Miami’s The Place to Be

After an uneventful flight to Miami International Airport I have made it to Miami Beach via two bus routes.  Other than the rain between buses it wasn’t bad.  The city, like most others, has lots of sprawl and lots of cars.  It looks like so many other cities I’ve visited, espcially Southern California.

The fashionable South Beach area is quite urban in its physical form, although geared toward the tourist rather than acting as a cohesive neighborhood — as least the blocks I’ve seen so far.  Cabs are everywhere and are able to pick up passengers from off the street rather than at designated stands only. 

Scooters are everywhere — I stopped into one little scooter rental store.  Fifty bucks for 24 hours with a $300 refundable deposit.  Hmmmm…  Had a good lunch at a little hole in the wall latino place — a fish taco did the trick.

I’m staying two blocks from the hotel where the conference is being held, this gives me a chance to see things along the way as I walk back and forth.  Unfortunately the hotel wifi system is not working as normal so my access may be limited. 

Unfortuantley it is overcast with the occassional rain shower but I think I might head back to the beach (just across from the hotel).  The water is cold but the wet sand feels good under the feet.   

Third Anniversary of UrbanReviewSTL.com

Today is the 3rd anniversary of this site. Started on Halloween 2004, it has turned out to be scary for our so-called leaders that cling to our 60-year old zoning code so they get a chance to play auto-centric developer.

When I started I had no plan for where this would go. The beginning was actually due to a tragic event. My father, at then age 75, had a major heart attack on October 1st of 2004. He had blacked out while driving due to the heart attack, two off-duty paramedics saw him drive over a curb and come to a rest — they gave him CPR until an ambulance arrived. Initially he was not expected to survive. I got the call from my brother late on a Friday evening — I was downtown for the gallery tour. Very early the next morning I was driving back to Oklahoma with my black suit — just in case. It is a long drive to Oklahoma City but as you can imagine it was very long that day. My dad is a tough man and he pulled through after several weeks in the hospital. That entire month I was, to put it mildly, a complete basket case.

So it was on that Sunday, Halloween 2004, that I decided to begin writing as a means of gaining some clarity in my life. Rather than write about my personal life, I chose to express my frustration about the urban environment in the St. Louis region. My first post that night was on the Kirkwood Plaza Station project on the old site of the Kirkwood Target.

So much has changed since that first day three years ago. My father is doing well but my mother passed away in June 2006 (see post). A few months after starting the blog I ran for public office, losing two months later (see post). In these three years I’ve done over 1,300 posts and you’ve responded with well over 11,000 comments. I’ve received some good press along the way as well as my share of detractors (Ald Florida called me a “zealot” in St. Louis magazine). At one time I was rather anonymous — able to attend public meetings and be noticed only because of my size, shaved head and tattoos (those things don’t really “blend” in most places). Today, however, seldom is there a meeting where I’m not known.

Being recognized certainly has some benefits but it also has drawbacks, it was certainly never a goal. In fact, I had no goal other than to share my thoughts. Since then I’ve certainly struck a nerve with many equally frustrated by St. Louis’ political structure and auto-centric development patterns. Others are frustrated with all the talk and want to see more action. Many want me to host meetings and gather the troops troupes to fight various battles. First, however, I need to finish my masters in Urban Planning and Real Estate Development at St. Louis University.

This is not to say that I’m closed to the idea of starting something new.

At this point I do have some very tangible goals, my wish list if you will (in no particular order and by no means complete):

• See the complete replacement of our old zoning codes in the city, to be replaced by form-based codes which reflect the community’s vision for neighborhoods and commercial districts. This is a compliment to the city’s 2005 Strategic Land Use Plan that is basically useless without new zoning. Similarly, I’d like to see form-based codes throughout the region with urban nodes where logical (around major transportation hubs, for example).
• See the establishment of a permanent program to establish bike parking along commercial streets. In parking lots for retail properties I’d like to see a bike/scooter/motorcycle parking requirement.
• Break through the leadership vacuum in the city and region, get progressive urbanists into decision making roles.
• See a charter change to eliminate partisan elections within the City of St. Louis. Term limits of 2-3 terms might be a part of this as well.
• See the population of the City of St. Louis reach 500,000 people — an increase of nearly 45% above today’s figure.
• See the return of a frequent localized transit system serving the city and inner-ring suburbs. This would most resemble a return to numerous streetcar lines designed for local users — not a system designed to get the suburbanite to downtown as fast as possible. This would system would include a variety of systems, including bus and light rail.
• See the urbanization of sites such as Loughborough Commons, Gravois Plaza and so many others that are currently acres of asphalt.
• And so much more. Suggestions?

The how and when of the above and others isn’t exactly clear. While I am working on being somewhat more patient I don’t want to become too patient so that I’m willing to wait 20-30 years for these things. Unfortunately I think it may take something drastic to bring about the level of change I think we need. It may well take the fallout from peak oil and global warming to wake up the populous to the need to change our ways. When gas is $6/gallon and coastal cities are wiped out from rising ocean levels then we’ll then see a call for better transit and more pedestrian friendly retail. Hopefully we will not be too far behind the curve.

I had hoped to plan a big splash party for this 3rd anniversary of the blog but I’m really not a flashy party type of person. Besides, those always seem to call for valet parking! So how am I celebrating this milestone moment? Well, I’m on a plane this morning to Miami. I’m also not a beach person but that is where the annual Rail~Volution conference is being held and this year I am a panelist. I think being in Miami Beach on Halloween, staying in a nice hotel along the beach and checking out a new city is celebration enough. I will be blogging from Miami, including some posts from the panel on Thursday afternoon. Sadly the forecast calls for scattered showers all weekend.

Upon my return next week I will be preparing for a panel at the Missouri state American Planning Association conference. That same week I will also be moving into my new place. Yes, I am staying within the city but moving out of Dutchtown and the 25th ward. Where? I will give you a hint — I’ll let you know who the alderwoman is as part of my post next week with all the details — that narrows it down to 10 possible wards. A new location in the city will certainly give me a different perspective as well as new material to write about. I’m sure I can find plenty to write about for at least another three years.

Thanks to all of you for helping make UrbanReviewSTL.com part of the dialog about the future of our city and region!

Some Small American Downtowns Avoided Urban Renewal Mistakes

A guest editorial by Richard Kenney, AIA

I had an unusual opportunity for extensive travel this year. I teamed up with a roofing consultant to inspect a large portfolio of properties in 22 states. My portion of that work was 125 sites in Alaska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, the Dakotas, Missouri, Kansas, Washington and Oregon. Almost all the sites are lumber/hardware stores located in small towns. So my summer was all about planes, trains and automobiles. I used all three, but by far most of my travel time was spent on the highway. I was surprised to learn that I drove over 10,000 road miles! It was exhausting, but it was a remarkable opportunity to see some unbelievably beautiful countryside and some really charming small towns that I would normally never see. UrbanReviewSTL’s Steve Patterson joined me for the Missouri, Kansas and Iowa sites when the project first started.

In some ways this trip renewed my faith in the small American downtown. Recently I had been back to Shawnee, Oklahoma, where I went to high school, and I was very saddened by the condition of its downtown. When my family lived there we owned a business on Main Street, and downtown was still a great place to be (this was the mid-1980’s, not that long ago). Sears and JC Penney were still there, as well as dozens of thriving local businesses. I still remember the “Midnight Madness Sidewalk Sales” and the summer parades. But the tragic shift was well underway as I left for college in 1986. A mall was constructed on the city outskirts, and the retail epicenter shifted dramatically. It’s my understanding that “Shawnee Mall” was proud to be the first in the United States to have Wal-Mart as an actual anchor store, which seems like a sad thing indeed. Shawnee then fell the way of many American small towns, as Downtown is now a sad collection of pawn shops, payday loan offices and thrift/junque stores. It’s clear that the city has made the usual attempts to revitalize the area, including the addition of sidewalk ‘bulbs’ at intersections, planters, and benches. These new commodities stand unused near the many vacant buildings and blank storefronts with windows covered in paper. Incidentally, Wal-Mart made its usual move a few years after opening, and abandoned the mall location to build a larger super-center down the street from it.

In 1989 I lived and studied in Cologne, Germany, an old and large city that was literally 95% destroyed in World War II. Allied bombs focused on larger cities like Cologne, which lost most of their architectural legacy in the process. It’s amazing to think that
only 5% of the city fabric remained intact by war’s end. In many ways, American cities suffered the same fate, only ours was self-inflicted. In the name of post-war progress, most large American cities began to decimate their architectural legacy (which evidently is still in full swing in St. Louis). Priceless historic buildings and irreplaceable urban fabric were dismantled in the name of new highways, urban open space, “super-blocks”, convention centers, stadiums, and ‘fill in the blank here’. It really didn’t matter what the reason was, it was all considered to be disposable urban blight and a barrier to progress. My Mother lived in downtown Oklahoma City in the early 1950’s before the substantial demolition began, and it’s hard for me to imagine that it was ever as vibrant and interesting as she describes. Accordingly, it would be hard for a kid in today’s Shawnee to imagine that Shawnee’s downtown was as ever the way that I remember it was a mere 20 years ago.

If you want to see the real Germany, you see it in small towns which were typically spared the mass destruction of big cities. The same is true for the United States. The small American Downtown is our last great cultural and architectural vestige which was spared from the urban renewal war. Surviving a deadly viral infection like Wal-Mart is another issue and one that is on-going.

So now back to the summer road trips. I was concerned that I would be driving through many Shawnees: small downtowns that are bombed-out and boarded up. I was pleasantly surprised that in many northern states the small American downtown has survived beautifully. There is undoubtedly a demographic and population threshold at which Wal-Mart stays away and the local businesses thrive. But what’s truly great are the small downtowns that have managed to survive despite the existence of a Wal-Mart or a new shopping mall. There’s typically a contributing factor: perhaps they’re college towns, military towns, or towns that are close enough to a metro center to be a “boutique weekend destination” for nearby urbanites. Here are just a few of the pleasant surprises I encountered in three of my destination states.

Minnesota: Stillwater has a thriving downtown on the waterfront of Lake St. Croix.

Minnesota: Stillwater’s local businesses in wonderful original storefronts.

Wisconsin: Madison’s thriving State Street.

Wisconsin: well-utilized outdoor dining on the sidewalks of State Street.

Wisconsin: downtown Platteville (a small college town).

Wisconsin: charming and inviting original storefronts in downtown Platteville.

Wisconsin: unique retail housewares in Fort Atkinson, as can only be properly displayed in a 100+ year old basement with painted stone walls in an old downtown building.

Wisconsin: charming buildings and well-restored storefronts in downtown Sheboygan, on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Michigan: downtown Manistee, an unexpectedly thriving area which was a random stop on the way south.

Michigan: beautifully restored original storefronts in Manistee.

Michigan: fun & quirky coffee shop storefront in Petoskey.  This Petoskey coffee shop was well populated when I stopped for my Americano before hitting the road again.

What a great storefront!

Michigan: this wonderful old theater marquee in Marquette is a small work of art.

Michigan: delightful art deco storefront in Marquette.

Michigan: busy downtown coffee shop with a view of the gorgeous old City Hall across the street.

Michigan: Marquette’s City Hall

These are all small towns (with the exception of Madison, Wisconsin, which is a medium-sized city that has managed to keep its sanity nonetheless). They were fortunate enough to be in a shadow when urban renewal was blazing brightly and scorching everything in its path. These towns did not destroy themselves and their history in the name of progress. None of these towns did anything dramatic to “re-invent” themselves to compete with a mall. They didn’t bulldoze large blocks of urban fabric to create open space or parking garages. They didn’t do anything extreme or bizarre to redesign their old downtown for the 21st century (such as downtown Salina, Kansas, a story for another day). What they did was embrace what they already had, and to manage this valuable resource to keep it intact and allow it to prosper naturally. They left it alone, and the beauty and integrity of what had been built 100+ years prior returned again to provide us the texture and beauty that can’t be genuinely replicated in a new shopping environment. If you have a visitor from out of town, you don’t take them to the new Wal-Mart or to the Shop-O-Rama Factory Outlets, do you? If they ask to see your town, you take them downtown because that’s where the soul of the city resides.

There is, however, a size threshold. I had great expectations for towns like Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Unfortunately they were just large enough to have big-city ideas of re-inventing downtown, to no avail. But this is a story for another day too.

—

Richard Kenney is an Architect in Seattle Washington and the principal of Cool Green Cabin, LLC.

Six Years and Counting

Like the “where were you when Kennedy was shot” question from an earlier generation, we all know what we were doing as we watched on live television the unfolding of events on 9/11/2001. There I was in the living room of a client I had just met, watching that second plane hit the other tower of the World Trade Center. Any doubt about the first plane being lost in the fog was gone. I think what I remember most was the courage of those in the fourth plane, knowingly facing their own deaths, thinking of others on the ground — preventing the deaths of so many more.

In the weeks prior a friend and I had booked an exciting 17-day trip to the east coast — Washington DC, Pennsylvania and New York. Our flight to DC was October 19th. I had been to DC before but this time was obviously different — the Pentagon had a huge hole in the side. Still, people were out and about in the various neighborhoods. The Washington Monument, as you might suspect, was closed to visitors. We had planned a road trip from DC to New York via Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water in rural Pennsylvania and thus had booked a rental car. Getting off the city bus at National Airport was weird — the place was a ghost town as flights were still not being permitted in or out. My first time in New York was surreal. Hotels and restaurants were eager to kick start the local economy so tourists were welcomed. As you approached “ground zero” as it was becoming known, the smell hit you. Neighbors in nearby Battery Park were hosing out the filters on their ventilation systems. The skyline I had seen my entire life in pictures was different, the Statue of Liberty was closed. We walked through the upper east side on the day a person died of anthrax poisoning on the upper east side. Stores had signs indicating they sold the anti-anthrax drug.

I visited New York again in the Fall of 2005. By then the debate about the future of the 16+ acre WTC site was in full swing. It should become a memorial park, it should be rebuilt as it was, and we shouldn’t build targets anymore were among the numerous viewpoints. Others advocated for much needed housing rather than simply replacing vast quantities of office space. Still others sought to return to the long abandoned street grid.

When Minoru Yamasaki was selected to design the World Trade Center his Pruitt-Igoe public housing, designed a decade earlier, was already troubled. When the ribbon was cut for the WTC in 1973 St. Louis had already begun to implode Yamasaki’s insensitive work here. In the 50s and 60s there was little opposition to such large scale projects save for Jane Jacobs. Today the debate over the 16+ acre site in lower Manhattan continues. Such a massive site in NYC is a rarity.

Back in St. Louis 16 acres is nothing to us. The Schnuck’s City Plaza development at Natural Bridge & Union is 20 acres, the Southtown Plaza strip center (former Famous-Barr site) is 11 acres. The old arena site, now called The Highlands, is 26 acres. The remaining Pruitt-Igoe site is roughly 33 acres. At 30 acres, Loughborough Commons, the Schnuck’s/Lowe’s albatross, is nearly twice as big as the WTC site. Yes — Loughborough Commons is 87% larger than the World Trade Center site! Wow, they are debating how many blocks and streets as well as how much office, retail and housing they can squeeze onto their 16 acres while here just getting the ability for an ADA-compliant sidewalk clearly takes more than action by the Board of Aldermen.

Thousands lost their lives six years ago and many more were strongly impacted by the loss of family, friends, co-workers, neighbors and simply a smile from a passing stranger no longer with us on the subway. Decisions made about the future of the WTC site, as well as development sites here in St. Louis and throughout the world, will too have an impact on people’s lives, although in a different way. We must ask ourselves why we are not creating places beyond just the short-term — a place to buy a cordless drill or get a latte at a drive-thru window. Architecture cannot made us better persons but our environment can and does impact how we all engage each other in our daily lives. We must do better. If not, we are simply funding a self-inflicted form of long-term terrorism.

Patterson a Panelist at National Rail~Volution Conference in Miami, MO-APA Conference in St. Louis

I’m very pleased to announce that I will serve on a panel discussion at the upcoming Rail~Volution conference in Miami FL. The panel on media tools will be on November 1st. I attended the annual conference for the first time last year and I was amazed at the quality & quantity of information.

Keynote speakers for the upcoming conference are, from the website:

Henry Cisneros, Chairman, American City Vista and City View
Henry Cisneros has an illustrious career that combines executive management in a variety of businesses, local and national government leadership positions, and numerous prestigious civic positions. He is the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a four-term mayor of San Antonio. In these positions Cisneros has unprecedented success in revitalizing urban areas and providing housing for urban families in all income ranges. His current ventures, American City Vista and City View, focus on building significant numbers of reasonably priced homes in the central neighborhoods of major metropolitan areas. Cisneros has been awarded more than 20 honorary doctorates from leading universities across the nation.

Congressman Earl Blumenauer, 3rd District, Oregon
Congressman Earl Blumenauer, founder of Rail~Volution, has focused most of his 34 years in public service on transportation and livable communities. He served as a state-, county-, and city-elected official in Oregon before being elected to Congress in 1996. In the U.S. House of Representatives, Blumenauer promotes livable communities, the environment, sustainable development and economic opportunity at the federal level. He currently serves on the Ways and Means Committee, the Budget Committee and the Select Committee on Global Warming and the Environment.

James S. Simpson, Administrator, Federal Transit Adminstration, Washington, DC
Mr. James S. Simpson was sworn in as the Federal Transit Administrator on August 10, 2006. Jim began his career in transportation over 30 years ago as a tractor-trailer driver for a local moving company while attending St. John’s University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in Managerial Science and Economics. He eventually bought the moving company and developed it into an international transportation business. Jim has been an airplane pilot for almost twenty years and flies both jet and multi-engine prop aircraft. He has a special interest in aviation and transportation safety.

William W. Millar, President, American Public Transportation Association, Washington, D.C.
William W. Millar is president of one of North America’s foremost organizations dedicated to the advancement of public transit. Millar became chief executive officer of APTA after 24 years in transit operations and is credited with re-energizing the national organization. Millar will bring us up to date on transit projects and will share his perspective on the future of public transit.

James F. Murley, Director, Catanese Center for Environmental and Urban Solutions, Florida Atlantic University, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Jim Murley is the leader of an organization whose mission is to: “work with policy makers and the public in their pursuit of options for managing growth while preserving natural systems, promoting a strong economy and planning livable communities.” He served as secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs under former governor Lawton Chiles and helped draft and gain passage of Florida’s landmark Growth Management Act. Murley also is a former leader of 1000 Friends of Florida and will provide great insight into the history and vision of our host region.

Rep Blumenauer gave a great presentation last year and I had a chance to talk briefly with him about St. Louis:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gidCOjS82mU [/youtube]

You can also read my post as a summary on the conference here. Additional posts can be found in the archives. Yesterday I had a conference call with the other panelists and the moderator, a very diverse group including transit advocates, industry consultants, a transit agency representative and the federal DOT. I will give you more details prior to the conference.

Although I have visited Florida numerous times as a kid (my older brother lived in Jacksonville while in the Navy) I have never been to Miami. I hope to do some quality blogging from the conference as well as some sight seeing and taking advantage of some of the mobile workshops on the conference schedule. Last year the host group from Miami had an excellent promotional video with the music from Will Smith’s Miami.

Following the short trip to Miami I will be back in St. Louis in time for the Missouri state conference of the American Planning Association, held this year in downtown St. Louis (more details) November 7-9. This panel will be called “Daylighting Planning Decisions” — more details to follow.