The THEME:
"Redevelopment, Innovation, and the New Urbanism"

Is this a QUESTION? IS THERE A RELATIONSHIP?
WHICH CAUSES WHAT? WHAT works and what does not?

In particular, does NU have a good answers for either Redevelopment or innovation?

Innovation = a result or product that is creatively BETTER (structurally, functionally, economically, humanly)
It is not just a refinement or revival, though they can be good.

Redevelopment = inherently some existing thing or place or land that needs restoration, rebuilding, repair.
In our context, this means parts of cities, neighborhoods, streets, natural corridors, regions. Not greenfields.

THE QUESTION:
1. IS NEW URBANISM AN INNOVATIVE SOLUTION FOR REDEVELOPMENT? AN INSPIRATION for INNOVATION? OR THE REVERSE?

• NEW URBANISM IS A SUBURBAN MOVEMENT PRIMARILY, seeking better tract development on virgin greenfields. A real estate tool, with a single owner – the developer.
  It wants tracts to become neighborhoods, offering town centers instead of strip malls and urban sprawl. It mandates higher residential density, more mixed use, town centers, and public transit. It does not evolve by patterns of human use – it is planned. All Good!
• There are several branches of NU – "traditional neighborhoods," and "transit oriented" with different formulas for handling a mix of elements. Both are quite formularized. The Do’s and Don’ts seem easy but in practice they bump into life in the real world, where multi-ownership is the law of the land (or law of the jungle).
• NU is a concept that works for developers as the single owner-controller. One has to refer to Disneyland--- a place with hundreds of restaurants whose food all comes out of Disney’s central kitchen. Likewise shops. This is not free enterprise; once inside. It is a monopoly.

These are good objectives for suburbs – making suburbs more livable – but should not be confused with being "urban." Or with the real problems and opportunities that lie in real cities, which are not land monopolies – rather, they are an ownership jungle rules by a riot of diversity.

REAL URBANISM
I WOULD LIKE TO UN-DOCTRINATE YOU BY SUGGESTING THERE IS ANOTHER MOVEMENT – CALL IT REAL URBANISM. IT MAY OFFER THE REAL INNOVATION THAT OUR SOCIETY REQUIRES IN THIS MULTI-CULTURAL COUNTRY AND WORLD.

We are going to talk about the mechanisms that you can find, or invent, TO MAKE REDEVELOPMENT INTO A FORM OF INNOVATION IN CITIES.

INNOVATION IS THE WAY TO SOLVE REAL URBAN PROBLEMS THAT ARE TRADITION-BOUND.
Great opportunities are not being recognized because they are expected to be approached the old fashioned way --- in real cities, the starting task is assembling sites that are under many ownerships and varied regulations, or starting a project on a single infill site within a fixed context. Something is always "abutting." Cities are about limitations and immutable context. The core cities are also the life support systems on which all those suburban and small towns depend -- economically, culturally, educationally. and politically. Their improvement cannot be manipulated on a drafting board or at the AutoCad screen, with roof shapes or fences.

URBAN CONTEXT
What makes the urbanism of cities fundamentally different? What defines Real Urbanism. and how do we make cities better in a real urban context? What makes that special?

• Complexity --- of infrastructure, of use, of multiple ownership, of objectives
• Diversity --- of spaces and places, people, ideas, beliefs
• Density --- of people and of use, which pays for the infrastructure that supports and makes City land so valuable
• Tradition --- Most urban places evolve over time; have a layering of Infrastructure, of decisions and decision-making, of attitudes, and lifestyles.

REDEVELOPMENT is the need to FORGE solutions out of this complexity,
Essential: Shared Interests --- Action is forged from the dynamics of coexisting in a city --- of sharing costs and resources and common spaces and headaches; sharing a sense of responsibility for other people.

People share interests…

As citizens sources --- for business, for labor
As customers for a multitude of commercial activities,
As residents/ occupants or others pressuring for habitable places;
As workers who man and manage the city itself.
As audiences at happenings and events of every scale

Shared interests make things work better for everybody…..More people on the streets mean more customers, more purchasing, more factories and jobs, more demand for housing and amenities and leisure activities and good schools. It’s through the cycle of shared productivity, also of shared sociability and social awareness, that cities are energized.

REDEVELOPMENT
Let me demonstrate how development proceeds in cities, which have no green fields or Blank Slates: It is the typical condition known as REDEVELOPMENT which can help both developers and communities. Once-good places can become something else; what uses can you invent for venerable old hospitals, or unused class B office buildings. warehouses, decommissioned churches? How can you build a surrounding environment to support them in a new life?

All of this is Invention – the reinvention of the city tradition for better results. NU doesn’t deal with this order of problem. It’s Real Urbanism.

The basis of Real Urbanism is renewing what is obsolete, infilling what is missing and needed, adding on to what needs to grow, transforming what remains serviceable with new ideas and new uses. A commentator might say, "The dress is not an imposed ill-fitting fashion, it is a garment tailored to the individual body, made expressive by the skilful drape of well chosen fabric. It FITS the problem."

Decades ago, we learned that "urban renewal" was often really the destruction of the very fabric of community. We have learned to help cities renew themselves without self-destruction, by healing processes, re-growing their cells and vital organs by inner regeneration. The spark comes from the INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITIES in each core city: --- sometimes a need for residential development, or more retail, or an amalgam of office, hotel, and entertainment. A dormant rail station, an unused factory district, can offer a new form of space and function to solve a immediate community problem.

FANEUIL HALL, and all that followed
Perhaps the first urban mechanism demonstrated in the U.S. post-war period, an effort to fight urban renewal and white flight from Boston was demonstrated in the revitalization of Faneuil Hall Marketplace (1967- 1978). As architects and planners at BTA, my husband, myself and staff decided to recreate a working city market (the building was there, empty, out of business). Markets had always been the social and information center of a community, as well as its source of daily supplies . To make it over into a city market, not wholesale but retail ,for everybody, was a new idea.

We used this to rebuild a sense of community in the center of Boston, a mix of uses built around food. It was the first downtown pedestrian mall – actually planned as an anti-mall, as a public place and space with local walking streets, with local merchants, and lots of spontaneous street life.

At that time, no city really knew how to run its traditional public market to accomplish all those things for public benefit. FHM was a model that gave courage to inner cities, and brought many good city markets back to life in the next decades. It was complex – but not at the highest level of urban complexity. The basic contract was: a 99-year ground lease to the developer; infrastructure improvements to the streets were made by the city. In lieu of taxes, we worked out a formula for the city’s participation in profits. To this day, the city receive about 25% of all net revenues from the entire project.

It was called a "halfway house" in urban terms – because it was still developer-driven. James Rouse, with a master lease, was king, sort of. He set the rents and assembled the spectrum of merchants and products, according to a merchandizing plan we created as part of the concept,calling for small Local merchants and no franchises. That enormous individuality succeeded because it required diversity, and the mix of vendors shared interests and shared customers. At the time, a developer-driven project was the only way to save a great historic complex.

WATERFRONTS
And we did Baltimore Harborplace on the same principles. (1978 - 1980) Whereas Faneuil Hall took 12 years of our lives to promote, develop and construct, Harborplace took 26 months. It was a retail center, but we saw it as a mixing place for people- gathering, bringing really diverse parts of a large population, residents and visitors downtown for daily needs and entertainment, and sharing the enjoyment of a public realm on the waterfront so long closed to the public. Like the New York’s South Street Seaport, and Miami Bayside, a fusion of City, State, Federal interests and private developers solved the complications of ownership parcels. But the tenancy and management was still under – a single developer. It was public-minded private management.

Each waterfront case involved designing access to waterfronts previously blocked from the city. DESIGN REALLY INVENTED THESE PLACES to solve an urban problem, for people and merchants, and legal mechanisms ran along side to assure implementation.

I can’t convey the complexity of designing a new Fulton Market on a site half occupied by a thriving 24-hour market on city land, with 80 union-defended vendors who would not lose a day of business for four years while it happened around them. Maybe the Supercollider deign was a match but not by much.

In the late 1980’s Ben and I stepped up our planning/architecture scale to tackle sections of waterfronts and cities all over the world. There were large sites of reclaimed industrial lands (Cardiff Harbor, 2000 acres; London Docklands’ Victoria Docks, 150 acres; sites in Yokohama and Tokyo -- MM-21, and Harumi Island; Amsterdam’s riverfront. And Dublin’s Custom House Docks. Sometimes these were prompted by cities hungry for regeneration of wasted waterfront through private investment, setting up framework for dealing with a multitude of interests and ownership. and historic interests and continuing commerce. GENERALLY ABROAD THEY DEVISED and trusted THE AUTHORITY, WITH STRONG MANDATES AND POWERS TO GET THINGS DONE, with ability to bypass local regulations. And by god they accomplished much broader solutions that we could accomplish in the USA --- housing, commerce, continuing waterfront industry, hotels, sports activities – all within a single development coalition/administration.

Chicago Navy Pier was done by an Authority, and run by an Authority (MPEA) (1990- 1995) That made it possible to accomplish a new pier after decades of developer interest had turned away.The Charge was to develop a new space for public benefit – leisure culture, recreation, and family Enjoyment, a program without prototype. I was the BTA partner in charge, project director and planner. The project,accomplished in 1995, continues to attract ever larger crowds each year.

GRAND CENTRAL
Elsewhere in the US more sophisticated private mechanisms were evolving, driven by shared interest of land owners in sections of cities that needed renewal of a quality that the city itself could not offer. This was the BID—the invention of an entrepreneurial mind who understood the true value of shared investment raising the tide that lifts all boats. The originator and those who evolved the concept also understood the shared value of a clean neighborhood, decent secure streets with places to sit, a real solution for the homeless, and quality street retailing as a magnet to urban vitality – also a stimulus for real estate values.

Pioneers were Peter Malkin (Wien, Malkin & Bettix, NYC,) a lawyer of course. and a major landowner), working with a civic-minded associate and organization leader, Dan Biederman. They took a small untested idea and expanded it into the first major Business Improvement District in midtown Manhattan’s Grand Central District, forging some of the patterns of tax increment financing that apply today – TIFFS, TIRZs, UEZ’s. The membership entry cost was 10c a square foot of owned area, annually. With over 40 million SF commercial space in the BID, the partnership had a working budget. I was lucky to be chosen as planner and designer for The Grand Central Business Improvement District in 1986, and worked on it until 1995.

My architectural partners thought I was off track – 54 blocks and NO buildings to design! Just streets and spaces and sidewalks and shelters and kiosks! Well, the instincts of Malkin, Biederman, and their 154 owner-colleagues, who included most of the moguls of New York real estate – were good. Our experience in urban street retail planning, in marketplace design with park-like street amenities, gave the right framework for understanding how to pull together these dull declining 54 square blocks around Grand Central ( with a major bank on every corner) and make them work again as the heart of the city with really lively streets.

As cities began to allow and encourage this self-taxation and self-financing of self-determined improvements, alot was learned about collaboration of law and design. (Of course, all the normal city requirements and approvals continued to apply.) Design had to be the unifier, the bridge among all interests. We said, Make it Better, and they will come. The management attitude was, we need to see these problems on a comprehensive business basis, and we need to invent mechanisms to push through real changes. GCP forged the idea of big-budget bonding for BID capital improvements; they forged the "middle management" concepts -- that allowed the BID to provide organization personnel as street cleaners, street security patrols, and visitor hospitality leaders -- and to coordinate them with existing city services and attitudes.

All this allowed us as designers to address the total district as a unified plan – sidewalk quality, need for trees, street lighting, signage and information systems (deplorable), visitor orientation, uncontrolled commercial clutter on public streets. New retail offerings in all the street-front store was a program accomplished with great success totally through persuasion and voluntary landlord action --- individuals connecting with shared interests and benefits for all.

We took on every issue This wasn’t just benches and banners, It was real rethinking – starting with establishing a pro-active homeless center AWAY from the door of Grand Central, in a nearby church that provided full service social and job rehabilitation. And re-lighting the exterior of Grand Central as a landmark and evening destination. Our lights shamed MTA to finally begin the glorious interior renovation. Through private initiative, the GCP contributed a great deal of improvement to the Public Realm, without stumbling over struggles with city budgets. They invested directly, and they found it was worth it.

Grand Central Master Plan took almost 10 years in all its parts; that it has worked is visible and palpable. I don’t know by many hundreds of percentage points the rents have increased in 15 years, but it was wise investment underscored by intelligent legal mechanisms. Even Rudy Guiliani, in his jealousy over the Partnership’s success, couldn’t kill GCP and its mission, which is ongoing.

In midtown Manhattan new legal mechanisms are in place because imaginative lawyers made things happen that never happened before, or have been too cumbersome to try. I have my own Law: Thompson’s 42nd Law: "You Can’t Do Anything for the First Time" That’s why I do it. The Second time is a cinch – the easy model exists. When I start out, I see visions of what can be, and I call for someone with the know-how of—say, Peter Buchsbaum.

REAL URBANISM
Where New Urbanist communities use Condo rules that supplant government in favor of the power of a single controlling interest, Real Urbanists are learning to accomplish with innovative mechanisms that add on to the existing democratic framework (or bend it) to deal with multiple ownerships and jurisdictions. In urban coalitions, people are demonstrating through voluntary organizations that they are even willing to impose levies and transfer funds, propose plans and make design decisions and ,jointly, actually enlarge and manage parts of the public realm.

That is why REDEVELOPMENT CAN BE A TOOL FOR URBAN I NNOVATION through a) inventive design solutions done by a integrator and unifier. (This is the visioning that makes extra effort worth while.) b) working with courageous lawyers devising the mechanisms to accomplish the urban objectives. The goals include devising a workable project that is reasonably efficient for developers, that achieves a more animated better-used city, a better place to live, work, and recreate. We’ve done it in Long Branch, N.J. – a small city. It works, for everybody’s benefit.

Law and Design. It’s a great partnership. R-U- Urban? Try it.

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FOOTNOTES

New Urbanism :
a) Residents typically buy into a "self-governing" condominium neighborhood, owned by the developer (i.e. Disney) who grants voting rights on maintenance, security, and physical change, the right to keep other people out. (but not taxation.)
b) Neighborhoods with gates are not urban. They tend to be the atomization of democratic ideals – self-concerned, self-referential, disconnected from the rest of the world works and independent of life outside of their own.

NU plays to the life style choices of Middle Americans owning homes in a secure neighborhoods. GOOD: suburbs need all the help they can get, as long as they last.
NU ‘s "tradition" means walkable streets, town centers, and transportation networks (if the host city can support them in suburbs).

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Author and Copyright Information

Copyright 2002 by author

Jane Thompson, AICP, AAIA, President of Thompson Design Group of Boston, Architects and Planners, was former Partner with her husband, Benjamin Thompson FAIA, in Benjamin Thompson Associates, Inc. for 25 years. In that firm she was Director of Planning for such waterfront and urban revitalization projects as Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Baltimore Harborplace, and numerous major waterfront replanning/ revitalization commissions in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and Japan. Her multi-disciplinary firm today undertakes urban redesign at scales from district plans and city plazas (Cleveland's Star Plaza and Theater Distric Master Plan), to waterfronts with historic restoration (Oceanfront District, Long Branch, N.J., Maxwell House Plant, Hoboken, N.J.) to regional plans and urban corridors (Master Plan for Houston's Buffalo Bayou.) Jane is a Board Member of the International Design Conference in Aspen, Advisory Board of SPNEA, a member of ULI and APA , involved in the Urban Design Committee.

Jane Thompson
Thompson Design Group
368 Congress Street Boston, MA 02210
jthomp3600@aol.com