The New, New Thing (Well, Not That New), Part II

Greenbelt, Maryland, a New Deal-era development twelve miles outside of Washington, DC, faces the need to modernize. Built in the 1930’s, Greenbelt was modeled on the “garden city” concept, which was pioneered by utopian thinker Ebenezer Howard back at the beginning of the twentieth century. Two other similar settlements exist outside Cincinnati and Milwaukee. Greenbelt was designed as a self-contained community separated from existing development by a green space buffer. Its architects advocated, and executed, a mixed-use environment whereby residents could live, work and play within a compact community. For the most part, the settlement has survived the pressures of creeping development. Nonetheless, the stream of traffic generated by the Beltway loop highway flows near the site, sucking the area into the orbit of sprawl. However, two new developments, if built, would reshape the town into a place with double the people. As one of the developers describes it, “You can live, work and shop there. . . . We’re basically building a new town.”

But are they really? Sure, they’ll be new stuff there, including thousands more residential units and oodles of square feet of commercial space. The existing Metro train station located next to one of the planned developments will no doubt receive a welcome facelift. There are some obvious benefits to the new. But in the end, it’s the same product stuffed into new packaging. Instead of “garden city,” we can call the new improvements to Greenbelt an example of “New Urbanism,” the current movement among a certain percentage of design professionals. But the two approaches, although separated by a century, resemble the same mixed-use, compact development, public-transit oriented principles to land use planning. What has worked before can work again, goes the mantra. And why shouldn’t it? Despite the revolutionary changes to daily life over the last century, people fundamentally want to have easy access to their work places, a safe neighborhood, and maybe even have a few things to do within close proximity. People, if given the option, would probably even walk more than most do. As a recent transplant to Brooklyn, I’m already finding that having ten restaurants within a block’s walk (for the delivery guy, too) is very good thing.

But aside from the polishing of the garden city concept in Greenbelt, another revision to long-held views appears to be developing up the coast here in New York. This week, there will be three exhibits around the city taking another look at the man who could fairly be called the Creator of Modern New York, the Power Broker himself, Robert Moses. Having control over the city’s parks department and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, Moses constructed much of the current infrastructure that the region’s cars use as parking lots, and sometimes as highways. He also orchestrated the construction of such public jewels as Lincoln Center and the United Nations. Parks and housing he constructed still survive and thrive. He also displaced hundreds of thousands of people, ruined neighborhoods and exercised exclusionary tactics towards minorities. The new exhibits choose to take the long view, blurring the ugliness and highlight from afar the ballet-like qualities of traffic moving across his parkways, and the architectural accents of his structures. Just as Moses himself saw “the city” as a skyline rather than the people that stand dwarfed at street level, the new approach harkens back to the time when urban renewal wasn’t a bad word. Hopefully the exhibit organizers remember a bit from the lessons of the past.

Let enough time pass, and the old becomes new again. But like a pair of Jordache jeans from the ‘80’s, just because they’re back in style doesn’t mean you should pull that old pair back out and wear them with your favorite top from the era. The old is only new again if it changes with the times.

The New, New Thing (Well, Not That New)

The other day, while perusing the offerings at the local Barnes & Noble, I came across an intriguing new publication, at least one that I had not seen previously. It’s called The Next American City, a periodical created in 2003 and which publishes four times a year. I picked up the Winter 2006 edition, with a cover article on immigration and its impact on cities. Not a one-note affair, the issue also tackles such far-ranging urban questions as the Canadian Geese problem of New Jersey, and toilet legislation in Portland, Oregon. The brainchild of The Next American City, Inc., a “not-for-profit organization founded by a new generation of urban thinkers and leaders to promote a new vision of socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth in America’s cities and suburbs,” the magazine sets lofty goals for its purpose. Even the New York Times proclaims that the group has started a “subtle plan to change the world.” I wish them luck in their pursuit, aiding in their grand vision by promptly signing up for a subscription.

Of course, the whole idea of what a “city” is and should be has received the attention of thinkers and leaders for quite some time. The Greek thinker Thucydides wrote that “men make the city.” Shakespeare likewise noted, “What is the city but the people?” Even the love/hate relationship we have with our urban environments has passed through the ages. The Roman writer Horace described the phenomenon in connection with his home city: “In Rome you long for the country; in the country – oh inconstant! – you praise the distant city to the stars.” And those that have devoted their lives to cities have discovered the basic truths. Jane Addams of Hull House fame wrote, “Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited.” And the insensitivity towards the city has been a constant. Take Former Vice President Spiro Agnew, who once proclaimed on a campaign stop, “if you’ve seen one city slum you’ve seen them all.”

The most fabulous thing about cities is that they are one of those phenomena that neither goes out of style, nor reaches a level of complete understanding. It’s not like polio, or the source of a seemingly endless river – there is no “answer” to the issues surrounding cities, only choices that will either make things better, or create more problems, or some combination of both. Sure, you can solve the toilet shortage problem in an area by installing more of them, or rid yourselves of an influx of Canadian Geese by poisoning them. But determining the big questions, square among them matters of land use, a metropolitan area must weigh the impacts, which are inevitable and unavoidable, and calculate the lesser of evils.

For instance, the developer Bruce Ratner, who recently purchased the New Jersey Nets, will be constructing a mega complex of retail and residential construction, along with a new arena for his basketball team, just up the street from my new home in Brooklyn. Residents have voiced their objections to the disruption that the construction will cause, and the eventual traffic concerns caused by the arena. Ratner and the city have touted the economic benefits that the new development will bring, and the prestige for Brooklyn in once again serving as the home for a major league sports team. Either way, who’s right? Not knowing the answer is what makes such questions interesting in its endless permutations, just like a debate on sports talk radio about the Nets could turn in a multiplicity of directions.

So I look forward to another voice such as The Next American City, as we continue to attempt to answer the unanswerable questions facing cities and their future.

Times Remembered, Times Lost

As a youth, I spent much of my time in Kings Park, New York, a sleepy suburban burg tucked along the northern shore of Long Island, about fifty miles east of Manhattan. All of my family members have since relocated to other places, but for some reason the hometown retains a special place in my heart. Aside from the good school system (which produced such luminaries as Houston Astros great Craig Biggio and members of the metal group Dream Theater) and a relatively good location for commuters to New York City, the other claim to fame for my hometown is the enormous state mental health facility that occupied about 450 acres of prime real estate, including along the water. In its heyday in the mid-1950’s, the facility held over 9,000 patients, and required a small army of workers to man it. When it closed in 1996, the great news, and anticipation, would be what the State decided to do with the property. For several years the belief was that the tract would be sold to developers, and a massive residential and commercial building spree would commence.

In a classic example of NIMBY concerns at work, the hamlet mobilized, behind organized citizens groups. Local politicians joined the crusade to stop the construction. After it was discovered that Kings Park lacked a local sewer system (something that any resident could have told anyone who cared to ask), and that the site had some serious environmental remediation issues, the desirability of the site waned. Still there was potential that the development would occur. Then, just after Christmas, the State announced that it would transfer the overwhelming majority of the property to the State Parks Department, and that the dedicated swath would join its neighbor, the Nissequogue River State Park. As told to the New York Times in a small blip of story in its Sunday Real Estate section, the players in the process were shocked, and had little idea that this would be the result of ten years of anticipation.

This is where the New York Times lost its interest in the story. The writer no doubt had to hop back on the Long Island Railroad and make it back in time for her deadline. But the surprising nature of the pronouncement begs a number of questions intertwined with the land use process itself. Mainly, the State’s foot-dragging in making a determination should have tipped the Neighbors and Town officials that the State was having difficulties trying to convince a developer to purchase the property. If these folks were really involved in the process, wouldn’t they have known?

Beyond this query, the real lesson from Kings Park is that in the pursuit to regulate what can and cannot be done, and what does and does not get built, it is ultimately the property owner who is in control, and everyone else interested in what happens must wait to see what the owner decides to do. It is an actor/reactor symbiosis, and until the owner makes some type of affirmative action, everyone else needs to wait. This simple order of things causes much of the frustration for those participating in the land use process. The waiting can be endless, or in the Kings Park case, ten years, which is pretty long, too. Functioning within the land use arena requires a substantial helping of patience. Sometimes it takes people time to make up their mind, particularly when they’re public servants, and particularly when the decision involves the future of an entire town, no matter how much ink devoted to it by the New York Times.

The Other Side of Kelo

Now that we’re settled in our Brooklyn home, after much inconven -ience, it’s time to breathe a sigh of relief and look beyond the streets of New York to see what’s happening in other locales. At this time of year, even though it should be colder in New York than it is, let’s turn south for the basking warmth of Florida. For the last week or so, the media has paid close attention to the case of Briny Breezes, Florida, a coastal town along the eastern coast between Palm Beach and Miami. Unlike the posh and polished multimillion-dollar homes that line this part of the world, sandwiched in between them is this 43-acre burg comprised entirely of trailer homes. The residents have been confronted with an intriguing offer from Ocean Land Investments, a Boca Raton-based development company: $510 million for the whole tract, or about $1 million to each and every owner. After much contemplation, the community, run like a corporation where each owner sits on the board and gets to vote on such matter, decided to sell to the developer by a margin of 80% to 20%, with a 97% turnout. Much still needs to be resolved, including the rezoning that the developer will need to install the condos, hotel and marina it envisions for the plot. Nonetheless, the people have spoken.

This example got me to thinking about how with all the uproar over the Kelo decision, why wasn’t there more of an uprising over this blatant attempt to clear residents out of a perfectly-acceptable community and replace it with a use that would generate significant revenue for a developer, and tax ratables for the municipality? Was it the “$1 million per owner” catchphrase? Was it the fact that the municipality was not involved in the acquisition process? I suppose this second reason largely explains it – people were so enraged over Kelo because they thought the government was stepping into a process where it didn’t belong. The City of New London, in the opponents’ eyes, overstepped its authority in trying to make a development happen.

But what if there isn’t a corporate board to approach when a developer seeks to purchase a large parcel in an already-developed community? What if majority does not rule, but instead the decision of one lone holdout (or twenty percent worth of holdouts) who do not want the inconvenience of moving, even if the developer offers a tempting price for their property? What if the majority of the people who own the subject property do want to sell, but cannot because of these others? What if the majority of the city’s residents want the new development to enhance its attractiveness and generate more tax revenue to improve city services and infrastructure? Is the will of the few how the American system ought to work?

This is all not to say that I don’t see the potential for abuses in allowing others to “strong-arm” people who don’t want to move when they are subject to the will of market forces in the development of land. But I just have to question the quality of the debate when media outlets and advocates alike fail to see the parallels between a Kelo and the Briny Breezes example. To truly come to a position where the issues are fully discussed and understood, the facts must give way to rhetoric. The land use process is designed to look after property owners, but only within the limits of the communities’ needs. That’s why we have zoning, and other land use regulations to provide some checks and balances over what can and cannot be done with property. It’s not a perfect system, but it shouldn’t be governed by double standards. If this were allowed, the value of what we all do to keep our communities vital and healthy would be eviscerated.

New Urbanism

This week, as we start this new year, my fiance and I are moving into our new home -- a pleasant one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, New York. As we settle into Brooklyn, I've been looking around trying to process not only where the supermarket is, and figuring out how to utilize every square foot of our smaller place, but I've also been studying the people in this strange, new environment. When I first watched the wave of denizens exiting our subway station after a work day, I realized that we're not in Los Angeles anymore.

I spent most of my childhood in New York, and I lived in the New York area (Northern New Jersey) for many years after law school. However, I've never actually lived in New York City -- always in "the burbs." And although we lived in Los Angeles proper, no matter how congested the "city" is, the place is still built for the automobile. Now that I'm here, I'm adjusting to the concept of walking a lot more than I'm used to, spending more time hunting for parking and climbing more stairs (particularly to our fourth-floor walk-up). My fiance lived in Manhattan for many years, so she embraces the opportunity. But as a lazy suburbanite, what am I to do?

The art of living in New York (and other similar urban settings), I'm quickly coming to realize, is how to minimize inconvenience. Unless you have a large source of funds, you will have to contend with daily questions that most suburbanites don't have to consider. The first choice we've made, at least to start, is that we will be keeping our car. Our little chariot has made the journey across the country, twice, along with traversing the landscapes on either coast. That means that I join the world of "street parkers," as we contend with street cleaners, parking meters and fire hydrants. Granted, we do live literal steps from the subway, and the bus runs outside our door. But there will be times when we will need that freedom of movement. That means we'll have to pay the price for that right. Transportation of us, and our stuff, will be a careful computation henceforth. Our daily routines will be governed by this reality.

For most of my years as a student and professional in the land use field, I have been a proponent of precisely this type of living -- pedestrian-friendly environments, mixed-use streetscapes and public transportation as the main method of moving people. Only now will I experience this style of urban life on a day-to-day basis. Sure, living in Northern New Jersey and West Los Angeles offers its share of headaches, but they are mostly connected to the all-mighty automobile and all the other cars with which one must contend. The issues that face us now are of a different nature.

But because our new living situation offers different challenges, it also offers a number of distinct advantages. Why would people choose to live this way otherwise? First, we are in the middle of a vibrant neighborhood, with cultural and shopping offerings within a block. We are a subway ride to anywhere within one of the greatest cities in the world, and all that it has to offer in terms of work and play. I can even get to Jersey by train quite conveniently. We are close to our families, and to a circle of friends. All this access, and we don't have to drive to get there. The thought alone puts a smile on my face. So for all the inconvenience, which I cannot ignore as a self-respecting suburbanite and a lawyer looking for all the possibilities, there is tremendous potential. I welcome the opportunity, and look forward to the experience because I know that it will only enrich my understanding of the built-up environment. Not to mention I can finally find a decent bagel and slice of pizza again.