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LIBRARY |
ARTICLE: Bohl, C. |
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LIBRARY |
ARTICLE: Bohl, C. |
South Square Closing Remarks:
The Market and Planning for Livable Communities (10/2/00) Charles C. Bohl© 2000 Charles C. Bohl. All rights reserved.
[IMAGE – SOUTH SQ ENTRANCE] As Robert F. Kennedy once said, "Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?" This weekend, a group of dedicated citizens, designers, planners, developers, and city officials were brave enough to ask WHY NOT, and set sail in a skiff of paper, maps, drawings and – above all – community dialog to envision what COULD BE. The pessimists and pundits would have you view this as a pipe dream with no basis in reality. I’d like to take a moment before we view some of the strategies and ideas produced this weekend to bring the naysayers beneath the surface of what they perceive as "the market" and the inevitability of sprawl. |
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| The Market What drives development? What moves the mountains of money, people and materials that create and recreate our homes, our workplaces, our marketplaces, our streets and neighborhoods and – when taken together – our communities? As the authors of a text book on real estate development wrote, "the excitement of identifying an unfulfilled human need and creating a product to fill it at a profit is the stimulus that drives development." [IMAGE: SPRAWL SHOT] If you base the future of this area on the market conditions and planning and design concepts that created the South Square district nearly 30 years ago, you will be investing in a place rooted in the past, a place with no future. Those who invoke "the market" would have you believe that the ONLY thing the market can produce and support are places like these images of placeless sprawl in Florida, Maryland, Asheboro, and right here in the South Square area. The critics would have you believe that these places are somehow the perfect response for meeting the "unfulfilled human needs" of people today. What drives development is PEOPLE and their needs and desires. In case you’ve missed it, those needs and desires have been changing as the composition of our population and families have changed, and our communities become saturated with traffic congestion, mile after mile of lookalike strip centers, and what James Kunstler has described as the "automobile slum" created by sprawl. But if the market is based on what people want, what do we find when we actually ask people about places like this. We find out that 70% of people are dissatisfied with the way suburbs are developing today; we find that 29% of people think that the current pattern of strips and centers is OK, but that 86% of people would prefer to see commercial development clustered in town centers, where shops, offices, churches and libraries are clustered around a village green. Look at your plans, however, and you will find that these types of places are illegal to build! Alternatives to Malls & Sprawl So what if we look at what the MARKET is actually producing right now in other parts of the country? [IMAGE: LIFESTYLE CENTER] Lifestyle Centers: Today, one-third of all NEW shopping centers incorporate some of the things you see in these images, things like…
The problem is YOU CAN’T BUILD THIS HERE – IT BREAKS ALL OF THE RULES embodied in outdated planning regulations, street standards, building codes and public works. Live-Work-Play Neighborhoods: What if you don’t want to simply reinvent the mall as yet another retail-only property such as a lifestyle center or urban entertainment district? What if your goal is to grow a neighborhood or lively district within the City? [IMAGE: ORENCO STREET] Here are some views of loft housing in Orenco Station, a New Urbanist community located a 30-minute light rail ride from downtown Portland, deep in the suburban fringe. Looking in the rear-view mirror of the real estate market, you would never see loft apartments and townhomes in this market, they simply didn’t exist. These housing options responded to TODAY’s market of high-tech workers at nearby Intel plants, Cisco and other "New Economy" companies that represent the future, and these units are being snapped up at a phenomenal pace. [IMAGE: ORENCO WINDOW VIEW] Orenco Station provides the type of place where many New Economy workers want to live, where they have options to open up ground floor offices or home-based businesses in accessory units over garages, which over 40% of the single-family home buyers in Orenco have chosen to build! THIS MARKET IS HERE, IN THE TRIANGLE, AND IF DURHAM CAN’T MUSTER THE VISION TO PLAN FOR IT AND ACCOMMODATE IT, I GUARANTEE YOU THAT OTHER COMMUNITIES IN THE TRIANGLE CAN AND WILL. The problem: YOU CAN’T BUILD THIS HERE, IT’S ILLEGAL. AND IF YOU WAIT FOR A DEVELOPER WILLING TO TAKE ON ALL OF THE CHANGES NECESSARY TO MAKE IT HAPPEN, IT PROBABLY NEVER WILL. [IMAGE: POST RIVERSIDE] Post Properties is a $3 billion developer of apartments, condominiums, and townhomes throughout the south and southwest. The major emphasis of Post’s new development is on creating mixed-use, "live-work-play" settings like this one in Atlanta, and others in Denver, Phoenix, Florida, and throughout Texas. A company like Post might be interested in an area like South Square and the Research Triangle with it’s high-technology workforce nearby and powerful population growth projected for the next 40 years, right? WRONG! Art Lominick, an executive with Post, says that the company won’t even consider looking at an area of less than 80 acres and that includes "a plan that has teeth in it." I can’t think of a single area within Durham, or anywhere in the Triangle for that matter, that has such a plan, let alone one with any teeth in it, to attract this type of exciting, community-building investment. TO MAKE IT HAPPEN THE COMMUNITY MUST BECOME PROACTIVE. [IMAGE: KROGER SHOPPING CENTER] Community Shopping Centers: What about "plain vanilla" neighborhood shopping centers? Surely you can’t do anything with these? [IMAGE: UPTOWN DISTRICT] Compare the Krogers shopping center here in the South Square area with the Uptown District in San Diego, a mixed-use district that includes a neighborhood shopping center with a grocery store, offices, live/work units, apartments & condos above the shops and restaurants. The district maintains a fabric of walkable blocks and streets with on-street parking and parking lots in the rear of buildings. It also incorporates a community center, and a quiet courtyard green in the condominium section that looks directly out onto the street leading to the grocery store. This creates a situation, not merely of co-existence, but where commerce and streetlife create a more interesting place to live, where you don’t need a car to buy a loaf of bread, get a cup of coffee or a meal, get your film developed, or simply rub elbows with other people. Enduring Models: But how can we know if these places will fare any better than the big boxes and shopping malls with 10-20 year life cycles today? What if we looking to create places that can adapt and endure, rather than become obsolete after a few years or a couple of decades? [IMAGE: COUNTRY CLUB PLAZA] We can’t be sure, of course, but we can look to places that have endured over the long haul and have continued to attract people and reinvestment for many decades. Country Club Plaza, for example, is a 76-year-old mixed-use district in the heart of a 100-yr old master-planned community in Kansas City. The Plaza district is laid out along pedestrian streets, with public parks and plazas, shops, offices, entertainment and residences all intermingled into what remains some of the most valuable real estate in KC today. So Why Plan? [IMAGE: FUTURE LAND USE PLAN] Take a look at the future zoning plan for the South Square area: this is a recipe for DISASTER. If you like the way the South Square area looks today, you’re going to love what this plan produces. It ensures that whatever gets built will continue the pattern of isolated pods of retail, office and housing that will never add up to a community, never achieve a sense of place, or create a place of enduring meaning and value to the people who choose to make Durham and the Triangle their home today, tomorrow or for generations to come. It is a recipe for investment tied to the whims of commerce rather than the long-term goals of the community. If the examples shown here prove anything, it is that commerce and community are NOT incompatible and that you can grow in a more livable pattern and make money at the same time while creating more enduring places. [IMAGE: SOUTH SQUARE SPRAWL] Those who take a rear-view mirror view of how to plan and develop are doomed to create yesterday’s model of automobile-oriented strips and centers surrounded by oceans of asphalt and sprawl where no pedestrian has gone before. Today the South Square district is a poster child for urban sprawl, and it is difficult to envision anything different for the area. The challenge is to create a livable community framework within which investment can occur, where the whole becomes much greater than the sum of its parts. This is the challenge facing the South Square area and the City of Durham as it faces its future. There are people here in this room, people from all walks of life in the community as well as dedicated designers who have volunteered their sweat and blood over many months, who are up to that challenge, and you are about to see some of the alternative approaches for reinventing this important southern district of Durham. [IMAGE: LUCIEN’S PLAN] As Bobby Unser said, "Success is where preparation and opportunity meet." Opportunities like South Square are out there, now it’s time for communities to prepare for their successful redevelopment. All it takes now is the type of community leadership and entrepreneurial know-how that has always helped create great places throughout history.
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