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.

Un-Malling 14th Street

The year was 1977.  The city was hemorrhaging population at an alarming rate (nearly 170,000 between 1970-80).  What to do?  Emulate the suburbs! So why not close the street grid and create a pedestrian “oasis”?

Except it never quite turned out as expected.  The pedestrian space was free of cars but it also appeared empty most of the time. There is indeed safety in numbers.

Next year sometime 14th Street will be a through street for the first time in 32 years.  This experiment that last 32 years will finally be over.  Many experiments were tried in cities — the money was found to do the experimenting but harder & more costly to undo the results of the experiment.

If only the citizens had run off the mad scientists promising suburban bliss inside our historic neighborhoods.

Did closing 14th street slow down population loss or speed it up?  My instinct tells me we would have lost population anyway.  But had the street not been closed this neighborhood commercial district might have had a better chance of rebounding in the last 30 years. Unlike other areas that simply had to worry about the buildings, in Old North they had that plus a dead pedestrian mall with no population to populate the space.

The day in 2009 when the ribbon is cut and the street is reopened I will be there front and center. Then I’m going to Crown Candy for a banana malt!

A Pop Culture Look at Urban Renewal From 46 Years Ago Today

In August a couple of friends told me about an episode of ‘Car 54 Where Are You?’ dealing with Urban Renewal. The episode, ‘Occupancy August 1st’, of the police sitcom set in the Bronx, first Aired on October 21, 1962 – forty six years ago tonight. This was five years prior to my birth and although I had heard of the show I don’t recall ever seeing an episode from its 2-season run. Thanks to YouTube I was able to find and watch this episode — what a gem!

The show opens on the construction site of a new public housing project with workers spotting a woman on the 14th floor. The workers thinking she is going to jump call the police. The job foreman calls the Building Commissioner to explain about the woman on the construction site. The Commissioner responds, “Oh no, another delay?”

Officers Toody & Muldoon from Car 54 arrive. When they make their way to the 14th floor (via a beam hoisted by a crane) they find a sweet Jewish woman, Mrs Bronson, setting up home in the unfinished building still lacking walls. They explain to her “you can’t stay here.” She rebuts, “For two years I’ve been waiting to move in and now ‘You can’t stay here.’ In my own apartment I can’t stay?”

She produces a lease which begins on August 1st. In the exchange with the officer she asks what the sign out front says. He responds, “Occupancy August 1st.” What is the date? August 1st.

“In the old tenement when they tore it down for six months they kept nagging with papers and eviction notices. A new apartment they promised me. Now I’m in the new apartment and it’s ‘Get Out, Get Out.”

“I’m back in the Bronx. For two years I lived with my daughter in Brooklyn. She’s a lovely girl but who can live with her.”

Lots of great lines. At one point Mrs Bronson asks the Architect, Hilton Hartford Harlow (played by Charles Nelson Riley), to make sure the electric & gas meters are above the icebox. He indicates the building will have refrigerators and the meters will be in the basement.

“You mean there won’t be electric or gas men to come here to check the meters and their won’t be an ice man to sit and talk with me for a half hour? What are you building for me here a jail? Apartments are for people to visit.”

“But this is progress!” replies the Architect.

“You are making so much progress I could drop dead and nobody would find me in 10 years.”

The 22-minute episode is on YouTube in four segments (Note @ 12:40pm – the embedded video is not working correctly, please use the links to watch the video segments)

Part 1 of 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MP_PUhNUYk

Part 2 of 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVrAqjH8wDY

Part 3 of 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnnOvCkLgeo

Part 4 of 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ0qAVH0Tj0

All the characters are in place, the sweet woman that loved her old tenement, the uncaring building commissioner, the architect that cares more about his reputation than building a good space for people. An interesting step back in time indeed.

Town & Country Crossing A Marked Improvement Over The Typical Strip Center in Our Region

Last week, after a meeting, I took a drive out West along Clayton Road with the destination being the new Town & Country Crossing shopping center at Clayton & Woods Mill (map).

The municipality of Town & Country is home to many well to do types. Their city, however, is neither town nor country. It is a collection of big homes on streets with pretentious names yet lacking of sidewalks. The closest they get to country is having deer and that is something they’ve been trying to get rid of. A little too country I suppose?

A few years ago Lucent Technologies left a large building and site vacant at the SW corner of Woods Mill and Clayton:

While the existing uninspiring building could have been remodeled for new tenants a developer saw an opportunity for more suburban development. In particular a more upscale development anchored by a Target and Whole Foods.

In the site plan above you get the Target in the bottom left of the development while the Whole Foods is the letter “E” on the right. A large pond/lake is in the upper right near the intersection. A large section of the total site (left) is designated for residential development.

Nothing says upscale like stone and the entry marker has plenty. I actually like the way the signage for the stores is worked into this wall. The above is the Clayton Rd entrance. Note the presence of sidewalks, an unusual sight along Clayton Rd.

Many might think who needs sidewalks because nobody walks out here. The counter argument, of course, is that nobody walks because they have no sidewalks. However, they do have sidewalks in places.

Above is looking North along Woods Mill from the entrance to the residential area to the South of the new Town & Country Crossings. Clearly when this was built some 20 or so years ago they had walking in mind. However the other commercial developments at this intersection are hostile to pedestrians by their design. The center with a Schnuck’s just to the East of this new development is not easily accessible by foot. They claim to be the “friendliest stores in town” but not if you are a pedestrian. OK, enough about them let’s get back to Town & Country Crossing.

Above is the sidewalk coming from Woods Mill. The entrance from Clayton also has a proper sidewalk.

Walking around the lake is also encouraged. The above view is looking East from the Whole Foods outdoor patio. This sidewalk provides another pedestrian access point into the development off of Woods Mill.

So far they’ve done a decent job of connecting various buildings on the site via sidewalks (thus complying with the ADA Access Route requirement). Above is the sidewalk from in front of the Whole Foods turning the corner to the left and eventually connecting to a couple of buildings that will have smaller stores.

Above is looking back the other direction at the entrance to Whole Foods (the only store completed & open on the day I visited). From this vantage point the center looks pretty typical of suburban strip centers.

Out in the middle of the parking area we see another departure from typical centers — an access route dead center. At the other end of the above sidewalk is the main entry to the new target.

Turning around we see that the previous sidewalk connects to a sidewalk that takes you to the strip buildings along the North (Clayton Rd) side if the development. It remains to be seen just how connected the entire site will be once completed.

For example the above is taken from in front of the Whole Foods looking West. Way in the background is a small strip building near the Clayton Rd entrance. At this time I don’t see an obvious route to get from here to there. I’ll have to return in a few months when they are further along, when it is cooler outside, and I can walk farther.

This is not the project I would have placed on this site. I would have done a commercial street lined on both sides by shops. Like the Boulevard off Brentwood near the Galleria although not so cutsie. The lifestyle center I saw last Fall in West Palm Beach (see post) is a good example of the upscale level of urbanism that would have been ideal for this site. Such a plan would require costly structured parking but offered more lease able space in return. It would have given this section of Town & Country a bit of that missing town.

Still as a big box (Target) strip center it is probably the best in the region. I can think of no other on this scale that does such a nice job of bringing the outside pedestrian into the site and then giving then the option to walk internally.

From a March 2007 Post-Dispatch article:

The shopping-center plans drew opposition from some residents who worried that the local streets were not wide enough for the traffic, while others complained that Target seemed a bit lowbrow for the well-to-do community. Residents signed petitions to block the center in its earlier versions, and they sued TNC. The dispute was settled out of court.

Work was done on both Woods Mill and Clayton, widening and adding turn lanes.  Perhaps the resulting project is better as a result of objections from neighbors?  They probably wouldn’t have liked my quasi-urban lifestyle center either.  Hopefully they’ll start adding more sidewalks so that more people can walk to this shopping center.  Hopefully other developers will stop by to see how strip centers should be designed to meet minimum standards of connectivity.

Downtown Bookended by Delayed (Dead?) Mega-projects

Acres and acres sit idle on the edges of downtown awaiting promised new development.  On the South edge we have Ballpark Village and just North of America’s Center and the Edward Jones Dome we have the Bottleworks District.  Both have made news over the past few
years, lately for not going anywhere.

Above:  blocks sit vacant awaiting the proposed Bottleworks District
The latter was in the news again this week for a settlement on one of the blocks the city took from its rightful owner:

A St. Louis jury awarded $2.8 million on Friday to the former owner of two acres just north of the Edwards Jones Dome downtown in a fight over eminent domain.

The city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Agency condemned the two-acre tract after the owner refused sell it in 2005 for $523,000.

The property, a city block bordered by Sixth, Seventh, Carr and Biddle Streets, was included in the “Bottle District” redevelopment plan for a $226 million entertainment destination including a restaurant, concert venue and bowling alley. It has not yet come through.

Today the entire site remains covered in gravel with much of the intact street grid blocked by Jersey barriers.

The surrounding blocks could have been developed without taking this one block from the owner.  But assembling larger and larger tracts for larger and larger projects is what proponents say must be done to get development.  Judging from the broken sidewalks and vacant blocks of land  think perhaps it is high time we questioned this practice.

Granted creating the ideal urban building on a single narrow parcel surrounded by vacant blocks is going to be an island for a long time.  Development does have to be large enough to build both excitement and a sustainable level of visitors.

An alternative to the single developer mega-project is to create a zoning overlay district that outlines the urban design qualities that future buildings must have.  This allows different property owners to participate in the redevelopment.  It also allows the business owner to build their own structure without being tied up in an increasingly complicated and difficult process of financing the mega-project.

This city was built one building at a time — each fitting into the grid.  I think we need to return to such a scale to finish filling in the gaps in our urban fabric.