity areas. Or, to put it another way, one of the big challenges to further loft development in downtown St. Louis is that many buyers don’t want to live in a concrete canyon. The lower densities west of Tucker are more conducive to loft projects, although the tradeoff is likely a longer walk to work.
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Other than that, your list hits most of the issues squarely and fairly. The challenge remains that we have become an auto-centric, non-transit-dependent society, and only a tiny minority out there is willing to consider giving up their single-occupant vehicle(s) completely. With that basic construct, combined with relatively-low land costs and few natural (compared to Vancouver or Manhattan) or unnatural (compared to Portland or Boulder) barriers around here, the question then becomes how do we balance our disparate desires for greater urbanity while maintaining or expanding our current mobility?!!
Steve, this post is very interesting. I’m going to offer up a thought and I stand ready to be corrected by you or one of your knowledgeable readers.
I think that to change the thinking on many of these issues, we have to dial all the way back to the engineering schools that bestow degrees and certificates in traffic management and the other post-secondary educational institutions and start thinking about whole new courses of study.
For example, our city charter requires that the Director of Streets be an engineer. In most cases he (and it’s always been a ‘he’) will come to the job with experience and education in traffic management. The trouble is that it’s an engineering degree–not a design or liberal arts degree–it’s science. They’re going to look at motion and safety (as they view it) and then–and here’s the real kicker–they’re going to advise every alderman, nso or mayoral staffer who looks at a problem. New thinking only comes when the city reaches out to hire a consultant to ‘plan’ an area.
I guess my long-winded point is that we have probably reached (or passed) the point of needing new degrees and areas of expertise for urban planning.
At Charlotte DOT, the cover of a brochure on the City’s Urban Street Design Guidelines (adopted October 2007) reads, “We can’t keep widening our roads, so we have to broaden our thinking.”
Inside the brochure, you also find this gem: “Our best laid plans for neighborhood streets are 100 years old.”
Many may wonder why some at the top of St. Louis leadership are in such a hurry to wipe out the last vestiges of our great civic past, and perhaps it’s because they are too embarrassed to admit that what was encouraged to take place over the last 60 years has been such an abysmal failure. It’s sort of like a person, walking aside a busy street, suddenly stumbles in full view of everyone else but instead of simply returning to normal gait after correcting balance, the person then incorporates the stumbling motion into stride as if that was the intent after all.
Great article! I especially appreciate your conclusion:
“But must we stick with these decisions half a century later? When does it become OK to take a fresh look at our urban policies? Just because a zoning regulation is still on the books doesn’t mean it is permanently etched in stone.”
Too often outdated and inefficient zoning regulations are considered “cast in stone” by planners and others. There are better ways to address land use and zoning. Check this one out: http://tinyurl.com/bg3yk5.
Two words – Property Rights – anytime you try to change something, someone’s gonna squeal that “You’re reducing the value of my property”, whether there’s a viable market for whatever they allegedly want to do, or not!
Jim Zaviston – “Two words – Property Rights – anytime you try to change something, someone’s gonna squeal that “You’re reducing the value of my property ”
That is a huge issue with regards to zoning districts – property owners consider certain zoning districts to be part of their bundle of property rights. In some situations, fixing flawed zoning schemes can be accomplished by expanding the purpose and altering the permitted uses in a district without actually changing the name or land areas designated for that district. Examples I’ve worked on include re-purposing a traditional Commercial district into a mixed commercial-office-residential district without changing the C-1 designation. This re-purposing was intended to allow growth of a more neighborhood-oriented development pattern, and to allow some historic buildings to be fully utilized.
However, sometimes rezoning of land is necessary. Where it is, the big thing I’ve learned to remember is to do a whole lot of active listening to folks affected by the rezoning right up-front, before starting any formal process. Attend neighborhood and block group meetings, meet with business owners, etc., and listen. The planners I know who’ve had big, controversial rezoning proposals go down in flames all had the same common characteristic – they talked too much and listened too little.
You can bicker about the car culture all day and night, but forcing downtown visitors to accept your anti-car agenda will just send more business to the suburbs (and it has).
I used to work downtown. I love the architecture, the restaurants, the shops, the atmosphere, but I HATED driving home. Why? It wasn’t I-44. It was using 20 minutes of my 40-minute commute to get through all the poorly timed lights that made moderate congestion worse.
So, while we disagree on WHAT to change, I do agree that its time to adopt some new ideas.