Defining Urban

The title of this blog is Urban Review St. Louis.  Its subtitle is “a look at urban planning and related politics in the St. Louis region.”  While we can all pretty much agree about what “planning” and “politics” likely encompass, there seems to be a big disparity about what “urban” actually might be.  The dictionary definition is fairly simple: “of, pertaining to, or designating a city or town.”  The reality seems to be much more complex, and likely mirrors the definition of pornography (“I’ll know it when I see it”).  Is the urban threshold crossed when population density or the number of dwelling units passes an arbitrary number per acre?  When buildings exceed a certain number of stories or when the front and/or back yards shrink or disappear completely?  When sidewalks and alleys appear and residential curb cuts disappear?  When true mixed use and viable public transit really function? When parking goes from convenient to a real pain in the a**?

New Town St. Charles and Seaside, Florida, both look a lot like parts of Soulard and San Francisco, but I doubt any of us would describe either of them as being “urban”.  Parts of our north side have fewer dwelling units or residents per acre than parts of Chesterfield.  East St. Louis is closer to our downtown than many city neighborhoods are, yet the only thing urban about the place is the wasteland part.  College dorms, state prisons and high-rise condos all have similar densities, yet have completely different interactions with the urban environment.  The core of every midwestern small town, the part laid out before 1930, is “walkable”, but few would be considered to be “urban”.

My guess is that our individual definition is a direct result of where we grew up. Like Steve, I grew up in a series of residential suburbs.  Going away to college, I experienced and learned to appreciate both higher-density urban living and the joys of owning an older home.  As an architect, I’ve worked on both urban and suburban projects, in everything from single-family residential to high-rise commerical structures.  So my view is that pretty much every part of St. Louis City is “urban”, even places like St. Louis Hills and the private streets in the CWE.  If I’d grown up on the upper east side of Manhattan in New York City, my viewpoint would most likely be much different.

The nearest common denominator for “urban” that I can identify are the old streetcar lines that were the preferred/de facto choice for transportation in many cities during the first forty years of the twentieth century.  They were the genesis for most of the commercial and mixed-use architecture that seems to define the urban ideal today.  They were also responsible for the growth of the many walkable urban neighborhoods that abut these old business districts.  Surprisingly (or not), these districts and neighborhoods were usually built with little direct government design review.  The buildings, both commercial and residential, were built simply because they were what sold, they were what the buyers of the time wanted.  The residential lots were relatively narrow because it maximized the number within walking distance of public transit.  More-expensive, higher-density, multi-family buildings could be justified if they were closer to the streetcar line.

All this changed, drastically, in the last half of the twentieth century, as the private automobile replaced public transportation as the preferred and most-prevalent form of individual transport.  Not surprisingly, architecture and what passes for urban planning evolved to reflect this changing environment.  The question then becomes what exactly is suburban and what is the new urban?  Clayton here and Tyson’s Corner in Maryland are both prime examples of the new urban – both started out as rural crossroads and both are now dense and important economic centers.  And while both are now integrating rail public transit, they remain primarily autocentric urban environments.

Every urban area has shades of grey, places/neighborhoods with very high densities and ones with lower, some even approaching suburban, densities.  Urban, to me, is both simple and complex.  Urban equals dense and diverse, in people, architecture, jobs, incomes and streetscapes.  There are no truly right or wrong answers, just an ongoing, hopefully denser, evolution.  St. Louis’ fundamental challenge is that we were once 800,000, we’re now 350,000, and many of us want to get back to 500,000 or 600,000.  We have the infrastructure.  We have the diversity.  We can focus on what was.  We can focus on a certain urban form.  We can be idealists.  But to really succeed, we need to temper our idealism with making sure we attract both new residents and new businesses AND keeping the ones that already here.

- Jim Zavist