Behold the Power of Books!

I just came across the March 2008 issue of the journal Public Management (agreed, it is not exactly Maxim, but I'm an economist, ok). That issue includes an article by Beth Pollard entitled "Libraries: Partners in Sustaining Communities. The author starts out with "Today's libraries are: ... A civic and economic anchor that attracts not only residents but the small businesses that they frequent, such as dry cleaners, grocers, drug stores, coffee shops and more." Wow, I have long argued that the number one thing an inner-ring suburb can do to revitalize a declining retail area is build a new library or (if they don’t need one) expand the existing library with a satellite in the declining area. And these strategies can be really cheap if, like most older suburbs, the retail infrastructure is way larger than what the market will support. Most mid-century strip malls are struggling because later full service malls and big box stores provide more attractive retail experiences for lots of the goods people buy today. As a result, older strip malls can be twice the size today’s market will support.

But I had primarily thought of libraries as something that brought a steady stream of local citizens to an area as a way of creating social energy that would attract other people and start a virtuous circle that could create a sense of place to the city and begin the revitalization process. What Pollard argues is that the benefits can be more significant. She adds: “In addition to the library’s role in supporting small businesses by providing research, databases, and seminars, a library can serve as a business attraction and retention function… A well used library brings a high level of pedestrian traffic… Some new libraries are part of mixed-use developments, with condominiums above and stores on the street level. The appeal of having everything in walking distance can be a great incentive for social and business activities.”

And Pollard describes how, as the best case scenario, the new Seattle library opened, its annual number of visitors jumped 299%. Of course, the Rem Koolhass designed building is an architectural tour de force. This outcome is not likely to be equaled in most cities.
At the end of the day, a new library that works not only as a repository of books, but as a community center, can bring a new focal point to a city that can generate the social energy necessary to create a much needed sense of place to declining midopolises. And if you look back at my last post, I wonder about the synergistic potential of mixing a new library with Appleseed Project type development?

Seeds of Community

Ok, for the last 20 years lots of successful places have brought people together for shopping, eating and entertainment. This social energy can create a sense of place, but in places with less income, it has its limits. At the same time, without high income levels, developers might not want to risk investing in a place that has nothing going on. At the same time, cities in the inner ring might be able to raise some cash in an attempt to get someting going, but what should they do with it? One strategy is to buy up some property, maybe combine a few parcels with different owners and then offer developers land on the cheap as an incentive to take the risk. I think a different direction needs to be considered.

The public can try to create something that brings people together without the requirement that they spend a bunch of cash. That in itself might create enough demand for other options that retail, restaurants, and entertainment might start up in the area giving even more people reason to join the fun. The trick is to create a virtuous cycle.

Small parks set up for social events, fountains kids can play in, an area available for a farmers market, a classic car show, live music, etc. would be a great idea, so long as it is centrally located in such a place where other privately funded development could sprout up. A library would be a wonderful addition. They almost guarantee a flow of people in and out of the area. What else?

The Appleseed Project (www.theappleseedproject.com) is another element that could be really useful. Appleseed is essentially a place where small business types can go once they have outgrown the dining room table, but cannot afford a traditional office. They provide all the essential business resources from desks and messages to conference rooms which can all be rented as needed (more of less). On top of that, they design these facilities with storage for anything a small business might need to store and even several storefronts for retailers and restaurants to open up shop. What is key (to me) to this concept is that 300-400 people might be using an Appleseed facility each week. That brings in traffic and social energy needed to strengthen the sense of place that I think is key to building community and rethinking our inner-ring suburbs.

Replacing shopping

Thinking about great places I have been, many of them revolve around historical significance. In fact, sometimes reclaimed and repurposed buildings make a great basis for placemaking. Of course, many times these repurposed buildings can utterly fail too. Either way, historical value can be a draw. But I digress.

Lots of the great places I can think of in the US center on nightlife and shopping. Even a lot of malls I have been too have many of the elements of great places. But what about areas without the economic firepower to support numerous restaurants and specialty stores? And what about the inner ring with its emptying strip centers with acres of parking? With much retail gone to the big boxes or malls, how can these areas create enough social energy to pass the tipping point and make a great place? I believe the key is giving people a reason to mix and mingle in close proximity without spending a lot of money. Take a big corner strip mall and replace a square of the parking with grass, a fountain, stalls to sell produce, ice cream, coffee, a place for live music (but no band shell, please -- they look so dead when empty). Maybe replace part of the strip with a library extension or city hall? This would bring a stream of people to the area all week long. Oh, and a few port-a-potties would be nice too.

What else is cheap and relies on other people to increase the value?

The future of housing?

From the website here, you can see that Urban Re:vision - Dallas has facilitated the redevelopment of a city block near Dallas' city hall. The site claims:

"Soon, a single block will be transformed into a place that creates economies,supports community, facilitates relationships and generates resources."

The idea here is to come up with a model that could be a prototype for residential neighborhoods in the climate/energy era we seem to be entering. There seems to be a widespread belief that when energy gets expensive, we will all have to live in high density urban areas in buildings covered with PVs and wind turbines with gardens on the roof where we can all grow our own food. The planners seem to have written off moderate to low density suburban living.

I think this is a mistake.

Why?

1. The only reason this type of density makes sense is if transportation costs get really, really high. I have faith that electric powered transportation (cars, buses, light rail, etc. powered via nuclear power) will be able to keep transportation costs below what it was in the streetcar era. This means that we will be able to maintain densities below what we experienced in the 1900-1910 period. And even then, residential housing was not as dense as these competition entries.

2. I am going to go out on a limb here and assert that these buildings are a lot more energy intensive in constrution (steel and concrete, and elevators) than a stick-built or even adobe-like two story building. I think it can be argued that the Jones/Emmons 1961 Case Study House #24 idea is much closer to the future of residential housing than anything I see at Re:vision - Dallas.

I cannot find a good pic of the plan online, but basically, Jones/Emmons carved a 48'x60' hole out of a pile of dirt and filled it in with 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2 living areas, three garden areas (all 48'x12') and a swiming pool. At 1736 SF, the house isn't at all cramped. With the main living area and bedrooms opening up to the gardens, the rooms would feel larger than they are. The house would also be energy efficient and by using 60'x80' lots, a neighborhood would be much more dense (9 =units per acre) than most of what we see today.

3. Are we really going to get away from the huge economies of scale that agribusiness creates for us and grow our own food in community rooftop gardens? Even if we need to build greenhouses in cities to lower the cost of transporting food to people, won't we want to lower the cost dramatically by letting professionals grow the food for us? This one is beyond me.

4. There doesn't seem to be any sense of place being created in any of these entries. Ok, I guess this is a little off-message, but after my previous posts on placemaking, I have to address this. From what I can tell, most of these entries turn their backs to the street (or rise above it) and then try to create a communal space within the housing development. Have we learned anything from 60 years of public housing? People use streets to get from place to place. The street is where a place can gain social energy from people that live elsewhere. The internal park-like or street-like areas in these plans will mainly be accessible to people who live here. Without reaching a critical mass, these places will mostly be dead space. My grandparents used to live in a gated park-like area development containing about a dozen condo towers each with 120 units. Even with all those people living in such high density, the outdoor spaces were empty most of the time. I am guessing Jane Jacobs would not be a fan of any of these entries.

And finally, one thing is certain. We have no idea what effects policies to control climate change will have on the cost of resources or what new technologies will be developed in response to those changes. What I do know is that trying to keep the cost of energy low and then requireing people to use less of it by having experts design "better" places is a terrible idea. The lowest cost way to handle this transition is to tax activities that cause the planet to heat up and then let people find the lowest cost way to avoid the taxes.

I bet what we would see in that case is a moderate increase in density of economic activity concentrated around our existing edge cities and central cities and a shift towards more mixed use land use to reduce travel costs.

Project for Public Spaces

I was just made aware of an organization pretty much dedicated to building a sense of place. It is called The Project of Public Spaces and the web site goes in all sort of directions. There is a ton of great stuff, although I find a little new urbanist over-confidence in some of the ideas presented. For example I got a sense in the section devoted to reinventing streets as places that new urbanist type streets can be much more prevalent then economic realities suggest is feasible.

I can't wait to wade even more through the organization's site.

Building a Sense of Place

Most of the time when we talk about sense of place, a place people care about, we think of historical significance (Boston), cultural significance (New Orleans), architectural significance (Chicago). But the more I think about it, the more I come to believe that a critical piece of placemaking is social significance which I think can be achieved by creating a place that attracts people.

New Urbanist Andreas Duany was in Dallas recently and he discussed how few good places there are in Dallas. He even trashed the new Victory area near downtown Dallas that everyone here in Dallas thinks of as our best shot at creating a place that matters in the heart of the city. He didn't talk about this in detail, but he inferred that the design of a neighborhood could create a sense of place. I think he is right that a lot of architecture and neighborhood design works against and even precludes placemaking, but I also think that even when architecture and neighborhood design is optimized to create a place, it may not be sufficient to make it happen.

Although the ideas of "focal points" and "multiple equilibria" can be found in lots of economics texts, they don't pop up in the popular press that often. However, Tim Harford devotes an entire chapter of his book _The Logic of Life_ to the importance of these comments in the creation of places and the evolution of neighborhoods.

It is key, I believe, to creating a sense of place that a location attracts people. This is because, for the most part, being around people is a good thing. I seem to have more fun in a restaurant or bar that is full of other people rather than ones that are mostly empty. I prefer going to athletic events that are well attended. Cafes in Europe with outdoor seating tend to be located where lots of people walk by and the chairs at the beginning of the day are oriented towards people watching. Harford uses parks as an example of a place that is much more fun to be when there are lots of other people also using the park. I am even more enthusiastic about taking a bus if there are more people on it (although for some reason this is not true about an airplane). Even shopping malls are more fun when busy -- assuming I am not under the gun to buy things and the crowds do not slow me down -- like the Saturday before Christmas.

All of these are examples of focal points, something that creates an opportunity for people to coordinate being around other people without any actual communication taking place. There is actually a park near our house which is wedged between City Hall and a creek that has seldom used bandshell, tennis courts, and horseshoe playing areas, but the park is full of people almost every weekend day when the weather is good enough. The reason is that it contains a large pavilion with grills that can be reserved for use by any group that wants to sign up. Even if groups decide to use it for only 1/2 the Saturdays and Sundays from April to October, use is regular enough and the activity that accompanies it attracts people to the park to use the other grills, the playground, the basketball court, etc. I cannot prove this, but that regular enough use of the pavilion by large groups attracts so many people that even when no one is using the pavilion, the park is a fun place to be. This state of a crowded park on relatively nice weekend days is an equilibrium. So long as everyone believes the park will be well attended and more fun, they will continue to go, making the crowded park crowded. Crowded parks tend to stay that way.

And how about this: In the winter when it is much less likely that any group will reserve the pavilion because the weather is much less certain, even on a pleasant Dallas day (sunny and 60 deg), the park will be less well attended and if we go, we won't stay as long as the park won't be as much fun. This is also an equilibrium. Empty parks tend to stay that way.
This park has multiple equilibria because it swings from full to empty depending on the day of the week and month of the year.

So if I were going to try to build a sense of place in a city based on the social aspect of place, I would do two things. First, I would create spaces (parks, plazas, streets, squares, etc.) that are easily accessible, preferably by foot or bicycle, but also do something that creates a focal point, something that would create coordination of use of the space without any actual communication. Plaza de Mayor in Madrid is a fully enclosed plaza ringed with shops and restaurants. The Place Georges Pompidou (a plaza) in Paris is constantly full of performers, live musical performances, and people. Cafes and restaurants are there, but the focal point has to be the Pompidou Centre, which houses the National Modern Art Museum and a large public library. Between the different potential used for the space, there is virtually no time when the plaza does not have a great deal of social energy. St. Peter's Piazza is in front of St. Peter's Basilica and it gains energy from the stream of the faithful and tourists coming to see the Swiss guard and the Basilica or to celebrate mass.

Unfortunately, the past 40 years have provided thousands of examples of failed place-making attempts. Downtown Galesburg Illinois has a small square off Main Street complete with benches, a small stage with seating and small decorative pine trees. With Main Street on one side and a parking lot on the other, I am sure the designers hoped this place would bring people back downtown. The problem is that there is never anyone in it. LaGrange Illinois turned a street into the walking Calendar Court Mall lined with retail shops. When real malls attracted most shoppers, Calendar Court was left empty and the city has re-introduced the street. Professional planners now decry the three Bs of 1980s redevelopment: banners, berms and bandstands. The first two because it isn't the physical look that matters and the third because their infrequent use never creates the focal point that brings enough people to the area to reach that critical mass that becomes a self sustaining equilibrium of social energy.

The trick is to have a place that has easy access for people to get to, but also has a reason for people to be there enough of the time that people go because they have faith that enough other people will be there as well to make the place interesting.

Two key questions remain. First, how many people have to live within easy access to make this work? This may limit how many such places can be successful. Barcelona and Hong Kong are so dense that there can be a lot of successful social places in a small geographic area. But how about within a much less dense suburban area? It may be my imagination, but the new less dense outer-ring suburbs seem to have less social energy or social places than much more dense middle class neighborhoods. Is this simply a function of density?

The second question is how strong or consistent does the focal point have to be to create a high social energy equilibrium? If an inner-ring suburb redevelops an area as a public square, does the city need to ensure that art festivals, musical performances, street performers, etc. are scheduled twice per month? Twice per week? Can some of this be supplanted with restaurants with outdoor seating? How much does a light rail station add or subtract from the social energy?

This entry mainly focused on small places, but might it be possible to use some of the same ideas to create a sense of place over the entire city? I’ll have to ponder that.

How not to build a sense of place.

Here is great piece about how a noble attempt to build a sense of place failed miserably. It is about a square built in a London neighborhood that didn't quite create the social energy the planners had hoped for. Here.

It turns out that place making is really, really hard. But at the same time, the author discusses how this part of London has plenty of social energy, it just isn't where the planners wanted it. So if there is a lesson here, it is to find where people are congregating, and build upon it.

Authenticity is Key to Sense of Place

From the previous entry on sense of place, one thing I take away is the importance of authenticity. So how do we think about or define authenticity? Greg Lavardra in his design blog not only discusses it, but cites a TED talk by marketing consultant and author Joseph Pine on the topic of authenticity.
See: http://blog.lamidesign.com/2009/04/consumers-and-authenticity-considering.html


According to Pine, what people want more and more is to have authentic experiences. This involves not only goods and services we buy, but all the elements that contribute to the lives we lead. That is, people want to have the sense that their own lives are authentic. So what does authenticity mean? He points out that the basis for how we today think about authenticity was first clearly defined by Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet when he says:

This above all: to thine own self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act I, scene iii, 78-80

Pine breaks this idea of authenticity into two parts. For a thing (person, good, services, experience) to be authentic, it must first be what is says it is and it must second be true to itself. For both, if the answer is yes, then the thing is real and if not, then it is fake.

But what is the difference between these two facets of authenticity?

1. Is the thing what it says it is?
To me this means that when experienced, is this thing under consideration as advertised? So if a consumer gets what they pay for, the thing is real in this dimension.

2. Is it true to itself?
To me this means the thing under consideration is consistent with or is a manifestation of its creator’s values and mission. If so, then the thing is real in this dimension.

I do think there is a rather blurry line between these two ideas, but it does seem to be a useful way to think about authenticity.

See: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joseph_pine_on_what_consumers_want.html

With two possible answers (real/fake) to two questions (Is something what it says it is? Is it true to itself?, we get a 2 by 2 matrix of possibilities.



This is not to say that any one of the four quadrants is superior to any other in any metaphysical way, but Pine argues that it is becoming increasingly important for business to come across as offering authentic experiences because that is what their customers want. He says that customers prefer Real/Real to Real/Fake or Fake/Real and all three are preferred to Fake/Fake. I’d rather leave it to psychologists and sociologists to figure out why, but I cannot help but think that new technologies that allow us the ability to fake almost anything at very low cost might be part of the issue.

Before getting to the authenticity of cities and neighborhoods, I’d like to explain this matrix with a few examples from a couple of unrelated areas.

First, let’s think about bottled water. There are lots of brands of bottled water that advertise themselves as offering high quality water. When you buy them that is exactly what you get. They are what they say they are, and in that sense are Real. However, it has recently come out that Dasani put out by the Coca-Cola company is just high quality filtered tap water. This is the same company that once used the tag line “It’s the real thing” to promote Coke’s authenticity. I would have to say using the initials PWS instead of the longer “public water source” on bottles of Dasani is a sign that Coke is not being true to itself. I’d have to call Dasani a Real/Fake.

The automobile industry offers some great examples as well. BMW projects itself as a producer of high quality, high performance automobiles built with state of the art technology and design. As that is what they sell, they are what they say they are. If you go to the BMW factory, you will find that everything about the company is geared towards continuing to produce this type of automobile. The BMW experience is Real/Real.

Let’s contrast this with the Cadillac brand during the 1950-2000 time period. During the 1950s, Cadillac billed itself as producing the largest, most comfortable, and best luxury cars in the world. The cars were built to some of the highest standards of the day. They were what they said they were. And in the 1950s the company was fully intending to maintain that position. They were real/real.

By the late 1970s though, they were not trying to compete with BMW, but they were still producing the best large luxury cars in the US. However, there were signs that Cadillac was not being true to itself. To cut costs, GM was finding ways to share parts with other brands in the company. Although they sold products that were as billed, the company was no longer being true to itself; they were becoming real/fake.

Then they offered the Cimarron model in 1981-1982. In fact, the Cadillac Cimarron was supposedly designed to compete with the BMW 320 as a performance car. But the Cimarron was seriously lacking in performance and, with a fake convertible top as an option, no matter what the advertising said, the Cimarron did not exhibit cutting edge design. Was the Cimarron experience what Cadillac said it was? Heck no, it was fake. Was Cadillac being true to itself? No. Cadillac had been known for large comfortable luxury cars. This was certainly not one of those. The Cimarron experience was fake/fake and the car was a complete failure.

Check out the Lamidesign blog for some great examples of the real/fake matrix with respect to architecture.

So how does any of this apply to neighborhoods or towns?

Real/Real
Let’s start with small town America. Rural towns are what they say they are. Most everyone that works in town lives there too, went to school there and most people know each other’s names. The pace is slower and high school sports, fishing and the weather are big topics of conversation. You can get just about anywhere within a 10 minute walk and the best meal and conversation in town is at the local deli/Italian/German restaurant. And at this point, most of these small towns are just trying to stay afloat and have no choice but to be true to themselves. Almost every small town I have visited has been Real/Real.

Now let’s turn to the city. Residential city neighborhoods built in the 1900-1940 time period are what they say they are and are true to themselves. Much like small rural towns, they were built according to market forces of the time to meet the needs of their inhabitants without pretension or attempt to be anything other than what they were. Residential land use is mixed in with retail, churches and schools because walking was still an important means of transportation. These neighborhoods are Real/Real as well.

Fake/Fake
I’d like to contrast these with the new outer ring suburbs with their more isolated enclaves or loops and cul-du-saqs. The themes often seem to fall into one of a small set of categories. First, there is the Old World Chateaux theme where each house is presented to be the country estate of a member of the landed class from either England, France or Italy. Are these neighborhoods what they say they are? No. This is not Europe, this is not the 19th century and these houses are not on 50 acres. Are these neighborhoods true to themselves? Not really as I am sure few of the homeowners are European aristocracy. It would have to be classified as fake/fake. The second prevalent theme is similar, but based on 19th century American country estate architecture. All the fake/fake characteristics equally well apply here.

Taking a different tack, a third popular option is the small town America motif with wood frame farmhouse as the architectural cue. But has the developer created a small town on the edge of suburbia? Not really. The non-grid layout and entirely residential use of land means the development is not what it says it is. Is it true to itself? Again, no. Most people are from elsewhere, it is impossible to walk anywhere of interest, the dining and shopping experiences are varied and plentiful, the local high school might have 4000 students. And it is a good bet that few of the areas cops, teachers, services workers, etc. live in the neighborhood. Is the neighborhood was it says it is? No. Are these neighborhoods true to themselves? No. They are Fake/Fake.


Fake/Real
For an example of Fake/Real, I use an example from the Lamidesign blog again. Colonial Williamsburg is a mixture of pre-1776 buildings and newer buildings build to colonial specifications with colonial technology. As the city is not what it says it is, a preserved colonial village, it is a fake. However, as it is not composed of buildings made with 21st century building technology with a veneer of old details applied to them, but instead buildings true to colonial architecture in every way except the time of construction, the area is true to itself. It is a Fake/Real on the matrix.

Real/Fake
How about the ex-warehouse district turned artists studios neighborhood? Clearly the neighborhood says light industrial which does not match the reality. On the other hand, I would say they are true to themselves as they are indeed often barely livable warehouses finding a second life as something else. At this point, I would have to call the neighborhood Fake/Real. Of course, once a developer builds a new loft building designed to look like an old warehouse, we have crossed into the Fake/Fake area.

And this leads me to the New Urbanist concept. New Urbanists operate under the assumption that the economic constraints that created the walkable, mixed-use towns and city neighborhoods of the pre-war era also created the most livable and sustainable type of development. So what does it mean to recreate that after the automobile rendered those constraints obsolete? New Urbanist planning generally takes as a model streetcar suburb or small town. Taking architectural cues from those typologies, they create neighborhoods that look like they were built 90 years ago with a grid system of streets, mixed use of land -- houses, churches, schools, public buildings, retail all within walking distance of each other. Are these New Urbanist developments what they say they are (dense, walkable, mixed use)? Yes. To that extent they are real. Are they as old as the architecture would suggest? No, but let’s put that aside for a minute. Are they true to themselves? Not really. First off, they were not really built before WWII, but also, to make the system work, the individual looking shops are all owned and operated by one management company. While the retail area may look like a series of small mom-and-pop shops, that is not really the case. To this extent, these developments are fake. New Urbanism is largely Real/Fake on the authenticity matrix.

Midopolis: Real/Real
So now to the big question: What about Midopolis? Most of the 1950-1970 vintage suburbs I have visited have a lot in common. First off, the layout is not about creating detached exclusive enclaves, but it does acknowledge the freedom created by the automobile. These suburbs were not designed to look like small towns or clusters of European estates, but to look like suburbia. Clearly, these were residential neighborhoods oriented towards the automobile as the dominant mode of transportation and the idea that people would live here, but work in the central city. Retail and restaurants were built in strip malls designed to look like strip malls. Ok, I know strip malls are everyone’s least favorite archetype, but they are really no different from the new outer-ring suburban strip malls designed to look like little villages (small town or European, take your pick). Architecturally, the houses of this era are simple and unpretentious and their Frank Lloyd Wright inspired open plan layouts are the most notable departure from what came before. These are houses suited to the new post-war lifestyle with two living areas and a kitchen more tied to the living area than ever before.

At the end of the day, most inner-ring suburbs I have visited are exactly what they appear to be. And that makes them Real in that dimension. Are these inner-ring suburbs true to themselves? Conceptually, these first post-war suburbs were places where city residents aspired to go to leave the noise, pollution and density of the city and that is as true now as ever before. So long as they stay true to that vision, they will be true to themselves. These cities are what they say they are and they are true to themselves. This is as Real/Real as it gets.

So, in my opinion, inner ring suburbs have a great deal of authenticity potential, but is that the last word? I don’t think so. To further complicate things, when it comes to neighborhoods and cities, it is impossible to talk about authenticity without discussing the social dimension. And at the same time, this social dimension is critical to building a sense of place. Do inner-ring suburbs have a sense of place? Do they have or can they create an emotional connection with residents? Are they or can they become places that people care about? And how does the social component tie into the discussion?

If Mr. Pine tells us that having authentic experiences is becoming increasingly important in the marketplace, what can we make of the popularity of suburbs that are more Fake/Fake than anything else? These developments are the result of market forces, so it is hard to argue that people do not want this or are oblivious. Authenticity and design quality seems to matter elsewhere in the marketplace. After all, nobody wants a Mercedes that looks like a 1948 Plymouth. Nobody wants a HD LCD TV that looks like a 1972 Zenith. However, when it comes to housing, people openly prefer an architectural style that architects generally believe are largely comprised of poorly organized pastiche of historical details placed in settings inconsistent with the architecture. As for neighborhood design, the market says that families prefer isolated enclaves of residential land use to more interconnected neighborhoods. The question is not whether these developments have value, they clearly do, but whether their lack of authenticity will eventually matter and be their downfall. If and when this happens, will Midopolis be able to capitalize on the opportunity?

I have a suspicion that the social component is what is largely driving demand for the new suburbs. It may well be that real and authentic places have a population that that ethnically and economically reflects the region. But it may also well be that for a lot of Americans, there is a strong preference to live in a place that is much more homogeneous than the larger area and people are willing to overlook such inauthenticity if it means having higher status neighbors, better schools, lower crime, etc. It may well be that Midopolis must focus on attracting people who put authenticity above exclusivity.

Sense of Place... What?

So noted urbanist Joel Kotkin tells us that the inner ring suburbs that will be successful will provide inhabitants with a strong sense of place. Sense of place?” What? After a quick google search, I found that Wikipedia has a “Sense of place” entry. I am not a big fan of Wikipedia, but for something like this, it will probably do. So what does the great Wiki have to say on the matter?

“Places said to have a strong ‘sense of place’ have a strong identity and character that is deeply felt by local inhabitants and by many visitors.” “It is often used in relation to those characteristics that make a place special or unique, as well as to those that foster a sense of authentic human attachment and belonging.“

“Places that lack a ‘sense of place’ are sometimes referred to as ‘placeless’ or ‘inauthentic.’ Placeless landscapes are those that have no special relationship to the places in which they are located—they could be anywhere.”
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_place

So what creates a sense of place? Certainly, great public spaces can really help. Plaza De Mayor in Madrid, Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps in Rome, Times Square in New York, Grant Park in Chicago, Leicester square in London are all public spaces that provide an unparalleled sense of place. At the end of the day however, what makes these places so great is that they attract people. There are a lot of physically beautiful places on earth that don’t attract people, and I bet many of them would not be considered places with a great “sense of place.” So the ability to attract people is very important. But they are also all places that are authentic. If you reread the above, authenticity is a term that seems central to placemaking. So if I had to define it, I would say that having a sense of place first and foremost means that a place attracts and fosters social energy. To do that requires access and authenticity. But authenticity is such a nebulous term. I guess that needs to be the next stop.

Who? This is complicated.

The easy answer to who will solve the Midopolis problem is: Yuppies!

Ok, that isn't going to happen. Young upwardly mobile professionals are looking towards the newly revitalized central city in almost every MSA in the US (Detroit excepted) and once they start families, it is off to the outer ring.

But look, there are two groups that seem to be attracted to Metropolis. First is immigrants and upwardly mobile ex members of the inner city. These groups include entrepreneurs, shop keepers, and restaurateurs, etc. that can bring a vitality to areas abandoned by affluent whites moving out. To once again quote Kotkin (2001 -- cite below): "[T]he best course for these new melting pots may be not so much clinging to their demographic past, but finding ways to seize the advantage fo their more diverse roles, both economically and demographically. No longer homogeneous enclaves, midpolitan communities increasingly must draw their strength from the energies, skills, and cultural offerings of their increasingly diverse populations."

The second group are recent, non-professional, college graduates starting out and looking for a location that is vital and stimulating with access to a wide array of employment opportunities in the central city and edge cities that dot all MSAs in the US. And for those with entrepreneurial aspirations, inner-ring suburbs offer access to all the city's support services, but also office space at a moderate cost. The one thing that continues to hold the populations together in cities is the agglomeration benefits that accrue to clusters of firms in the same industry. Fostering the development of clusters of firms in the same or related industries can be a powerful force for economic growth.

But how do you get these groups to buy in and move in to town?

Again, Kotkin (2001): "The key to securing a thriving economic and social future for midopolitan suburbs is developing a distinct identity and sense of place. Older suburbs with low quality housing stock and deteriorating infrastructure may continue to struggle, but the fate of Midopolis does not need to be dismal. Their success will depend mostly on local entrepreneurs, government, and volunteer groups who can shape the future of these communities.

Sense of place... the sounds like hard work. Damn.


Kotkin, Joel (2001). Older Suburbs: Crabgrass Slums or New Urban Frontier, Reason Public Policy Institute Policy Study 285.

Define Success

So what characterizes success? I believe that long term sustainability requires a productive use of all property and housing values that increase at roughly the inflation rate. This probably goes hand in hand with quality of life variables that are continually trending upward. But this is a tall order.

I have already mentioned that the number one issue with the Midopolis is a depreciated housing stock. Unless a city's amenities can outweigh that downside, housing values will necessarily fall. At the same time, the decreasing housing values are attracting a wave of migration from the city. This increase in diversity may be seen as a plus to some, but often this provides further impetus for households to move to the outer-ring.

However, for inner-ring suburbs located between central cities and new and rapidly growing suburbs, the number of jobs within a 25 minute commute (the average commute in most cities) is greatest in the inner ring -- surpassing even central city locations. And beyond that, inner-ring suburbs are closer to central city cultural amenities than outer-ring suburbs.

For inner-ring suburbs located on the side of a central city that is not growing, access to the central city is the biggest factor in their favor.

All this taken together seems to suggest that inner-ring suburbs need to not only embrace their increasing diversity and at the same time play up their locational benefits to those that care more about location then having the largest, most up to date, housing and the highest possible quality schools. So who might that be?

The Future Won't Look Like the Past

Change is inevitable, but what will it look like?

It took a while, but the new suburbs have it figured out (or so they think). People do not want to live near schools, churches, stores, busy roads, hotels, restaurants, or anything except for other houses like theirs. So we zone residential neighborhoods as isolated single use pods with a fairly narrow range of housing sizes. City councils and zoning boards believe that if enough lower income households move in to the school district or city, housing values might start to fall and the viscious cycle of decline will begin. As a result, multifamily housing is carefully segregated from the rest and its existance is limited.

Because real incomes are up over the last 60 years and lifestyles have changed (I have heard that most formal dining rooms in the US now function as home offices), houses in the outter ring are larger and more adapted to 21st century middle and upper middle class households.

Can the inner ring compete with that? Probably not. Instead of developing large tracts of previously agricultural land and taking advantage of economies of scale to produce housing the 21st century family wants at $80/SF, replacing inner-ring houses costs over $100/SF PLUS the cost of the land. And when you replace older housing, the income variance becomes much larger than what you see in the new suburbs. Beyond that, although zoned, the inner ring has a much wider variety of housing types in much less isolated neighborhoods than the new suburbs. This means that inner ring schools will always have a much more diverse (at least economically) student body than the new suburbs.

In short, for households that dream of a large 21st century house in a cul-du-sac with a homogeneous neighborhood and local school, the inner ring, is just not an attractive option for a lot of households.

Define inner-ring suburb? I know it when I see it.

Before 1920, as a central city grew up to the edges of a smaller town, the town would generally join the larger city to take advantage of lower cost city services. But this process came to a screrching halt in 1920. Why? In a word, zoning. New York City passed the first comprehensive zoning ordinance in the US. In short order, cities and towns realized the power of such control over land use and it no longer was advantageous to join the larger city and lose that power.

So the question is then, why zoning? Before the automobile and city bus came to exist, transportation technology was such that land use was largely fixed and determined by transportation costs. Before the streetcar, everyone pretty much needed to live near where they worked. According to William Fischel (2004) "An Economic History of Zoning and a Cure for its Exclusionary Effects" in the journal Urban Studies, pre-streetcars, there is no need to zone land use as everyone needs all uses (residential, industrial, office, retail, etc.) within walking distance. Then the streetcar and still expensive automobile were born at about the same time. These set a whole new set of incentives where people move away from industrial uses. However, streetcar lines are fixed over time. Lower income households choose to live within walking distance of the streetcar and higher income households with cars can live further away from the streetcar. For economi reasons, businesses choose to live near the streetcar lines as well. Still no need for zoning. These early streetcar suburban areas (both within central cities or independent suburbs) are closest to the mixed use, walkable cities that New Urbanists and smart growth advocates like best.

The era of the city bus and cheap auto changed everything. While high income households could previously look to the streetcar lines as an indication of where apartment buildings would be located, the bus and then car changed that. To quote Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland “[apartments are] a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings created by the residential character of the district (Euclid v. Ambler, 1926).” I am not sure this view has changed much in 85 years. As buses -- with easiliy modified routes -- allow apartments (with their mass-transit dependent residents), to be built anywhere, zoning was needed to make sure that did not happen.

The low cost car allowed a whole new type of development that is planned not by economics, but by zoning. The era of sprawling single use development began in the prosperity that followed WWII. These first, new, comprehensively zoned suburbs are what I primarily think of when I discuss the inner-ring Midopolis. But certainly, many pre-war suburbs can and should also be considered inner-ring and the issues certain are similar.

Changing Midopolis. So what?

According to pundit Mike Davis, "Across the nation, hundreds of aging suburbs are trapped in the same downward spiral -- from garden city to crabgrass slum." (Kotkin, Joel (2001) Reason Public Policy Institute Policy Study 285).

In some ways, every inner-ring suburb is a special case, but the future need not be feared. However, that does not mean that the future can necessarily be made to look like the past.

If the issue is reduced demand for a depreciating housing stock leading to a filtering down of houses from high income housholds to lower income households, the first question is what is the problem? I mean, what is the problem with increased economic and ethnic diversity -- everyone has to live somewhere?

On the face of it, nothing. However, there are a lot of details to consider. First, if current residents prefer a level of taxes and city services and amenities based on the recent past, a decline in property values (or fear of a futrure decline) might cause a mass exodus. Moving is expensive, so this transition is costly. Second, no one can look at inner city America during the 1960s-1980s and call that a success even in areas where vaccancy rates were low. I do not have specific evidence to back this up, but economic theory and research suggests that more economically and ethnically diverse cities should have better average school quality and overall lower crime rates than more segregated cities. That is, crime rates and school quality in the low income areas are so bad that when averaged in with the higher income areas, the situation is worse, on average. So moving inner city problems to older suburbs cannot be considered a successful outcome.

So where are we so far? Tearing down Midopolis' aging housing stock is not an economically viable option and becomming a crabgrass slum is a possibility that should be avoided. Where is the middle ground? What is the future of Midopolis?

What is wrong with the inner ring?

So after experiencing decades of growth and popularity during the 1950-1970 time period and another decade of stability, inner ring suburbs across the US are now largely (but not exclusively) experiencing a decline in property values, stagnant or declining population and the fastest growth rates of population living in poverty comparied to central cities, rural towns or more distant suburbs.

Why?

In the 1980s, schools were good, crime was low, access to central cities was good, new edge cities with their 5,000,000SF of office space were nearby -- what is not to like? The houses.

Volume builders can put up lots of new houses at a size and with amenities that middle and upper middle households find most desirable at a very reasonable cost. Older suburbs have older, smaller houses that are really expensive to replace. As a result, when new families are looking for a place to live, they look further out. So who moves in? It isn't like houses become vacant? With property values lower than in the new suburbs, the new residents tend to be more diverse economically and ethnically. Since social problems and school quality tend to be correlated with low income, the quality of life indicators that realtors and new home buyers look at might tip ever so slightly and the slide has begun.

Because of their location close to the central city, if the land were still agricultural, most of these cities would developed now as exclusive suburbs. Location does matter. But the smaller and aging housing stock makes such redevelopment impossible.

But recent experience tells us that while some midopolises are headed for collapse, others experience a rebirth -- although rebirth should not be confused with turning back the clock to become what they once were.

The Big Picture

Economists tell us that economic activity (jobs) will tend to cluster for a couple of reasons. First, and most true historically, firms (businesses) that export goods to other cities prefer locations with access to transportation infrastructure -- ports or rail depots. This has become much less necessary as the interstate highway system has made highway interchanges almost as usefull as a large port or or rail depot. Second, firms (businesses) tend to do better when they are nearer to other related firms. This can be to either promote face-to-face communication with suppliers, accountants, banks, advertizing agencies or it can be to access a large pool of potential workers.

So where does this leave people to live? Well, outside these employment clusters. Economic theory also tells us that because commuting costs (time and money costs) are so important, land closest to emplyment centers should be most valuable and, because they have the highest time cost to commuting, where the highest income households choose to live. But that doesn't really describe how the world looks. The wealthy tend to live in suburbs furthers away from traditional downtowns.

Historically, this is because when the streetcar and later the auto allowed people to move away from crowded and polluted downtown neighborhoods that were populated by people of all different incomes and ethnic backgrounds. So the suburbs were populated by people who may have had the higher commuting costs, but they also were willing to pay the most for lower crime, better schools and a back yard. Crime and schools might be obvious, but the backyard is much overlooked. And to that I mean not backyards specifically, but housing that matches the economics and the lifestyles of the day. Building a new house where a house currently exists is expensive, building a new house on agricultural land where lots of houses are going to be built at once is cheap. More than anything else, this tells the story of suburbs and why inner ring suburbs are beginning to struggle.

The goal of this web log is to tell the story of inner ring suburbs, explain the economic forces that shape them, and try to think through strategies that will bring them successfully into the the mid-century.