Panorama 2011

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VOLUME XXXX VOLUME XIX: POST |

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PANORAMA PANORAMA 2011 2011

non-profit organization us postage paid permit #2563 philadelphia, pennsylvania

A M A R O N A P

The University of pennsylvania School of Design Department of City and Regional Planning 127 Meyerson Hall 210 S. 34th Street Philadelpha, Pennsylvania 19104-6311

THEME

Journal of the Department of City and Regional Planning University of Pennsylvania School of Design spring 2011

PANORAMA

JOURNAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING SPRING 2011 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF DESIGN

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From the Editors / Author Bios

the chicago metered parking system concession agreement: how the windy City Sold its parking rights, revenue, and responsibilities alexandra Sweet

investing in the electric grid: smarter technology or increased capacity?

Anjuli Maniam

timing and visibility: the failure of the High line improvement district and its implications for the reading viaduct Liza Cohen

segregated los angeles: historical residential patterns and the psychology of Space Yumi Lifer

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the gendered city: a response to sexism in the built environment Elizabeth Hesmiller

Reactions to Kelo v.

City of New London and the Impact on PostKatrina New Orleans Lauren Nolan

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New urbanism vs. landscape urbanism: The battle over the future of urban design Andy J. Wang

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Public Realm Studio Orenjstad & San Nicolas Aruba

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fair or foul: ballparks and their impact on urban revitalization David L. Dobkin

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utmost annoyance or blessed convenience? it depends on Implementation: An Examinition of the Past, Present, and Future of SkipStop Service in New York City Laura Podolnick

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Back to the Future: Solving Philadelphia’s Water Problems with historic ingenuity Maggie Wood

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dallas tod: fact or fiction?

A study of transitoriented development near dart red and blue line rail station John Tatum

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invisible paris: urban planning and the banlieues Matthew VanOosten

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the dead end: the failure of Cincinnati’s subway, and the potential of future urban revitalization through historic infrastructure Ryan Bash

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image citations

From the Editors

author bios

Post The most illustrative way to explain our theme this year, Post|, is to make transparent our editorial process. The truth is this: We did not have a theme in mind when we chose articles. Instead, we read each submission and simply chose the best of the best from an impressively varied field of all-around excellent papers, with the belief that we’d inevitably discover a common thread linking the chosen pieces.

implies but does not negate “pre.” We believe that to understand a subject one must examine the before, the after, the in-between.

A common theme we did find, but it was somewhat ineffable. We tried and tried to give it a name, but whiteboards scrawled with our suggestions fell short. We played the most with the ideas of “Re:” and “Post|.” The common theme seemed to involve dealing with the past—the reusing, redoing, reinventing, recreating part of planning. But “Re:” seemed too narrow and too literal. It seemed to carry with it the notion of backing up, starting over, and erasing. Post, in contrast,

It is important to note that Post| is not meant to suggest that we are finished with any of these things. In planning like in physics, there is no true disappearing. There is only alteration of state or form. Planners must always confront the decisions of the past that manifest themselves in physical form— past architectural styles, past political decisions, past social norms. Being postanything does not mean that that thing is no longer relevant. Rather, it speaks to

Post| is not meant to imply one idea in particular—we are not, for instance, taking a stance on post-modernism. Post| is open. Post-history? Post-gender? Postrace? Post-automobile? Post-planning?

Post-environment? Post-Katrina? Sure.

a difference in perspective. We haven’t the hubris, of course, to assume we are at the end of history. We are, however, as always, moving towards different and changing ideals in planning. This is the age of the suburban retrofit, of downtown redevelopment, of local food, of progressive water management.

It is the age of multiple voices and mass participation via different and new channels. Yet in this age, we are still surrounded by—even haunted by—results of the decisions made in earlier eras. Post| does not mean that we are dismissing the past, or that we advocate attempts to erase or obliterate it. It is merely meant to acknowledge a change—a call to put forth plans for the future by working with what the past has provided us.

We hope you enjoy this issue of Panorama.

Ryan Bash (MCP ‘12) is concentrating in Public and Private Development and pursuing the Real Estate Design and Development Certificate. He graduated magna cum laude from Kenyon College in 2010 with a degree in Biology and Environmental Studies.

He enjoys sailing, guacamole and longdistance running.

Liza Cohen (MCP ’12) is from New Haven, CT and has a BA in Urban Studies from Bowdoin College in Maine.

Her concentration is transportation, and she is particularly interested in the link between project conception and implementation.

David Dobkin (MCP ’12) is a student concentrating in Public-Private Development.

His love for the Philadelphia Phillies and stadiums served as the inspiration for his article. A native of Simsbury, CT, he is a sub-matriculate from Penn’s Urban Studies program.

Laura Podolnick Editor MCP ‘11

Maggie Wood Associate Editor MCP ‘12

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Aaron Kurtz Associate Editor MCP ‘12

Adam Amrhein Design Editor MCP ‘11

Keyleigh Kern Design Editor MCP ‘12, MLA ‘12

Elizabeth Hessmiller (MCP/MSHP ‘13) returned to her native Pennsylvania after obtaining her undergraduate degree in Geography from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France. Concentrating in Community and Economic Development, she is interested in place-making as a tool for neighborhood revitalization.

Yumi Lifer (MCP ‘11) concentrates in urban design. She enjoys foreign horror films, succulents, and spontaneous dance parties.

She is from Santa Ana, California, but considers L.A. home.

Anjuli Maniam (MCP ’11) is concentrating in both community and economic development and urban design to bridge communication gaps amongst planners, policy makers, architects and the community. She aspires to create communities that challenge current urban forms and are socially, politically and culturally meaningful.

Lauren Nolan (MCP ’11) is a secondyear student with a concentration in Community and Economic Development.

Prior to coming to Penn, she doublemajored in Economics and Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Her planning interests include post-industrial cities, the intersection between workforce and economic development, and the City of New Orleans.

Laura Podolnick (MCP ‘11) concentrates in transportation and is thus interested in transportation issues. She also writes fiction and poetry.

Alex Sweet (MCP ‘11) is studying Urban Design and Transportation Planning. She enjoys riding her bike, stopping at stop signs, and cleaning her desk.

John Tatum (MCP ‘11) grew up in Dallas, TX. He has a dual concentration in Public/Private Real Estate Development and Urban Design. His career ambitions include real estate finance and urban development.

Matthew VanOosten (MCP ’11), was born in Rochester, Minnesota and received a BA in Human Geography from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

He is concentrating in urban design at PennPlanning.

Andy J. Wang (MCP ‘12) is from the L.A. suburbs, and concentrates on urban design. He was previously editor of the architecture and neighborhoods blog Curbed SF, and has been published in Giant Robot magazine.

Maggie Wood (MCP ’12), studies land use planning with a focus on the urban environment. She has a new found fascination with Philadelphia history and is excited to make the city her home.

THE CHICAGO METERED PARKING SYSTEM CONCESSION AGREEMENT: How the Windy City Sold its Parking Rights, Revenue, and Responsibilities

INTRODUCTION In 2009 the City of Chicago leased 34,500 parking meters to Chicago Parking Meters LLC (CPM, LLC), a private entity led by Morgan Stanley. In return for the 75-year lease, the city received an up-front cash payment of approximately $1 billion. The city faced a looming budget deficit and the cash, the City’s administration boasted, would help avoid the tax increases that otherwise would have been necessary to cover the shortfall.

Critics, like Ralph Marteri from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago think-tank, argued that the city’s short-term thinking would end up hurting the city’s budget, the taxpayers’ wallets, and any future efforts towards citywide street transportation improvements. Chicago citizens were particularly outraged: soon after the lease agreement, the cost of parking increased and it is expected to quadruple by 2013.

What’s more, the maintenance of the parking meters lagged and drivers claimed they were unfairly ticketed due to faulty meters.

Increasing the cost of parking is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can help direct drivers to other modes of transportation and create a revenue stream to pay for transportation projects and maintenance. As will be discussed, cities such as Pasadena, CA have used parking meter rates to fund public improvements.

The immediate problem with Chicago, however, is not necessarily the increase in parking rates. Rather, the implications of the Metered Parking Concession Agreement reveal two primary concerns. First, in the agreement, the City relinquished full control and monetary benefits to a private company, thereby missing the opportunity to accumulate and control parking rate revenue for the next 75 years. Second, the deal binds Chicago to compensate CPM, LLC for any disruption in parking meter use, which could deter future public works projects or street reconfigurations. This further suggests the larger problem: Chicago lacks the importance of a long-term vision for a more efficient and balanced multimodal transportation system. In the end, the City surrendered transportation policy control for a short-term cash infusion.

This paper will look at the details of Chicago’s parking lease, its detrimental long-term implications, and how municipal parking practices and policies can use parking as a tool to influence driving behavior and improve citywide transportation.

By Alexandra Sweet 4

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THE CHICAGO METERED PARKING SYSTEM CONCESSION AGREEMENT On Thursday, December 4, 2008, the Chicago

City Council approved the parking lease agreement with Chicago Parking Meters, LLC, a private entity of Morgan Stanley. The city leased approximately 34,500 metered parking spots in exchange for a one-time payment of $1,156,500,000 (Chicago, Authorization for Execution of Concession and Lease Agreement and Amendment of Titles 2, 3, 9 and 10 of Municipal Code of Chicago in Connection with Chicago Metered Parking System 2008).

As the concessionaires, Chicago Parking Meters, LLC will have the authority to raise parking meter rates (Table 1) as detailed in the lease agreement and receive all consequent revenue throughout the term of the 75-year lease. Additionally, the concessionaire will be responsible for the maintenance and operations of the meters. In exchange, the City of Chicago will retain the right to:

1) perform enforcement and collect all

enforcement revenues;

2) Revise meter rates, locations, and

hours of operations;

3) Add or eliminate on-street parking

spaces in the future;

4) Restrict parking for special events.

(Waguespack, Piwinski and Sajovec 2008) The concession agreement lists one stipulation that ultimately undermines the city’s overarching authority. According to the agreement, the city of Chicago may act on all of the aforementioned rights; however, if any of these actions result in a loss of parking meter revenue for Chicago Parking Meters, LLC, the city is required to compensate the concessionaire in full. For example, if the City wants to restrict parking for a festival or special event, they will be fiscally responsible for paying Chicago Parking Meters, LLC in exchange for the closed meters.

On December 2, 2008, two days before the council voted on an ordinance to approve the parking deal, Mayor Daley held a press conference to announce the parking meter lease agreement to the public. He stressed the timeliness of the deal, saying it “comes just at the right time” considering the $500 million budget deficit and assured the public that part of the initial pay-out would go to social services (Joravsky and Dumke 2009).

In reality, $1.157 billion would be distributed into four categories, as seen in Table 2: A revenue replacement fund, a human infrastructure fund, a mid-term fund, and a stabilization fund. The revenue replacement fund’s $400 million will replace the lost revenues from the parking meter revenue in the amount of $20 million annually.

The human infrastructure fund is set up to support programs for low-income and senior individuals. The mid-term fund is

used to plug budget gaps through 2012.

Finally, the stabilization fund is to be used at the discretion of the city council. Few other details were released detailing what types of social services the parking funds would support.

If the parking agreement was a surprise to the public, it wasn’t much clearer to the Chicago Aldermen. Two days after the public announcement, the Aldermen reported they felt hurried to vote on the parking deal.

Further, many of the finance committee members who had gathered for the meeting knew nothing about the lease details before sitting down to take their vote. Some of the members didn’t understand the agreement, and others didn’t read it at all (Joravsky and Dumke 2009). Nevertheless, the full council voted 40-5 on December 4th 2008 to pass the ordinance. On February 13, 2009 the City finalized the deal with Chicago Parking Meters LLC, and within weeks, parking rates quadrupled. (Joravsky and Dumke 2009) The Chicago Metered Parking System Concession Agreement wasn’t the first time Mayor Daley sold a public asset to a private company. In October 2005, the City of Chicago leased the Chicago Skyway, a 7.8 mile toll road, to a Spanish Australian

Table 1 Parking Meter Rates per Hour (Waguespack, 2008)

joint venture between Cintra Conessiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. and Macquarie Investment Holdings. In exchange for a $1.82 billion upfront payment, the City of Chicago gave the Spanish Consortium a 99-year lease on the toll road including rights to operate and receive toll payments (Johnson, Luby and Kurbanov 2007). The city used nearly half the upfront payment to pay off Skyway debts, then placed about $400 million in reserves for yearly returns, $50 million of which contribute to budget relief through 2010 (Guinane 2006).

The Skyway sale produced little resistance from Chicago residents. This may be explained, in part, by the fact that the majority of Skyway users are non-Chicago residents, instead coming from Indiana and Illinois suburbs. As such, it was a political walk in the park, and “in some respects the Chicago Skyway was the perfect candidate 5

for long-term privatization because the seller gained all the proceeds and the seller’s constituency will pay virtually none of the costs” (Enright 2006). It led the way for the City to privatize more of its public assets.

A year later, in 2006, the City of Chicago leased four parking garages to a Morgan Stanley Investment Management Division for $563 million in over 99-years. Again, Morgan Stanley reserved the rights to operate the garages and collect revenue. The city used the upfront payment to relieve debt associated with the garage and set aside funds for park improvements and an annual replacement fund (Waguespack, Piwinski and Sajovec 2008).

Mayor Daley has praised the Chicago Skyway, Parking Garage, and Parking Meter deals as bright and innovative public-private partnerships in times of fiscal crises. But critics have their doubts about the parking meter deal. Chicago journalists criticized the City for its secretive proceedings, particularly the rushed vote to pass the concession and the vagueness of the funding distributions.

Simultaneously, drivers revolted in a backlash against the sudden increase in parking meter rates. The old parking meters couldn’t handle the sudden influx of quarters from the increased rates, and when meters broke, drivers were ticketed, much to their dismay. In March, local newspapers started to report stories of drivers vandalizing the meters in revolt. “Some are boycotting meters by parking on side streets or not driving at all” (Joravsky and Dumke 2009).

Drivers protested the increase in parking rates, but their energy may have been well spent elsewhere. The increase in parking meter rates is perhaps one of the only

benefits of the Metered Parking Concession Agreement. The bigger question should be, what are the long-term implications of the Chicago Metered Parking Concession Agreement? And what does it mean for the City and its residents now that it has relinquished control of the parking system and its revenue stream? And why is parking such a big deal anyway?

THE ROLE OF PARKING IN A BALANCED TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM Parking plays a key role in the larger scheme of a city’s transportation system.

Simply, a transportation system consists of the multiple modes of transportation that people use to travel, and it includes transit, driving, walking, and bicycling. A successful metropolitan transportation system will have a well-balanced modal split, meaning that there is a fairly even percent distribution of trips among modes of transportation. The goal is to have a system that accommodates a city’s multitude of transportation needs. “No single mode of passenger transportation can satisfy the diverse needs of a metropolitan area” (Vuchic 1999, 627).

In large metropolitan areas such as Chicago, transit, walking, and bicycling deserve preference over driving. Chicago has the second largest transit system in the nation, along with 165 miles of bike lanes.

(Chicago, Chicago Climate Action Plan 2008) In addition to being more efficient, these alternative modes can also be healthier and less polluting. In the hierarchy of transportation, driving is near the bottom, as it has a greater demand for space and produces a host of negative externalities which are rarely assumed by the driver: environmental pollution, noise, road space, and traffic accidents.

Table 2 Chicago Parking Concession Funding Distributions (Source: Waguespack, 2008)

When cars dominate a city there are detrimental effects to all modes, to the environment, and to the livability of a city. Unfortunately, the car has been given preferential treatment through federal policies and planning methods since the 1950’s, including free parking, highway construction, and

minimum parking requirements, which only induce more driving. Congestion, which occurs when the volume of cars on a road exceeds the road’s capacity, is nothing new to a city like Chicago. Street traffic is caused by a combination of cars passing down a street and those that are looking for parking.

“Cruisers” circle for a curbside parking space to open up, even if it means circling the block many times. In a city dominated

by car use and wrought with congestion, measures should be taken to reduce car trips and increase trips taken on alternative travel modes. This will greatly decrease congestion.

Reducing car trips to an optimum level can be accomplished through two methods: 1) disincentivizing driving and 2) incentivizing alternative travel modes (Vuchic 1999, 270).

One method for disincentivizing driving is to use market forces, such as charging people for driving and parking. This relies on the assumption that, when given a choice, people will choose the travel mode that has the lowest out-of-pocket costs. Parking meter rates, then, can change driving behavior. One method is to set parking rates at the “lowest price that keeps a few spaces available to allow convenient access” (Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking 2005, 398). The “lowest price” is also known as the right price, in which roughly 85% of the parking spots are occupied. Typically, this price is going to be a lot higher than what many drivers are used to paying, which is usuall nothing.

An increase in on-street parking meter rates subsequently increases the cost of driving, which can have two significant effects on driving behavior:

1. Drivers who have access to

alternative travel modes will start to

walk, bike, or use transit.

2. On-street parking will have a

higher turnover rate, thereby opening

up more parking spaces.

A reduction in driving and an increase in turnover rates can produce a number of benefits. Drivers who switch to alternative transportation modes will reduce the number of cars on the road and the subsequent congestion and pollution. A high turnover rate is good for drivers because it means they will spend less time circling the block to find a parking space, which will further reduce traffic congestion (not to mention driver frustration). A high turnover rate is also good for business owners because it means there will be a higher number of unique customers parking outside their stores. The purpose of increasing parking rates is not to maximize revenue, it is to “allocate curb spaces more efficiently to drivers who are willing to pay for parking if they don’t have to waste time cruising for it” (Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking 2005, 399). Changing the price of parking is one method of changing driving behavior; getting rid of parking spaces is another.

For example, the city of Copenhagen, Denmark used parking as a tool to change resident commuting patterns. From 19942005 the city incrementally eliminated parking spots throughout the city. Over the ten year period, Copenhagen removed 2,500 parking spaces. Concurrently, the city incrementally replaced the parking spots

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with pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, thereby incentivizing walking and biking.

From 1994-2005, bicycling traffic increased by 40% (Vanderbilt 2008).

Ultimately, it may have been the lack of political will, insight, and patience that resulted in a leasing deal that will overshadow the next 75 years of transportation planning in Chicago. How could the city have done things differently?

INDIANA TOLL ROAD When considering Chicago’s lack of a longterm fiscal plan for its parking payment, H. Woods Bowman looks to Indiana and how it handled its privatization of the Indiana Toll Road.

After the successful lease of the Chicago Skyway, Indiana State Governor Mitch Daniels sought a similar deal with the Indiana Toll Road. In 2006, the Governor leased the Indiana Toll Road for $3.85 billion to Statewide Mobility Partners, a joint venture between Cintra Concessiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain and Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Australia, the same group that won the Skyway deal. The Governor did three things with his sudden cash payment. First, he paid off the debt from the toll road. Then he invested $2.1 billion into a transportation fund that would go directly towards transportation improvements, including 104 new roads by 2015. The remainder of the money, $578 million, was put into a trust fund. Every five years the government took out the accrued interest and put it towards their 10-year transportation plan (Hellman 2010).

The state of Indiana employed a longterm vision to guide its funding allocation.

Although the case in Indiana dealt with a toll road and not parking, it demonstrates how a government can responsibly use an upfront cash payment from a publicprivate partnership to invest in a longterm transportation plan. The benefits are two-fold. First, having a long-term plan encourages the state to have a reliable and consistent source of funding for transportation projects. Second, the plan and the long-term funding convince constituents that the lease money is being used to benefit the taxpayers. In contrast, the City of Chicago’s funding allocation shows no relation to Chicago’s long-term transportation plan as outlined in Strategy 3 in the Chicago Climate Action Plan. The evidence of Chicago’s spending habits further supports the hypothesis that the City never had any intention for the Metered Parking Concession Agreement to provide long-term support for a transportation system.

In addition to Chicago’s lack of a long-term vision, the City also lacked the foresight to use parking as a financial tool to meet its transportation goals. Pasadena, California acts as a case study for how a city can use parking meters as a financial tool to raise revenue and pay for public improvements.

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA Once a popular commercial destination, the downtown area of Pasadena, California experienced rapid decline through the 20th century. In the 1980’s, the City enacted two parking policies which, Donald Shoup argues, were critical to its rebounding success (Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking 2005). The most important policy related to this paper is the City’s decision to channel all the parking meter revenue into public improvement projects. The City didn’t install parking meters until 1993. Before then, parking was free with a two-hour time limit.

Naturally, business owners and early-risers grabbed the best spots, and left visitors and shoppers circling, rather futilely, for vacancies.

When the City of Pasadena proposed curbside parking meters, business owners feared that they would scare away customers.

Proponents argued that meters would encourage short-term parking and result in a higher number of shoppers. After two years of debate, the city reached a deal: they could install parking meters if all the revenue was returned to Old Pasadena to pay for streetscape improvements. The businesses readily agreed. The City would continue to collect parking fine revenue. As soon as the meters were installed, the City borrowed $5 million to finance the “Old Pasadena Streetscape and Alleyways Project” and dedicated the incoming meter revenue to repay the debt. The City installed street furniture, trees, and lighting fixtures to improve the pedestrian experience.

In 2001, the Old Pasadena parking meter revenue, after operating expenses (18% of total revenue) amounted to $1.2 million.

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also significantly affect the City’s future street and public works decisions. In other words, planners will need to weigh future street projects by the potential expense of losing meter hours.

$448,000 went to repay the $5 million debt, while the rest was dedicated to other public improvements, such as more police patrol, better street maintenance, and marketing materials for the area. The total parking meter revenues and expenditures for the 2001 fiscal year are shown in Table 3. All of these benefits are paid for by the parking meter revenue, which comes from drivers who frequent the local shops and enjoy the improved streetscape atmosphere. There is no cost to the business owners or the taxpayers (Shoup and Kolozsvari, Turning Small Change into Big Changes 2003). The benefits are self-perpetuating. The more people park, the more money there is to make public improvements, which attracts more visitors and more parkers.

Old Pasadena retained strict control of the parking, its revenue, and its funding stream to revitalize their downtown district.

The City was on board because it helped revitalized the downtown, businesses were on board because it increased foot traffic, and customers approved because they never had to wait for a parking space.

How has Chicago’s Metered Parking Concession Agreement affected the city’s transportation system? Unfortunately, the city’s decision to relinquish its control of the parking and its revenue stream, in addition to its potentially misguided funding plans, illustrates the city’s lack of long-term vision for parking and its greater multimodal transportation system.

HANDING OVER FINANCIAL CONTROL The City of Chicago gave Chicago Parking Meters, LLC full control of the operations of the parking meters and their revenue. In exchange, the City retained responsibility for parking enforcement (ticketing), parking restrictions, and the addition and subtraction of meters. The stipulation, however, is that the city must compensate Chicago Parking Meters, LLC if its actions result in a loss in parking meter revenue. Not only may this affect the City’s decision to hold large events and festivals that will restrict parking, it can 8

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According to Weinberger et. al. this is damaging to the city’s transportation policy; “Since most of the city’s arterial streets are metered, these restrictions could seriously impinge reprogramming street space for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit” (2010).

Closing a single meter in downtown Chicago could cost the city $8,000 per year in compensation to Morgan Stanly. Permanently removing 8 parking meters on a block for a bike lane could cost Chicago upwards of $4,800,000 in compensation for the term of the agreement, not including the cost of infrastructure and maintenance. As a result of the agreement, the city’s decisions for public infrastructure improvements, including loading zones, bike lanes, curb bulb-outs, streetscaping, and sidewalk widening, are contingent on the project’s compensation costs to Morgan Stanley. Following in the footsteps of Copenhagen’s aforementioned ten-year parking diet and bicycle plan would be a financial disaster for the city. Not only has Chicago relinquished control of its parking meter revenue, it has practically relinquished full control of the public rightof-way.

In 2009, The Independent Voters of IllinoisIndependent Precinct Organization sued the city of Chicago over the parking meter deal, which it claims is illegal for “using taxpayer money to benefit a private company, delegates police power to the private firm, and restricts the City Council’s ability to set parking policy in the future”(Dumke 2009).

Although portions of the suit were thrown out in 2010, the suit remains active in its accusation that the city relinquished traffic policy control to a private entity.

What’s worse, the City may have also undersold the parking meters. At the time of the deal, Chicago Alderman Scott Waguespack conducted his own analyses of the parking meter concession agreement and, using the parking meter rates per hour and their proposed rate increases, he calculated that, as a conservative estimate, the parking meter rates would actually earn the concessionaire $5.19 billion in revenue over the next 75 years, or roughly one fifth of the leasing price (Waguespack, Piwinski and Sajovec 2008). Per the agreement, the city no longer has the authority to manipulate the parking rates. When Waguespack tried to present his findings to the City Council, they rejected them.

Anger over the Chicago parking deal persists. In the fall of 2010, Chicago resident

Jennifer Bunting sued William Blair & Co., the consultant hired by the City of Chicago to assess the worth of the city’s parking system. The suit accuses William Blair & Co. of negligence for grossly underestimating the value of the parking system (Harris 2010).

William Blair & Co. has filed a motion to have the suit dismissed.

LACK OF A LONG-TERM VISION Inherent in this deal is perhaps the problem most detrimental to the City; its lack of a long-term transportation vision and plan.

When Mayor Daley publicized the Parking Concession Funding Distribution, there was no plan to reallocate money back into transportation infrastructure investment.

The most encouraging part of the Metered Parking Concession Agreement is the rise in parking rates. According to Donald Shoup, this should increase parking vacancies and encourage travelers to use other modes.

Unfortunately, the Concession Agreement makes no mention of using the $1.57 billion to accommodate the potential increase in transit use, walking, and bicycling. In fact, the parking agreement stands like a separate entity, void of any travel behavior implications. Instead, Mayor Daley has lauded the agreement’s ability to fill budget gaps and fund social service programs.

Parking is also absent from the Chicago Climate Change Plan. The Plan’s third strategy, Improved Transportation Options, includes actions to encourage walking and biking, but does not include any strategies to discourage driving. Parking is never mentioned (Chicago, Chicago Climate Action Plan 2008). What’s more, the funding allocation does not specify how the resources will be spent on transportation improvements, if any at all. Further, the plan does not acknowledge how walking and bicycling transportation improvements will handle the compensation costs for any street projects that disrupt parking meter use.

DePaul professor and former Chicago Cook County chief financial officer H. Woods Bowman believes the City’s parking deal lacks a long-term plan. Parking policy, he argues, should be the responsibility of the government. In this case, though, the government didn’t have the political will to raise rates themselves. The city had considered doubling parking rates in 2007, but City Aldermen argued that it would hurt business to increase meter rates and the proposal was quickly rejected. “There’s nothing that the lessor is going to do to raise money that the city couldn’t do itself without a little moxie” DePaul said. What’s worse, he noted, was that the city would have to rely on the single cash payout for the next 75 years.

The $20 million annual replacement doesn’t take into account inflation, and it will dry up before the lease is up (Joravsky and Dumke

2009). His predictions soon became reality.

In March 2010, the Indiana Economic Digest released an article stating that the City of Chicago had already burned through $973.6 million of the $1.16 billion parking agreement payment. Of that spent, 94% had been used on daily expenses. This type of funding scheme, Peter Skosey, vice president of the Metropolitan Planning Council, argued, isn’t sustainable, “If we keep doing this, we’re going to run out of revenue in the not too distant future,” he said (Hellman 2010).

Parking is entirely absent from the City’s future vision. Though perhaps difficult to stomach, evidence shows that Mayor Daley may have used one of the City’s most valuable assets in a “get rich quick” scheme.

The Mayor, riding on the success of his recent accomplishments, including the popularity of Millennium Park and Chicago’s election as the U.S. contender for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, quickly pushed through a public-private partnership that disregarded

bibliography Chicago, City of. (2008). Authorization for Execution of Concession and Lease Agreement and Amendment of Titles 2, 3, 9 and 10 of Municipal Code of Chicago in Connection with Chicago Metered Parking System. Chicago: Authority of the City Council of the City of Chicago, Chicago, City of. (2008).“Chicago Climate Action Plan.”

Dumke, Mick. (2009 August) “IVI-IPO Sues the City Over the Parking Meter Deal.” The Chicago Reader, Guarino, Mark. (2009 June).“The Great Sell-Off: Chicago Auctions City Assets.” The Christian Science Monitor.

Harris, Andrew M. (2010 September 17). William Blair Sued Over Its Advice on Chicago Parking

its long-term implications on the City’s budget or the City’s transportation system.

Raising parking meter rates is hardly an easy feat for politicians, as evidenced by Chicago’s inability to double the parking rates in 2007.

But, as H. Woods Bowman argues, all it takes is a little “moxie” to push it through.

Chicago can learn lessons from both the state of Indiana and Pasadena, CA. Indiana showed the political will of using a longterm plan to guide its lease payment into an incremental transportation funding scheme.

Before completing the Metered Parking System Concession Agreement, the City of Chicago should have identified how parking fits into its long-term goal and then acted accordingly. The lack of long-term thinking led to short-term decision-making. Chicago could have allocated parking revenue towards fulfilling its transportation goals as outlined in the Chicago Climate Change Plan, including increasing transit use, walking, and bicycling.

Similarly, the city of Old Pasadena took control of its parking meter revenue to make parking downtown easier and to fund public streetscape improvements. Chicago could have considered implementing a downtown BID district that would funnel parking revenue back to the neighborhoods. Not only would this help improve parking options and public improvements, it would also be a political move to garner support from the local business community, who so adamantly opposed parking rate increases in 2007.

Meter Privatization. www.bloomberg.com (accessed February 13, 2011).

Hellman, Nathan. (2010, March 1). “Chicago Burning Through Skyway Privatization Cash.”

Indiana Economic Digest.

Johnson, Craig L., Martin J. Luby, and Shokhrukh I. Kurbanov. (2007).“Toll Road Privatization Transactions: The Chicago Skyway and Indiana Toll Road.” School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Joravsky, Ben, and Mick Dumke. (2009, April 9).

“FAIL, Part One: Chicago’s Parking Meter lease Deal.” Chicago Reader. Chicago, IL. Shoup, Donald. (2005). The High Cost of Free Parking. Chicago: American Planning Association..

Shoup, Donald, and Douglas Kolozsvari. (2003).

“Turning Small Change into Big Changes.”

CONCLUSION The City of Chicago used short-term thinking to fix short-term budget deficits. They lacked any long-term vision to employ parking meter prices as a tool to reduce driving or as a revenue stream to fund or incentivize alternative travel modes. Ralph Marteri of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability argues that politicians have a hard time thinking about long-term consequences, “They are willing to lose future benefits because it doesn’t hurt them [in the present]” (Guarino 2009).

Chicago’s efforts to raise the price of metered parking, while unpopular among residents, was an important step in balancing the modal split. Missing from the agreement, however, was the city’s efforts to improve alternative modes. The City of Chicago lacks a transportation vision that includes parking as a tool for meeting its long-term goals. When the City of Chicago leased 34,500 parking spaces to Morgan Stanley for 75 years, not only did it relinquish control over its parking system, it also lost control of future street infrastructure changes. In the long run, the city will lose revenue and will have difficulty making walking, biking, and transit accommodations on streets because of its financial commitment to Morgan Stanley’s revenue stream. In the end, the City missed a prime opportunity to divert funds into a long-term strategy to discourage driving, encourage walking, transit, and biking, and work towards the greater goal of creating a more balanced multimodal transportation system and livable city.

Access, no. 23.

Vanderbilt, Tom. Traffic: (2008). Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us).

New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Vuchic, Vukan R. (1999). Transportation for Livable Cities. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research.

Waguespack, Scott, Patryk Piwinski, and Paul Sajovec. (2008, December 3).“Chicago Metered Parking System Concession Agreement: An Analsys of the Long-Term Leasing of the Chicago Parking Meter System.” Chicago, IL. Weinberger, Rachel, John Kaehny, and Matthew Rufo. (2010). “U.S. Parking Policies: An Overview of Management Strategies.” Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, New York City.

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Investing in the Electric Grid: Smarter Technology or Increased Capacity?

By Anjuli Maniam INTRODUCTION Key infrastructure investments can increase economic growth and improve the quality of life for thousands, if not millions, of United States residents. In August 2003, a four-day blackout disrupted the lives of 50 million people in northeastern United States and parts of Canada, reminding the country of the importance of the electric grid. For four nights, cities affected by the power outage reported incidents of looting, vandalism, and arson. New York City alone recorded 3,000 fire calls and 80,000 emergency service calls (International Association of Fire Chiefs 2003. The power outage resulted in billions of dollars in damages. The disruption in services, economic costs, and lawsuits filed against Con Edison, the region’s power provider, forced public officials to rethink the national grid to improve energy transmissions across the United States.

The nation’s outdated electrical grid is unprepared for increasing demand and for a future that includes more renewable sources of energy. As the nation moves towards sustainable power supplies and states attempt to meet renewable portfolio standards, the country must decide if an interjection of federal jurisdiction into an area traditionally handled by states is necessary to keep pace with rising standards of living and to ensure the country’s future economic growth and competitiveness. Along 10

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with federal intervention at the planning level, the federal government will have to guarantee public investment to attract private investment in the power grid. A partnership between the public and private sectors will be critical to a complete overhaul of the electric grid.

In February 2009, the U.S. senate passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which included $11 billion to upgrade the country’s power grid. The upgrade of the electric power infrastructure and incorporation of Smart Grid technologies is widely considered to be one of the largest business opportunities of the new century.

In, “The U.S. Smart Grid Revolution,” KEMA, a leading energy consulting firm, estimates that over the next four-year period 280,000 new jobs will be created in the U.S. as a result of Smart Grid projects. In that same period, KEMA expects that the potential public disbursements of $16 billion would catalyze projects totaling nearly $64 billion (2008). However, further analysis is necessary to project expected job growth from the investment in smart technologies.

The number of jobs reported by KEMA is not net new jobs. In the future, technology jobs will replace jobs supplied by the current system. A comprehensive investigation into the effects of smart technology job growth on national or regional economies requires

an examination of both job creation and job destruction.

This paper will explore the effectiveness of the Obama administration’s investment in smart grid technologies. This investment focuses on improving the technology required to maintain and monitor the power system instead of investing in large-scale infrastructure projects that will increase the capacity of the grid. In many instances, the investment in smart grid technology will be associated with job losses through substitution. Consequently, the government should be cautious about only investing in industries that attract high-skilled workers and may not offer the opportunities for multi-level job growth.

OVERVIEW OF THE ELECTRIC POWER SYSTEM Physical and Technical features The United States’ power grid is a patchwork of systems originally built by individual utilities as isolated transmission islands to meet local needs. Unlike the interstate highway system, which was built in conformance with a federal plan, the grid’s small networks were unsystematically linked when utilities decided to jointly own power plants or to connect to neighboring companies to facilitate power sales (American Electric Power System 2004).

Eventually the grid evolved into what is currently three major “interconnections;” the Eastern, Western and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which covers most of the state. These separate grids have limited connections and are operated by a total of approximately 130 authorities that monitor the grid and take actions to prevent failures (U.S. Department of Energy 2008).

Private and public ownership of the grid varies greatly across the country. For example in the West and Upper Plains public utilities own more than 40% of the transmission grid. However, in the Northeast/Midwest, Southeast and Southwest, about 80% of the grid is owned by private utilities (Kaplan 2009).

Regulatory Framework Electric power regulation is divided among state, federal and regional authorities.

Public utility commissions oversee power regulation at the state level, but they often only regulate private utilities within states.

The commission’s duties include: setting retail rates, reviewing utility operations and issuing siting permits for new transmission lines. On the other hand, publicly owned utilities are self-regulated by their governing agency. These agencies may range from a local community-based organization to a statewide government monopoly; however, public utilities are generally not subject to state or federal regulation.

Federal regulation of the power industry is two pronged; regulating electric power transmission and regulating power system reliability. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), an independent agency administratively housed within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), regulates wholesale electricity rates in transactions between a generator and a reseller of power, or between two resellers, approves transmission line projects, and sets transmission rates. FERC’s authority, however, is limited to private utilities excluding those in ERCOT and while FERC must approve all transmission projects, utilities still need siting permits from every state their proposed transmission lines will traverse (Kaplan 2009). Since transmission projects must be approved by multiple states, the time between planning and constructing a process can be lengthy. Many utilities have criticized this multi-state permitting process for being convoluted and delaying the construction of needed transmission lines.

TRANSMISSION PLANNING: STREAMLINING THE PLANNING PROCESS In a 2009 proposal, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources recommended a federal planning process

that would streamline transmission planning, permitting and financing. The proposal envisions federally authorized planning authorities that would coordinate the development of plans and submittal of the plans to FERC for review and approval.

According to the proposal, this process would replace the existing “bottom-up” planning approach with a more “top-down” integrated and binding approach. This would ensure that federal resources are not funneled into piecemeal developments that do not benefit the system as a whole.

Furthermore, transmission projects included in interconnection-wide plans would have federal permitting to bypass state regulation.

This centralized transmission planning under the control of FERC would lessen states influence over power system planning but accelerate the overall the development process.

Proponents of interconnection-wide planning believe that a national plan is necessary to avoid piecemeal development of the grid, and many have emphasized the need for additional federal funding. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 included construction incentives for transmission investment, however many have campaigned for the federal government to step in with direct funding to allow transmission developers to “supersize” planned lines to meet potential future generation (Western Governors Eye Senate Bill, 2009). Recently, Congress approved $132 billion for infrastructure spending out of the $787 billion 2009 federal stimulus. For those who had hoped that this would be an opportunity for an electric grid overhaul, the funding amount came as a disappointment.

For successful upgrades to proceed, Congress will have to invest at much greater levels in order to provide efficient and reliable electricity to a rapidly expanding population.

TRANSMISSION PLANNING: SUPERHIGHWAYS TO CONNECT RENEWABLE ENERGY The frayed networks of the electric power grid speak to the consequences of inadequate federal policy and poor infrastructure management in the United States. The condition of the electric grid and the challenge of expanding and upgrading it are often compared to that of the interstate highway before Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956. Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower, believes that the interstate highway system could serve as the model for building a modern electric grid. In a radio interview with National Public Radio, she commented, “Like the early highway system, the current electric grid is a patchwork of disparate regional webs that are often unreliable and inefficient.

And like the road system of Eisenhower’s youth, the electric grid requires immediate and dramatic modernization to maintain the nation’s economy and security” (National Public Radio 2009) President Eisenhower’s visionary plan for an interconnected system of multilane highways was based on the country’s projected commerce needs 30-40 years into the future.

The expanding manufacturing industry of the 1950s meant that the interstate was a crucial investment. Similarly, a modern and interconnected electric grid with the transmission capacity for the future needs of the nation will foster today’s information economy and avoid expensive expansions and renovations down the line.

Expanding the current transmission grid to reach remote renewable energy regions would involve building a system of “transmission superhighways” designed to move large amounts of renewable electricity to customers. This continent-spanning “overlay” system of transmission lines is considered the electrical equivalent of the interstate highway system and would make renewable energy a more viable option in the States. Currently the most important source for new renewable electricity generation is wind power (Logan & Kaplan 2008). Wind energy soared 45% last year, however, transmission-line shortage threatens to slow its growth and prevent some states from meeting renewable energy mandates (Davidson 2010). Many of the best places for wind production are in thinly populated areas with no connection to the electric grid. (FIGURE 1). Similarly, the best region for solar development is the isolated desert of the southwest (FIGURE 2). In a transmission planning proposal, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, recommended a federally sponsored planning process to oversee the development of transmission lines to

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serve “National Renewable Energy Zones.”

The proposal stipulated that 75% of the generating capacity connected to the lines should be renewable energy (U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 2009).

Figure 1 : Regional Electric Network

Figure 2 : Coal Power Sources

Figure 3 : Wind Power Network

Figure 4 : Solar Power Network

Figure 5 : Concentration of Coal Power Plants 12

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Many states have contested the transfer of renewable energies over states lines.

Ian Bowles, the energy secretary for Massachusetts, believes that renewable energy brought in from distant producers over lines subsidized by the government may undercut homegrown wind projects in New England (National Public Radio 2009). Bowles’ concern is that if renewable energy sources from the Midwest and Western plains were connected to the grid, the wind farms and utilities in that area would act as “propulsive industries,” generating profit opportunities in other industries in those local communities. In other words, the expansion of the grid into source areas for renewable energy may lead to the domination of those regions over neighboring states in renewable energy industries. As an alternative, Bowles’ suggests that New England build upon its local resources and wind projects to better the internal coherence of their economy.

Communities in the Midwest and Western plains hope that the government’s investment in renewable energies will result in economic growth in their region. The world’s largest wind farm, consisting of 627 turbines located in Roscoe, Texas, has made a significant impact on the town’s economy and livelihood. Before the turbines, things were bleak in Roscoe; “people couldn’t wait to get out of town and head to the big cities, not because they didn’t love this area, but because there were so few opportunities” (Etheredge 2009) The growth of the wind energy led to an economic boom in Roscoe.

Today, four hundred landowners in the area share the benefits of leasing their land to E.ON Climate & Renewables, the operators of Roscoe’s Wind Farm. For the first time small family farmers receive a steady income (about to be $15,000 per turbine, per year) and can still use their land for farming and ranching (Roscoe Wind Council 2007).

Furthermore, many people who grew up in Roscoe are returning to live in the town because of the wind industry.

The DOE reports that wind power could account for 20 percent of the U.S. energy supply by 2030. This would reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation by 25 percent in 2030, and support roughly 500,000 jobs with more than 150,000 workers directly employed by the wind industry (U.S. Department of Energy 2008). This could revitalize towns in sparsely populated areas and sustain family farmers, many of whom

ensure the quality and variety of the food that we eat.

TRANSMISSION PLANNING: DIGITALIZING THE SYSTEM In addition to expanding the power grid, modernizing the system into a ‘Smart Grid’ is critical to increasing renewable energy development, electric vehicle adoption, and energy efficiency improvements (KEMA 2008). Smart Grid technology enables individual customers and utility control centers to share both the movement of electrical information and the control of electricity usage to better manage demand.

In addition this technology will include self-monitoring and automatic protection schemes to improve the reliability of the system (Kaplan 2009).

Proponents of the smart grid believe that its ability to signal consumers when electricity is expensive or in short supply will influence them to reduce their power usage. As part of this demand response capacity, new rate structures such as “dynamic” pricing, in which charges to consumers reflect actual market prices for electricity, will be implemented. Dynamic rates mean that consumers would have an incentive to reduce their power usage in the afternoon when demand peaks and the most expensive generating plants are online and delay powering using activities to the evening or the weekend when the price of power drops (Galvin Electricity Initiative 2010) Consequently, there would be less use of expensive fuels and less need for new power plants to meet the growth in peak load.

Critics reason that because consumers currently pay a rate for power that reflects annual average costs rather than real-time hour-to-hour costs, consumers have no immediate economic incentive to respond to utility price signals (Vock 2010). Critics also contend that lower income people may not have the schedule flexibility to shift their power using activities such as cooking and laundry to less expensive hours of the day and that the elderly may face the choice of paying higher power bills or risking their health (Tiernan 2008).

However, advocates such as the Electric Power Research Institute and the Galvin Institute, research arms of the power industry, calculate the potential benefits of the Smart Grid to be astronomical. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that implementation of the smart grid and related technologies could increase GDP by 10% annually by 2020 (Electric Power Research Institute 2010). The Galvin Institute claims that a modernized grid would “reduce the need for massive [electric power]

infrastructure investments by between $46 and $117 billion over the next 20 years” (Kaplan 2009). Despite these claims, the benefits of the smart grid remain uncertain because the technology is still evolving and there are no operating systems to evaluate.

As the technology matures and continues to change, net job growth will remain unpredictable.

In California, Pacific Gas and Electric has installed smart meters (also referred to as advanced metering infrastructure or AMI), that allow the utility and consumer to monitor and manage power usage. By 2012, Pacific Gas and Electric plans to have $10.3 million smart meters installed at a cost of $1.7 billion (Weinzimer 2007). Estimates of installing smart meters nationwide range from $40 billion to $50 billion, however, it is unclear how many meters are needed to achieve the demand response benefit and whether the benefits will ultimately justify the costs (Faruqui 2009).

In addition to managing electricity usage, instituting smart grid technology may create jobs. A report prepared for the GridWise Alliance by KEMA estimates that the government’s disbursement of $16 billion in Smart Grid incentives would rapidly advance the approval and commencement of $62 billion in private Smart Grid projects.

KEMA states that these projects would lead to approximately 280,000 new positions between 2009 and 2012. In addition to these positions, an estimated 140,000 new jobs will “persist beyond the Smart Grid deployment as permanent, on-going high-value positions” (KEMA 2008). KEMA’s predicted new positions created during the deployment period (2009 – 2012) include: 48,300 direct

BIBliOGRAPHY Electric Power Research Institute. 2003. Electricity Sector Framework For the Future, Volume I: Achieving the 21st Century Transformation.

Etheredge, David. 2009. Carbon Nation (DVD).

Directed by Peter Byck Davidson, Paul. 2010.

Faruqui, Ahmad and Sanem Sergici. 2009.

Household Response to Dynamic Pricing: A Survey of the Experimental Evidence. The Brattle Group.

Galving Electricity Initiative. 2010. The Value of Smart Distribution and Microgrids. Accessed July 22, 2010. http://galvinpower.org/ International Association of Fire Chiefs. 2003.

Performance of the Fire Service during the 2003 Northeast Blackout and the Implications for Critical Infrastructure Protection. Fairfax, VA. “Lines Lacking to Transmit Wind Energy.” USA Today, March 17.

Logan, Jeffrey and Mark Kaplan. 2008. Wind Power

utility jobs created by Smart Grid programs; 19,000 contract utility employee jobs; 117,700 direct utility supply chain jobs; 79,300 indirect utility supply chain jobs, and 25,700 new utility and Energy Service Company jobs. Moreover, increasing venture capital investment in “clean” technologies and distributed renewable energy generation shows the potential for substantial job creation in emerging technology industries such as renewable energy source suppliers, distributed generation suppliers of products and services, and plug-in electric hybrid vehicle providers.

Undoubtedly, the Smart Grid will transform a significant portion of the U.S. workforce into high-tech, industry leaders. Furthermore, the rapid technology transitions that will occur in the U.S. to meet the demand of the growing smart technology market will spur the domestic Smart Grid supplier’s industry and perhaps position the U.S. as a technological and industrial leader and global supplier of Smart Grid technologies. However, replacing existing jobs with smart technology will reduce the number of mid-skilled jobs and increase demand for a highly educated labor force, thus widening the gap in earnings.

TRANSMISSION PLANNING: A PROMISE TO FUTURE GENERATIONS Improving the reliability and efficiency of the electric grid will have substantial social benefits in addition to the economic benefits discussed in this paper. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that “improvements in productivity that result from more reliable transmission and other upgrades will eventually save the consumer $500 a year” (2003). In addition to lowering customer costs, these improvements

in the United States: Technology, Economic, and Policy Issues. CRS Report RL34546.

Kaplan, Mark. 2009. Electric Power Transmission: Background and Policy Issues.

CRS Report R40511.

KEMA. 2008. The U.S. Smart Grid Revolution: KEMA’s Perspectives for Job Creation.

Prepared for the GridWise Alliance.

“Power Hungry: Reinventing the U.S. Electric Grid” (Radio Broadcast). 2009. Produced by Andrew Prince for National Public Radio.

Accessed March 4, 2010. http://www.npr.org Roscoe Wind Council. 2007. Roscoe Wind Farm.

Accessed July 22, 2010 http://www.roscoewind.org/ Securities and Exchange Commission. 2004. In the Matter of American Electric Power Company, Inc. Prepared Direct Testimony of Paul B. Johnson on Behalf of the American Electric Power System.

U.S. Department of Energy. 2008. 20 percent Wind

could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance energy security. If calculated into the equation, these external benefits could result in a net positive impact on a regional economy. As the U.S. transitions away from oil, coal, and gas and towards renewable energy, it will be the responsibility of legislators to change transmission laws and regulations to meet the nation’s new energy goals and ensure the growth, or at least the retention, of the energy workforce.

Managing this transition will require considerable federal investment and a strong role of the U.S. government in transmission planning. Investing in a combination of large-scale transmission projects and new monitoring and control technologies will be required to foster regional economies and prepare the electric grid for 21st century demands. As such, regulators will need to provide the private sector with the incentives to expand investment in smart grid technologies and publicly fund largescale energy infrastructure that will require mid-skill workers.

An investment in infrastructure is a promise to future generations. At one time, the world admired the ability to build America’s Interstate Highway system. However, as the rest of the world has continued to implement long-range programs to integrate infrastructure networks with state-of-theart technologies to serve economic hubs, America has fallen behind. This means that government officials and policy experts must take effective action in determining a national vision for infrastructure improvements that support the viability of the nation’s local and regional economies.

Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy’s Contribution to U.S. Electricity Supply.

Accessed July 29. http://www1.eere.energy.gov U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources. 2009. “Siting of Interstate Electric Transmission Facilities, Senate Energy.”

Majority Draft prepared on March 12.

Tiernan, Tom. 2008. “Utilities Sometimes in the Middle as Enthusiasm, Wariness Circle Each Other in Smart Grid Push.” Platts Electric Utility Week. November 3, 2008.

Weinzimer, Lisa. 2007. “PG&E Advanced Meter Upgrade Would Cost Ratepayers $900 million,” Platts Electric Utility Week.

December 17, 2007.

“Western Governors Eye Senate Bills to Push New Transmission Policy”. 2009. www.

EnergyWashington.com. EnergyWashington Accessed July 21, 2010 Vock, Daniel. 2009. “Smart Grid’s Growth Now Depends on States.” Stateline.org. Accessed July 22, 2010.

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for the Viaduct (Kise, Straw and Kolodner et al. 2004). As of 2011, no organization has published a master plan for the Viaduct.

Timing and Visibility: The Failure of the High Line Improvement District and its Implications for the Reading Viaduct

By Liza Cohen Illustrations by Emily Leckvarcik Closed in 1984, the elevated tracks of the Reading Viaduct now stand abandoned above the Callowhill neighborhood just north of Philadelphia’s Center City and Chinatown.

The rusting structure is covered in grass and other plants, and the space below is dark and decrepit. In 2003, two community members started a small, grassroots project, called the Reading Viaduct Project, (RVP) to turn the viaduct into a neighborhood park. In Chelsea, New York, a similar effort converted an abandoned elevated rail into The High Line Park, which opened its first completed section in June 2009. The public and private sectors funded construction of The High Line, but the Friends of the High Line (FHL) attempted to create an Improvement District (ID) to pay for some maintenance costs. However, the community around the High Line rejected the idea of a mandatory assessment for the improvement district. A closer examination of the failed ID in New York reveals several valuable lessons for the proposed initiative in Philadelphia. For an ID to successfully provide funding to maintain the viaduct park, the community must be involved from the beginning, the ID should follow traditional Business Improvement District models, and the assessed community needs to see tangible effects resulting from their contributions.

History The High Line and the Reading Viaduct are both relics of the United States’ railwayoriented past. Construction began on the Viaduct in 1891, as part of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad’s line to Pottsville.

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Specifically, the Viaduct connected Reading Railroad to the Reading Headhouse Terminal, which is now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The railroad carried both freight—often coal—and passengers (PhilaNet 2009). After 85 years of operation, the Reading Company closed down its railroad division in 1976. Trains continued to use the viaduct until 1985 when Philadelphia rerouted its commuter rail system (Reading Terminal Market and Reading Viaduct Project 2011).

Although it was also abandoned in the 1980s, the High Line is almost 40 years younger than the Viaduct. In 1929 the City of New York and New York Central Railroad built the elevated High Line in response to safety concerns with street-level freight trains that ran down 10th Avenue. The Line connected directly to freight destinations like factories and warehouse buildings. However, the rise of the interstate highway system and thus freight trucking throughout the 20th century eventually negated the need for the High Line, and the last train ran across its tracks in 1980, pulling a load of frozen turkeys (The High Line 2011).

In 1999, two local residents, Joshua David and Robert Hammond started a grass roots movement to convert the New York rail line into an elevated park. The grass roots movement led to the creation of “Friends of the High Line,” a non-profit that gradually gained municipal support for the project by working with City Council. The city broke ground on the first segment, with

an expected budget of $85 million, in April 2006, and the park opened to the public three years later. FHL eventually raised $44 million in private money and planned on a combination of city and federal dollars to support the remaining costs (Taylor 2010).

Since opening, the High Line has become a critically acclaimed park that has supported new and novel development. Even in the current depressed housing market, a recent New York Times article highlighted the burgeoning real estate market along the High Line (Kershaw 2010).

The foundations of a similar group to FHL exist in Philadelphia. Inspired by the High Line, John Stuble and Sarah McEneaney founded the Reading Viaduct Project in 2003.

In that same year, the City of Philadelphia funded an Urban Engineers study that estimated the development of the rail line into a park to cost $5.1 million in comparison to $35.5-$51.2 million for demolition. In 2004 the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the area’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, put together a study of Chinatown and Callowhill, the two main neighborhoods through which the Viaduct cuts. The study identified the Viaduct as a defining and dividing characteristic of the area, and proposed several development alternatives for the structure. However, without recommending either demolition or redevelopment, the report ultimately suggested small improvements to the structure such as lighting, painting and drainage. In addition, the report called for a future master plan and economic study

An Improvement District Fails at The High Line After opening the first section of the High Line in 2009, Friends of the High Line decided that fundraising alone would not suffice to cover all costs and thus looked to the neighborhood for funding. While the Department of Parks and Recreation was responsible for the maintenance of the structure, elevators and security, FHL had partnered with them to operate and maintain the park (Amateau 2009). Two months after the park opened to the public, FHL put forth the city-endorsed idea for a $1 million capped Improvement District covering 37 blocks. This meant charging residents and local business either 9 or 3 cents per square foot of space, depending on their proximity to the park. For one warehouse owner, the total fee worked out to about $4,320 annually (Amateau 2009).

The neighborhood response to the ID idea, especially as portrayed in the media, was very negative, and FHL eventually abandoned the idea of instituting an improvement district. One resident called it, “condescending” to “assume that the neighborhood owes [FHL] something for the benefit that [FHL] perceives they have brought [to the area]” (Hedlund 2009). Many articles about the High Line ID published online drew comments from concerned citizens, such as one Chelsea Resident who wrote, “A BID is meant to improve the entire district, not fund a project…This is wrong” (Hedlund 2009). Eventually FHL put the project on hold, stating that they would look to a more “diversified revenue stream” for the time being (Friends of the High Line 2009). Currently, FHL provides 70% of the High Line’s annual operating budget through member donations, while New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation shoulders some of the other maintenance costs (Friends of the High Line 2009).

one can see from the resident who called the ID a “condescending” idea, residents were adverse to the ID because of the perceived lack of citizen engagement in its creation.

Therefore, they resented the idea of being told that the park is a neighborhood cause they should and had to support.

In addition to timing and neighborhood relationship issues, the formation of the ID was different in many ways to that of a traditional successful BID. Many areas have implemented BIDs to respond to “declining public resources” and “stronger competition.”(Levy 2009, 13) While the High Line ID addresses the issue of declining public resources, it did not really need to address the issue of stronger competition since the park doesn’t compete for customers (anyone can access it for free) in the same way a company competes for business.

Companies that typically participate in a BID use it to try to draw customers they feel they are losing to other, better maintained business districts. In addition, most North American BIDs act within very specific boundaries (Williams 2006). However, the High Line ID faced the difficult problem of defining those boundaries, something they in fact tweaked a few times (Friends of the High Line 2009). In a BID, each participating entity within a given area pays an assessment to the BID organization, and receives tangible benefits such as clean sidewalks in return.

In this system, the BID creates a direct effect for each participating member. Studies have found no “spillover effect” – either bad or good – outside BID boundaries (Furman Center 2008). However, the catchment area of those who benefit from a park in their neighborhood through increased property values is larger and more nebulous. Although properties located directly on a proposed park will likely gain value, property values of places with close proximity to parkland are rather difficult and subjective to calculate

(Garrod and Willis 1991).

Lessons for the Reading Viaduct Improvement District If the Reading Viaduct Project, the City of Philadelphia, or another entity hopes to form a BID or ID to maintain the proposed Reading Viaduct Park, there are several lessons that they can learn from FHL’s experience in New York. First, the community needs to be involved in the planning and construction of the project from the start, so that they are mentally invested in the idea. While supporters of the High Line might have been excited about the park, they did not play a big role in its construction and initial maintenance and thus stood to gain no visible benefits from paying an assessment to an ID once the park was established.

In addition, the Reading Viaduct needs a clear definition of the area in which it expects property values to rise, and these details must be communicated to residents.

This will require a detailed study specific to Philadelphia and Callowhill. The research that goes into defining this area will yield numbers that can then accurately describe how residents’ assets will rise with the construction of the park. RVP should then present or distribute these numbers to the community. If RVP has a clear map of the ID area from the beginning of the project, they will avoid the issues of ambiguity that contributed to the breakdown of the High Line ID. Another key problem with FHL’s proposed improvement district was that it lacked the ongoing, tangible effects inherent to typical BIDs. The Center City District (CCD) in Philadelphia is an excellent example of a successful BID whose tangible effects on its neighborhood allowed it to expand both in size and scope. BIDs are, “fundamentally a legal mechanism to raise funds to enhance

Map of Reading Viaduct Extents

Although FHL succeeded in converting an abandoned structure into a successful park loved by both the public and design critics, they organization made a couple of big errors in its attempts to engage the High Line community in an ID. The first big difference between this ID and other successful improvement districts, usually called business improvement districts (BIDs), is that FHL completed the project without any mandatory fee charged to local property owners. Therefore, local residents saw no point in paying for something that they already had for free. In addition, as 15

the management of a particular place (Levy 2009). In particular, BIDs generally focus on commercial corridors, not residential areas.

The CCD began in 1990 with two goals for downtown Philadelphia: “Clean and Safe,” and a five year sunset date. As businesses watched the CCD maintain center city in respect to both of these goals, they ostensibly understood the importance of paying the BID levy. The CCD has now expanded to include a variety of services, from marketing to streetscaping, as well as acting as a major urban planning force in Philadelphia (Levy 2010). In contrast, the tenants near the High Line already had their well maintained park and their increased property values, and thus could not foresee a direct impact of any ID levy. Therefore, if an ID is to maintain the Reading Viaduct, it must have a visible, ongoing impact, as “BIDs prove that owners will pay for services that they can see and that respond to their needs” (Levy 2009, 13).

To emphasize the benefits of being a paying member of the Viaduct improvement district, RVP could hold annual or biannual events where the Viaduct is shut down for all but members of the ID. As Bankside in England has done, another option would be to create “informal recreational opportunities” for ID members (Williams 2006). Both of these things would emphasize the boundary lines that are key to the success of IDs as well as give assessment zone members a tangible gain from being part of the ID. In order to connect the park to its neighborhood funding source, RVP could create a visual display that honors those people paying to support the ID. For example, along a bridge on Locust Walk on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus, bricks on the walkway have been inscribed with the names of contributors to the school. These serve to honor donors to the school and to remind everyone who uses the bridge of the importance of the donors’ contribution.

Another idea is to mesh the models of both the High Line and Bryant Park in New York and try to use an ID to attract high volume business development, which would eventually decrease the financial burden on residents and small local businesses. In response to the decrepit state of Bryant Park in the 1980s, local business leaders such as the Rockefeller Brothers put together the Bryant Park Corporation which restored the park and implemented strategies that decreased crime by 92% (Bryant Park 2011). While the High Line ID attempted to assess residents for park maintenance, a typical BID gets most of its income from commercial businesses(Levy 2010). The Bryant Park BID works well because they sought the involvement of many large local organizations like New York Library (Murray 16

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2008, 48).The BID gained traction with the business community’s input and now much of its income comes from corporate businesses with steady cash flows located around the park (Bryant Park Report 2009).

The Viaduct could build on the success of the High Line and Bryant Park in transforming public spaces to attract businesses to the area surrounding the park. Businesses that move into the space around the park would agree to be a part of the ID. RVP could set a “sunset date” on the BID assessment for the residents who would meanwhile be paying a decreased levy as more businesses moved to the park area and could assume more of the maintenance cost burden. If the assessment did not decrease to a given amount by a certain year, then the residents could agree to scrap the BID. This idea has the added bonus of making the BID feel more voluntary.

Unique Hurdles for the Viaduct Despite its facial similarities, the Reading Viaduct Park project would be very different from the High Line. The people living in the neighborhood surrounding the Viaduct have much lower incomes than those living around the High Line. Common economic principles show that people with lower incomes put more value on each dollar, thus any assessment would appear to be greater in Callowhill than in Chelsea.

In addition, the Viaduct faces opposition from the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC). The growing Chinatown North neighborhood views the structure as an impediment to the development of their neighborhood.

PCDC has instead called for its demolition, at least between Noble and Spring Garden streets. In contrast to the Urban Engineers study which estimated that it would cost $35.5-$51.2 million to demolish the rail line, PCDC argues that their section would only

cost $9 million to take down (Bakeman 2009). The debate between park supporters and PCDC has been long ranging, and there have not been recent steps towards any sort of resolution (Walsh 2009) – likely because funding does not yet exist to take down or develop the Viaduct.

Finally, while commercial businesses often benefit from increased foot traffic near a park, the industrial businesses located around the Viaduct would probably not see an obvious benefit from converting the rail line to a park. However, many parts of the Viaduct surroundings are zoned C3 for mixed use commercial. This means that businesses that typically support BIDs could locate near the Viaduct. However, it will may difficult to attract new commercial businesses in an area that is still largely industrial. A critical mass of commercial businesses would be necessary to support people visiting the park who would probably want to patronize smaller cafes and shops that welcome pedestrians.

Although there are many challenges in store for the development of the Viaduct, it is a fascinating project. The preservation of the structure celebrates American and Philadelphian industry as a rail town, while saving the city the money it would cost to remove a current eyesore. Property values in a struggling neighborhood could increase substantially as a result of this new development. The citizens and businesses in the local area, as well as in Philadelphia as a whole, stand to gain a lot from such a project. The park will have to be maintained somehow, and in a city where a BID has worked before it seems logical to do so again. However the creation of an ID in this area will take patience, careful research, and extensive public outreach. If done right, however, it could be a wonderful success story for Philadelphia.

Below left and above: Renderings of Proposed Park along Reading Viaduct

Bibliography Amateau, Albert. 2009. “High Line group hopes district will keep park on track.” The Villager.

July 15. Accessed March 2011. http://www. thevillager.com Bryant Park. “Bryant Park Today.” Accessed February 2011. http://bryantpark.org/about-us/ today.html.

Bryant Park. 2009. Bryant Park Management Corporation Annual Report. Bryant Park Management Corporation. October 13.

Accessed March 2011. www.bryantpark.org Bakeman, Mark. 2009. “Chinatown leaders favor destruction of the ‘Chinese Wall’”. University City Review. August 26.

Friends of the High Line. “High Line Newsletter, August 2009.” Accessed February 2011. http:// www.thehighline.org/newsletters/081209.html.

Furman Center. 2008. The Benefits of Business Improvement Districts: Evidence from New York City. New York University, July.

Garrod, G.D., and K.G. Willis. 1991. “Valuing Goods’ Characteristics: An Application of

the Hedonic Price Method to Environmental Attributes.” Journal of Environmental Management 34 (January 24): 59-76.

Hedlund, Patrick. 2009. “High Line plan is too taxing, neighbors cry.” The Villager. August 12. Accessed March 2011. http://www. thevillager.com Kershaw, Sarah. 2010. “In West Chelsea, a High Line Boomlet.” The New York Times. November 11.

Kise, Straw and Kolodner, Brown and Keener Urban Design, Urban Partners, and Gannet Fleming.

2004. Chinatown Neighborhood Plan. Prepared for the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.

Levy, Paul. 2010. “Downtown Development.”

Lecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

September 24.

Levy, Paul R. 2003. “Introduction”. In Business Improvement Districts by Larry Houston.

Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute.

Murray, Michael F. 2008. “Private Management of Public Spaces: Nonprofit Organizations and Public Parks.” Yale Student Prize Papers 35.

Philanet.com. “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (PA) and the history of the railroads in the Delaware River Valley.” Accessed February 2011. http:// philanet.com/Philadelphia/railroads/.

Reading Terminal Market. “About.”

Accessed February 2011. http://www. readingterminalmarket.org/about/middle.

Reading Viaduct Project. “About Us.” Accessed February 2011. http://www.readingviaduct.org/ aboutus.html.

Taylor, Kate. 2010. “After High Line’s Success, Other Cities Look Up.” The New York Time., July 14 The High Line. “High Line History.” Accessed February 2011. http://www.thehighline.org/ .Walsh, Thomas. 2009. “Reading Viaduct ‘another opportunity lost’.” PlanPhilly. August 28.

Accessed March 2011. www.planphilly.com.

Williams, Peter. 2006. “UK BIDs: A Growing Force in Urban Management.” From International City and Town Centre Management Conference, June 2006.

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embodied the idea of residential suburbs even as early as the late nineteenth century.

Segregated Los Angeles:

Historical Residential Patterns and the Psychology of Space

By Yumi Lifer “The psychological foundation, upon which the metropolitan individuality is erected, is the intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli.” -Georg Simmel Los Angeles is the sixth wealthiest city in the world, the third densest metropolis in the United States, and one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the nation (Richman 2003, 200). The ocean meets the city to the west, the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains bind the city’s northern and eastern borders, while canyons and valleys stretch alongside its coast. An intricate network of highways connects one brimming cultural enclave to the next, across cinematic miles of palm trees and stucco jungles. Georg Simmel believed that the fast-paced tempo of the metropolis created necessary stimuli for our mental lives. For him, the city reflected humans’ deep desire for difference and dynamism.

Upon first glance, Los Angeles seems to embody the vigor of city life that Simmel found so critical in man’s psychological development.

Yet, Los Angeles is plagued with a unique history of segregation that thwarts the vision of the metropolis as a unifying center 18

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accessible to all. Its history of segregated enclaves is compounded by the creation of fortressed and isolated spaces – symbols of a culture of imagined fear. This essay will explore the history of Los Angeles’s settlement patterns, economic disinvestment, and the exclusionary architectural/planning practices that shaped the spatial segregation of one of the most diverse cities in the nation.

It will also analyze recent planning initiatives that seek to rectify the social and spatial polarization that characterizes the urban landscape of Los Angeles today.

was Hispanic or Latino (of any race).

The city’s population was predominantly white in 1970, but became more diverse over time, with Latinos representing nearly half of the population by 2000 (U.S. Census, 2000). While the proportion of Asian/Pacific Islander residents doubled between 1970 and 2000 due to increased immigration from Asia, the proportion of the African American population decreased. The proportion of immigrants grew between 1900 and 2000, composing over forty percent of the population in 2000 (Richman 2003, 201).

Background: Geography and Demographics According to the US Census, the city of Los Angeles (LA) spans an area over 498 square miles, with a population of approximately 3.8 million. The city is one of the world’s largest centers of business, international trade, entertainment, media, fashion, technology, and education (City of Los Angeles, 2002).

It is also one of the most ethnically diverse metropolises in the United States. According to the 2005-2007 American Community Survey conducted by the US Census Bureau, the racial distribution of LA was 31% White American, 11.2% African American, 10.5% Asian American, and 44.5% of the population

Racially Demarcated Spaces in Los Angeles: Historical Context Early Residential Patterns After Mexico took over Los Angeles in 1848, the city transformed from a close-knit and dense community to a rapidly expanding area (Fogelson 1993, 39). This pattern was a result of the growing population, land speculation, and the desire of newly arrived Anglo-Americans to live away from “socially subordinate groups” (Pulido 2000, 26). The new residents were financially secure and had the luxury of choosing their lifestyles as opposed to being forced into undesirable living conditions due to economic necessity.

In short, Los Angeles settlement patterns

Residential Expansion in the World War II Era During World War II, approximately 40,000 Japanese Americans were displaced from their homes and neighborhoods in Los Angeles County and moved to internment camps for the duration of the war (Ford 1993, 90). African American residents occupied a large proportion of evacuated homes during this time (Richman 2003, 201). By 1945, however, restrictive racial covenants prohibited the sale of homes to African Americans, Jews, Chinese, and Mexicans (Ford 1992, 73). Such measures contributed to an enduring segregated landscape, especially of the African American community in South Central Los Angeles (Richman 2003, 205), which includes the areas south of the Santa Monica Freeway, east of La Brea Avenue, and north of the Century Freeway. In 1955, the ratio of single-family and multifamily units was more than nine to one in Los Angeles (Pulido 2000, 30). Since people of color traditionally had larger families, they were largely excluded from new suburbs, which led to overcrowding in inner-city areas. In addition, massive funds were funneled to the building of suburban homes, which meant that less money was available for inner-city development (Arvidson 1999, 141). In 1960, the average income in Central and East Los Angeles was $5,916, while the incomes of the newly developed areas averaged $8,575 (Arvidson 1999, 151).

Post World War II and Rapid Suburbanization Post World War II infrastructure depended on federal subsidies. Promises of the American Dream lured middle-class whites away from the cities with the help of such federally subsidized programs as mortgage insurance for affordable homeownership and “G.I. loans” for former servicemen. The promises, however, were not extended to minority communities in the downtown area, the East Side, or South Central Los Angeles due to restrictive covenants and complex underwriting criteria for mortgage loans (Richman 2003, 202).

The combination of federally subsidized mortgage programs and discriminatory lending practices led to “white flight” from inner cities, which then led to increased racial segregation (Pulido 2000, 31). Federal policies increased housing supplies, but often resulted in neighborhood separation by race. For example, the institutionalization of redlining by the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Act (FHA) was intended to protect

small home-owners from foreclosure (Jackson 1987, 196). However, they ranked neighborhoods from “A” to “D” according to the desirability of neighborhoods. “A” ratings were given to newer, affluent suburbs strung out along curvilinear streets and away from the problems of the city (Arvidson 1999, 148). Lower ratings tended to represent nonwhite neighborhoods. Suburban areas such as Pasadena and Beverly Hills received “A” ratings while homes in the eastside, central Los Angeles, and south of downtown were rated “C” or “D” (Arvidson 1999, 148). In addition, budgetary cuts to public transportation compounded the isolation of minorities and the poor, creating an increased dependence on local services and employment opportunities (Richman, 204).

Growing Tensions and Changing Demographics Around 1950, Los Angeles established the Community Redevelopment Agency (unfortunately dubbed “Chicano Removal Agency” by local activists) (Pulido 2000, 30). Through the power of eminent domain, the entity was able to acquire and assemble mass amounts of land in the downtown and adjacent areas for larger corporate interests.

In 1965, the predominantly AfricanAmerican community of Watts was a center of civil unrest. The lack of equal economic opportunities and the frustration related to strained race relations led to widespread arson and looting (Ford 1992, 75). The riots occurred in a time of massive whiteflight from the Los Angeles area into new communities along the periphery, such as the San Fernando Valley (Skogan, 2009). Though the unrest exposed the intensity of LA’s socioeconomic disparities to the general public, the result of the destruction only added to the conditions of poverty in the inner-city areas.

Economic Restructuring and Residential Polarization With the burgeoning power of the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC), the rapid growth of Japanese exports, and the end of the Vietnam War in 1973, the global economy shifted away from western dominance (Richman 2003, 221). As old industries along the “Snowbelt” began to close, the population shifted to the less unionized “Sunbelt” in the South and Southwest. Higher paying engineering jobs were replaced by low-wage sectors such as clothing manufacturing and service-based industries (Dear and Flusty 1998, 54). The economic trend paralleled the large influx of Latin American and Asian immigrants.

In 1992, the acquittal of the police officers responsible for the beating of Rodney King

Figure 1 : Changing Demographics of Los Angeles, 1970-2000

immediately sparked the LA Riots, less than thirty years after the Watts Riots. The unrest spoke to systemic underlying causes such as corporate restructuring and government deregulation, which led to growing economic disparities within the city (Davis 1992, 745).

As a result of growing media attention and public concern on the conditions of poverty in inner cities, the Special Committee of the California legislature produced a detailed study of the unrest. The Committee identified poverty, unequal educational and employment opportunities, and lack of consumer services as underlying causes of the riots (Assembly Special Committee, 1992).

The riots engendered a widespread feeling of resentment and powerlessness within the inner cities and reflected the extent of racial segregation in LA

Contemporary Trends and Continued Economic Disparity A large migration of whites from Los Angeles marked the years following the civil unrest of 1992 (Ford 1993, 78). During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Los Angeles experienced an increasingly diversified and rebounding economy. However, the rise in employment rates did not result in a decline in poverty.

The city’s general economic shift towards low-wage sector employment paralleled the growing population of recent immigrants, who were willing to occupy low-security, non-unionized jobs (Richman 2003, 220). This has resulted in the growth of the informal sector, where a largely undocumented immigrant workforce provides goods and services outside the purview of government regulation (Soja 1989, 120). Recent attempts to attract the affluent to the inner city have led to increases in rent and property values, effectively pricing out low-income residents (Pearce and Cassidy 2003, 21).

Despite the growing trend towards inner city gentrification, widespread economic disparity and segregated landscapes continue to plague much of Los Angeles today.

The Shape of Disinvestment and Deindustrialization in LA The remnants of one hundred and fifty years of institutionalized racism continue 19

Figure 2 : Map of Neighborhoods in the City of Los Angeles

Figure 3 : Median Household Income

to resonate throughout Los Angeles.

The city remains highly segregated as a result of historical precedents and recent economic shifts. Such factors as immigration, residential mobility, and economic restructuring reinforce segregated spaces and continue to account for the predominance of white communities in peripheral areas (Dear and Flusty 1998, 52).

Neoliberal economic policies such as industry privatization, diminished social services, and dependence on “flexible” labor regimes had a significant impact on the class restructuring of Los Angeles. Deindustrialization and the globalization of capital resulted in the decline of the working class (Arvidson 2009, 140). Edward Soja describes the spatial manifestation of this growing class polarization (Soja 1989, 237): “…the ‘haves’ move out of the original urban core and central cities to new urban villages and edge cities, leaving the older, increasingly blighted areas to recent immigrants and other ‘have-nots.’”

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Davis and Soja both emphasize how economic forces and subsequent class restructuring play out geographically, creating spatial divisions according to social status. While “Anglo Angelinos” reside on hills or along coastlines in gated communities, the dense and polluted areas of the inner-city are increasingly composed of an unemployed nonwhite working class (Soja 1989, 132). Figure 3 demonstrates the distinct patterns of spatial polarization of the City of Los Angeles according to household income.

The spatial concentration of poor minorities in de-industrialized areas is a telling sign of unmitigated historical segregation and point to disconcerting physical consequences.

One example is the increased likelihood of exposure to environmental hazards on lower socioeconomic groups (Pulido 2000, 12). Studies have shown that working-class Latinos and African-American communities are consistently and disproportionately exposed to such hazards as uncontrolled toxic waste sites, disposal facilities, and air toxins (13). Most industrial hazards in Southern California are in central and southern areas of Los Angeles County, which are largely inhabited by people of color. In fact, 35 of 57 waste sites are in an old LA industrial zone, which is also the site of a longstanding immigrant neighborhood (17). The disproportional impact of environmental hazards on working-class Latinos and African Americans demonstrates the alarming consequences of residential segregation.

Spatial polarization points to underlying societal ills and has perplexing physical ramifications. LA’s historical settlement patterns, significant economic shifts, and neoliberal policies have contributed to the city’s current social and spatial inequities.

However, we have yet to look at how architecture and planning perpetuate or alleviate the city’s current segregated conditions. The next section will explore not only the importance of design in shaping socio/spatial relationships, but also the psychological significance and value of wellintegrated spaces.

Modernism and the Psychology of Space As many urban scholars have noted, modernist principles in design and architecture have facilitated the construction of segregated spaces. Social scientists of the LA School have shown how the geography of Los Angeles reveals important lessons on contemporary social relations. Mike Davis devotes much of City of Quartz to the fortresses of hi-tech offices, museums, and shopping centers separated from surrounding areas of extreme deprivation

(Davis 1990, 229). In Edward Soja’s view, Los Angeles has many centers and is characterized by “peripheral urbanization, ”which is marked by high-income residential developments, large shopping centers, prescribed leisure environments such as theme parks, and various enclaves of cheap (mostly immigrant) labor (Soja 1989, 178).

Other scholars have described the extent to which modernism has created dystopic, segregated spaces. Christine Boyer describes the modern city’s “alienating abstractions, rational efficiency, fragmented and malign configuration, and ruptured tradition and memory” (Boyer 2005, 39). Meanwhile, architectural historian Anthony Vidler links modern planning and architecture with psychoanalysis and explores the modernist production of urban space. The nineteenth century city became increasingly viewed as a breeding ground for diseases and psychosis, such as agoraphobia (fear of crowds and lack of escape) (Vidler 2005, 47). Vidler uses Freud’s version of the uncanny to explain unease and discomfort in urban spaces, which represented the fear of contact. The stark divide between nature and machine that characterizes the modern city represents fears not only of disease and disorder, but also of bourgeois kitsch and the useless sentimentality of tradition.

Though modernists believed that tradition and historic preservation protected and accentuated existing social hierarchies, it was modernist architecture and planning that created and solidified physical divisions across the city.

Perhaps the fear inherent in modernist urbanism represented a repressed desire to delineate between home and the outdoors, the known and the unknown, and between us and the other. As Andre Breton once wrote, “modernist functionalism is the nightmare of the collective unconscious… solidifying desire in most violent and cruel automatism” (Breton, 1964, 18). Modernist spaces had the intention of erasing the old city and sterilizing urban environments, thus cleansing it from mental disturbance.

However, modernism’s attempts (or alibis) of curing societal ills have resulted in cold, impersonal cityscapes that suppress anxieties and phobias, mask societal discontent, and re-establish separateness.

California Plaza and Disney Concert Hall: Lessons of Defensible Architecture Exclusionary modernist designs and privately controlled environments continue to create racial and class divides in contemporary LA. Such developments as the California Plaza and Frank Gehry’s Walt

Disney Concert Hall are prime examples of how the built environment promotes urban segregation. While the large empty spaces that characterize Los Angeles’s urban core create distance and discourage pedestrian activity, the surveillance and control of public spaces serve to isolate and induce fear amongst residents, encouraging social homogeneity.

Built in 1974, the street front of California Plaza separates the “publicly subsidized luxury of Bunker Hill (Davis 1990, 230)” from deteriorating Broadway Street. Meanwhile, Broadway has been reclaimed by Latino immigrants, and remains a vibrant shopping and entertainment district. The Plaza is a fortress that seems to avoid the public life that surrounds it. The streets are spaces for the automobiles of the rich, or for the poor’s public transportation and pedestrian activity.

Rarely do the elite walk on public streets as a method of travel or use public spaces as social hubs. Lacking any integration with the urban fabric, much of LA’s streetscapes seem to have been abandoned and left for the underclass.

Though it may not be his intention to create isolated streetscapes, Frank Gehry’s designs parallel the city’s intimidating fortressed centers of consumer activity (Davis 1990, 238). Perched just east of Bunker Hill on the corner of Hope and 1st Street, the vast steel construction is difficult to visually capture on a human scale. Lacking any indication of interior activity and exposing only an amorphous, solid façade, the edifice seems to be turned outside in. It evokes an illusive fantasy and appears discordant with its environment. Mike Davis describes Gehry’s work in City of Quartz: “…Gehry’s strongest suit may simply be his straightforward exploitation of rough urban environments, and his blatant incorporation of his harshest edges and detritus as powerful representational elements in his work… With sometimes chilling luminosity, his work clarifies the underlying relations of repression, surveillance and exclusion that characterizes the fragmented, paranoid spatiality towards which Los Angeles seems to aspire.”

that dominates Los Angeles’s downtown.

Los Angeles’s problem, in his view, is its heterogeneity, which he believes is the cause of civil unrest and chronic ethnic strife. He sees increased surveillance and defensive/ protective measures as being products of reality, and he praises Gehry’s architectural style for transforming the necessity of defense into art (quoted in Caldeira 1996, 322): “Architecturally [Los Angeles] will have to learn the lessons of Gehry’s aesthetic and en-formality: how to turn unpleasant necessities such as chain-link fence into amusing and ambiguous signs of welcome/keep out, beauty/defensive space…”

Jencks assumes that the solution to social conflict is to separate, and does not address the consequences of social inequality and racial segregation (Caldeira 1996, 323). The rationale behind defensive architecture echoes Vidler’s description of Corbusier’s objects as tools to suppress anxieties without actually addressing the problem. Teresa Caldeira argues that such fortified enclaves lead to spatial segregation, making social inequalities more explicit. When public encounters occur only within sheltered, homogenous groups, interactions with other social groups decrease substantially (Crawford 1995, 6). Social boundaries are constructed with defensive facades and walls, and the crossing of boundaries is rigidly observed. This pattern, Caldeira argues, breeds a culture of fear and suspicion, of exclusion and restriction. Contrary to Jencks’s reasoning, Caldeira describes defensible architecture and planning as promoting conflict by accentuating social inequalities and lack of common ground (Caldeira, 2006, 324).

The development of such exclusionary streetscapes keeps residents of

neighborhoods such as South LA (though only several blocks east) from using public areas as commercial or recreational hubs.

Instead, the visual and social language of Downtown LA and its immediate vicinity communicate its access only to the elite.

Consumption and Urban Life: The Grove and the Future of Public Space The fortification of privatized public spaces promotes segregation and denies the basic elements of public life: the openness and sociability of streets; free circulation of crowds; anonymous and personal encounters; spontaneous public enjoyment and congregation in public areas; the exposure to people of different social backgrounds; gazing in store windows; visiting local cafes; or using public spaces for mass political gatherings or mass entertainment. The spatial voids of Downtown and consumers’ contained activities in corporate buildings have not only maintained social separations, but also contributed to a dearth of street life.

Los Angeles’s downtown prevents residents from participating in civic life such as that envisioned by Baron Haussmann. Though his state-promoted transformations of Paris were strongly opposed, residents gravitated towards the boulevards to enjoy the anonymity of the public realm, practice civil life, and to explore the myriad possibilities of consumption (Caldeira 1996, 320). As Paris became the prototype of the modern city, Baudelaire described the flaneur and the consumer as symbols of the “modern appropriation of urban public space” (Caldeira 1996, 320).

In Los Angeles, the most popular public spaces seem to be those that exclusively promote consumer activities. Completed

Though many would disagree with Davis’s critique, it is interesting to note the exclusionary attributes of Walt Disney Concert Hall. Given its proximity to lowincome residential areas, the location has the potential to attract diverse crowds. Yet, the intimidating scale of the building limits meaningful street life and pedestrian activity.

Architect Charles Jencks, however, defends and praises the “defensible architecture” 21

in 2002, The Grove is located in the historic Fairfax neighborhood, adjacent to Museum Row and the Farmer’s Market. Despite its location, The Grove’s fortified walls and privately controlled “public” space insulates the private realm from street life and signifies a suburbanization of an urban core. With its exaggerated (and irrelevant) reproductions of historic small-town architecture, shopping trolley, box-stores, and multiplex cinema, the retail center shares no perceptual connection to the surrounding neighborhood or to the larger city. Like any traditional suburban mall, The Grove is a corporate enclave, featuring national retail stores and entertainment corporations.

The Grove promotes a prescribed and controlled urban-themed pedestrian experience geared solely to consumer activity. The clearly delineated and fortified boundaries of the development disallow explorative opportunities that connect residents to the city. The immense popularity, quaint urban simulations, and decorative kitsch of The Grove give it an appearance of a vibrant urban place, but urban life is reduced only to consumption purposes (Loomis, 2003). Though the retail center celebrates pedestrian activity within its parameters, it does not contribute to pedestrian life on Fairfax’s streets – it only increases traffic.

The primary purpose of The Grove is to shop. Public facilities, offices of middle and working class labor, and products of local businesses are not found here. The Grove’s success represents a problematic trend for Los Angeles’ public spaces, as it essentially eliminates other possible definitions of urbanism.

The idea of public life is embedded in the notion that everyone has access to the city.

Of course, this ideal is never completely

manifest, but modern western cities, at the very least, maintain the image of openness and accessibility. The possibilities and the desires related to consumption (i.e., shopping, sitting in cafes, and glancing in store windows) are important elements of the public realm. However, the mix of activities balancing domestic, productive, civic, and consumer needs is what defines urban life.

Though the success of The Grove represents an unsavory trend in urban design and does little to promote social and physical cohesion, perhaps it points to Angelinos’ growing desire to participate in public life. Just as the “dead mall” trend on the suburban fringe, the single-purpose function of The Grove will surely become obsolete (Loomis, 2003). Future developments may need to incorporate residents’ desire for public life into a more socially and financially sustainable investment of the city’s resources.

Los Angeles City Plan Addresses Downtown Design On August 8th, 2001, the City Council adopted the Los Angeles Citywide General Plan Framework, a comprehensive longrange growth strategy. It defines citywide policies that will be implemented through amendments, and serves as a guide to 35 Community Plans. Community Plans comprise the Land Use element of the General Plan of the City of LA, and serves as a blueprint for guiding development and growth in the city. The Community Plans incorporate community desires and neighborhood needs (LADCP, 2005).

Major concerns in the “Current Urban Form and Neighborhood Design” section of the Framework include the failure of streets to function as open public spaces, the lack of neighborhood linkage (from one neighborhood to another), and unattractive

commercial corridors that lack open space and community facilities. As evidenced by this outline of concerns, the Framework recognizes the importance of spatial cohesion and street dynamism in the overall success and liveability of Los Angeles.

The Framework creates generic neighborhood design policies and programs that guide local planning efforts, laying a foundation on which community plans can be built (LADCP, 2005). Goal 5A pertains to creating a liveable, interconnected city, and is well defined by Objective 5.8: “Reinforce or encourage the establishment of a strong pedestrian orientation in designated neighborhood districts, community centers and pedestrian-oriented subareas within regional centers, so that these districts and center can serve as a focus of activity for the surrounding community and a focus for investment in the community.”

Polices that support this objective include having building walls continue along street frontage, shops with entrances accessible from the sidewalk and located at frequent intervals, well-lit corridors, ground floor buildings devoted to windows, and parking located behind commercial frontage (LADCP, 2005). Such policies address the problem of exclusive and heavily fortified commercial corridors (e.g., California Plaza).

In addition, Objective 5.9 of the Framework incorporates “proper design and effective use of the built environment to … increase personal safety…” Policies encouraging mixed-use development promote natural surveillance and clear definitions of outdoor space, increase activity, and provide good visual overview to potentially unsafe areas. These objectives are written into the Implementation Program (Chapter 10 of the Framework).

More recently, the City of Los Angeles adopted the Downtown Street Standards in April, 2009 in conjunction with the Design Guide. The document is an attempt to create a street hierarchy that balances traffic flow with public transit, bicycle lanes, building facades, and open spaces. The document establishes curb lines, sidewalk widths, and other pedestrian-oriented requirements for future development in the downtown area (LADCP, 2009). Property owners are required to maintain adjacent sidewalk, median, and other public right of way improvements as a condition of project approval.

Promoting shared streets, pedestrian connectivity, and transportation choices in a city like Los Angeles represents a paradigm

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Material reminders of social differences, such as fortified, inward facing commercial corridors in poor, inner-city neighborhoods, prevent the functional and safe use of public spaces. They prevent natural and casual daily interactions between individuals, create clusters of homogeneity, and render obsolete the very essence of street-life imagined by Baudelaire and Haussmann.

The behavioral and physical monotony on a citywide scale has negative psychological impacts on residents, as described by such scholars as Simmel, Boyer, and Vidler. The lack of dynamism and difference, and the production of cold, impersonal facades only mask underlying societal discontent. Indeed, the repression that is translated along LA’s streetscapes have manifested in massive civil unrest on more than one occasion. shift in the city’s planning culture. The Design Guidelines balance residents’ needs, environmental health, and economic growth in an accessible yet comprehensive format.

Rigorous street-specific guides, detailed implementation strategies, and financial incentives for private entities to manage public spaces are steps toward a more socially and spatially integrated urban core.

Conclusion Los Angeles’s history of settlement patterns, economic disinvestment, and exclusionary architecture contributed to physically polarized spaces. Though history and politics set the backdrop of LA’s segregated condition, the active construction of defensive modernist architecture reinforced social inequalities, and continues to serve as physical division between race and class.

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Dear, Michael and Flusty, Steven. “Postmodern Urbanism”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88.1, (1998): 50-72.

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Assembly Special Committee. To Rebuild is Not Enough: Final Report and Recommendations of the Assembly Special Committee on the Los Angeles Crisis, Sacramento: Assembly Publications Office, (1992). <http://www.usc. edu/libraries/archives/cityinstress/reb/i.htm>.

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Despite the disconcerting historical and architectural trends of the past several decades, the City of Los Angeles is making strides towards equitable built environments.

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with single family neighborhoods with elementary schools but no employment opportunities, and business complexes with fitness rooms rather than childcare centers” (MacGregor 1995, 33). Nevertheless, the city planning profession is slow to adopt the fruits of this research. Despite the growing number of women in city planning, planning epistemology and cities themselves remain gendered spaces. This paper will highlight the ways in which city planning remains a patriarchal profession and body of knowledge, the ways that cities have developed into gendered spaces, and the ways that women today are continuing to change the field of planning and cities themselves.

The Gendered City: A Response to Sexism in the Built Environment

By Elizabeth Hessmiller

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In all languages that assign gender to words, the word “city” is feminine. La ville, la ciudad, die Stadt, and la città are examples of the city’s female identification. Indeed, cities are historically sensitive to the changing roles of women in society. “Women’s active use of space and time often results in changes to the spatial and social structure of the city” (Miranne and Young 2000, 1). In the past 50 years, women have become more independent and started to work outside the home. The absence of the security offered by stay-at-home wives caused the rise of gated communities. These private communities also perform the services women traditionally carried out: Municipal organization, neighborhood clean-up and landscape design. In addition, working women’s reliance on the automobile to connect childcare, errands, and employment in a way that public transit does not led to the growth of the sprawling automobile-focused edge cities of the late 20th century (Spain 2005, 22).

It is clear that the evolution of women’s place in society has caused the evolution of the urban environment.

stance that there is one rational and objective truth that can be applied to all circumstances.

However, scholars note that this rational planning epistemology often does not reflect the realities of many communities. How, then, can planners believe that their theories are objective? City planning is historically a profession of white, upper-class men who populate the dominant class of society. It is easy to confuse dominance with objectivity.

Susan Fainstein quotes the works of Eugenie Birch, Gerda Wekerle, Rebecca Peterson, and David Morley when she states that “within the urban realm feminists have contended that men design cities to serve male needs” (Fainstein 1992, 456). Male planners work with the theory that “all people aspire to be like privileged men” (Milroy 1997, 461).

Planning epistemology then adopts this approach as rational, objective, and true.

Today’s planning students still learn and apply a world view that is both whitesupremacist and patriarchal. Feminist academics have only just begun to discuss patriarchy, the term used to describe men’s control over women, in planning.

However, city planning theory and epistemology has not evolved with the social movement for women’s equality. City planners traditionally take the enlightenment

Since the 1970s evolution of both the women’s movement for equality and city structure, the issue of gender has made its way into the city planning discussion. Gender is not sex;

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it is not limited to male or female. Rather, it is a set of characteristics performed by an individual so that society can identify that person as feminine or masculine.

Thus, the discussion of gender in planning must not only surround women, men, and their relationship, but also transgendered people, queer people, and others who do not identify with the gender binary. This article, however, will deal primarily with the place of women in cities, as the majority of research has focused on women’s experiences alone. In particular, women with children are at the heart of this research. Despite the growing number of women who choose not to have children, the average American woman remains the primary care-giver in her household. This article examines all women’s experiences in urban areas with a particular focus on women who juggle work, errands, and child-rearing in the city.

Feminist planners have been writing about the discrepancies between applied city planning, planning theory, and female realities for the past 40 years. The gendered city, the city built in a sexist way, with disregard to the needs of women, is a well researched reality. “The generalized concept of ‘citizen’ is based on male characteristics and concerns… Consequently, we end up

Even though women are a greater presence in the planning world than they were even 20 years ago, many do not object to the patriarchal theories they practice. According to Beth Moore Milroy, “One could ask how it is that women have not objected more than they have to substantial exclusion from these decisions [about the reality of sociopolitical and cultural phenomena]…. A cognitive-based theory of knowledge (like the one used by city planners) can rationally exclude the means by which to grasp one’s oppression.” That is to say, women in planning do not see the ways in which their realities, and the realities of other women, are ignored or regarded as unimportant because they, too, believe in the rational objectivity of the theory. Milroy continues, “A system of domination, constructed over time by a group in society, would logically not make room for a way to explain the domination from within the system because the domination is, after all, its inner logic and raison d’être” (Milroy 1997, 462).

Even women who do see how city planning is inherently patriarchal often hesitate to challenge the male-dominated system.

Female graduates from an Australian school of planning “are afraid of being stereotyped and dismissed as ‘noisy feminists’” (Forsyth and Sandercock, A Gender Agenda, New Directions for Planning Theory 2005, 79).

There is a widespread worry that many planners will pigeonhole their female colleagues if they bring gender relations into the discussion. “Female planners and planning scholars have to make a conscious choice about their ‘identity’. A female planner who chooses to approach planning from a feminist prospective must be ready to be labeled or have her professional credibility, intelligence, or research methodology questioned by hostile, or at best indifferent, colleagues” (Ritzdorf 1997, 448). While men who create planning theory fail to see, it seems, how gender bias has shaped cities and

planning theory, many women in planning only question the system at risk of ostracizing themselves from the profession.

Part of the reason planners consider gender to be a fringe issue, besides acknowledging the fact that is it difficult to identify power dynamics that are built into a system, is that planning education focuses very little on gender issues in city structure. Very few schools of city planning offer courses focusing on gender relations and the urban plan despite the growing number of female students in these programs. Leonie Sandercock and Ann Forsyth relate an anecdote about an introductory planning course at the University of California at Berkeley in which the professor incorporated the importance of gender into most of the subject matter. At the end of the semester, 10 percent of the students identified the emphasis on gender as the worst part of the class, whereas 30 percent said it was the best thing about the class. Male-dominated faculties’ resistance to and incomprehension of gender issues reinforces this polarization towards the inclusion of “gender-sensitive curriculum” in planning education (Forsyth and Sandercock, A Gender Agenda, New Directions for Planning Theory 2005, 79).

Moreover, courses of planning history, like all history, are taught and understood from the perspective of the dominant class and often ignore the experiences of minority groups.

Sue Hendler quotes from Sandercock’s book Making the Invisible Visible: “Frankly, I wouldn’t know how to teach ‘The History of the [Planning] Profession’. Which history would that be? The heroic story? Or the story of the ‘great planning disasters’? The story of the all-wise planner divining the public interest, or the story of planners complicit in racially and sexually discriminatory practices?” (Harrison and Hendler 2000, 139). Planning history transfers the myth of the utopian city to planning students and, for the most part, ignores the history of women in the city. It is not surprising, then, that planners work towards building perfect gendered cities, bourgeois utopias, in which “women are perceived as being part of the scene, but not part of the action” (Lofland 1975, 145).

49) (for example, an assessment of the understood reality that planning theory follows the enlightenment principles of rationality and objectivity) can be very useful in a planning world that is slowly moving towards more participatory processes.

Perhaps most importantly, Helen Liggett discusses the use of “reproduction” in feminist theory: “If identities are ongoing projects formulated in the context of cultures that devalue women, it is also the case that these conventions must be reproduced in order to continue…. Reproduction is not cloning, not totally determined, but subject to escape” (Liggett 1997, 454). Liggett’s claim means that the reproduction of knowledge in planning is subject to change. The more feminists in the field who challenge patriarchal planning practices, the more the reproduction of knowledge about the field will incorporate gender issues and new ways to think about the city. “New women in old places are polymorphously destined to change some of the conditions into which their daughters are born” (454).

Currently, the conditions into which their daughters are born are full of sexist urban structures. Clearly, city planning epistemology formed around privileged men’s ideas about what an ideal city should be. How have these patriarchal ideas been implemented in real cities? Cities are places in which people experience their day-to-day.

The issues that feminist planners must deal with are also mundane. “For most people, ‘feminism’ does not immediately evoke thoughts of curb cuts and zoning by-laws…

It seems that few of us, committed feminists included, recognize that our struggles for equality take place within a built environment that has been quite literally man-made” (MacGregor 1995, 26). With critical analysis, the implicit yet omnipresent aspects of the gendered city are evident.

As mentioned above, city planners often view women as a part of the urban scene, not actors in the urban environment. Their role is most often reminiscent of the 1950s ideal of the domestic stay-at-home wife and mother.

Residential zoning codes that separated homes from employment reinforced this Salary by Gender and Experience

Planning theorists have incorporated feminist theory into the discussion of the gendered city. In fact, Sandercock and Forsyth believe that “feminist critique and feminist literature need to be incorporated into the debates within planning theory” (80). The feminist tradition of consensusbased decision-making and finding “alternative epistemic points of departure for a critical assessment” (Butler 1990, 25

ideal. “The period of early suburban growth represents a distinct phase in the relationship between women’s activities and urban planning… Communities were planned on the assumption that individual households supported a full-time domestic worker (the wife) and a full-time (male) breadwinner” (Little 1994, 49). Philadelphia is a prime example of the effect of zoning on women’s urban experience. Between 1950 and today, Philadelphia lost 25% of its population, mostly to the suburbs. The separation of residential, industrial, and commercial functions creates problems for women.

Low-density land use and accessibility issues meant that women “tended to be severely constrained in their daily activities” (Miller 1983), and “physical distance encouraged feelings of isolation amongst women living in the suburbs” (Little 1994, 50).

The construction of highways and transportation to the suburbs and in cities also boomed during the post-war period.

These services, however, were design by and for men. The routes typically link residential areas with commercial areas, giving men access to their places of work.

These systems do not cater to the needs of women. “National transport policy has publicly recognized that women do have different transport needs from men” (Coleman 2000, 83). Women tend to have the primary responsibility for childcare and domestic work, which means they need transportation systems that connect childcare facilities with grocery stores or Laundromats Boston’s North End, once a slum, is now a tourist attraction. This demonstrates the limits of a rational approach to planning.

and their place of employment. Public transit, as designed for men, does not connect these nodes. Nevertheless, more women than men ride public transportation (According to the 2008 American Community Survey for the Philadelphia MSA, 5.5% of women took public transportation compared to 4.5% of men). Women continue to use public transit that is not adequate partly because women are much more likely to be at a “transportation disadvantage,” according to Sue Zielinski: “Transportation disadvantage comes from the planning profession and is used to describe the people in a city who have limited access to a car” (Zielienski 1995, 131).

Even women who do have access to cars are at a disadvantage. Due to the effects of zoning laws and the structure of roads, women spend more time in cars than men who make a simple round trip from home to work. Zoning laws often call for a separation of land uses that require commercial, residential, industrial, and public land to be located far from each other. The street structure rarely connects these disparate land uses. Therefore, women need more time to reach their destinations that the average man. Women who are able to walk to their destinations also experience discrimination: many sidewalks are too narrow for strollers or shopping caddies, and others do not include curb cuts.

Not only are women’s different needs not met by transportation systems designed by men, but the systems themselves are often unsafe for women. Planners place bus stops in remote areas where women are isolated and vulnerable to crimes. Car garages are often dark, isolated, and designed in a way that makes it impossible to be aware of one’s surroundings. Subway stops usually have no cell phone reception and only one exit in case of an emergency. Highways have few places to exit, making them frightening places for a woman’s car to break down. Antiquated transit systems do not serve women well, and women are often at risk when they use them.

Safety issues are of great concern to women in the gendered city. In addition to women feeling unsafe while using public transportation, women are at a higher risk of violent crimes in their homes, workplace, and on the street. In Toronto, one principle of crime prevention is to “treat ‘crime’ and ‘fear of crime’ as gendered phenomena, and treat public violence as part of the continuum of acts that harm women and other vulnerable groups” (Whitzman 1995, 89). Women’s perception of safety, or lack thereof, can severely affect their experience of the urban environment. Often this perception is a

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consequence of poor urban design, such as in a “1982 study of 65 rape sites in Seattle public places [which] indicated that certain design factors were characteristics of sites where the rapes had occurred” (93). These design factors were inadequate lighting, lines of sight broken by pillars or walls, and poor maintenance.

One reason for increased vulnerability to crime is women’s lack of anonymity in society. “Anonymity is pervasively gendered – women on the street are objects of comment and approach, in part because they are assumed to have (and do have) less ‘ownership’ of public space. Particularly with respect to violence on the street, women, who are unable to regulate their interaction with male strangers in public places, are robbed of an important privilege of urban life: their anonymity” (Garber 2000, 32). It is very common for a stranger to identify a woman on the street, pick her out, and address her.

It is as if she has entered into his space.

He assumes the right to interact with her because men have ownership of the urban environment; women stand out as part of the urban scene.

This lack of ownership of public space and subsequent lack of anonymity is an issue for many genders, especially those that do not conform to social norms. Gender-queer people stand out and others assume they have no ownership of the city. “Because they are so nonconformist, butches and drag queens are more vulnerable to unwanted notice or other interventions on city streets” (32). The negative attention gender-queer people receive in public spaces fosters a sense of insecurity in the community. Insecurity further diminishes a sense of ownership in the city. Traditionally, spaces in which queer people have felt ownership – or safety in the presence of anonymity – have been non-institutional spaces reclaimed from the public realm (such as city parks, abandoned warehouses, or bathhouses). In order to more fully embrace all experiences of urban life, city planners should make efforts to institutionalize safe spaces and promote ownership for all genders.

Health systems, housing structures, and food justice are other aspects of the gendered city that influence women’s urban experience.

Planners evaluate environmental health risks of a proposed project by analyzing the effects a project will have on a “universal person.”

This “universal person” is a healthy male of 150 lbs with a life span of 73 years (Jabanoski 1995, 72). This “universal person” does not suffer the same health risks that women, children, and the elderly are likely to suffer from an urban project. Marilyn Jordan Taylor,

Dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, spoke of the need for designers to engage in women’s health at the Cities and Women’s Health conference at the University of Pennsylvania in April, 2010. Housing is also a controversial issue.

“Housing policies appear to be genderneutral, but their effects are not” (Novac 1995, 51). Women have a much harder time maintaining autonomous households because they typically have lower incomes then men. Women tend to have less choice of location, physical condition, and cost of their housing. Because they have less choice of location and higher poverty rates, women are more likely than men to live in food deserts where they and their children have no access to healthy foods. As mentioned above, public transportation often bypasses grocery stores; thus, the situation is even direr.

The gendered city is a reality that feminist planners have been writing about for decades. In today’s planning world, however, steps towards a new way of advocacy planning are making feminist criticisms more widely accepted. The APA created a division of Women in Planning in 1979 which awards women who have made significant contributions to the field of planning. As more women enter the field, the income gap between women and men decreased. In fact, the 2010 Salary Summary of the American Planning Association indicates that, among planners who have been working for less than 5 years, female planners have a higher average salary than their male counterparts (The American Planning Association 2010).

Women are making strides to combat the gendered city.

A growing trend in the city planning process is the use of participatory or advocacy planning. Planners are beginning to communicate with communities and citizens to see what projects specific communities want to see in their city. This process is a movement away from the idea that city planning is a rational, objective truth.

Planners are beginning to understand, as Jane Jacobs pointed out in her book, that each community is distinct, has different needs, and each individual has his or her own experience in the city. Advocacy planning moves away from the objective and towards a nurturing and subjective type of planning. Female planners are well suited for this new planning process. “Feminists argue for ‘connected knowing’, by which we mean something like ‘the head and the heart’, reason and passion, rationality and politics” (Forsyth and Sandercock, A Gender Agenda, New Directions for Planning Theory 2005, 72). Female planners working with feminist theory are, according to research,

Feminizing the profession: city planning classes at the University of Pennsylvania now have a majority of female students.

more likely to engage in participatory, subjective planning. “Feminism implies intuitive, participatory approaches to gaining knowledge and non-rational (although not irrational) contextual solutions to planning problems” (Fainstein 1997, 458). Feminists are more ready to apply a participatory approach, thus they have the opportunity to be very effective in new planning processes.

One issue that arises in town hall style planning forums is that the town halls are also gendered. Society teaches women to be submissive, and this learned behavior applies to participatory planning as well. Women who come to community planning meetings are less likely to express their opinions than men: “It has been observed that women are less likely than men to express themselves in public meetings, and that this reluctance to participate is often an appropriate response to an environment that devalues and dismisses stereotypically feminine forms of communication” (MacGregor 1995, 35).

Men tend to assume authority and tend to have more practice speaking at meetings. In addition, it is more difficult for mothers to attend town meetings than people without the responsibility of caretaking. Even within a participatory style of planning, gender relations play an important role.

One very important way that women are changing planning practices does not relate completely to the planning profession: more women are entering city government as city managers. A study by Richard Fox and Robert Schumann of Union College and the University of Wyoming, respectively, “shows that there are important differences

in the priorities, leadership styles, and policy agendas of women and men public officials…. Women may provide a distinct ‘voice’ in the politics of city management” (Fox and Schuhmann 1999, 231). Their report showed that female city officials were more likely to use participatory methods of governing and more likely to support advocacy planning in their cities. In this way, women are contributing to a new planning epistemology. They are supporting a paradigm in which there are multiple realities, many experiences, and planners have the responsibility to listen to them all.

Modern cities are gendered spaces built by city planners who believed in a rational model of planning that did not incorporate the experiences of women into its epistemology. Zoning, transportation, design, housing, and health are examples of urban systems that were built by men, for men.

Slowly, feminist planners and women in city government have been able to promote the idea of that planning is a field which must take into account multiple realities. As more women, gays, lesbians, transgender people and other people who don’t fit the gender binary enter the field, planners realize that the traditional “objective” epistemology is actually based on the urban realities of privileged white men. Today, planners are taking action to make the field more democratic and representative of all city residents.

There are several issues, however, with feminist theory as it is applied to planning theory. First, there is no consensus about what feminist theory actually is. “At 27

present, no consensus exists on a feminist epistemology. Moreover, I do not believe that there will ever be one” (Milroy 1997, 468). However, in this way feminist theory is similar to planning theory, which also lacks a clear consensus about what defines it. Though there is no agreement among feminists about what the exact epistemology

includes, the idea that men dominate women in society is a universal feminist belief that can be applied to planning.

The larger issue which connects to the issue of non-consensus is the problem of representation in the feminist community.

Largely, feminists tend to be privileged white

Transit stations are often places of heightened insecurity for female passengers. This trolley station in Philadelphia has one exit and no phone reception. There is an emergency phone in the station inside a padlocked steel box. bibliography Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Coleman, Charlotte. “Women, Transport, and Cities: an Overview and an Agenda for Research.” In Women and the City, by Jane Darke, 83-97.

New York: Palgrave, 2000.

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Forsyth, Ann, and Leonie Sandercock. “Feminist Theory and Planning Theory: The Epistemological Linkages.” In Planning Theory, by Susan Fainstein, 471-474. Malden: Blackwell, 1997.

Fox, Richard L, and Robert A Schuhmann. “Gender and Local Government: A Comparison of Women and Men City Managers.” Public Administration Review 59, no. 3 (1999): 231242.

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Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

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women. The experiences of these feminists do not correlate with the experiences of women of color, of poor women, of lesbians, etc. in the city. “The danger in discussing ‘the feminist epistemological project’… was precisely the tendency to imply that there was a feminist social science, a feminist epistemology, a feminist research method.

Women of color and non-western women… have argued that feminist theory has been written by white, middle-class women, unconscious of their own position and special interests as members of a dominant culture” (Forsyth and Sandercock, Feminist Theory and Planning Theory: The Epistemological Linkages 1997, 473). Feminist planners must not forget that their reality is also one of many realities that face women and other urban residents. There will never be a planning epistemology that incorporates the needs of every part of society, because theory is inherently based on the experiences of those writing it. As Leonie Sandercock says, “The construction of meaning involving as it does communication, will always involve politics and passion as well as science. It will always be unfinished business. Planners must finally learn to live with unstable paradigms” (473).

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Reactions to Kelo v. City of New London and the Impact on Post-Katrina New Orleans

By Lauren Nolan INTRODUCTION On June 23rd, 2005 the Supreme Court of the United States rendered its decision for the case Kelo v. City of New London which held that the use of eminent domain by a municipality for the purposes of economic development was not in violation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. This ruling would prove controversial and garner considerable reaction. Two months later, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravened the Gulf Coast in one of the worst disasters the United States has experienced, taking the lives of over 1,500 individuals and completely destroying over 300,000 homes. Four years later, the region still feels its impact as it struggles to rebuild.

The similar timing of the Kelo decision and Hurricane Katrina seem on the surface inconsequential. However, the Supreme Court’s ruling has significant implications for the role of state and local government in the rebuilding process, particularly when considering the changes passed in 2006 to the Louisiana state constitution in response to the decision. New Orleans, like most municipalities, has a set of procedures governing property, which have taken on a new meaning and role in light of the rebuilding process. This new

role is particularly influenced by post-Kelo legislation. This paper seeks to illustrate the impacts of legislative reactions to Kelo on the city and state’s part in facilitating the rebuilding process. It concludes with a discussion of recent developments as well as recommendations regarding how the City of New Orleans can best utilize the its legal framework to promote positive development.

KELO V. CITY OF NEW LONDON Case Description Among the powers attributed to government since ancient common law times is the power of “eminent domain” (Mandelkar et al 2008, 70). Within the context of the United States, it refers to the power possessed by government to take private property for the public use. This power is governed by the Fifth Amendment which states, “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” In Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), the issue presented before the courts was whether economic development justifies an adequate public use for which government can use the power of eminent domain.

In 2000, the City of New London Connecticut (population 26,000) approved a waterfront redevelopment plan aimed at revitalizing an economically distressed area of the city

and generating jobs and other revenue.

Redevelopment required land assemblage.

The city’s development agency purchased properties from willing sellers and proposed using eminent domain with the provision of just compensation to obtain land from owners that were unwilling to sell. Unwilling land owners included several longtime residents, who chose to sue to block the use of eminent domain. In late 2000, the Institute for Justice filed suit on behalf of Susan Kelo and a group of her neighbors living in the Fort Trumbull section of New London (Sharp and Haider-Markel 2008, 557). When the homeowners failed to obtain favorable judgment in the lower courts and the Connecticut Supreme Court, the Institute for Justice successfully petitioned the US Supreme Court.

In deciding the case, the Supreme Court relied on the precedent of two past takings cases: Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26 (1954) and Hawaii Housing Auth. v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229 (1984). Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion. The decision acknowledges the city’s careful formulation of the economic development plan and its belief that it will provide significant benefits to the community including new jobs and increased tax revenue. It states, “Given the comprehensive character of the plan, the thorough 29

of 20 constitutional amendments. Four of them pertained to hurricane protection, and two were in direct response to Kelo.

“Amendment #5”, as it became known for its location on the ballot, placed limits on the use of the power of expropriation, the state’s expression of the power of condemnation or the use of eminent domain (Marcello 2007, 3). “Amendment #6” placed limits on the transferability of expropriated property (Alexander 2009, 46). Both amendments were passed by voters the following September.

Amendment #5 was applied to Article IV Section B of the Louisiana state Constitution, which now reads:

Ruddley Thibodeaux, a senior housing inspector with the City of New Orleans, takes notes on a home in the upper Ninth Ward in New Orleans on Tuesday, November 2, 2010 during a code and health enforcement sweep.

deliberation that preceded its adoption, and the limited scope of our review, it is appropriate for us, as it was in Berman, to resolve the challenges of the individual owners, not on a piecemeal basis, but rather in light of the entire plan. Because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment” (Kelo, IV). Justice Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion. There were also two dissenting opinions, one written by Justice O’Connor with which Justice Scalia concurred and one written by Justice Thomas.

Reactions Reactions to Kelo were significant, categorizing it as a controversial and hotly contested case. Although the court in effect reaffirmed current federal case-law regarding eminent domain policy, it brought the issue to the attention of the public and provided a forum for those seeking reform (Sharpe and Haider-Markel 2008, 559). Reactions took hold in state legislatures, and in the months following the decision more than seventy bills related to eminent domain were proposed (559). By the time of the annual meeting in 2006 of the National Conference of State Legislatures, eminent domain reform legislation had been considered in each of the 46 state legislatures that had been in session since the decision and was enacted in 26 of these states (559). One such state was Louisiana, whose legislature in 2006 approved for submission to voters a series 30

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(B)(1) Property shall not be taken or damaged by the state or its political subdivisions except for public purposes and with just compensation paid to the owner or into court for his benefit. Except as specifically authorized by Article VI, Section 21 of this Constitution property shall not be taken or damaged by the state or its political subdivisions: (a) for predominant use by any private person or entity; or (b) for transfer of ownership to any private person or entity….(La. Const. art. I, §§4(B)) It continues to state: (3) Neither economic development, or tax revenue, or any incidental benefit to the public shall be considered in determining whether the taking or damaging of property is for a public purpose pursuant. (La. Const. art. I, §§4(B)) In addition to roads, bridges, public waterways, public buildings etc., expropriation is permissible for the “The removal of a threat to public health or safety caused by the existing use or disuse of the property” (La. Const. art. I, §§4(B)).

Amendment 6 added section (H) to Article IV: (H)(1) Except for leases or operation agreements for port facilities, highways, qualified transportation facilities or airports, the state or its political subdivisions shall not sell or lease property which has been expropriated and held for not more than thirty years without first offering the property to the original owner or his heir, or, if there is no heir, to the successor in title to the owner at the time of expropriation at the current fair market value, after which the property can only be transferred by competitive bid open to the general public. After thirty years have passed from the date the property was expropriated, the state or political subdivision may sell or otherwise transfer the property as provided by law. (La. Const. art. I, §§4(H)) Amendment 6 also requires that all surplus property not necessary for the public purpose of the project for which it was expropriated

must be identified within one year of project completion and offered for sale to the original owner, heir, or successor at the current fair market value. If the owner or heir refuses or fails to purchase surplus property, it may be offered for sale to the general public by competitive bid. Owners and heirs are also given the right to petition to have property declared surplus (La. Const. art. I, §§4(H).

IMPLICATIONS The passage of Amendment 5 and Amendment 6 raise serious questions regarding the City’s ability to address unrecovered land and facilitate redevelopment following Katrina. The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) is the agency that has the power of expropriation and is the holder of such land.

It also received the property of owners who opted to sell to the Road Home Corporation following the storm.

Amendment 5 narrows the conditions under which NORA would be able to utilize eminent domain. However, it is clear NORA has the power to acquire properties that are “a threat to public health or safety.” As David Marcello (2007), Executive Director of The Public Law Center in New Orleans notes, this language places no additional limitations on NORA’s use of expropriation regarding the removal of a threat to health or safety because the constitution explicitly recognizes that a “threat to public health and safety” is a permissible “public use” for taking a property (5). The next sentence of the amendment however places limits on the disposition of the property, as it cannot be taken if the public purpose is to make it available for “predominant use” by or a “transfer of ownership” to any private person or entity. Yet, “public health and safety” is still explicitly authorized as a cause for taking. Marcello points out that, “NORA need not and should not justify its taking of property by reference to the property’s potential later use or disposition,” and that the purpose of protecting health and safety sufficiently justifies a taking (5).

Amendment 6 impacts NORA’s ability to transfer expropriated property.

Subparagraph one states that all expropriated property held for less than thirty years must first be offered back to its original owner/ heirs. Then, if the original owner refuses to purchase the property, it may then be sold, but only to the general public through a competitive bid process. Subparagraphs 2,3,and 4 hold the same requirements for ‘surplus property.’ Under these restrictions, the use of expropriation on the part of NORA is an effective tool for acquiring land that will be used for more than thirty years.

Such would include a public park, green space, drainage, public buildings, streets, or utilities (6). Expropriation could also be used if NORA were to rehabilitate individual properties with the intention of offering them back for purchase to the original owners or the general public (6). However, in light of Amendment 6, NORA should not attempt any sort of large land assemblage with the intent to sell it to a developer, as it would have to offer each individual parcel back to its original owner first. It is likely that one if not multiple owners will capitalize on the site’s slated future and buy back newly valuable property, thus making the project near impossible (6). NORA’s ability to acquire, but inability to unload property has been described as a potential “roach motel” effect, whereas properties would “check in [to NORA], but they don’t check out” (6). A ‘strict textualist’ reading of Amendment 5 and 6 as described above preserves NORA’s right to use expropriation for ensuring public health and safety, but with two new constitutional provisions that safeguard property owners: full compensation and the right to buy back property (6).

Frank Alexander, professor of law and director of the Project on Affordable Housing and Community Development, offers a creative alternative interpretation.

He underlines the fact that the presence of “blight” falls within the language of the “removal of threat to public health or safety caused by the existing use or disuse of the property.” Yet, given the apparent policy contradiction by which NORA can acquire but not dispose of property, perhaps Amendment 6 does not apply to blighted properties. He points out that the subsections of IV(H) all contain references to “project” and “surplus,” which suggests that the subsections may not refer to blighted property acquisitions (Alexander 2006, 25-7). Regardless, he stresses that, in the absence of future amendments, it will be necessary for the Louisiana courts to present an authoritative interpretation. Without that interpretation, title insurance companies may be unwilling to insure clean title in a transferred property from NORA acquired by expropriation (27).

the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the initial “Bring Back New Orleans” Plan created with the assistance of the Urban Land Institute and released on March 20th of 2006.

The plan called for certain neighborhoods in the city to not be rebuilt such as Broadmoor and the Lower 9th Ward, which resulted in considerable public outcry and its ultimate shelving. Many residents of New Orleans were concerned they would be denied the right to return home or that their land would be transferred to a private developer. Such transfers may have systematically bared certain individuals from returning to the City with an adverse impact in those in poor and minority neighborhoods. This fear was legitimized in the waves of calls to local real estate agents from land prospectors looking to purchase homes while evacuees were still reeling from the storm’s devastation (Brown and Williams 2007, 6). These concerns are further exacerbated by a strong mistrust of local government stemming from the City’s history of political corruption as well as the failures of the federal government in immediate disaster response and the gross inadequacies of FEMA and the Road Home program.

The issue of property rights in New Orleans is well reflected in the words ofPeter Werwath (2005-6) of Enterprise Community Partners: “There are two seemingly opposing points of view about how to rebuild destroyed communities. On one hand, urban planners, real estate developers and architects tend to see solutions mainly in terms of demolition and large-scale redevelopment projects. On the other hand, property owners look at the wreckage…and ask, ‘How can I fix this?’” (12-13). The rebuilding experience in New Orleans is certainly characterized by the latter description, with homeowners and non-profit organizations doing most

of the groundwork. Four years later, the biggest challenge to recovery, particularly on the neighborhood level is the prevalence of unrecovered, derelict property. Even if the City will not be partaking in large, top-down land assembly projects, its ability to address this problem is impacted by its capacity to use expropriation.

Prior to the storm, New Orleans was already dealing with issues of derelict property.

The City had steadily been losing its population since its peak in 1965 and was experiencing economic decline, job loss, and all around disinvestment. The impacts of Katrina magnified these issues to extreme proportions, particularly the ill-effects of population loss and the prevalence of blight.

Eighty percent of the City of New Orleans was flooded when the levees breached, and the storm devastated approximately 112,300 owner-occupied units alone in the New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner Metropolitan Statistical Area (HUD 2006) as well as twothirds of all rental housing (Brown 2009, 150).

As the city struggles to rebuild, unrecovered properties are a huge obstacle, particularly on the neighborhood level. Blighted properties detract from neighborhood quality and safety and inhibit the return to more ‘normal,’ pre-storm real estate conditions (although real estate markets in many neighborhoods were weak prior to the storm). Furthermore, unrecovered homes are especially demoralizing to families that went to pains to rebuild and are constantly reminded of the storm’s devastation by the state of surrounding properties.

NORA presumably has the power to expropriate properties determined to be blighted. But, as discussed above, it would have limited ability to transfer the titles of these properties to new owners and

ADDRESSING DERELICT PROPERTY: ALTERNATIVES TO EXPROPRIATION NORA’s ability to use expropriation is an important question given the assumed necessity of eminent domain in disaster recovery. Eminent domain would presumably to be used to shape land use decisions, guide the rebuilding process, and ready land for redevelopment. However, many vehemently fear this type of government action. Such sentiment was observed in 31

developers. However, the City has two additional legal proceedings apart from expropriation that can be used for addressing derelict property: the code enforcement process and adjudication/tax sales. Each strategy has benefits as well as obstacles and shortcomings.

Code Enforcement The City’s ability to institute building and health codes and enforce compliance is derived from multiple constitutional sources including the authority to use a “reasonable exercise of police power,” the power to enact land use regulations and building codes, and from rights guaranteed to home rule jurisdictions (Marcello 2007, 21). The code enforcement process begins with an inspection of the property. If the property is in violation of the code, three types of notices will inform a property owner and the general public of the administrative proceedings: a letter to the owner as identified in the assessor’s records, posting of notice on the property, and publication of local newspaper ads. Next, the property will go to hearing, with a decision rendered within 30 days after which the property owner has 30 days to seek judicial review of the administrative order (N.O. Code Enforcement 2010) . With the passage of Act 115 in 2007, an alternative enforcement mechanism was established by which the City could, after an administrative hearing, apply directly to the clerk of the district court for issuance of a write in accordance with Article 2253 of the Code of Civil Procedure. In response to the write, the sheriff would take possession of the property for the City and put it up for public auction (Marcello 2007, 22).

Tax Sale/Adjudication A second means by which property can transfer hands through government action results from unpaid taxes. Properties with delinquent taxes are addressed through lien or tax sale procedures. In Louisiana, property owners who have had their properties sold in a tax sale have a three year period during which he or she can redeem the property by paying back the delinquent taxes plus a 5% penalty and 1% interest from the month of the sale. For properties in the city of New Orleans that have been declared blighted, the redemption period is reduced to 18 months (N.O. Property Auction Authority 2010).

New purchasers have no incentive to make improvements to purchased properties prior to the 3-year or 18-month period because such investments would be unrecoverable if the original owner redeems the property.

Properties with outstanding taxes not sold in a tax sale for the minimum bid are adjudicated and their title is transferred

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directly to the City.

Obstacles Although code enforcement and the tax sale/adjudication process offer alternative to expropriation, they are not without significant obstacles. One such obstacle is the vast number of properties with ambiguous heirs and title ownership. New Orleans has a large proportion relative to other cities of properties that have been passed down generation after generation usually without the benefit of probate and with potential clouts on title from unknown heirs (Alexander 2009, 39). This is likely due to the high nativity rate among New Orleans citizens (Campanella 2008). “Heir property” is most commonly found in low income neighborhoods where there is little market pressure for construction or new mortgage financing which serves as a trigger for re-examining a title (Alexander 2009, 39).

Ambiguous ownership makes both the code enforcement process and tax sale procedures increasingly complicated.

The tax sale and adjudication process is particularly cumbersome in New Orleans, which results in a lack of action on many properties for a significant number of years.

As Frank Alexander (2008) notes, “Property tax foreclosure laws in Louisiana are most the most complex, lengthy, and convoluted of any state in the country” (47). The tax adjudication process does not involve a judicial proceeding or ruling on the tax sale.

Therefore, additional legal proceedings usually in the form of a quiet title action are needed in order to make title to a property insurable and marketable (40). Because of the lengthy redemption period and additional proceedings, properties with delinquent taxes often sit unaddressed for long periods of time.

Using adjudicated properties as a global recovery strategy is difficult and ineffective, as each property represents its own myriad of title clearing challenges (Marcello 2007, 15). This phenomenon was witnessed in 2003 when the City of New Orleans embarked on an endeavor to circulate adjudicated properties back into the private market with the Sale of Abandoned/Adjudicated Property (SOAP) program. However, few properties had actually been rehabilitated by the time Katrina arrived in 2005 (13). In 2006, the City renewed its commitment to SOAP and announced three months later that it had “awarded” 2,000 properties to developers, but most did not actually receive property until months later (13). A year after the City’s goal of addressing 2,500 adjudicated properties was announced, the Times-

Picayune reported that not a single home had been rehabilitated (13). Many complained that the award process was “opaque” and properties were given to developers on an inconsistent basis (13). The past failings of attempts to address adjudicated properties shed considerable doubt on its success in the future.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Many feel that the passage of Amendments 5 and 6 was done hastily and with little consideration for its negative impacts. As David Marcello (2007) describes it, “Against this backdrop of physical devastation, Louisiana’s voters could not have chosen a worse time—one year later—to saddle the state and its political subdivisions with comparably devastating constitutional restrictions on the power of expropriation” (2). Frank Alexander (2007) describes it as a “second storm.” Many believe the best way to address the issue would be through further amendments to the Louisiana state constitution. Such an amendment is currently in the works, as a House committee approved House Bill 276 on March 30th, 2010. The bill would exempt the City from having to offer an expropriated piece of property deemed a risk to health or safety risk back to the original owner and would apply to residential and commercial properties taken by the state or any of its political subdivisions (Barrow 2010, 1). The bill is co-sponsored by Representatives Walter Leger III and Walker Hines, both New Orleans Democrats. As Leger notes, “Once you have gone through the process of expropriating the property, to have to go back and offer it to that original owner just doesn’t make any sense” (1). A second bill, Senate Bill 154, has been filed

by New Orleans Democrat Senator J.P. Morrell, which calls for the removal from section IV of the prohibition of “economic development or any other use of the property by a private person or entity, which may result in an increase in tax revenue or any other incidental benefit to the public” in determining public purpose” (SB No. 154).

A constitutional amendment will require a two-thirds vote in both legislative chambers and will be included in the November 2nd

general election to be approved by voters (Borrow 2010, 1).

Others see the code enforcement process as having immediate potential for addressing the prevalence of blight. David Marcello describes the process as an unexplored option with budding prospects. The code enforcement process does not require a redemptive period after auction like tax sales, and it has the potential to pass clear title to a new owner. Purchasers of auctioned homes as a result of unresolved code violations can begin to make immediate repairs to the homes without facing the possibility that the property may be reclaimed as with a tax sale purchase. Furthermore, properties can be transferred to a third-party purchaser without having to offer first right of refusal to the original owner (Marcello 2007, 20-1). It is important however that code enforcement proceed prudently, as “…improvident use of code enforcement right at the outset might run the risk of igniting a firestorm of opposition comparable to the anti-Kelo backlash” (22). Marcello recommends that the City work closely with neighborhood organizations to identity which properties should be targeted for inspection in order to foster greater public acceptance of the practice (22). Over-zealous and pre-mature code enforcement becomes less of an issue as more time passes since Katrina. Four years later, blighted property is less forgivable on the part of neighbors, as unrecovered houses are less the result of uncontrollable circumstances for example issues with Road Home fund disbursements or contractor fraud, and are more likely the result of owner unwillingness. Many neighborhood groups have already taken an active role in the code enforcement process by conducting property outreach campaigns to get in contact with owners about their plans for their properties.

Campaigns also work to better educate residents about the code enforcement process and assist them in understanding the various outcomes and factors affecting derelict properties in their neighborhoods. The City has recently embarked on a new code enforcement sweep process that has residents optimistic about its future involvement in property recovery.

CONCLUSION Reactions to the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London have impacted the recovery of New Orleans from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The state constitutional still permits the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority to use expropriation in instances where the public health or safety is compromised.

However, Amendments 5 and 6 place

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landieu at the city’s Fight the Blight Day, Dec. 11, 2010

severe and ambiguous restrictions on that power, particularly with regards to NORA’s ability to transfer property to third parties.

Aside from expropriation, the City has two other legal means by which to address the prevalent problem of derelict properties: tax adjudication/sale and code enforcement.

Tax sale/adjudication prove to be ineffective means for property recovery given the lengthy process it requires, which is further complicated by a prevalence of unclear title ownership among “heir property.” Code enforcement may be a positive outlet for addressing unrecovered property given its relative lack of restrictions and obstacles.

While reactions to Kelo may complicate the rebuilding process in New Orleans, it is a minor factor when compared to the multitude of other challenges facing the City and its residents. Such challenges extend far beyond issues of derelict property into the realms of environmental degradation, economic decline, rampant poverty, and issues of social justice. Solutions to these problems will not be unearthed without innovation, creativity, and effective, visionary leadership. As the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, it is imperative that we learn from past mistakes in order to ensure a more promising future not only for the residents of New Orleans but for all victims of natural disaster.

Bill 276, which exempts the city of New Orleans from having to offer expropriated property deemed a risk to health or safety risk back to the original owner.

Additionally, newly elected Mayor Mitch Landrieu has made addressing the issue of blighted property a top priority. In October of 2010, he announced an aggressive strategy to revamp the city’s previously slow and inadequate blight-fighting strategy. Landrieu states, “The old system that we have is disorganized, it’s ineffective, it’s convoluted and it’s slow. The system has been reactive rather than proactive” (Donze 2010, 1). His goal is to eliminate 10,000 blighted structures by 2014. Key components of the program are an Interim Nuisance Abatement Program, in which the city pays crews to prune high weeds and fill in abandoned swimming pools. The second is a Strategic Demolition Plan which tears down structures near collapse and a threat to public health and safety. Both are funded through federal block grants from the Louisiana Recovery Authority (1). The plan also includes consolidating two city departments that deal with nuisance abatement: code enforcement, which sites property violations, and environmental health, which has jurisdiction over vacant lots. City officials track progress towards blight remediation in biweekly BlightStat meetings.

ADDENDUM On November 2nd, 2010, Louisiana voters by a 51% to 49% margin elected to amend Article I, Section 4(H)(1) of the Louisiana Constitution by voting in favor of 1052/House

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Bibliography “About the Tax Sale Process.” The Property Auction Authority. Civic Source Auctioneer. Web. 4 April 2010. <www.neworleanstaxsale.com>.

Alexander, Frank S. “Louisiana Land Reform in the Storms’ Aftermath.” 53 Loy. L. Rev. 727 (2007). Web. Lexis Nexis Legal. 1 April 2010.

Alexander, Frank S. “Land Use Planning by Design and by Disaster.” Law and Recovery From Disaster: Hurricane Katrina. Robin Paul Malloy ed. (England: Ashgate, 2009), pp.37-50.

Alexander, Frank S. “RE: Reflections on Refractions: Parsing the Implications of Amendments #5 and #6” Memorandum. 16 Dec. 2006.

On file with Loyola Law Review. Appended, “Housing Redevelopment Strategies in the Wake of Katrina and Anti-Kelo Constitutional Amendments: Mapping a Path Through the Landscape of Disaster.” 53 Loy. L. Rev. 763, 2007.

Barrow, Bill. “Blight constitutional amendment clears first legislative hurdle.” The TimesPicayune. 30 Mar. 2010. Web. <www.nola. com>. 5 April 2010.

Brown, Carol Necole. “Kelo v. City of New London and the Prospects for Development after a Natural Disaster.” Private Property, Community Development, and Eminent Domain. (England: Ashgate, 2009), pp149-164.

“Brown, Carole Necole and Serena M. Williams.

“The Houses that Eminent Domain and

Housing Tax Credits Built: Imagining a Better New Orleans.” 34 Fordham Urb. L.J. 689 (2007). Web. LexisNexis Legal. 5 April 2010.

Campanella, Richard. “Urban Geography: New Orleans.” Bard Urban Studies in New Orleans. Xavier University, New Orleans. June 2008. Lecture.

“Comprehensive Housing Market Analysis: New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner MSA.” US Department of Housing and Urban Development. 1 Sept. 2006. Web. 2 April 2010.

Donze, Frank. “Mayor Mitch Landrieu sets goal of clearing 10,000 blighted eyesores.” Times- Picayune. 1 Oct. 2010. Web. <www.nola.com>.

22 Feb. 2011.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Department of Homeland Securities. Web. 2 April. 2010, <www.fema.gov>.

Krupa, Michelle. “New Orleans leaders to update blight efforts Thursday.” Times-Picayune. 9 Feb. 2011. Web. <www.nola.com>. 22 Feb. 2011.

Louisiana Secretary of State. Web. <www.sos. louisiana.gov> 22 Feb. 2011.

Louisiana State Constitution of 1974, Article IV. Louisiana State Senate Statutory Database. Web. 2 April 2010.

“NOLA Plans.” New Orleans Plan Database.

Brendan Nee and Jed Horne. Web. <www.

NOLAplans.com>. 4 April 2010.

Mandelker, David et al. Planning and the Control of Land Development: Cases and

Materials, 7ed. (Newark, NJ: Lexis Nexis, 2008).

Marcello, David. “Housing Redevelopment Strategies in the Wake of Katrina and AntiKelo Constitutional Amendments: Mapping a Path Through the Landscape of Disaster.” 53 Loy. L. Rev. 763, (2007). Web. Lexis Nexis Legal. 1 April 2010.

Morrell, Jean-Paul. “Senate Bill No. 154.” The Web Portal of the Louisiana State Legislature.

Louisiana Legislature. Web. 15 April 2010.

Sharp, Elaine B. and Donald Haider-Markel. “A the Invitation of the Court: Eminent Domain Reform in State Legislatures in the Wake of the Kelo Decision.” Publius: The Journal of Federalism v38, n3, pp.556-575, (2008).

Oxford Journal Press. Web. University of Pennsylvania Library. 4 April 2010.

Thomas, Jeffrey. “Abating Katrina’s Second Wave: A Strategy for Using Code Enforcement to Target Unoccupied Nuisance and Blighted Property in Post-Disaster New Orleans.” 53 Loy. L. Rev. 839 (2007). Web. Lexis Nexis Legal. 1 April 2010.

Werwath, Peter. “Two Paradigms for Renewal: Development Versus Property Owner Empowerment.” Social Policy. (Winter 2005-2006). V. 36 n. 2. P.12-13. Web. <www. socialpolicy.org>.

Ruddley Thibodeaux, left, a senior housing inspector, and Sabrina Smith, right, an environmental health inspector, and Ardell Walters, an environmental enforcement field supervisor, center, inspect property on North Galvez Street during a code and health enforcement sweep in the upper Ninth Ward in New Orleans on Tuesday, November 2, 2010.

New Urbanism vs.

Landscape Urbanism: The Battle Over the Future of Urban Design

By Andy J. Wang It can’t be easy being a suburb these days.

Buffeted on one side by population and environmental pressures and an increasing impetus to densify, and on another by a sprawling mortgage crisis, the outlying urbanized area has gone from being the manifest destiny of every American family to a cultural flashpoint, an object of morbid anthropological curiosity. At some point in recent history, mainstream America turned a leery eye toward the burbs. Last year, indie rock mainstay The Arcade Fire’s album “The Suburbs” located “the battle for the human soul amid big houses and manicured lawns” (Rolling Stone 2010). A couple years prior, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet reunited in “Revolutionary Road” to reenact their doomed relationship — the tragic backdrop of that movie provided by suburban stagnation rather than a sinking passenger ship. And if we go as far back as the mid-90s, we find an atmosphere in which, as Robert Bruegmann writes, “even airline magazines ... considered anti-sprawl broadsides uncontroversial enough to occupy space on their pages” (Bruegmann 2005, 156).

As Bruegmann argues, however, none of this is new, even if it has reached a delightful new crescendo in recent years. Call it, as he does, cultural elitism. Or take it up another notch or two, as writer Joel Kotkin does when he says the anti-suburban contingent is essentially telling “millions of people whose most important investment is a house in a suburb that they deserve to have their

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OMA’s unbuilt proposal for Parc de la Villette.

suburbs blow away and die” (Kotkin 2006, 90). Either way, the suburban question has become an emotionally fraught one — one at the nexus of any combination of public health, social, aesthetic, and environmental concerns. No wonder then that the fault line has extended deeply into the field of urban design, where practitioners have located the battle for the soul of urban design among big houses and manicured lawns.

has its ideological center of gravity in the city, if not in reforming car-oriented and isolated suburbs to be more city-like. The suburbs, meanwhile, are seen as anathema to an environmentally sensitive, culturally progressive way of life and a priority for structural or surgical intervention. This idea has been promulgated as much by Andres Duany, one of the founding figures of new urbanism, as by anybody in the profession.

It wouldn’t seem that way from a cursory glance. If we ignore for a moment the contrarians who’d have us think twice about the burbs, the profession seems to have come to a remarkable consensus about “sprawl.” From book titles like “Retrofitting Suburbia” to “The Smart Growth Manual,” the discourse in urban planning and design

It may not be so surprising, then, that Duany was the one who penned a hyperbolic lament that Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design had been taken over in a coup — a “classic Latin American style operation,” he wrote (Duany 2010). His words, published online by Metropolis magazine in November, were aimed squarely at what he saw as a 35

before industrialization and its enabling technologies took our built environments down the path of dispersal and decentralization (Leinberger 2008, 154).

New York’s High Line Park: “The future of the space is less about the High than the Line. … it will emerge as neither city nor park nor movement infrastructure but as a hybrid creature formed from all three” (Baldwin 2009).

competing approach to urban design — landscape urbanism — and the GSD’s recent hiring of one of the movement’s noted leaders. War would seem to have broken out. The other camp wasn’t quick to dispel the notion of a brewing battle between new urbanism and landscape urbanism. In fact, academics and practitioners active in the field attribute the first shot fired to the GSD’s recent hiree, Charles Waldheim, who at one point said that “Landscape Urbanism was specifically meant to provide an intellectual and practical alternative to the hegemony of the New Urbanism” (Krieger, 2010). Another Harvard professor, Alex Krieger, only went as far as acknowledging the disagreement, noting that these were indeed “fighting words.”

That probably was not quite enough to diffuse the tension, which is likely undergirded by unease in certain quarters of the urban design practice — unease that landscape, now the upstart darling of the industry, actually offers very little in the way of urbanism. Landscape urbanists, for their part, argue that new urbanists are only regurgitating a stale model that’s ill-suited to addressing contemporary issues. Though both have urbanism in their names, they’re both reacting, consciously or not, to a new suburban reality. While urban designers of past generations worked off the idea of the central city — either reforming it or escaping from it — the battlefront of this generation is in the suburbs. The dialogue is much the same. While landscape urbanists believe the suburbs are here to stay, new urbanists 36

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continue to push for an abandonment of the form and a return to traditional, walkable, mixed-use forms. Either way, both ideas start from the premise of the suburb, a powerful acknowledgment of the subdivision’s primacy in the American way of life.

There’s nothing essentially new about new urbanism. The “new”-ness of its approach is belied by its usual accompanying descriptors: “neotraditional” or “traditional neighborhood design.” (Though the official advocacy body of new urbanism, the Congress of New Urbanism, includes no mention of “tradition” in its charter, the phrases are often linked and interchangeable, and indeed are used as such on the CNU’s website.) The design approach, first formulated by Duany in the early 1980s, has a theoretical foundation in the “transect,” a longitudinal cross-section of different urban morphologies ranging on a smooth continuum from the dense city core to the sparsely built rural environment (Leinberger 2008, 191). Each architectural ecology, Duany argues, has a use and character natural to its form. And so it is that urban activities should be accompanied — or buttressed — by an appropriate urban form. The Congress for the New Urbanism’s charter lays out explicitly what this urban form should be: for neighborhoods, “compact, pedestrian-friendly, and mixed-use,” and for metropolitan regions, development respecting “historical patterns, precedents, and boundaries” (CNU 1996). In practice, new urbanist projects have ended up emulating urban forms followed long

Since the first new urbanist development in Seaside, Florida, in 1979, new urbanist developments small and large have multiplied across the country and globe — 210 completed or under construction, by the Congress for the New Urbanism’s count (CNU). The rural development of New Daleville, Pennsylvania, which began selling its first houses in 2006, is a typical example.

Initially, the developers at Arcadia Land Company faced the task of selling the idea of a tightly packed residential community to a wary township — “our commission is not generally well-disposed to residential development ... and here the developer is asking for a fifty percent increase in the number of houses” (Rybczynski 2007, 63).

Both culturally ingrained notions of density (or rather the proper lack thereof), and the zoning codes that embody those notions have made it difficult to build new urbanist (Leinberger 2008, 151). To see if they could change some minds, Arcadia Land Company invited township officials on a bus tour to Kentlands, Maryland, a prior new urbanist development designed by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Visitors reacted initially to the off-putting veneer of perfection — “like Disneyland,” one said.

But the picture of charm seemed to have won them over by the end. “I am still struck by the sophistication of Duany and PlaterZyberk’s plan,” notes author and PennDesign professor Witold Rybczynski, who followed the Arcadia Land Company on its tour. “The houses are mixed to avoid uniformity. ...

The streets are subtly angled, just enough to skew the view occasionally and produce the sorts of ‘accidental’ effects that make a place like Chestnut Hill so charming” (Rybczynski 2007, 67).

This is the model that the brand new, 125-unit development of New Daleville was pursuing: walkability, “townlike surroundings, and the comfortable sense of community.” But Londonderry Township, where New Daleville is located, is rural and far-flung. “It is too rural to be called a suburb.” Instead, “it’s what city planners call an exurb” (Rybczynski 2007, 111).

The development may be internally more amenable to walking than other subdivisions, but “future inhabitants will drive to work in West Chester and Downingtown, shop at the Exton Mall, and buy fresh vegetables from Amish farm stands in Lancaster County. ... School buses will take the kids to the Octorara educational campus, six miles away. ... They will occasionally visit Wilmington or Philadelphia, but for most of them the visits will be few and far between” (Rybczynski

2007, 111–112). While railing against the suburban form, then, new urbanists have ended up in practice being co-opted by it.

Landscape urbanism has followed an entirely different track. As described by PennDesign’s landscape architecture department chair James Corner, the field has historically not met architecture on the same “level of discourse” (Blum 2008). Even now, the idea that landscape architecture, once confined to trees and bushes, has anything at all to offer the traditionally architecture-derived field of urban design has, some say, the mark of “radicalism” (Krieger 2009, 126). But a couple key tenets of landscape urbanism appear to have rocketed the field to the forefront of academic discourse (as well as big-ticket design competitions). The first and defining tenet is that the white space of figure-ground maps — the landscape — can play the traditional role of the black space — buildings.

Landscape, in other words, can be the “generative force in the modern metropolis” (Krieger 2009, 125). The form of actual landscape urbanist projects is guided by principles that arise from the landscape itself; manmade “landscapes,” adherents argue, can have a fluid connectedness and consistency like that of natural systems, and urban designers can direct the flow of these systems on a large scale. The idea has been percolating through the profession since the days of Ian McHarg’s ecologically sensitive design framework (others point as far back as Frederick Law Olmsted), but it really emerged when Corner submitted his design proposal for New York’s Freshkills Park, and won. Of that moment, PennDesign professor Laurie Olin said, “It was a kind of transcendent moment for ecological design” (Blum 2008).

The approach hits at the heart of an issue that Corner first experienced when he worked with architect Richard Rogers on the redevelopment of the London docklands over two decades ago: the firm complained that “they didn’t have the conceptual or imaginative tools or techniques to do the whole thing synthetically.” Natural systems, on the other hand, program themselves.

Corner’s winning entry for Freshkills Park is a 2,200-acre expression of that idea: the plan proposes what he calls an “autopoetic agent”: among the many parts of the plan, the landfill grows its own soil, laying the groundwork for a “self-sustaining ecosystem” over the next thirty years.

While rich in theory, landscape urbanism as a practice is young. A high-profile built example can be seen in New York’s High Line Park, the recent transformation of a derelict elevated train track into a semi-wild park embedded in Manhattan’s urban fabric.

Considered along with Freshkills, it would seem that one of the basic charges against landscape urbanism may be true: “that landscape architect-directed urban design favors low densities, exhibits little formal sensibility, and contains too much open space — in other words, it produces sub- or nonurban environments” (Krieger 2009, 126).

But the two above examples of landscape urbanism also present a framework that’s both practical and theoretical for addressing a chronic ailment of aging cities: large-scale industrial decay and its resulting inventory of brownfields. In marrying urbanism and ecological thinking, writes architect and Harvard professor Richard Sommer, the

movement’s “most vaunted agenda is to articulate a sustainable urbanism capable of retrieving wasted areas ... in an aesthetically pleasing way.” But more than that, in that approach lies “a tacit hope that perhaps these spaces will provide an opportunity for a renewed architecture of public life” (Sommer 2009, 149).

The conflict between landscape and new urbanism hits the ground in the suburbs.

When Andres Duany complained about landscape urbanists’ lack of an “urbane, urban design sensibility,” he was articulating the critique that the school of thought has little to do with what we think of traditionally as the urban form — or perhaps at least the one long espoused by the “urbane” (Duany 2010). From the landscape urbanism point of view, this is exactly the point. Charles Waldheim, the new chair of Harvard’s landscape architecture department, seems to be echoing charges of cultural elitism when he writes that “urban design ought to concentrate less attention on mythic images of a lost golden age of density and more attention on the urban conditions where most of us live and work” (Waldheim 2009, 233). Landscape urbanism, he argues, has the broad conceptual foundation capable of addressing the many problems facing urban places today — and that includes not just brownfields, but suburbs. It is on the rise, he writes, “precisely at the moment when European models of urban density, centrality, and legibility of urban form appear increasingly remote” (Waldheim 2009, 235).

Or when, to put it another way, even a dense, walkable development like New Daleville is

A Kentlands, Maryland, street.

In discussing the challenge of Freshkills, a landfill reclamation project that will ultimately end up being almost three times the size of Central Park, competition entrants land on the problem of program. “The shifting nature of Fresh Kills confounds interpretations, predictions and conviction necessary for end or phased scenarios,” wrote one team. Another landscape urbanist project, OMA’s unbuilt vision for France’s Parc de la Villette in the early 1980s, saw a similar, if reversed, problem: “proposed functions in the competition for the Parc de la Villette would result in a plan too large for the location. In place of submitting a design, (the firm) proposed a ‘scenario’ for organizing the park,” a series of crosscutting layers that appear to have laid out the ingredients of a living ecosystem, rather than a strictly programmed recreation area (OMA).

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2007, 146; Krieger 2010). But new urbanism isn’t alone in putting a pretty face on sprawl.

Author Michael Mehaffy wonders aloud if landscape urbanism isn’t just “sprawl in a pretty green dress.” The rhetorical core of his question may not get much protest, in fact, from landscape urbanism’s leading proponents. James Corner has argued that “horizontality and sprawl in places like Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, San Jose, and the suburban fringes of most American cities is the new urban reality. As many theories of urbanism attempt to ignore this fact or retrofit it to new urbanism, landscape urbanism accepts it and tries to understand it” (Mehaffy 2010).

The question, then, is one about whether designers and planners should accept or reject what has come to be the dominant form of urban settlement pattern in the United States, and a model that’s increasingly exported throughout the world. Much of the debate between new urbanism and landscape urbanism — the questions of theory and framework, of past or future orientation, of form, can be read as a latent debate over the validity of sprawl. Should we end its proliferation, retrofitting suburban settlements for ecological and human health, or is sprawl ultimately incurable, requiring a more complex framework for evolving our cities? But the question is also one about the heart of urbanism itself. Is it only, as Duany says, an “urbane” thing, cultured and framed by human-scaled buildings and the human institutions within — or can it be something bigger, emerging from systems of ecology, of infrastructure, of movement and time?

The landscape of sprawl, by photographer Christoph Gielen.

located on a rural tract, miles away from all the presumed daily destinations of would-be residents.

Still, the debate between new urbanism and landscape urbanism has thus far been one ensconced entirely in rhetoric, if not battles of personality. In practice, landscape urbanism has so far brought a couple new parks and open spaces — even if they’re arguably of an aesthetic and ecological sophistication that’s never quite been seen before. And in practice, new urbanism has wrought, incrementally, a return to “traditional,” walkable city forms.

There’s no debate on which urbanism has had the most influence to date on the urban design profession. The codification of new urbanist tenets into local zoning and land use is slow going, but the absorption of these tenets into the basic language of urban design is unmistakable. As Michael Sorkin points out, “Over the past twenty-five years many American cities have seen dramatic — if restricted — transformations in form 38

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and habit, and virtually no town of any size now seems to lack zones replete with sidewalk cafes, street trees and furnishings, contextually scaled architectures, artistic shop fronts, loft living, bike paths, and other attractive elements from the urban design pattern book. This collusion of pleasant infrastructures has, in fact, emerged as the salient professional measure of urban quality” (Sorkin 2009, 177–178).

In practice, where these processes were transformations — and not ground-up developments — they have been powerful adjustments to the way cities shape their urban spaces. But to the extent that new urbanism has succeeded in shaping new suburban spaces, the phenomenon has been largely a real estate one. Witold Rybczynski’s story of New Daleville, a 300-page account of the development of a new urbanist “village,” is told from a vantage point largely adjacent to that of the developer. This is a reflection not of the writer’s sensibility, but of the linchpin role the developer plays in the new

urbanist story. Developers are generally driven by profit and market forces, and not necessarily by a normative sense of urban design. “Learning that, under the right circumstances, home buyers would not only accept density but actually pay more for it,” writes Rybczynski, “was the real estate equivalent of discovering a new planet” (Rybczynski 2007, 25).

This has an important implication for the future of new urbanism — indeed an implication that has already played out over the past couple decades. If, as University of Illinois professor Robert Bruegmann writes (and Rybczynski quotes), “most Europeans, like most Americans, and indeed most people worldwide, would prefer to live in single-family houses on their own piece of land rather than in apartment buildings,” then the pattern of suburban and exurban development dressed in fashionable new urbanist garb will likely continue — “sprawl in drag,” as Harvard professor Alex Krieger has been attributed as calling it (Rybczynski

Bibliography Baldwin, Ian. 2009. “The Past Is Promenade.”

Design Observer, September 18, 2009. http://places.designobserver.com/entry. html?entry=10907.

Blum, Andrew. 2008. “The Long View.”

Metropolis, November 19, 2008. http://www. metropolismag.com/story/20081119/the-longview.

Bruegmann, Robert. 2005. “Sprawl: A Compact History.” The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London.

Congress for the New Urbanism. 1996. “Charter of the New Urbanism.” http://www.cnu.org/ charter.

Duany, Andres. 2010. “Duany vs Harvard GSD.” Metropolis POV, November 3, 2010. http:// www.metropolismag.com/pov/20101103/ duany-vs-harvard-gsd.

Kotkin, Joel. 2006. “The New Suburbanite.”

Commonwealth (Growth & Development Extra), January 1. http://www.

The polarity of the two approaches is probably more a result of a certain insistence on ideological rigidity than on the actual spirit of the principles. For one thing, new urbanists believe — as Duany hinted, in the primacy of architecture in defining the “urbane.” And if we take Waldheim’s arguments at face value, then we can also infer that landscape urbanists believe in the opposite: the primacy of landscape, and the corresponding obsolescence of a narrowly defined understanding of “urbanism” in our changing — and changed — cities. But certainly, if landscape urbanists deal with the urbanism of landscapes and new urbanists deal with the urbanism of buildings, then they should both be able to contribute their respective territories on the complete figureground map of urbanism.

As it stands, however, urban designers should be hard-pressed to champion either of the two strategies — whether one at the expense of the other, or at the expense of some third or fourth competing approach.

Both new urbanism and landscape urbanism suffer from serious defects.

CNU co-founder Daniel Solomon writes that new urbanism “constitutes a resistance movement” meant to bring “a revivified sense of town life” — a sense that partly owes its 20th century damage to “instruments of isolation” like the car (Solomon 2003, 18). If that’s the case, new urbanists must endeavor to divorce themselves from their association with car-reliant greenfield developments, and from a certain substance-less emphasis on design — an emphasis that often lends itself better to real estate marketing than to

commonwealthmagazine.org/Article-ImportLatest/Other/Development-expert-Joel-Kotkinon-suburban-life-Mend-it-dont-try-to-end-it. aspx.

Krieger, Alex. 2009. “Where and How Does Urban Design Happen?” In Urban Design, edited by Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders, 113– 130. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Krieger, Alex. 2010. “Krieger to Duany.” Metropolis POV, November 8, 2010. http://www. metropolismag.com/pov/20101108/krieger-toduany.

Leinberger, Christopher B. 2008. The Option of Urbanism. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Mehaffy, Michael. 2010. “Landscape Urbanism: Sprawl in a Pretty Green Dress?” Michael Mehaffy On Resilient Settlement, October 11, 2010. http://mehaffy.posterous.com/thelandscape-urbanism-sprawl-in-a-pretty-gre.

Office for Metropolitan Architecture. “Parc de la Villette.” http://static.nai.nl/oma/Start_EN/ Start_search.php?projectid=75&subcat_

a sincere attempt to engage the problem of urbanism in the suburbs. Legislating design for the sake of tighter-knit neighborhoods may incidentally lead to better socioeconomic mixes and a lighter burden on the environment — but these results are by no means guaranteed if those goals are subsumed by an overarching concern for architectural minutiae.

Meanwhile, landscape urbanism has injected an energizing sense of ecology into our understanding of how cities can work. But as the theory also “accepts … and tries to understand” our new suburban reality, it’s not at all clear that it has come to any conclusion about making suburbs more workable transportation-wise, more sustainable environmentally, or more equitable socially. For these weighty questions, the theory seems to have few answers. Because of this, it’s difficult to understand landscape urbanism as a fully realized approach to “urbanism.”

What these deficits call attention to are not just the weaknesses of their respective principles, but the breadth of the urban conditions they’re being positioned to address. Whether or not we as a society choose to accept or to deny the suburbs, we are confronted with the need to recognize that the challenges we face are going to be too intractable for any single design principle — no matter how dazzling — to conquer, and what we really need are open-mindedness to new and opposing approaches and, above all, a healthy dose of humility.

van=0&subcatid=0.

Rolling Stone. 2010. “30 Best Albums of 2010: Arcade Fire, ‘The Suburbs’.” http://www. rollingstone.com/music/lists/30-bestalbums-of-2010-20101213/arcade-fire-thesuburbs-19691231.

Rybczynski, Witold. 2007. Last Harvest. New York: Scribner.

Solomon, Daniel. 2003. Global City Blues.

Washington DC: Island Press.

Sommer, Richard. 2009. “Beyond Centers, Fabrics, and Cultures of Congestion: Urban Design as a Metropolitan Enterprise” In Urban Design, edited by Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders, 135–152. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Sorkin, Michael. 2009. “The End(s) of Urban Design” In Urban Design, edited by Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders, 155–182.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Waldheim, Charles. 2009. “The Other ’56” In Urban Design, edited by Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders, 227–236. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Urban Design Studio: Aruba Oranjestad Team Members : Rachel Ahern, Emliy Leckvarcik, Marie Park, Michael Parkinson, and Adam Tecza This project is located in Oranjestad, Arubaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capital. It focuses on the site of the existing cruise ship terminal and the former shipping container facility. On the former container site, a restored mangrove wetland, cultural institution, and waterfront park is proposed. The major street, LG Smith Boulevard, will be rerouted through the site, with residential and mixed-use development along the Boulevard. The cruise terminal will also be restructured to fit four mega-ships.

Massing of LG Smith Boulevard

Site Plan of Waterfront Park and Cruise Terminal

Section Through LG Smith Boulevard

San Nicolas Team Members : Adam Amrhein and Keyleigh Kern These two projects are located outside of the Aruban town of San Nicolas.

The town was developed around a large oil refinery, which is experienced severe economic hardship over the last twenty years. These projects present strategies for redeveloping both the refinery lands and the entire region.

The proposals include a post-industrial park, regional bicycle network, sustainable golf course, and ecotourism resort development. The larger scheme also provides an extended road and circulation network through the refinery lands, and wells as coastal restoration on the Southern tip of the island.

Footprint of Refinery and Town

Circulation Diagram

Site Plan of San Nicolas and Seroe Colorado

Diagram of Bicycle Network

Perspective of Eco-Tourism Resort

Perspective of Bicycle Network and Park

Panorama 2011 Section Though Tourism Resort and Golf Course

Section Though Park and Bioswale

Fair or Foul? Ballparks and Their Impact on Urban Revitalization

Baseball is a game that has evolved over three centuries and ties together communities, families, and cities by providing common heroes to cheer for—it is America’s Pastime.

Over the years, baseball has brought together Americans at ballparks of various shapes, sizes and configurations. The history of these baseball venues tells a story beyond the game. The evolution of ballparks, from hasty wooden structures to concrete and steel monoliths, from center city to city outskirts has paralleled the rise of industrial cities and changes in urban form. Stadiums consume massive amounts of land, attract millions of visitors, add traffic congestion, increase noise, change property values, and generate excitement and pride in residents.

As a result, the public takes a keen interest in the siting and development of ballparks (Riess 6). Recently, cities have used ballparks in attempts to revitalize downtowns and redevelop neighborhoods. This paper aims to evaluate these efforts and explore the intricate planning process of the modern fields of dreams and schemes in San Diego and Philadelphia.

HISTORY OF BALLPARKS By the end of the nineteenth century, baseball transitioned from a frontier sport to a professional sport rooted in cities, where trains could easily transport players to their opponents. Eventually, wooden ballparks, sometimes built in a matter of months to accommodate thousands of fans, evolved into larger, more permanent concrete and steel stadiums. With the rise of the twentieth century, professional leagues stabilized, the sport popularized, and attendance grew.

Urban form in developing cities shaped the first modern ballparks. For one, owners needed a considerable amount of space to construct ballparks. In rapidly expanding cities, the only large swaths of lands could be had on the outskirts. In most cases, the available parcels dictated the dimensions of the playing field. Because the stadiums had to fit within the block or property boundaries, each ballpark’s dimensions were unique and challenging for the opposing team’s players. For example, Fenway Park built the Green monster, a 37-foot high wall to limit the number of home runs caused by the short distance from home plate to the field’s boundaries. Later, fans and baseball players alike would complain how the second era of ballparks lacked character and personality that the early ballparks all espoused.

Ballparks of this era were located along streetcar, trolley, and railroad lines which spurred the development businesses and increased the connection to the local

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By David Panorama 2011

Dobkin

neighborhood. In many cities, such as Chicago and Philadelphia, owners and renters of homes that overlooked the ballpark let fans view games from makeshift rooftop bleachers. Almost a hundred years later, neighborhoods surrounding Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are still referred to as “Wrigleyville” and “Fenway.”

After World War II, aging ballparks showed signs of decay. During the Depression, teams didn’t have the resources to invest in rehabilitation. During the war, the rationing of materials, such as concrete and metal, prohibited significant renovations.

Simultaneously, cities began to decline.

In the postwar years, middle and upperclass families moved to the suburbs (as did businesses), aided by rising automobile ownership rates, the expansion of roadways, and heightened racial tensions in cities.

Additionally, the proliferation of broadcasts on radio and television networks allowed fans to follow the game without having to travel into the city.

As a result, the drive-in ballpark was born.

The majority of baseball fans now drove to games, and ballparks needed parking spaces for cars. Many of these ballparks became massive multi-purpose stadiums, often shared with a National Football League franchise, and featured increased capacity, wider concourses, and of course, more parking. Several ballparks of this era are referred to as “concrete doughnuts” for their round concrete shapes. Those include Veterans Stadium (Philadelphia), Three Rivers Stadium (Pittsburgh), Riverfront Stadium (Cincinnati), and Busch Stadium (St. Louis). These enclosed stadiums symbolized attempts to “shut out the unpleasant realities” of the “slow, painful death of the inner cities” (Gershman 1993, 214). This disappointment with the depersonalized setting led teams to recreate the authentic atmosphere of the old ballparks beginning in the 1990s.

Baltimore’s Camden Yards, which opened in 1992, inspired the third era of ballparks, the retro age. The Orioles designed the ballpark as homage to first generation ancestors, with unique dimensions, similar architecture, and an open outfield. The team also built the park in the middle of downtown Baltimore as part of the Inner Harbor revitalization effort. Unlike the first generation of ballparks, Camden Yards was built in the Central Business District, not on the outskirts.

Most teams that have built new stadiums since Baltimore have model the ballpark on Camden Yards, both in design and location within the dense urban core.

THE POLITICS OF MODERN BALLPARKS In addition to the physical implications of large stadiums on surrounding neighborhoods, ballparks generate significant debate because of the massive public expenditures that are necessary to finance the costs of construction. The trend in increased public financing began in the 1950s as smaller cities attracted teams to establish themselves as “major league cities.” In the 1990s, approximately $18 billion was spent on 60 major league facilities, with public funds subsidizing 55 percent of the costs (Chapin 194, 2004). Many critics think the money would be better spent on schools, roads, and other public goods. While tangible spillovers, such as job creation and revitalized neighborhoods, could justify public investment, many fans that consume at ballparks simply substitute ballgames for other entertainment choices. In addition, because modern ballparks contain restaurants, retail stores, and even museums, some critics argue that the multitude of consumption opportunities inside the gates limits the amount of spending that would occur outside the stadium. Also, unlike museums, zoos, or theatres, which have potential to invigorate downtown streets most of the year, baseball parks are only open 82 times a year (excluding preseason and playoff games). Therefore, they do not attract the year round foot traffic necessary to create vibrant neighborhoods.

However, baseball stadiums can catalyze new development in cities. According to a survey by the Orioles, fans spent an additional $25 million at downtown restaurants, hotels, and shops the year that Camden Yards opened (Gershman 1993, 227). The nineteen major league baseball parks that have opened since Camden Yards opened in 1992 have been used as successful development tools for economic development, whether they were downtown stadiums or not. Stadiums have potential to attract fans to spend money at local businesses, foster new construction of hotels, residences and retail, and revitalize a blighted area. Additional spending generated by new establishments around ball parks ultimately results in higher tax revenue for the local government.

It is clear that the locations teams and cities agree upon influences future land use patterns in the neighborhood adjacent to the stadium. Moreover, the cohesion and creativity of the public-private partnerships formed between cities and baseball franchises during the site selection process ultimately impacts not just the location of the site, but the success of the ballpark.

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During the planning process, many cities that plan to subsidize new ballparks use the stadium as an opportunity to promote the development or revitalization of neighborhoods—in most cases, the central business districts. An examination of the relative success of San Diego and Philadelphia in developing new baseball stadiums provides insight on how the public private partnerships that evolve during planning are indicators of the ballpark’s resulting benefits.

CASE STUDIES SAN DIEGO In the nineties, the San Diego Padres, under the leadership of new owner John Moores, sought the construction of a new ballpark. The Padres, like many teams, shared their facility, Qualcomm Stadium, with an NFL team (the Chargers). The details of this lease favored the Chargers1, and the Padres needed additional revenue streams in order to compete with other teams. By 1998, the team, city, and center city development agency agreed on a financing agreement for a new ball park in which the city paid $206 million, the Centre City Development Corporation paid $83 million on behalf of the redevelopment agency, the port authority paid $21 million and the team paid the remaining $173 million (Rosentraub 2010, 109). Moreover, the team also agreed to develop more than 26 acres around the ballpark and lead revitalization as master developers in the blighted East Village neighborhood. By 2004, the Padres opened Petco Park in the East Village section of downtown San Diego, along with hundreds of hotel rooms, office space, and condominiums.

Public Private Partnership And The Ballpark Planning In 1996, San Diego announced that publicly financed renovations for Qualcomm Stadium, the home of both the Chargers and the Padres would begin. Since most of the renovations were intended to update the stadium for the Chargers use, at the same time as the announcement, the city simultaneously agreed to analyze the importance of the Padres to the community and if the impact of the baseball team merited the construction of a new stadium strictly for the baseball team. The Mayor’s Office appointed several citizens to a Task Force on Padres Planning, marking the emergence of a successful public-private partnership. The Mayor’s Task Force concluded that the Padres added to the quality of life in the region and that a new ballpark was critical to both their financial viability and performance.

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Once the task force concluded that a new stadium was needed, several groups were involved in public-private negotiations about the location and financing of the ballpark.

The public’s reaction to tax-payer financed renovations of the Qualcomm stadium had been largely negative, so the city was eager to involve the public in the planning process for the Padres Stadium. The primary players were the city, the Padres, and the Centre City Development Corporation. However, others including local business leaders and the San Diego Port Unified District played a pivotal part in the planning process.

While the city hired a team of experts, the mayor also assigned many of the city’s most prominent business people to the Mayor’s Task Force on Ballpark Planning.

The Padres’ negotiating team included Larry Lucchino, who served as the Oriole’s President and CEO when the team planned Camden Yards. Lucchino, who had always been a strong proponent for downtown ballparks, helped prioritize the team’s desire to relocate to the dense urban core. The third important member of the partnership was the Centre City Development Corporation, a quasi-public organization formed in 1975 to support and fund large redevelopment projects. Throughout the debate, the CCDC “led the effort” to analyze the “benefits of a ballpark and where it could provide the best return for the city” (Judson 2010).

Site Selection The Mayor’s Task Force on Ballpark Planning evaluated seven sites, financing plans, and cost estimates, and recommended that the new ballpark be placed on a site in the East Village. The East Village was home to many vacant, rundown properties, industrial warehouses, and a considerable homeless population. The proposed site of the stadium was located between the city’s waterfront convention center and the Gaslamp District, a trendy area that had undergone substantial redevelopment (Hoyt 2008). In addition, the San Diego Redevelopment Authority could easily gather a large number of contiguous properties through eminent domain since many of the properties were vacant.

Throughout the negotiations, the CCDC was a leading proponent of choosing the East Village for the next baseball stadium.

After 56 public meetings, the task force and the city agreed that the East Village was the best place to capitalize on the opportunity of the baseball park to stimulate growth in the neighborhood.

After selecting a site for the new baseball park, the negotiating partners moved to close the deal. As the city and Padres finalized the lease, however, the city almost backed out.

As Judson tells the story, “at the eleventh hour, the city came back and said ‘we really need guarantees, we need assurances that this development will happen…if it’s such a good deal, why don’t you guys do it. Look we’ve talked about the great benefit, but we need assurances’” (2010). The team’s owner, John Moores agreed that the Padres would be the master developer of the project and he created a real estate firm for this purpose.

Contractually, the Padres guaranteed that the taxes generated by redevelopment would pay the city’s debt obligation, and if not, Moores would have to cover any shortfalls (Hoyt 2008). Additionally, the Padres agreed to cover project overruns, which saved the city an additional $58 million. The CCDC also agreed to finance $50 million of the project via tax increment financing (TIF).

The end product was a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which was approved by voters in a 1998 ballot item. Proposition C received 59.1% of the vote after a successful campaign that revolved around a “more than a ballpark” motto. The MOU stated that the Padres first phase of construction must include a 150-room extended stay hotel, 700 other hotel rooms, 600,000 square feet of office space, 150,000 square feet of retail space, and 2,000 parking spaces. Further, the Padres could either develop the projects themselves on city land, or sell the land to other developers.2 While the city and the Padres envisioned the neighborhood as a primarily office district, real estate trends and the impact of the Gaslamp District and Convention Center led the Padres to work with the city to create a special zoning district. The ballpark district zoning “planned district ordinance” allowed virtually any use so that the neighborhood could eventually develop a mixture of residential, office, and retail use.

city concerned with the redevelopment of its downtown area” (Hoyt 2008). As a result of the successful public-private partnership that evaluated the proposed sites and marketed the plan for the stadium, the Padres earned public support for the project.

According to the Centre City Development Corporation, approximately $4.25 billion had been invested or committed to projects in the East Village—including nearly $4 billion of private investment. By 2007, projects valued at $1.2 billion had been completed. This included the addition of 3,040 residential units, 747 hotel rooms, 546,670 square feet of commercial space, and 3,000 parking spaces (CCDC 2007).

Land values increased within a very short time period in East Village. For example, the Padres acquired a 12-acre parcel from the local electricity company at the rate of $39 per square foot, and sold it for prices between $150 and $250 per square. This land was than valued at $450 to $500 per square foot in 2007 (Hoyt 2008). In 2007, the chair of the CCDC said that Petco Park was “so much more than simply a ballpark. It sparked the transformation that resulted in a thriving neighborhood, now one of the most soughtafter locations to live work, and play in San Diego” (CCDC 2007).

While Petco Park succeeded in San Diego, it may not be a replicable model for all cities. It is unlikely that many teams or developers would agree to the development quota contained in the MOU for the Petco

Park project. Judson said “candidly, [the assurance] was a mistake on our part, one that turned up quite well, but it wasn’t without great risk.” Further, “I don’t think teams or developers will necessary [agree to neighborhood investment quotas]” (2010).

What can be a model of success for cities is “the integrated planning, the very close attention that was paid to the successful development as well as the ballpark—looking for a master developer, and looking for commitment—” (2010).

More importantly, the successful collaboration between the Padres and the City of San Diego shows the possibility of what a public-private ballpark can do.

As former mayor Dick Murphy wrote, “The ballpark became the catalyst for the implementation of a bold vision of redevelopment. Although the political, legal, and financial challenges were significant, the strong partnership between the Padres and the City of San Diego proved to be the foundation of success for this enormously important project (Hoyt 2008). Before the development of the ballpark, the East Village was a weathered district with many vacant properties. The public-private partnership shared between the city, the Padres, and the Center City Development Corporation, among others resulted in a modern baseball stadium that has thus far succeeded in revitalizing the neighborhood.

PHILADELPHIA In the early nineties, the Philadelphia Phillies publicly announced their desire to move to

a new facility. Since 1973, the team shared Veterans Stadium with the National Football League Philadelphia Eagles. “The Vet” was a concrete doughnut that closed off views from the outfield, had poor sightlines, and used artificial turf instead of real grass. The stadium was in South Philadelphia, adjacent to the arena of the Philadelphia Flyers and the 76ers professional hockey and basketball teams, with close access to Interstates 95 and 76. While technically located within the city limits, the sports complex is more than three miles from the heart of Center City Philadelphia. However, the stadium was a convenient drive from Southern New Jersey and Delaware and the Broad Street Subway had been extended to the sports complex for the stadium’s opening. Despite excellent access, the stadium was surrounded by parking with no retail or residential use within half a mile. According to a 1997 Arthur Anderson study, only 14% of fans attending Phillies games spent money before or after a game in South Philadelphia. That being said, those fans who visited Center City before or after a game spent $45.52 on average, compared to $23.32 overall, suggesting that a downtown ballpark could stimulate twice the outside consumption (1997). Logically, the city was hoping to find a home for the Phillies that would encourage spending outside of the ballpark and generate higher tax revenues. However, the Phillies ultimately built and opened Citizens Bank Park in 2004 adjacent to Veterans Stadium, far from Center City.

Exterior of Camden Yards and Warehouse

Impact And Discussion Before the Proposition C vote, Moores justified the need for a new stadium by tying the success of the team as a local revenue source to the success of the community.

Moores placed special emphasis on the civic value of sports and successfully advertised the project. The Mayor’s Task Force on Padres Planning noted that Moores’ ownership of the project “set new industry standards for regional marketing and community involvement” and that the Padres “have been exceptional corporate citizens” (Hoyt 2008).

Greg Shannon, a developer for the Padres commented that Lucchino and Judson “were really good at bringing people in, getting them involved early on—getting their buy in” (Hoyt 2008). Mark Rosentraub, a strong critic of public investment in stadiums, hailed the ballpark plan as “unique and one that meets the public policy objectives of virtually every 45

Public-Private Partnership There were four pivotal members of the public-private partnership in Philadelphia— the Phillies, Mayor Ed Rendell, the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), and the Central Philadelphia Development Corporation (CPDC). Mayor Ed Rendell assumed office in 1992 and inherited a fiscal crisis, which he is credited for easing by reducing the city budget, generating new revenue sources, and revitalizing Center City. As a result, he showed initial interest in a downtown location for the park to continue this work.

The Phillies president, Bill Giles, said in 1997 “my personal opinion is that it would be much more exciting to be downtown” (Miles). Another member of the negotiations, the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, a quasi-public agency that funds and promotes development within the city, had close ties to the Mayor. The president of PIDC, Bill Hankowsky, was one of Rendell’s primary economic advisors. As a result, PIDC’s and Rendell’s voice were one in the same, and thus PIDC did not present any challenges to the mayor’s agenda.

Finally, the last player in this partnership was the Central Philadelphia Development Corporation, the development corollary of the Center City District Business Improvement District. Yet, unlike the CCDC in San Diego, the CPDC was not a negotiator in the process. Instead, the CPDC was merely an advocate for downtown development.

While all of the parties involved in the site selection and negotiation process showed a strong interest in building a new stadium downtown, the ball park was ultimately built in a parking lot adjacent to Veterans Stadium in South Philadelphia. This turn of events occurred for several reasons.

Site Selection In October 1997, the CPDC commissioned Arthur Anderson LLP to study the economic Parking at Citizens Bank Park

impact of a ballpark in Center City. The summary concluded that a new downtown ballpark would increase the direct and indirect economic impact of the Phillies by 82 percent a year, from $229 million to $418 million. A new downtown ballpark would generate 87 percent more in city tax revenue and 128 percent more in state tax revenue.

This represented a 22 percent difference over a new ballpark built at the Sports Complex.

That being said, basic estimates projected the downtown site, because of land acquisition and clearance costs and, to be approximately 30 percent more expensive than building at the sports complex (Nicholas, 1999).

After internal research, the Phillies selected a site at Broad and Spring Garden Streets as the preferred downtown alternative. The site was approximately five blocks from City Hall, and was on the fringe of the Center City boundaries, but the increased cost to build in this location worked against the team’s selected site. The Phillies believed that the city should help cover additional costs because of the benefits associated with a downtown ballpark. However, Rendell ultimately reversed his opinion and thought that the city’s downtown business district would grow on its own without the additional investment of the ballpark.

When Rendell’s term ended and John Street was elected Mayor, he appointed 22 community leaders to a Committee on Stadium Planning in an attempt to find a suitable downtown location. In April 2000, the committee submitted a report that listed five possible sites including the South Philadelphia Sports Complex and 12th and Vine Streets. The 12th and Vine site was in the middle of Chinatown, which had a strong and vocal neighborhood coalition.

While Street preferred this site, the Phillies opposed this location since it required a very expensive relocation of a power substation.

Opposition To Downtown And The Return To The Sports Complex Local opposition to both proposed downtown sites (Broad and Spring Garden and 12th and Vine) eventually led the Phillies to return to the South Philadelphia Sports Complex. When the city and the Phillies considered the Broad and Spring Garden location, State Senator Vincent Fumo, who lived about seven blocks from the site said, “I don’t care what [the Phillies] want, they are not going to get a stadium there” (Hepp E1, 1999). Because of Fumo’s influence on state and local politics, Rendell did not want to risk leverage by publicly stating his support for a downtown ballpark. Sam Katz, who ran for mayor in 2000, said, “[Fumo’s] influence with Harrisburg and Rendell was more important than anything else” in the rejection of the Broad and Spring Garden site (Katz 2010). In addition, Bill Hankowsky, Rendell’s chief economic advisor and head of PIDC, ultimately preferred the South Philadelphia site, not because it would be easier and cheaper to build, but because he hoped it would help foster development at the sports complex (Mullin 2010). Furthermore, the Central Philadelphia Development Corporation, which supported the downtown location, was hampered by their limited role in the negotiations, unlike the CCDC in San Diego.

In addition, most Phillies’ fans supported the site in the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, and the fan demographics explain why (Montgomery 2010). According to the CPDC study, 83 percent of fans that attended games came from outside the city, and 34% came from outside the state (1997). Team surveys indicated that 75% of Phillies’ fans preferred the South Philadelphia location because of its easy access (Hersh 2001).

Therefore, access to the park may have been a greater priority to the fans than the opportunity to walk around downtown bars and restaurants before and after the game.

To complicate negotiations, the City Council had imposed a November deadline to reach a financing deal with both the Phillies and Eagles. If the deadline passed, the city would have to spend more than $100 million to upgrade Veterans Stadium and build a training facility for the Eagles. The deadline caused the city and team to rush through cost analyses. By the summer of 2000, Street retreated from the Chinatown site, and agreed to work on a deal that sited the Phillies in South Philadelphia. The ballpark, Citizens Bank Park, opened in 2004 and ended up costing $458 million, with $174 million coming from the public (Munsey and Suppes 2005).

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Impacts And Discussion Despite the success of Camden Yards, the initial agreement on a downtown site, and lobbying by the CPDC, architects, and city planners, the Phillies built a stadium three miles from Center City. While Rendell may have supported the downtown ballpark in private meetings with the Phillies, he did not risk his political leverage and refused to extend the city’s support publicly. When the Phillies tried to proceed with the Broad and Spring Garden location without the mayor and city by their side, they “got left like a wiggling worm on a hook, because there was nothing from the city saying ‘yes we’re for this” (Mullin 2010).

Besides political opposition and hurdles, neighborhood residents generally mobilized against both the downtown sites as well.

Unlike the East Village site in San Diego, three of the potential sites in Philadelphia were located in established residential communities. The other two sites were deemed physically unfit for a ballpark. Many residents in San Diego were attracted to the East Village and saw it as an amenity and property value booster; however, residents of Philadelphia saw a new ballpark as a threat to the community.

Timing also had a significant impact on the site selection since the teams and city had imposed a November 2000 financing deadline. More time may have allowed for further site and cost analysis that could have resulted in a feasible central city site that the city, team, and public would all be pleased with. However, The Phillies and Eagles both targeted 2003 as the occupancy years, and applied pressure to the city to make that reality.

Finally, there really was no site in center city Philadelphia that was as ideal as the East Village in San Diego. Center City Philadelphia is very densely developed, and also has a relatively high number of residents. Even on the edge of center city, at Broad and Spring Garden, there was no site that had an ample amount of vacant or underused land that was isolated from residential neighborhoods.

Furthermore, the city had not placed emphasis on any particular districts, like San Diego had in the East Village for years before they constructed Petco Park. It is difficult to conclude that the lack of a targeted revitalization area hindered the attempt to build the Phillies ballpark downtown, but it certainly did not help. The minimal effort to implement a vision, lack of an ideal downtown site for redevelopment, and political conflicts led to the siting of Citizens Bank Park in South Philadelphia.

OVERALL DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS These case studies prove that there is no simple model of success for building ballparks to help revitalize cities. While, a public-private partnership is necessary to locate a successful ballpark, it is not sufficient. Just as important as a publicprivate partnership is the public’s perception of this partnership. In Philadelphia, political opposition, the lack of an ideal site, community opposition and looming deadlines hampered the efforts to build a downtown ballpark. In San Diego, public participation at task force and planning meetings in San Diego helped lead to the support of the ballot measure to finance the Padres stadium, even after public outrage Interior of Citizens Bank Park

over the Charger’s stadium renovation.

In addition, it is likely that the Padres appearance in the 1998 World Series also had some positive impact on public support for Proposition C. Furthermore, the East Village site was in a blighted and vacant warehouse district were relatively few residents or businesses could formulate strong opposition to the proposal. According to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Report, less than 40 residents were displaced for the ballpark construction (Hoyt 2008).

When planning ballparks, cities need strong public-private partnerships and they task force charged with negotiating the final deal must consider site characteristics, public participation and the logical timeframe during which all parties’ views can be aligned. Lessons from the planning process for both the San Diego Padres and the Philadelphia Phillies lead to these recommendations for future ballpark planning.

1) Articulate a Strong Unified Message that Engages Public Support The planning process in San Diego demonstrates the value of articulating a strong message that engages the public in major land use decisions. Although the Mayor’s Task Force, consisted of mostly elite business and community leaders, it still showed that the took public suggestions seriously. This legitimized the Padres’ as a team that was an open and willing participant in the conversation necessary to warrant a ballpark financed by public investment. Additionally, the local news sources can be key allies to cities in explaining the need for a downtown ballpark that might be more expensive but is more likely to influence center city development.

Lastly, the public-private partnerships must develop a plan and message together.

In Philadelphia, the city did not provide support for the Phillies, and thus, the team had to go to neighborhood meetings alone, without any allies. Without the city and mayor at their side, their plans were doomed.

In San Diego, the message was very clear – if the city was going to invest in the stadium, and support the team, the city was going to benefit from the arrangement.

2) Cities Should Evaluate Ballparks as Investments in Neighborhoods In San Diego, the strong public-private partnership created a successful strategy to use a ballpark to stimulate development. The planning and construction of Petco Park took years of debate, obstacles, and uncertainty.

However, it is clear that the opening of the ballpark had an incredible impact on the East Village neighborhood. In Philadelphia, 47

although Citizens Bank Park generates revenue, it has not stimulated any physical development on its periphery. If cities are to invest in ballparks as a public good, then they should find a site that will return the best possible return for the public. While teams attempt to design stadiums to maximize revenue, ballparks located in neighborhoods surrounded by restaurants, bars, and retail can have an even greater positive influence on tax revenue. Cities that either fail to realize this potential, or fail to push for a site that promises to promote growth and redevelopment will end up as losers in the stadium game.

3) Location, Location, Location The site in San Diego was successful for three reasons. First, the proposed ballpark was located in an old industrial neighborhood that had large, cheap, vacant lots. This made the acquisition of land easier and the restoration of one of the old industries, Western Supply Metal Company became a unique design feature of the ballpark.

Second, because the site was in an old industrial neighborhood, there were small or negligible residential communities near the site. Without a large residential community, local opposition was limited.

In contrast, Philadelphia had not idea sites with low population and the people in dense residential neighborhoods mobilized in opposition to the proposed sites.

Lastly, Petco Park succeeded because the San Diego had already focused on revitalizing the East Village neighborhoods. This attention made it much easier to find a logical site for the propose ballpark.

Building ballparks in neighborhoods where they will contribute to urban revitalization

and redevelopment is extremely challenging and costly. The questions cities must ask themselves include “is the extra investment worth the benefit,” and “how can we ensure a return on our investment?” The simple answer for cities is that ballparks can be used as a catalyst for urban redevelopment and revitalization, thus justifying costs. In San Diego, private investment, both committed and spent, has surpassed public investment.

The most likely route to success is to identify a site, potentially in a previously targeted neighborhood, that has many vacant parcels and few residents nearby. After that, the team and city must work together to rally support from the community and the city council. The model seems simple, but it is clear that higher costs and challenges can drive cities like Philadelphia to prefer cheaper, less dynamic sites. City leadership in site selection will determine what impact a ballpark will have on its surroundings. While there can be no model for understanding the politics of stadium negotiations, it is clear that politics play a major role. In Philadelphia, the lack of support from Mayor Rendell left the Phillies fighting on their own for a downtown site.

In San Diego, the team and the Centre City Development Corporation led privatized efforts to develop land around the ballpark site. In the end, ballparks such as Petco Park in San Diego show that publicly-financed stadiums that are built as a result of effective, patient, and well thought out planning process can have a positive impact on local neighborhoods and the city as whole.

EPILOGUE In the spring of 2011, ground will break on the first phase of an entertainment complex called “Philly Live!,” which will be the first non-sports related development at the sports complex in South Philadelphia. The initial

phase calls for the construction of a 40,000 square-foot marketplace that will stretch from the Wells Fargo Center to Citizens Bank Park. The Sports Complex is a unique conglomeration of venues that most cities do not have, and there may be future potential for the creation of a neighborhood around the sports center and adjacent Navy Yard.

Utmost Annoyance or Blessed Convenience?

It Depends on Context and Implementation: An Examination of Past, Present, and Future of Skip-Stop Service in New York City

Many of the people interviewed for this article stressed the importance of patience while evaluating these projects. Certainly, the quick growth in the East Village was impressive, but the economic collapse has left many condominiums empty or selling at extreme losses for developers. Indeed, time will tell what type of influence these ballparks will have on their surroundings, but the answer to the question, “Was it worth it?” will probably never be unanimous.

Lastly, one factor that this study did not consider was on-the-field success of the teams. Since moving into Citizens Bank Ballpark in 2004, the Phillies have won four division titles, two pennants, and one World Series. Furthermore, the team has sold out 123 straight games. Therefore, albeit located three miles from Center City, the team has had great success in its new ballpark. For the most part, the Padres have struggled in their new ballpark, and the Phillies attendance numbers far exceed the Padres. Postseason appearances increase revenues, as well as boost civic pride and morale—a virtually impossible quality to measure. So while San Diego has shown success in catalyzing urban revitalization, Philadelphia’s project has been very successful in providing a competitive home for its team.

By Laura Podolnick Bibliography Center City Development Corporation. 2007.

“Scorecard: More Than a Ballpark.” Accessed March 2010. <http://www.ccdc.com/>.

Central Philadelphia Development Corporation.

1997. The Economic Impact of a Ballpark in Center City Philadelphia. Study conducted

by Arthur Andersen, LLP. Chapin, Timothy S. 2004. “Sports Facilities as Urban Redevelopment Catalysts.” Journal of

the American Planning Association 70.2 (2004): 193-209.

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Gershman, Michael. 1993. Diamonds: the Evolution of the Ballpark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Hepp, Christopher K. 1999. “RENDELL, PHILLIES AND FUMO DENY BALLPARK REPORTS.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. May 19 Sports sec. E1.

Hersh, Jim. 2001. “The Grand Design.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. July 1. Sports sec.

Hoyt, David. 2008. San Diego Padres: PETCO Park

as a Catalyst for Urban Redevelopment.

Stanford Graduate School of Business.

February 19.

Judson, Erik. 2010. Phone Interview. November 16.

Katz, Sa. 2010. Phone Interview. December 20.

Miles, Gary. 1997. “GILES MAKES PITCH FOR

SPRING GARDEN PARK.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. June 28. Sports sec.

Montgomery, David. 2010. Phone Interview.

November 9.

Mullin, Steven. 2010. Phone Interview. December 21.

Munsey and Suppes. 2005. “Citizens Bank Park.”

Accessed March 2010. <www.ballparks.com>.

Rosentraub, Mark. 2010. Major League Winners: Using Sports and Cultural Centers as Tools for Economic Development. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Introduction New York City is an express train town.

New Yorkers are considered more fastpaced than their city-dwelling brethren in other urban areas—there is a reason “a New York minute” is a phrase that means “very quickly,” but “a St. Louis minute,” “a Miami minute,” and “a Los Angeles minute” are phrases that mean nothing. It’s almost poetically fitting, then, that New York City is, in actuality, an express train town.

Express service is very common throughout the city. In almost all of Manhattan, and in much of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, most routes have local service with a

corresponding express option: For example, in Manhattan, the 6 has the 4/5, the C/E has the A, and the 1 has the 2/3. In Queens, the E and F provide express service along Queens Boulevard, while the V, G, and R stop locally. Even single lines—the 7, the 6— have “diamond service” express versions of themselves that operate during rush hour.

However, there is another type of accelerated service that has been used in New York, albeit not as widely: Skip-stop. Skip-stop has only appeared on two sections in several route iterations since the dawning of the subway system, with occasional half-hearted

murmurings of introducing it elsewhere.

However, the two cases of skip-stop service in New York provide lessons in the service pattern’s application elsewhere in the city— or truly, any city.

Skip-stop service has been quite successful on one section of the system—the J/Z pairing in southeastern Queens--but not at all successful on the other section, which operated on the Broadway line in Upper Manhattan as the 1/9 pairing for about seventeen years. Through examination of the successful J/Z pair and the unsuccessful 1/9 pair, it is possible to determine whether there exist any other 49

routes or portions of routes in the New York City subway system that could benefit from putting skip-stop service into effect.

Skip Stop: An Overview Skip-stop operation, like express operation and like zonal operation, is a service pattern in which not all vehicles stop at every station on a line. These skipped stations are not all grouped together, as they are with zonal operation, nor is there corresponding service that does stop at every station, as with an express/local pair. With skip-stop service, each station on a line is designated A, B, or AB. One partner in the skip-stop pair stops at A stations, the other stops at B stations, and both trains stop at AB stations.

Benefits of Skip-Stop Service Skip-stop service can increase operating speed on transit lines that only have two tracks, and it can do so while simultaneously maintaining high line capacity and high frequency (Vuchic 2005, 119-128). Skip-stop service can benefit both riders and operators of a transit system when operated correctly as it provides faster travel time for the majority of passengers while simultaneously using less equipment and fewer staff members (Parkinson and Fisher 1996). Travel time is saved because the train stops less frequently, and if the skip-stop service is planned and operated correctly, the station dwell time— the time in which the train waits at the station for passengers to board and alight—for each vehicle should not increase. That is, skipstop service should not be implemented in a way that would decrease vehicle frequency to the point that a vastly larger number of people would have time to gather at each A or B stop, thus lengthening the process for boarding and alighting (Parkinson and Fisher 1996).

An additional benefit of skip-stop operation is that it increases the passenger comfort level. Skip-stop service, by definition, has fewer stops than conventional service. This increases passenger comfort simply because unless a passenger wants to leave the train, he does not want the train to stop. Stopping brings with it the perception of wasted time, the discomfort of acceleration and deceleration, and the discomfort of other passengers shuffling and nudging as they attempt to leave the train or to make room for new passengers (Vuchic 2005, 124). Simply put in economic terms, unless a passenger is leaving a train, a stop creates disutility. The only passengers who want to the train to stop are those that want to exit the train.

Potential Downsides of Skip-Stop Service Skip-stop operation does have some downsides. Unless headways are scheduled 50

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short enough that a wait that is up to two headways is acceptable to passengers, there will be passenger dissatisfaction (Parkinson and Fisher 1996, 72). Related to this, skip-stop service adversely affects certain passengers no matter what: Passengers who use the line to travel from an A to a B stop would have to transfer, whereas an absence of the skip-stop service would afford them one-seat rides.

Third, skip-stop service requires very careful scheduling and coordination to work properly (Gould 2010). Without this meticulous oversight, the A and B trains will not be in the proper order, and passengers waiting on platforms will be subjected to several trains in a row passing them by. The time savings of fewer passengers boarding and alighting at each station is thus at least partially negated. For example, in a system in which A and B trains should alternate on a 1:1 basis, if passengers awaiting a B train arrive at a station, and, due to inexact and improper scheduling, two A trains pass by before the B comes, a larger number of passengers would have gathered at the station in that time; thus they will take longer to board when the B train does arrive.

This would increase dwell time. The A train behind the B train would, of course, have to abide by the B train’s delays, and the entire system would not function properly for this time span (Bata 2010).

A fourth downside to skip-stop service is the mere fact that it can confuse passengers.

At AB stations, passengers have to pay attention to which train they board, if they plan to alight at an A or a B station. This possibility of confusion can be remedied by clear communication from the transit agency (Vuchic 2005, 125).

Given the above challenges, skip-stop service should only be utilized on lines that have a specific set of characteristics. It should be considered for lines that have a large number of stations, and especially for those that are considerably long and have uneven ridership—particularly, lines that see lower ridership on stations near the end of the line, furthest from the central business district or other target destinations (Vuchic 2005, 128).

The rationale for this is simple: At the end of these lines, the vast majority of passengers on the vehicle do not want the train to stop until it arrives at, for example, the CBD. Skip-stop service in such a section eliminates almost half of these unwanted intermediate stops while still serving each station.

Skip-Stop In New York City Skip-Stop on the Jamaica BMT Line: from 14/15 to the J/Z New York has been making tentative

experiments with skip-stop service since the late 1950s. The line that has seen the most iterations of skip-stop service is the BMT Jamaica line, which is currently served by the J/Z skip-stop pair. The first skip-stop service—then a 14/15 pair, as the service predates route naming conventions—was introduced on this line in June of 1959, from the 168th street station (now demolished) and Eastern Parkway, known today as Broadway Junction. Skip-stop service ran during morning rush hour only and only in one direction—from Jamaica to Manhattan.

This service was an interesting mix of skip-stop and express service: One train of the pair was deemed “local” and one was deemed “express.” The “local,” labeled 14, made two additional stops on the skip-stop portion of the line, and then went on to make all local stops west of Eastern Parkway. The “express,” labeled 15, ran as an express line west of Eastern Parkway. (“Jamaica BMT to Start Speed-Up Tomorrow,” 1959). In the 1960s, the 14 would become the KK train, and the 15 would become the J. In July of 1960, a new connection between the BMT Jamaica line and the IND Sixth Avenue line—the Chrystie Street connection—was

Announcement of the discontinuation of 1/9 skip-stop service.

completed. The KK was rerouted to go through the Chrystie Street connection to join the IND Sixth Avenue line (Pooley 1985).

With this change, skip-stop service was extended to afternoon Jamaica-bound trains.

In the 1970s, New York suffered a host of financial problems, and as a result, cut transit service to save 3.1 million dollars (Burks 1976). Skip-stop service was a casualty of these cuts. On August 30, 1976, the K train was eliminated, as was the J-only skip-stop service and the J-express K-local express service. (“Transit Agency Drops 215 Runs…”

1976).

The Jamaica BMT line remained free of skipstop service from 1976 until the introduction of the Z train in December 1988 (“Changes in Subway Service” 1988). Skip-stop service in this iteration operated at both AM and PM peak periods. The Z train only operated during these hours. During peak hours, west of Myrtle Avenue, where the M meets the J and Z, the J and Z run express. East of Myrtle Avenue, they form a skip-stop pair (MTA New York City Transit 2009). This service continues today.

Skip-Stop on the 1/9: Rife with Problems In contrast to the success of the J/Z service, the 1/9 skip-stop service was a failure. Skipstop service was initiated on the BroadwaySeventh Avenue IRT line because ridership was very low on the far-north end of the line, and the transit agency believed that this was probably because travel time was too long (Bata 2010). In the late 1980s, the goal for the 1 line was to make it a more attractive option for passengers coming from far northern reaches of Manhattan—passengers who were furthest away from the CBD and who faced some of the longest rides, and thus made infrequent use of the line (Gould 2010). Back in the late 1980s, the line was quite similar to that of the J/Z, where skip-stop had been successful. It was a long line with many stops, and the very end of the line was quite distant from the central business district.

Therefore, in August of 1989, the 1/9 skipstop service was implemented. At first, skip-stop service only operated north of the 137th Street station on weekdays during daytime hours—between 6:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. This first iteration of the 1/9 skip-stop arrangement saw both lines skipping four stops, while the 1 train made five and the 9 train made four. (Brozan 1989). Then, in 1994, skip-stop service on the 1/9 was cut back: Midday service was discontinued—making the skip-stop service rush-hour only, similar to the J/Z—and service was changed so that 1 trains only skipped three stops, while 9 trains still skipped four (Chan 2005).

From the outset, skip-stop service on the 1/9 was controversial. Riders in far northern Manhattan neighborhoods like Harlem and Washington Heightswere angry because they felt as though they were getting half the service (Bata 2010). These neighborhoods were poor and mostly populated with minorities, and the skip-stop service implementation was seen not as an effort to improve transit in the area, but instead as an incident of classism and racism (Bata 2010). Harlem riders felt they were being inconvenienced for the benefit of more affluent riders in Inwood and Riverdale who were the furthest away and would thus see the most time savings (Brozan 1989).

From the first day of the skip-stop service, riders were confused. Passengers were quoted in the New York Times “grumbling” about the service change and complaining that they did not know which train to take (Lorch 1989). From its inception to its demise, passengers were noted as feeling “deeply resentful” towards the skip-stop service on this line (Vandam 2004).

Worse, service on the 1/9 skip-stop became inferior with time. In an interview, Mr. Andrew Bata from New York City Transit said that the skip-stop operations on this line were “not good” because the operators did not pay the close attention necessary to make sure skip-stop service works properly.

The initial operator of the skip-stop service was very enthusiastic about the service and felt it was his “baby.” Thus, this operator monitored it to make sure it ran properly— but later, when that operator moved on and another operator inherited the service, the line received less close attention, and the service worsened (Bata 2010). This poor implementation further confounded the initial issue of riders disliking and distrusting the service.

What does poor operation on a skip-stop line look like? On the 1/9, trains regularly

came into the terminal in the wrong order because of inexact and improper scheduling and operational delays. Then, because track configuration at the terminal did not allow for switching the order of the trains, the trains would go back out in the wrong order, too! One solution to that problem would seem to be simply switching the signs on the front of the trains, to turn what was earlier a 1 into a 9, but with the model of car that was used on this line when the skip-stop service existed, merely changing the signs on the front of the trains would take 30 minutes, and thus to do so would even further put the trains off schedule (Gould 2010).

It is no surprise, then, that on May 27, 2005, the 9 train—and, as a result, skip-stop service on the Broadway-Seventh Avenue IRT—was discontinued (Chan 2005).

Analysis: Why the J/Z but not the 1/9?

Both the J/Z and the 1/9 were deemed successful—at least by MTA/New York City Transit—at first. The two skip-stop services were given partial credit, in 1991, for significant improvement in on-time performance during morning rush hours from 1988 to 1990 (Finder 1991). Why, then, did the 1/9 suffer and the J/Z thrive?

Upon examination, there are quite a few reasons why skip-stop didn’t stick on the Broadway-Seventh Avenue IRT line in Manhattan but did, and continues to do, quite well on the Jamaica BMT in Queens and Brooklyn.

One reason is simply a question of amount of time per day in which the service was used. Longer skip-stop periods leave more room for error, and this became the case with the 1/9 service. With the J/Z pair, the period of the day in which skip-stop needs to be used—the peak—is very short. The 1/9 pair’s skip-stop period was much longer. In an interview, Mr. Larry Gould from New York City Transit explained that this was due to ridership—because the population of far northern Manhattan had grown since the late 1980s, the rush hour period became longer and longer, and as such, skip-stop service lasted longer. Ridership on the J/Z had always been light—consistently, this line’s distant stations in southeastern Queens have been among the least utilized in the New York City Subway System. Mr. Gould noted that, because of light ridership and thus a short peak period, J/Z skip-stop service is easy to schedule and maintain because each skip-stop train only makes one trip as a skipstop train. The conundrum of trains coming into the terminal out of order and then going back out in the same wrong order never even 51

becomes an issue, because by the time the skip-stop trains make their way back, the skip-stop period is over.

no historical precedent on this section of the subway system, and this could certainly be part of the reason its riders despised it so.

By the time the skip-stop service ended on the 1/9, “the customer benefit was not compelling” (Gould 2010). On the J/Z, the majority of people at the end of the line ride a long distance to the central business district and do not wish to stop beforehand: Thus, there are more winners than losers.

With the 1/9 skip-stop, there were initially more winners than losers, too, but by a smaller margin. That small margin became increasingly smaller as the service ran more and more poorly and simultaneously as northern Manhattan experienced population growth and gentrification (Gould 2010).

Northern Manhattan’s population growth and subsequent gentrification did two things to affect skip-stop service: First, it made the rush-hour period longer, making skip-stop operations during it more difficult, and second, it made the entire concept of skip-stop less and less sensible for the area because many former “skip” stops had become actual destinations. What was once a rare inconvenience—boarding a 1 and needing to go to a 9 stop, thus having to switch trains at a 1/9 stop—became more and more commonplace (Chan 2005).

Further, the 1 train experienced a series of changes after September 11th, 2001. First, it was rerouted because the IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line ran directly under the World Trade Center site and the infrastructure was heavily damaged in the collapse of the Twin Towers. Until September 19th, 2001, the 1 train ran only between 242nd Street and 14th Street. It ran local north of 96th street and express south of 96th Street.

The 9 train did not run at all during this time, and skip-stop service was suspended on the line. Then, on September 19, service was changed so that the 1 train made all local stops from 242nd Street to New Lots Avenue in Brooklyn via the to replace the 3 train, which, during this time, terminated at 14th Street. Almost a year later, on September 15, 2002, the 1 train returned to its preSeptember 11th route, and the 9 train and with it, skip-stop service, was restored (Lueck 2002).

Another reason skip-stop service is a success with the J/Z but was not a success with the 1/9 is a matter of history and precedent. Skipstop service had been present on the Jamaica BMT line for years in different forms, and so the local ridership was familiar with the service. Granted, there was a twelve-year gap between the elimination of the K train in 1976 and the advent of the J/Z duo in 1988, but twelve years is not a long enough time that there would have been a complete turnover in residents along the line. In fact, local riders love the J/Z skip-stop: The Z was in danger of being eliminated in 2009 due to another fiscal crisis, and its riders “bemoaned the prospect of losing the Z” and the idea of commuting without the benefit of skip-stop (Neuman 2008). Conversely, with the 1/9, passengers were almost hostile. Skip-stop service had J/Z skip-stop schedule as of April 2010

52

Panorama 2011

Considering all the complaints and assorted dissatisfactions with the 1/9 skip-stop service that had grown louder and louder through the 1990s, the interruption of the skip-stop service due to September 11th, 2001, as described above, may have inadvertently given riders a taste of what their commutes would be like without skip-stop. This year-long period without skip-stop likely highlighted the problems with the service when it came back from dormancy in September 2002.

Lessons Learned for the Future from the 1/9 and J/Z The most important lesson to take away from the 1/9 skip-stop service is that proper implementation of the service is integral.

The biggest downfall of the 1/9 was its faulty operation. Riders would not have complained about, nor would they have started a campaign against, a well-run, organized, predictable, and efficient skip-stop system that got them to where they actually

wanted to go had it been more efficient than the previous local service. The reason skipstop is successful on the J/Z but was not on the 1/9 is because the J/Z service runs well and the service on 1/9 did not (Gould, 2010).

Possible Skip-Stop Schedule

Brooklyn L Station

Systemwide Rank

Annual Ridership

Weekday Average

Saturday Average

Sunday Average

Bedford Av L

53

6,761,478

19,550

17,926

15,032

Lorimer St L / G

104

4,273,071

11,846

13,063

10,338

Graham Av L

169

2,717,687

8,766

4,967

3,865

Proper communication with the prospective and existent riders is also extremely important. In 2004, The New York Times, reporting on the imminent demise of the 9 train, had this to say:

Grand St L

219

1,981,342

6,700

2,943

2,071

Montrose Av L

255

1,718,655

5,433

3,397

2,678

Morgan Av L

261

1,684,084

5,269

3,440

2,760

Jefferson St L

276

1,581,941

5,059

2,959

2,350

DeKalb Av L

144

3,110,345

10,066

5,560

4,316

Although the transit agency has made no final decision on the train, it may already be teetering on the brink of existence. During an hour’s worth of observation last week at a 1/9 station, 24 No. 1 trains went by, but no 9’s. ‘’I haven’t seen them all this week,’’ said an indifferent station agent at the 145th Street station, where the No. 9 usually stops during rush hour. Riders on the line shared similar accounts. A transit agency spokeswoman could not explain the absence of the 9, adding that the train should have been running (Vandam 2004).

Myrtle-Wyckoff Avs L / M

80

5,111,569

16,030

10,679

8,098

AB

Halsey St L

227

1,907,900

6,154

3,523

2,681

A

Wilson Av L

338

1,067,833

3,357

2,183

1,690

B

Bushwick Av-Aberdeen St L

410

365,349

1,143

761

591

A

Broadway Junction A / C / J/L/Z

162

2,846,582

8,528

7,103

5,357

AB

Atlantic Av L

409

395,884

1,319

615

467

B

Sutter Av L

327

1,168,953

3,766

2,173

1,613

A

Livonia Av L

391

704,067

2,280

1,278

945

B

New Lots Av L

331

1,138,348

3,729

1,942

1,476

A

East 105 St L

349

1,014,253

3,407

1,505

1,152

B

Canarsie-Rockaway Pkwy L

120

3,660,047

12,282

5,573

4,091

AB

If riders, let alone station agents, are not familiar with the schedule, they cannot be expected to successfully and happily interact with the service. If the schedule is everchanging and not strictly adhered to, riders cannot be expected to understand it. Part of the appeal of the J/Z skip-stop service is that, since it was introduced in 1988, it hasn’t changed. It was introduced as rush-hour peak-direction skip-stop, and it remains so to this day. Thus, even if a potential rider were to look at a map or schedule and suffer confusion about the skip-stop schedule— which is sometimes inevitable, as it is a difficult thing to explain in a small space on a map or a brochure—consistent, reliable service on the line would soon teach him everything he needed to know. The second largest complaint heard about the 1/9 skipstop was that it was completely unpredictable whether the line was running skip-stop or not.

Skip-stop service is appropriate on a line with very specific characteristics—as the case of the 1/9 demonstrated, even gradual demographic changes can help make a skip-stop service that was once useful and appropriate ill-suited to current needs and preferences. As stated earlier, New York City is largely an express train town and most lines have some variant of express service at least part of the time. However, an examination of ridership data, a look at the subway map, and years of this author’s personal experience with the line leads to one thought: The MTA/New York City Transit should consider implementing skip-stop service on the L train (Canarsie BMT) between Rockaway Parkway and

Table 1: Ridership data of L train stations in Brooklyn, mapped to physical station order. Data from MTA New York City Transit

Myrtle-Wyckoff. Ridership of the L train in general is very high, but the stations between Rockaway Parkway and Myrtle-Wyckoff see the lowest ridership, and are the furthest away from the central business district (MTA

New York City Transit 2010) See Table 1, above.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Interview with Andrew Bata, Best Practices & Strategic Improvement New York City Transit [Telephone interview]. (2010, April 15).

Interview with Larry Gould, Senior Director, Operations Analysis, New York City Transit [Telephone interview]. (2010, April 22).

Jamaica BMT to Start Speed-Up Tomorrow. (1959, June 17). The New York Times. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://select.nytimes.com/ Johnson, K. (1988, December 9). Big Changes For Subways Are to Begin - NYTimes.com. The New York Times. Retrieved April 25, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com Kaplan, M. (1968, July 2). NEW SUBWAY LINE HAS BUMPY DEBUT; Rush-Hour Service Suffers Variety of First Day Kinks. The New York Times. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://select.nytimes.com/ Lorch, D. (1989, August 22). New Service For Subways On West Side. The New York Times.

Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://www. nytimes.com/ Lueck, T. J. (2002, September 15). Old Service, Old Stops Restored on West Side - NYTimes.com.

The New York Times. Retrieved April 25, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/ MTA New York City Transit. (2009). J/Z Train Timetable [Brochure]. Author. Retrieved April 25, 2010, from http://mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/ tjcur.pdf

Brozan, N. (1989, June 4). ‘Skip-Stop’ Subway Plan Annoys No. 1 Riders. The New York Times.

Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://www. nytimes.com/ Burks, E. C. (1976, August 15). TRANSIT AGENCY TELLS OF CHANGES; Waiting Times Lengthened By ‘One or T... - Free Preview - The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved April 25, 2010, from http:// select.nytimes.com Chan, S. (2005, January 12). Metro Briefing | New York: M.T.A. Proposes Dropping No. 9 Train.

The New York Times. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://query.nytimes.com/ Chan, S. (2005, May 25). On Its Last Wheels, No. 9 Line Is Vanishing on Signs. The New York Times. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http:// www.nytimes.com/ Changes in Subway Service. (1988, December 9).

The New York Times. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com Facts and Figures (Rep.). Retrieved April 25, 2010, from MTA New York City Transit website: http://www.mta.info/ Finder, A. (1991, December 11). Study Shows Improvement In Service On Subways. The New York Times. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com

The MTA/New York City Transit has been working on automating the L line so trains

can run closer together, and there has even been mild speculation that skip-stop service has been considered for this line in conjunction with the automated operation (Rivera 2008). Perhaps skip-stop service would dovetail nicely with this new system, since skip-stop requires a certain precision of operation that automated train operation can allegedly provide.

Conclusion The success of the J/Z skip-stop pair and the failure of the 1/9 skip-stop pair illustrate that whether the benefits of skip-stop service outweigh the detriments is highly contingent on the specific features of the line—long lines with many stops and low ridership at the far end of the line are ideal for skip-stop operation. Beyond this, though, these cases indicate that skip-stop can only be successful if it is operated with careful precision—it is more operationally complicated than most other service patterns. Perhaps the greatest lesson from the J/Z and the 1/9 is not merely that the characteristics of the line are important in determining whether skipstop operation makes sense, but also that the operations culture of the transit agency and the competence of the line’s operator can determine the service’s success. It seems simple, but the greatest moral of New York’s skip-stop story is as thus: Riders appreciate skip-stop service only if it works.

Neuman, W. (2008, November 18). M.T.A. Said to Plan 23% Increase in Fare and Toll Revenue.

The New York Times. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/ Pooley, E. (1985, April 8). You’re OK, There’s No K. New York Magazine, 24. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://books.google.com/books Rivera, R. (2008, July 23). M.T.A. Plan to Raise Fares Angers Officials and Riders. The New York Times. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/ Skip-Stop Operation. (1996). In T. Parkinson & I. Fisher (Authors), Rail Transit Capacity (pp.

71-72). Washington, D.C.: Transportation Research Board, National Research Council.

Skip-Stop Operation. (2005). In V. R. Vuchic (Author), Urban transit: operations, planning and economics (pp. 119-128). Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

TRANSIT AGENCY DROPS 215 RUNS; Resulting Schedule Shifts Bewilder Passengers.

(1976, August 31). The New York Times.

Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://select. nytimes.com/ Vandam, J. (2004, September 5).

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: NEW YORK UNDERGROUND; Where 9, Not 1, Is the Loneliest Number. The New York Times.

Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://query. nytimes.com/ 53

necessary to implement Green City, Clean Waters successfully. It is worthwhile to call attention to the parallels between the two projects so that a few ideas borrowed from Philadelphia’s water history might help solve its modern water problems.

Today’s Plan: Green City, Clean Waters Problems in the Water The U.S. EPA estimates that water infrastructure in the United States will require a $334.8 billion investment over the next 20 years (Underhill and Elliott 2010, 70). Aging infrastructure leaks, pipes break, and raw sewage runs into rivers. In the 19th century, engineers constructed combined sewers, where one pipe collects rainwater from streets and waste water from homes and businesses. Today, what seemed like an efficient investment years ago has become a major problem plaguing urban water infrastructure. Combined sewer overflows occur when hard storms overwhelm treatment plants and overloaded sewer pipes release untreated effluent into waterways.

These overflows degrade the health of the streams, resulting in low levels of oxygen and high bacteria content.

Back to the Future:

Solving Philadelphia’s Water Problems with Historic Ingenuity

By Maggie Wood Just below the Philadelphia Art Museum, on the east bank of the Schuylkill River, a series of Palladian-style buildings overlook the river’s dam at Fairmount, south of Boat House Row. For much of the 19th Century, these graceful buildings housed the pumps used to supply Philadelphia citizens with fresh water.

In 1793, yellow fever coursed through the streets of the nation’s capital, killing 1 in 10 Philadelphians (Miller 1982, 188). At least half of the population deserted the city. The sick vomited black bile and their skin turned a striking yellow. While medical experts did not connect the disease to mosquitos, the carriers of yellow fever, they did recognize the need for clean water to prevent disease and treat the sick. In 1801, Philadelphia opened one of the first public water supply systems in the country. Over the next two decades, the system evolved significantly; 54

Panorama 2011

and the Fairmount Water Works eventually became a worldwide wonder. In addition to supplying the city with fresh water, the Fairmount Water Works represented a massive public investment in Philadelphia’s future and served as a “monument to civic pride” (Spar and Bebenek 2009, 692 and Marks 2010, 202). As Arthur Marks says in his article, “Palladianism on the Schuylkill,” the Water Works “demonstrated what could be accomplished when government chose to respond directly to a pressing public need” (202).

Today, the Philadelphia Water Department must respond to a different public need.

While Philadelphia has no shortage of fresh water supply, persistent problems plague the City’s waste water system. In many parts of the city, combined sewers carry both stormwater runoff and household wastewater. Each year about 16 billion

gallons of untreated sewage run into Philadelphia’s waterways (PWD 2010). In response, the Philadelphia Water Department has released Green City, Clean Waters, an innovative plan to address waste water problems through green infrastructure, in addition to standard tunnels and tanks built to contain water. If the plan is implemented effectively, Philadelphia will be the first city in the U.S. to manage urban stormwater through natural resources on such a large scale.

The Fairmount Water Works addressed the problem of supplying fresh water to Philadelphians. Green City, Clean Waters proposes to manage stormwater runoff.

Although Philadelphia constructed the Water Works in response to a different problem than the city faces today, it was built with the same sense of civic pride and public stewardship that will be

Cities across the United States face the same problem as Philadelphia and have invested in expensive infrastructure to meet the requirements of the Clean Water Act. Washington, D.C. proposes to spend at least $1.2 billion to construct three mammoth underground tunnels to store excess water (“D.C.” 2010). Chicago’s Deep Tunnel project, which was commissioned in the 1970s, has cost upwards of $3 billion and is still under construction (Schein 2005). According to a 2008 Philadelphia Inquirer article, if Philadelphia were to build a structure to collect all of the stormwater during rain

events, it would have to be the size of Citizen’s Bank Park (Bauers 2008). Because of limited funding, the City would only be able to build half of a tunnel of this magnitude.

The economic realities have forced Philadelphia to develop a different plan that uses green infrastructure in addition to gray infrastructure investments.

Proposed Solutions In a 2009 full-color report, the Philadelphia Water Department laid out its plan for the future. After a highly collaborative planning process, PWD and the Advisory Stakeholder Committee recommended that the City invest 1.6 billion dollars over 20 years in green infrastructure and targeted gray infrastructure improvements. This plan applies a holistic approach to stormwater management. As PWD and the Advisory Committee explain, “As the single largest investment of environmental dollars in the City over the next 20 years, it presents a unique opportunity to … provide additional benefits beyond the reduction of CSOs, so that every dollar spent provides a maximum return in benefits to the City” (PWD 2009).

The Water Department plans to spread the $1.6 billion investment over three categories of improvements. The lion’s share of the money, $1.01 billion, is targeted for green stormwater infrastructure, while $290 million will go towards stream corridor restoration and preservation and $320 million will be used to upgrade wet weather treatment plants (PWD 2009).

Green City, Clean Waters recommends converting 1,600 acres of impervious cover into greened acres in the next five years. A green acre manages the first inch of rainwater on site without relaying water to the combined sewer system. The plan pictures

The Free Library of Philadelphia has recently installed a green roof.

asphalt schoolyards replaced with grass, row home gutters connected to rain barrels, green roofs dotting Philadelphia rooftops and trees lining most streets. The plan also calls for the evaluation of regulatory and policy changes across City departments such as the plumbing code, zoning, licenses and inspections, and planning department requirements.

Philadelphia plans to finance its stormwater infrastructure investments through an innovative fee based on impervious surface coverage. Impermeable surfaces increase the amount of stormwater that must be filtered during rain events, contributing to combined sewer overflows. The new bill will charge residents according to the square footage of impervious surface on their property.

In addition to the “parcel-based billing” program, PWD emphasizes the power of leveraging dollars. In particular, Philadelphia hopes that the plan to manage stormwater through green infrastructure will attract investment from private foundations and grants from the government that reward green construction. However, PWD also emphasizes that without public involvement and a sense of stewardship, the plan will not succeed. The history of the Fairmount Water Works reveals what the City of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Water Department can do to help increase pubic stewardship.

The Wonder of the Water Works Sustainable Technology After multiple scourges of yellow fever, Philadelphia’s Watering Committee, a municipal agency, hired British-born architect and engineer, Benjamin Latrobe, to develop a city-wide public water supply system.

Latrobe designed a two-story neoclassical building at the intersection of Broad and Market to house two steam engines which would pump water drawn from the Schuylkill River into an elevated basin.

When Latrobe left Philadelphia and went on to design the Baltimore Basilica and the U.S. Capitol Building, Frederick Graff, an engineer and assistant to Latrobe, maintained the Water Works facility.

From the beginning, the steam engines failed regularly and the holding tank emptied in a mere half hour without continuous pumping (Simpson 1859, 481). By 1815, repairs to the Centre Square facility and the cost of harvesting wood to power the engine’s boilers put the Watering Committee $552,047.73 in debt (Spar and Bebenek 2009, 691). The Watering Committee, on Frederick Graff’s suggestion, decided to move the facility to the banks of the Schuylkill where the steam engines could pump water into a much larger reservoir built in the hill at Fairmount (now the site of the Philadelphia 55

Art Museum). By 1817, the Fairmount Water Works supplied about 3,500 homes and businesses through 32 miles of yellow pine and spruce pipes (Gibson and Wolterstorff 1988, 15). Although the system was an engineering marvel, the wooden pipes leaked, the modern steam engines continued to put the Watering Committee in debt, and three men died in engine explosions in 1818 and 1821.

In 1822, Graff turned to a simpler design.

He engineered the system to run on ancient technology— the power of the river itself. By damming the Schuylkill River and replacing the steam engines with waterwheels, Graff slashed the cost of pumping 1 million gallons of water from $206 dollars to $4 dollars (Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center 2010). He replaced wooden pipes with iron ones, some of which were the largest in the United States. From 1830 to 1850, the wheels at Fairmount worked with silent efficiency, consistently bringing in surplus dollars and supplying fresh water to over 28,000 Philadelphians (Gibson and Wolterstorff 1988, 28-29). Although the modern concept behind the term “sustainability” did not exist in the 19th Century, Graff’s design of the Water Works was indeed sustainable.

The Schuylkill River provided both the water supply and the power to pump the water up to the reservoir. From there, the water flowed by gravity to residences and businesses in Philadelphia. The facility did not require additional power sources to pump the water, and as long as the Schuylkill River water remained pure, the City had a sustainable supply of fresh water. In an effort to supply water to the city as cheaply and quickly as possible, Graff designed a system that inspired awe and pride in Philadelphia residents and visitors. People like Charles Dickens came to the Water Works for the very reason that the river “forced by its own power” supplied water to the city at a “trifling expense” (1842, 89).

Green City, Clean Waters recommends the use of sustainable design to help remedy the combined sewer overflows which dump raw sewage into Philadelphia waterways. In addition to some necessary gray infrastructure such as underground storage tanks and treatment plant upgrades, the Philadelphia Water Department plans to install trees, rain gardens, permeable pavement, rain barrels, green roofs and wetlands to mitigate storm water runoff. Just as the Fairmount Water Works harnessed the power of the river, Philadelphia can use the natural function of trees and vegetation to absorb rainwater before it enters the sewer system. In addition, plants, like waterwheels, have the added benefit of being attractive to curious onlookers.

56

Panorama 2011

Accessible Civic Design From the beginning, the architects of the Water Works facilities, Benjamin Latrobe and Frederick Graff, intended the Water Works to be a testament to Philadelphia’s position as a preeminent American city (Marks 2010, 232-233). In choosing Benjamin Latrobe to design the first Water Works at Centre Square, the Watering Committee emphasized the importance of the structure’s outward appearance, not just its mechanical interiors. Graff’s Palladian design of the Fairmount Water Works shows that he also valued the appearance of the facility as a civic building (Marks 2010, 231). At the time, Graff designed the Fairmount Water Works, the industrial businesses that would lead to the city’s reputation as the “Workshop of the World” after the Civil War had just started developing (Workshop of the World 2007).

The country, which previously upheld the United States as a nation of wilderness and pastoral landscapes, was trying to reconcile the intrusion of industry on the natural vista (Marx 1964, 3-4). In keeping with the romantic ideals of the time, Graff designed the Water Works at Fairmount to harmonize with the local scenery and disguise the mechanical workings of the facility (Gibson and Wolterstorff 2010, 9). Surrounding the buildings, Graff created a garden replete with benches, walkways, sculptures, fountains and gazebos overlooking the Schuylkill River.

While the outer appearance of the Water Works gave no indication of the rotating waterwheels, Graff designed an indoor platform from which visitors could watch the 16 foot wheels noiselessly pump water to the reservoir. Besides the natural beauty of the site, the “the turning of the massive waterwheels, the action of the powerful pumps, and the sparkling reservoirs… made it different from other garden spots, and lent excitement and edification to the visit” (Gibson and Wolterstorff 2010, 5).

Visitors flocked to the Water Works to watch the spinning waterwheels and enjoy the

outdoor gardens. In 1840, Thomas Ewbank, an inventor and manufacturer, described his visit to Fairmount: It is impossible to examine these works without paying homage to the science and skill displayed in their design and execution; in these respects no hydraulic works in the Union can compete, nor do we believe they are excelled by any in the world…

The picturesque location, the neatnesss that reigns in the buildings, the walks around the reservoirs and the grounds at large, with the beauty of the surrounding scenery, render the name of the place singularly appropriate (1850, 301).

In addition to attracting tourists, the Water Works also became the most depicted piece of architecture in the United States by 1850 (Marks 2010, 204). Although the Fairmount Water Works is often skipped over in the discussion of American architectural history, the Watering Committee and Frederick Graff clearly intended the buildings to be prominent pieces of Philadelphia’s visual presence (Marks 2010, 202 and 205). The Water Works’ appearance in numerous engravings, paintings, porcelain and pottery confirms its status as a venerated public facility.

The Fairmount Water Works would have supplied fresh water to the city without the elegant architecture, the elaborate gardens, or the decks to view the waterwheels. However, without these details, which may seem superfluous to the acute purpose of a water supply system, the Water Works would not have generated so much public excitement about the facility.

Green City, Clean Waters identifies “limited public awareness and sense of stewardship” as major stumbling blocks to implementing the plan (2009, 6). Planting street trees, investing in green roofs, and designing rain swales require creative public thinking and

Historic view of the Philadelphia Water Works

continuous maintenance. However, unlike water tunnels, these storm water control mechanisms exist above ground in sight of the public. Civic-minded design of this green infrastructure system could help build public support for implementing the plan and maintaining the infrastructure. Once again, Philadelphia has the opportunity to build a highly visible portion of the water system that combines the excitement of technology with the beauty of the natural environment.

However, instead of one facility serving as a tribute to civic pride like Graff’s Water Works, the new system will be a series of small indicators of Philadelphia’s public investment: rain planters at the bottoms of hills, green roofs dotting the skyline, trees lining every street.

The Power of Public Participation With every turn of the waterwheel, city residents became more reliant on the public water supply and invested in its preservation.

In 1826, more than 30 years before Olmstead began designing Central Park and fifty years before work started on Boston’s

Bibliography Bauers, Sandy. 2008. “Age hurts water and sewer lines—Billions are needed for repairs.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer. November 1.

Accessed December 7, 2010. <http://infoweb.

newsbank.com/>.“D.C. looks for

new ways to solve CSOs.” 2010. Underground

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Department of Parks and Recreation. 2010.

Fairmount Park Website. Accessed November

2010. <www.fairmountpark.org/history>.

Dickens, Charles. 1842. American Notes for General

Circulation. London and New York, 1842.

Reprint 1985.

Ewbank, Thomas. 1850. A Descriptive and Historical Account of Hydraulic and Other Machines for Raising Water. New York. 4th Ed. Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center. 2010.

Movie in exhibit. Viewed October 30, 2010.

Gibson, Jane Mork and Robert Wolterstorff.

1988.“The Fairmount Waterworks.”

Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin. Vol. 84.

Keyser, Charles S. 1886. “Lemon Hill” printed

Emerald Necklace, the Philadelphia City Council recommended preserving land from development for the purpose of maintaining a pure water supply. During the 1800s, riverfront industries along the Schuylkill such as mills, breweries, and ice houses provided jobs, boosted the city’s economy and laid some of the groundwork for the “Workshop of the World” after the Civil War. However, these industries also polluted the river and threatened Philadelphia’s water supply. When an old mansion estate just north of Fairmount reservoirs became available in 1844, 2,400 citizens signed a petition to encourage the purchase of the property called Lemon Hill (Dept. of Parks and Recreation 2010). The City bought the 45 acre property in July at a cost of $75,000 and began the creation of Fairmount Park (Keyser 1886). In 1856, citizens again rallied support for the purchase of public lands and raised $60,000 of the $125,000 purchase price for the Sedgley Estate (Dept. of Parks and Recreation 2010). These purchases formed the foundation of Fairmount Park, one of the largest urban parks in the country today.

A big portion of Green City, Clean Waters calls for stream restoration and preservation throughout Fairmount Park. More than 150 years ago, Philadelphians invested in the City’s water system by preserving land to maintain water quality. The same sense of pride in the city and dedication to water quality that made the creation of Fairmount Park possible in 1844 will be critical to restoring the City’s creeks and rivers today.

Fairmount Water Works from 1830-1850.

The memory of Philadelphia’s prominent role in the founding of the nation was fresh in peoples’ minds. The city, though not as populous as New York City, was still one of the largest in the nation and a key player in the development of the country (Marks 2010, 201). Many public buildings were built to showcase the city during this time, but perhaps none exemplified that more than the oft painted Fairmount Water Works. The use of sustainable technology in the form of the waterwheels to pump water to the entire city cheaply and quickly garnered the admiration and support of the city. In addition, Frederick Graff’s design invited visitors to the Water Works to admire both the mechanical wonder of the wheels and the stunning natural scenery. Today, most water infrastructure hides underground, and what structures the public can see, such as wastewater treatment plants or holding tanks, have a purely functional design. As a result, many people understand little of the modern water system and have few reasons to get excited about a new waste water management plan.

However, the highly visible and publicly accessible projects recommended in Green City, Clean Waters have the power to change this perception. By using sustainable technology and civic-minded design, Philadelphia could generate the same sense of excitement that made Fairmount Water Works a worldwide wonder. In turn, this excitement and civic pride will aid in the full implementation of Green City, Clean Waters.

Borrowing from History There was much to be proud of in Philadelphia during the heyday of the

in Lemon Hill and Fairmount Park. Published

by Horace J. Smith, Philadelphia.

Marks, Arthur S. 2010. “Palladianism on

the Schuylkill: The Work of Frederick Graff

at Fairmount.” Proceedings of the American

Philosophical Society. Vol 154. No.2.

Marx, Leo. 1964. The Machine in the Garden:

Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America.

Oxford University Press, New York. 35th Anniversary Edition. 2000.

Miller, Richard G. 1982. “The Federal City 1783-

1800” in Philadelphia 300 Year History. Ed.

by Russell F. Weigley. W.W. Norton and

Company, New York, New York.

Philadelphia Water Department. 2009. Green City,

Clean Waters. Summary Report of

Philadelphia’s Long Term Control Plan

Update. Accessed December 6, 2010. <http://

www.phillywatersheds.org/what_were_doing/

documents_and_data/cso_long_term_control_

plan/.>.

Philadelphia Water Department, Office of

Watersheds. 2010. “FAQ.” Accessed December

6, 2010. <http://www.phillywatersheds.org/

watershed_issues/stormwater_management/

faq>.

Schein, David L. 2005. “Deep Tunnel” in The

Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. Accessed

March 2010. <http://encyclopedia.

chicagohistory.org/pages/367.html>.

Simpson, Henry. 1859. The lives of eminent

Philadelphians, now deceased. Accessed October 2010. <http://books.google.com/>.

Spar, Debora and Krzystof Bebenek. 2009. “To the

Tap: Public versus Private Water Provision

at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.”

Business History Review. Vol 83.

Underhill, Michael D. and Ian Savage Elliott. 2010.

“Waste and Wastewater Infrastructure.” In

The Handbook of Infrastructure Investing. Ed.

Michael D. Underhill. Hoboken, New Jersey:

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Workshop of the World. 2007. “Fairmount

Park.” Oliver Evans Press, 1990. Adapted for

the internet, 2007. Accessed March 2010.

<http://www.workshopoftheworld.com/

fairmount_park/fairmount_park.html>.

57

Dallas TOD:

Fact or Fiction?

A Study of Transit-Oriented Development near DART Red and Blue Line Rail Station – 1995 to 2005

the question, has Dallas TOD been built for the right people? Based on the analysis, this study concludes that many Dallas TOD projects create value and spur development, but they do not increase ridership. So are these projects really TOD’s? This type of development, generally transit-adjacent and not transit-oriented, defeats the purpose of TOD and simultaneously, DART misses an opportunity to increase its ridership.

TOD in Dallas Dallas, Texas is a sprawling, auto-oriented city. It is “interlaced with freeways and dotted with sprawling subdivisions, megamalls, and other space-hungry land uses” (TCRP 102, 2004). In the early 1990’s, Dallas began building out its plans for light-rail transit (LRT) service, which had been adopted by voters in 1983. From 1994 to 2004, DART built the Red and Blue LRT lines.

By John Tatum Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is not a new concept in America or, for that matter, the industrialized world. Throughout history, transportation methods and costs have driven infrastructure investment, which in turn have provided the foundation on which development can take place. Transit-oriented development refers to “a pattern of dense, diverse, pedestrian-friendly land uses near transit nodes that, under the right conditions, translate to higher ridership” (TCRP 102, 2004). TOD is intended to support transit connectivity, walkability, and a positive overall pedestrian environment with a mix of uses oriented towards the street. This re-orientation from personal toward public transportation infrastructure investment involves a conflict between short-term political needs and long-term land use and energy goals.

Many of the policy debates revolve around how this potential should be realized. They key idea behind TOD is that rail transit has the potential to add value to the station location as well as the overall system by generating incremental investment and new transit riders. Questions arise when development is adjacent to transit but not convenient enough to encourage residents 58

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or visitors to use transit. Is transit-adjacent development enough or is TOD the real goal?

The financial and social benefits attributable to transit investments are much debated and involve complex technical and political assumptions. “Transit is something of a conundrum. It works best serving highdensity, generally low-income communities located close to a major downtown, like New York-communities that developed before automobile travel was an option. It works worst serving low-density, auto-oriented Sunbelt suburbs, like Dallas” (ULI 2009).

Dallas TOD faces this conundrum. As Dallas builds transit infrastructure, it struggles to increase ridership because the necessary higher density urban form is not in place to support it. Social and economic disparities appear to have shaped TOD development in Dallas, denying housing, employment, and retail to those who have the fewest transit options, the least economic resources and the greatest need for service. Wealthier neighborhoods attract more development around transit than less well-to-do neighborhoods regardless of the fact that ridership is generally lower in higher income neighborhoods and higher in lower income neighborhoods. That is to say, development in these areas was already more likely to

occur, regardless of its orientation to transit.

Unfortunately, the areas with the highest number of residents who ride transit or who have the greatest propensity to ride transit have seen little or no development, and the concurrent goal of TOD—to increase ridership—fails to occur. Given these areas’ low median household incomes, the benefits of not owning a car are denied if transit is not available.

This paper seeks to explore the dynamics between transit-oriented development, ridership, and development in Dallas between 1995 and 2005. The goal was to determine the relationship between rail station locations and building permit value (which is assumed to be a measure of increased economic value and activity), ridership, and ultimately TOD benefit. More specifically, this study attempts to determine the social and economic factors that have resulted in private investment around rail transit locations in Dallas, Texas and how this development has impacted DART ridership. The goal is to provide information that describes historical trends and use that information to inform direction for future development, planning, and policy in sprawling, auto-oriented cities like Dallas.

More generally, this study tries to answer

Since the completion of the green section seen above, DART has been a major proponent of TOD in an attempt to increase ridership.

The City of Dallas, on the other hand, for the most part accepted a wait-and-see approach to TOD. More recently, after the much-touted success of Mockingbird Station, Dallas’s first TOD, the City as well as some of the outlying suburbs have begun to do more to encourage TOD. Overall, TOD in Dallas has been primarily a “place-making strategy” (TCRP 102, 2004). DART, the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG), and the City of Dallas promote TOD through a number of economic development activities and programs. Programs include the DART Local Assistance Program, the NCTCOG Sustainable Development Fund, and several Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Districts.

Activities include selling surplus land as well as providing infrastructure subsidies, property tax abatements and premium public services; however, much of this is a more recent phenomenon.

In the TCRP 102 Report titled TransitOriented Development in the United States: Experiences, Challenges, and Prospects, the authors write a summary of TOD in Dallas.

In that summary, they quote Jack Wierzenski of DART: “The City of Dallas provides a good example of how market factors and private sector-vision, rather than public policy, can spawn large-scale development next to transit. Since 1996, more than 1.2 billion in new commercial and residential investment has been constructed within walking distance of DART” (TCRP 102, 2004).

With the exception of the Cedars Project, this has happened without any subsidies, TOD planning or supportive policies by the regional planning agency, the City of Dallas, or DART (along the starter line). In

addition, there were “no changes to its plans or zoning codes to promote or allow TOD” (TCRP 102, 2004). While there have been a number of significant development projects next to DART stations, much of them have been transit-adjacent development (.25 miles - .5 miles) and are not truly transit-oriented development (less than .25 miles) (TCRP 102, 2004). Dallas must find ways to concentrate development around transit stations so that transit functions as a central, unifying hub of movement and not simply an ancillary element.

What is TOD Really About?

Ridership is the key component of TOD and as such, there is a direct relationship between the orientation of development around transit and ridership. In many cities, proximity to rail stations is a good predictor of who will use transit. In a 2000 Bay Area Travel Study, it was found that 19.6% of individuals living within a quarter mile of a rail stop traveled to work by rail transit while only 8.6% of individuals living beyond a half-mile commuted to work by rail. More generally, a number of studies during the 1990’s found that price premiums decreased with walking distance from the station. These price differences suggest that user value, defined as convenience or ease of use, decreases with distance. These data imply that a .25 mile and .5 mile radius around a rail station is a reasonable and reliable distance to identify probable users of transit and also define the limits of likely transit-oriented development impacts and influences. In addition, shorter distances to transit should be used in areas that have particularly cold winters or hot summers, such as Dallas, because temperature dramatically affects user comfort and propensity to ride transit all year.

Further, parking rates, automobile use and availability, and distance to desired locations also appear to influence ridership. Surveys from 1992 and 1993 of Bay Area workers living near BART stations, found that on average 32% commuted by rail. This is more than six times the regional average of 5%. In addition, automobile availability and parking prices had a huge bearing on ridership rates.

Station-area residents from households with no automobiles were 14 times more likely to commute than those from three-automobile households. In addition, 42% of station-area residents who paid for parking commuted by rail compared to 4.5% who received free parking (TCRP 102, 2004).

By expanding transit systems and increasing the number of access points, TOD has gained currency as a promising means of expanding the ridership base of many U.S. DART Construction Timeline

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from station) are the two most important factors affecting a population’s propensity to ride transit. The chart below clearly articulates these conclusions.

urban rail and bus systems. However, there are a significant number of other impacts.

As an approach to revitalizing communities, TOD constructs a new vernacular of architecture and urbanism, and creates a venue for increasing choice and diversity in local housing markets (TCRP 102, 2004).

More importantly, TOD projects enjoy landvalue rent premiums, which can generally outperform other competitive markets (TCRP 102, 2004). Overall, TOD has been shown to positively affect quality of life and increase social interaction.

However, in order for this land value and rent premium to exist as a result of TOD specifically and not just latent market forces that would have fostered high-value development anyway, demand for transit use must be fostered and demonstrated by the aforementioned increase in ridership.

If residents do not demand transit station access, they will not be willing to pay for its availability.

Who Uses DART and What Does This Tell Us About TOD? Given the documented benefits of TOD, there have been two studies that detail DART ridership and more importantly, demonstrate Dallas’ failure to accurately steer development to its riders. Since the first station opened in 1996, two studies have documented the socioeconomic characteristics of DART mass transit (bus, light-rail, and commuter-rail) riders. The first study, completed in 1998, made a number of key findings. However, accuracy of DART ridership numbers from 1996-2005 is not assured since new stations opened after 1998 and the stations that were open had only been in service for, at most, 2 years. In combination with a 2007 study of DART ridership, a more accurate picture of 60

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ridership characteristics can be generated.

Overall, these two studies helped “identify target market segments that represent the greatest potential for increased ridership” (NuStats 2008) as well as highlight the effects that years of TOD have had on ridership demographics and type of mass transit use.

DART 1998 Survey Results The 1998 study showed that a majority of DART rail (light-rail and commuter-rail lines) riders were low-income earners. Of weekday riders, [only] 47% reported an annual household income greater than $25,000.

In addition, 25% of rail riders reported a household income of less than $10,000 (NuStats, 1998).

This study grouped boarding stations into four location-based categories to identify the areas with the highest propensity to use mass transit: South of Convention Center Station, Downtown (Convention Center to Pearl St), North of Pearl, and West of Convention Center on Trinity Rail Express.

They found that “passengers boarding at the south stations were most likely to be regular patrons…and least likely to have a vehicle available [transit dependent]” (NuStats, 1998). The study also explained that drivealone was the preferred mode of transit to stations in the North while bus was the preferred mode of transit to stations in the South.

The results of weekday and weekend overall transit system ridership on bus and/or rail identify a number of key characteristics of mass transit users: 75% of mass-transit trips were home- or work based, 64% of riders walked to or from the station, 39% of riders had no household vehicle, 27% had a annual household income less than $10,000, and only 25% earned more than $35,000.

DART 2007 Ridership Survey Results The 2007 DART ridership study identified a number of particular characteristics of DART riders as well as identified a number of socioeconomic and location-based trends in ridership. Individuals included in this survey were DART fixed-route bus riders as well as light-rail and commuter-rail riders.

Income is an important factor, if not the most important factor, in transit mode choice. A detailed breakdown of annual household income of 1998 DART riders is not available so analyzing change in income distribution over time was not possible; however, the 2007 results are still significant. The distribution of annual household incomes of transit riders indicates that less affluent individuals have a higher propensity to ride transit. Of all transit riders surveyed, 67% reported annual household incomes lower than $35,000 (NuStats 2008).

What Was the Pattern of TOD in Dallas between 1995 and 2005 and What Can It Tell Us About the Future?

Regression Model: Building Permit Total Value In order to better understand the importance of individual independent variables, a regression comparing the total value of building permits with five variables was conducted. The R-squared value of .52 shows that 52% of the variation in BP Share was accounted for by the entire set of predictor variables. When the weighted combination of predictor variables values and BP Total Value are analyzed, the only variable with a t-statistic greater than 1.96 is median household income ratio (2.04); accordingly, the p-value for median household income ratio was .06, approaching the desired .05 level of statistical significance. While further analysis is needed to determine the exact effect that the median household income ratio has with total development around transit, the result is suggestive: median household income is an important factor

in predicting and explaining the amount of development that will take place around transit stations.

Descriptive Analysis of Spatial Location Maps identifying the spatial location of completed building permits were used to understand the relationship between citywide development patterns, TOD, and ridership. The maps provided a visual comparison of total Dallas development by property type compared to total development around rail stations. Four property types were considered for analysis: Single-Family Residential, Multi-Family Residential, Commercial Office, and Commercial Retail.

The commercial retail maps reveal a trend of highly dispersed development across the city. There is limited retail development in the South and East. The commercial office maps reveal a trend toward central business district and near-CBD development. In addition, development outside the CBD tends to be concentrated in the North and Northwest. There appears to be a complete absence of these projects in the South and East. Lastly, most of the development appears to be within .5 miles of a transit stations.

The multi-family residential maps show a central and northern development pattern.

Total Completed Building Permits by Type > $1M within Walkable Distance of Train Stations

It appears that higher-density development is happening closer to downtown while less dense development is happening more typically in suburban areas. Lack of development to the East and West, but most importantly to the South, is clear. The singlefamily residential maps show a concentration of development outside of transit accessible areas, almost exclusively in North Dallas.

A review of these maps shows a number of related trends. First, South Dallas has had the least development over one million dollars not just around transit but overall. Second, downtown Dallas has had the highest number of office projects. Retail development was very scattered across North, East, and West Dallas. Single-family residential development was concentrated in North Dallas, just north of Highland Park and University Park. Multi-Family Residential development was concentrated inside and just north of downtown. Overall, these maps show how development of different property types is clustered throughout Dallas.

More importantly, the map comparing total building permit value within a station area compared to average weekday ridership is striking. Development and ridership are higher in the CBD, which is assumed because

Total Completed Building Permits by Type > $1M within Walkable Distance of Train Stations

There is a relationship between income and propensity to ride. Specifically, the lower the income, the higher the propensity to ride mass transit even if convenience is decreased. The higher the income, the lower the propensity to ride mass transit, especially if convenience decreases. This is a significant finding that has many implications for transit planners.

Access and egress modes are important aspects of designing TOD’s. The chart above shows how many people walk to transit and the importance of walking distance to TOD. Developments more than .25-miles away from stations decrease walkability to and from transit, which is a key factor of convenience, transit mode choice, and possibly the price premium of TOD. The breakdown of transit ridership from 1998 and 2007 shows that clear patterns of ridership have stayed consistent over time.

Income and convenience (number of trips required to use transit and distance to and 61

infrastructure still dominates. As prices of commodities including oil and gas continue to rise, the cost benefit of transit becomes more apparent and the rent premiums of such development become less theoretical and more of a reality.

it is the center of commerce and employment.

What is most telling, however, is that while there is significant ridership from almost every station South of downtown Dallas, there is almost no TOD, except at Ledbetter Station. This was unfortunately a very small development relative to other TOD in Dallas between 1995 and 2005. While the map clearly shows this disparity in ridership and development, the chart below furthers this point. It clearly shows that development around transit has little to nothing to do with propensity to ride but rather everything to do with household income. It appears that the types of people who ride transit and would most likely benefit from living near transit are not seeing options become available.

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Will Dallas avail itself of the benefits of TOD to become more sustainable as a city? Or will it just call itself transit-oriented? The City of Dallas, DART, and the NCTCOG should consider a more hands-on approach to TOD planning and investment to guide their approach to planning for the future. More importantly, public officials should work to help eliminate the social and economic disparities that appear to have shaped TOD investment in Dallas and land uses region wide, increasing both transit ridership and revenue and social equity as a result.

What Can We Learn About TOD and Ridership from Dallas?

Building permit data was utilized to measure increased economic activity and value creation in proximity to rail stations in Dallas. The results of this study reveal a more complex pattern of relationships, many of which were unanticipated by reviewing previous research. The most striking finding was how little development has taken place within both .25 miles and .5 miles of DART stations in South Dallas. Over an eleven-year period, only a handful of projects of any type over a million dollars were completed there. While many describe Dallas and DART as hands-off when it comes to actively encouraging TOD, considerable resources have gone to other projects during that period. Many questions can be raised from these observations. Why has there not been more transit-oriented development overall and in South Dallas? What are the differences between the most developed tracts and least developed tracts? Why has development lagged in certain geographic sectors?

8th and Corinth to Ledbetter group includes Morrell, Illinois, Kiest and VA Medical Center Stations. The Cedars to Mockingbird group includes Union, West End, Akard, and Cityplace Stations. The Lovers Lane to LBJ Central group includes Park Lane, Walnut Hill, and Forest Lane.

Station Characteristics and Development The table below was created from building permit, demographic, and DART ridership data to provide insights into some of the questions generated by this study. It compares the average values of characteristics for a select group of stations that saw large amounts of TOD and a select group of stations that saw limited TOD. The

The characteristic differences between these stations are striking. The selected Southern Dallas station areas have predominantly lower-income populations with relatively higher levels of public transit usage. The selected Central and North Central Dallas station areas have predominantly highermedian household income populations with relatively lower levels of public transit usage. The selected Northern Dallas

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The line represents a .25-mile walking radius from the station. Development within the station area has been limited to single-family homes and suburban-style retail connected by autooriented arterials. Veterans Hospital (not-shown) is about .5 miles north of the station, limiting the accessibility of the hospital by rail.

station areas have predominantly average median household income populations with relatively lower levels of public transit usage. Most significantly, the South Dallas stations had only 1 project completed within .5 miles of a transit station from 1995 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2005.

Overall, this analysis supports the idea that over time development trends around transit are self-reinforcing. Once some development has taken place, it is more likely that development will continue. Overall, the difference in terms of investment and value creation is striking between North, Central, and South Dallas, which should be of interest to policy makers and political leaders.

Building Ridership and Walkable Communities If the actual goal of TOD is to increase ridership through creating vibrant, walkable, and sustainable communities, why not try to encourage development in areas of Dallas where residents have the greatest propensity to ride transit and where there has been the least amount of private development attention? The DART ridership study showed that lower income populations ride DART the most, while higher income populations will ride transit when it is the most convenient option but are more likely to drive if

The line indicates a .25-mile walking radius from the station. The most intense development has occurred outside of the walkable distance to transit. Highways and major streets are major pedestrian barriers to light-rail.

convenience is decreased. While lower income areas may require the largest amount of public investment, they will likely produce the highest number of riders. If these areas need the most public investment, TOD can add value. More importantly, while the goal of TOD is to increase ridership, the benefits to the City of Dallas or the areas where projects happen are the most important. City investment in TOD can provide the needed leverage for redevelopment while promoting other civic goals.

Convenience and Propensity to Ride Transit Propensity to ride transit is a factor of both income and convenience. Since a majority of mass transit trips are to or from work and home, convenience is determined by Bibliography GIS Data Clearinghouse. North Central Texas Council of Governments. Web. Sept. 2009.

Karash, Karla H., et all. Transit Cooperative Research Program 123. Understanding How Individuals Make Travel and Location

Decisions: Implications for Public

Transportation. Rep. Washington, D.C.:

housing and work location. Higher incomes allow greater housing choice, and greater housing choice allows for selection of the most convenient housing and transit options.

While higher income people can afford these choices, lower income people have fewer affordable housing options as well as a greater need for mass transit. Moreover, the lower income populations have the highest propensity to consistently ride transit and benefit financially from living around transit.

Experts agree that TOD in Dallas is still in its toddler stage. While there have been interesting and somewhat successful attempts to build around transit, TOD in its purest and most influential form has not yet been built. It is a struggle to build transit in a city built for cars, but planners and City officials must make sure that the appropriation of funds for TOD projects are invested more effectively. Orientation to transit is key and changing zoning codes such as parking requirements to accommodate this new form is important. In addition, the term walkable and walkability should not be used gratuitously; real projects should be built in which walk access is primary and auto access more limited. In many ways, Dallas is a case study in unfriendly pedestrian urban spaces.

When planning new areas, the social and financial benefits of walkability must be more prominent in both public policy and private investment decisions.

TOD in an Auto-Oriented City This study identifies more fundamental questions about market feasibility, TOD, consumer choice, and developer and lender risk aversion and preference. Dallas is in an interesting position as a city. While the transit infrastructure is in place, the auto-oriented

The greatest challenge for TOD in Dallas is and will be changing consumer preferences for transit and transit accessible areas.

Several projects have laid the groundwork for such future development but many more are needed. TOD policy must be designed to encourage long-term investment analysis and public policy support which will favor, both economically and politically, more sustainable development, whether more transit- or more auto-oriented.

Transportation Research Board, 2008.

NuStats. DART 1998 Transit Ridership Study. Rep. Dallas: DART, 1998.

NuStats. DART 2007 Transit Rider Survey - Final Report. Rep. Dallas: DART, 2008.

Ohland, Gloria, and Hank Dittmar. The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented

Development. Washington, D.C.: Island, 2004.

155-173.

Transit Cooperative Research Program. Transit- Oriented Development in the United States:

Experiences, Challenges, and Prospects. Rep. no. 102. Washington, D.C.: Transportation Research Board, 2004.

Urban Land Institute. Transportation for a New Era: Growing More Sustainable Communities.

Washington, D.C.: The Urban Land Institute, 2009.

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Invisible Paris: Urban

Planning and the Banlieues

By Matthew VanOosten Introduction Successful planning in Paris speaks for itself.

Haussmann’s wide boulevards lined with vibrant cafés mix grandeur and human scale shops. Paris’ business district, La Defense, blends historical and contemporary architecture. An extensive metro whisks Parisians and tourists throughout the city day and night. These highly visual testaments to planning make Paris the memorable place it is today. However, this paper is about the other side of Paris; one formed by planning decisions that have disproportionately injured the poor and has slowed the rise of Paris as an integrated, multicultural global city. The less visible side of Paris contains its post-World War Two social housing complexes on the edges of the city, the “Banlieues.” While this term simply means “suburbs” in French, the name has taken on a different connotation that includes a mix of blighted living quarters, social and economic problems, unwanted immigrants, and geographic isolation. The banlieues and the hundreds of thousands of people that inhabit them were, for many years, the invisible side of Paris, places that Parisians and the

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rest of the world failed to see. As a result of widespread riots in 2005 in the banlieues, and the ensuing world-wide media coverage, the banlieues are no longer invisible. Rather, they are the center of Paris’ contemporary planning agenda. In 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked ten of the world’s leading planners and architects to envision a Grand Paris. Many of the resulting plans focused on uniting Paris and the banlieues.

This paper examines the history of planning the banlieues, the struggles within the suburbs, and the 2009 plans for mending the relationship between Paris and the banlieues.

History of the Banlieues The banlieues refer to large, low-income apartments and social housing projects constructed on Paris’ urban periphery after World War Two to combat the doubleedged sword of a population boom and a battle-destroyed housing stock. During the war, “half a million dwellings had been destroyed… and some 1.4 million badly damaged, devastating about 20% of the total housing existing in 1939” (Pearsall 1984). In 1945, the number of births spiked in France,

and many people from Southern Europe flooded he city to help the rebuilding effort immediately after the war. These two events led to a high demand for housing, but France focused its efforts on rebuilding the economy, not housing. As a result, by 1954 shanty towns formed to the north and east of the city property to hold Paris’ swelling population (Power 1993). Eventually, the French government began building large amounts of state housing called Habitations à Loyer Modéré – HLM (dwellings at moderate rents) and also worked with the private sector to create secteur aide (subsidized private dwellings) to deal with the housing shortage (Pearsall, 1984).

In 1958, Paris introduced a new planning mechanism: the Zones a Urbanisation Priotitaire (ZUPs), which gave the government greater power to acquire land and commence large-scale housing and infrastructure developments. In order to increase efficiency, buildings in ZUPs continually increased in size and number of units per site (Power, 1993). At the time, many people considered these mass housing

plans a great planning success because they dealt quickly and effectively with the housing shortage emergency. Franc was not alone in handling this crisis. Much of Europe faced the same dilemma and France’s model for housing development was commended across Europe for its speed, large number of units, and low cost.

These massive housing structures, or grande ensembles, were built in the modernist style as “towers in the park” that was tremendously popular at the time (Pearsall 1984 and Preteceille 1973). The very structures that Paris opposed in the 1920’s with Le Corbusier’s “Plan Voison Pour Paris” were constructed on the greenfields at the edges of the city after World War Two (White 1984). The drab buildings and modernist functionalism of the estates fostered separation between people and from people to uses (Romanos 1979). The grande ensembles offered housing to many families but the proposed shops, schools and welfare programs were often lost in the rush to build more residences. Developers gave little thought to the relationship between housing and transportation systems, employment, and other retail and population centers.

While the privately constructed secteur aidé housing was built to higher standards in better locations than the HLMs, both parts of the building boom were inadequately coordinated and largely unsuccessful (Pearsall1984)

and the lack of good transportation were exceedingly inadequate for a labor pool demanding greater mobility. The middle class moved out of the developments and back into the city for better housing conditions, leaving only the lowest classes behind in the banlieues. The suburban housing developments became subject to a structural “new poverty” in which the sociopolitical-economic exclusion of those living in the tenements coupled with geographic exclusion and lead to an ever downward spiral of destitution (Marklund 1990 and Waquant 1993).

Growing Exclusion and the Reign of Invisibility By the 1970s the post-WWII housing transitioned from the “banlieues” meaning suburbs to “the Banlieue” denoting an area of poverty and crime and immigrants who were not “French.” In other words, an area meant to be cut off from society both physically and mentally. While the grande ensembles had the density to support retailing and commercial activities, insufficient space for investment led to a lack of jobs in the immediate area. In

addition, the government’s investment in public amenities usually lagged far behind housing construction and despite reforms in the 1960’s, low levels of service provision continued (White 1984). Without retail and commercial activities, there was little incentive for rail transit to the Banlieue so some residents relied on private automobiles.

However, most people living in the lowincome housing developments relied on inefficient public bussing and suffered from the resulting class exclusion. The lack of amenities led to additional disinvestment in the community. Vandalism and delinquency grew commonplace and the Banlieue became stigmatized by the rest of Paris, leading to even greater social and economic exclusion.

The full effects of discrimination started showing in the late 1970s when employers began refusing jobs to those living in the Banlieue based on their home address (Waquant 1993). Local unemployment became entrenched and police also began discriminating based on location: “All youths recount the change of attitude of policemen when they notice their address during identity checks” (Dubet 1987 in Waquant 1993).

La Courneuve at night

By the 1960s, France still had a booming population and when the Algerian War ended in the summer of 1962, over one million North Africans immigrated to France within weeks. The immigrants provided the cheap labor needed to build additional housing, and new construction followed the pattern of inexpensive, low-quality suburban post-war housing (Power 1993). France’s continuing economic growth sustained this sequence and more and more immigrants moved into the grande ensembles. By 1975, France reported that it had finally struck a balance between the provision of dwellings and the number of households, a considerable accomplishment in a Europe still struggling to replace housing destroyed in World War Two and to construct new dwellings for a rising immigrant population (Power 1993).

Despite the celebration, conditions in the banlieues deteriorated quickly. Maintenance of costs of the cut-rate buildings increased steadily and few property managers came from the city to oversee repairs. The location of the banlieues on the urban periphery,

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Perhaps most importantly, the residents of the Banlieue faced an identity crisis. This was particularly common in youth born to immigrants in the Banlieue. Even if one was born in France (making him or her officially a French citizen) he or she was rarely recognized as such. In this case, some French labeled them “second generation immigrants.” As a result, a large portion of youth in the banlieues felt neither attached to their parents’ homeland nor to their own country, France. This lack of identity, coupled with all forms of exclusion led to countless Banlieue residents feeling like ghosts, completely invisible (Waquant 1993).

Rising Visibility In 1981, architects Roland Castro and Michel Cantal-Dupart started a think-tank to explore the urban issues of exclusion and inequity. In 1983, the group took formal shape adopting the name Banlieues 89. The 89 in the name

an agency was created to work closely with the prime minister on these urban issues (Gravelaine 1988 and Roberts 2000).

Banlieues 89 worked closely with local mayors to design parks and plazas to uplift the dreary, forgotten urban periphery. The designers worked to meet the functional needs of the residents, change the image of the banlieues as a place to live, and to imbue a greater sense of identity and significance to its inhabitants. The ideas behind Banlieues 89 gained traction in the press and public eye but the movement was scaled back despite its popularity when Mitterand lost significant power to the conservative government in 1986. Eventually, the program ended in 1991.

Though it met a disappointing end, Banlieues 89 left its mark across Paris’ periphery housing having completed well over 100 projects valued at more than a half billion francs (Roberts 2000).

Faces of the Banlieue in La Haine

was taken from 1789, the year the French Republic was formed – a testament to unity.

At the same time, socialist French President Francois Mitterand made the urban crisis in the Banlieues a priority for his second period of office (Roberts 2000). Castro took Mitterand on a helicopter ride over the Banlieue to highlight the grim differences between a banlieue such as La Courneuve and more affluent suburbs like ChatenayMalabry. After the President recognized the importance of the Banlieues 89 program,

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The fall of Banlieues 89 left a void public attention to the Banlieue but a new medium gave those in the banlieues a voice: film.

Starting in the early 1990s, an entire movie genre in France was spawned called ‘Banlieue Films’. While some ‘Banlieue films’ fell to stereotypes of crime and ghetto culture, many others raised awareness of the complicated issues facing the Banlieue and brought worldwide attention to the dilemma.

Geographer Amy Siciliano comments on the importance of the genre: The Parisian banlieues, long absent from the dominant French imaginary, have materialized as spatialized, racialized markers of politicaleconomic crisis, social fragmentation, crime and violence (Siciliano 2007).

No film in the genre has been as influential as 1995’s La Haine (Hatred). The film won numerous awards including Best Director (Mathieu Kossovitz) at the Cannes Film Festival that year. La Haine is unique in that it focuses not just on the social and economic exclusions present in the Banlieue but also instills a sense of geographic isolation. The film pays great attention to “…the social relations shaping the boundaries of the ‘urban’ and ‘suburban’…” (Siciliano 2007).

Freedom of movement and conversely, the lack of it, are ever present themes as the film follows the tense twenty four hours in the lives of three Banlieue youths shortly after an uprising in the housing projects. In striking black and white shots, the picture immerses the viewer in the grey, concrete filled surroundings of the Banlieue. The representation of the Banlieue is both open and veiled, challenging the viewer to understand the people and the surroundings.

The same year La Haine was released, newly elected President Jacques Chirac branded the banlieues as the “fractures at the end of the twentieth century” and announced a national plan for integration (Reader 1993 and Siciliano 2007). Things looked up for the banlieues but the French Government’s plan was gravely ill-conceived: “What emerged rather, was a renewed form of colonial governance” (Siciliano 2007). A strict ‘broken windows’ regime took hold of the Banlieue and France changed penal codes to imprison people for actions like loitering (Siciliano 2007). These largely racist measures furthered segregation. France turned its back on seeking integration and the discriminatory practices that so many Banlieue films fought against only increased. La Haine’s release coincided with actual uprisings in the banlieues of Paris in 1995, eerily foreshadowing the much larger eruption of violence that would happen ten years later.

The Paris Riots of 2005 A 2005 New York Times interview with a 22 year old resident of La Courneuve, one of the banlieues, shows the acute frustration and alienation of people living in the post-war housing projects.

“The sun never shines. The buildings are gray.

The people are gray. Everything is gray. It’s the same people and there is nothing to do, nothing to do. You wake up every morning looking for work.

But why? There isn’t any” (Sciolino).

In the summer of 2005, tension was thick. The banlieues had remained areas of invisible youth, caught in a web of socio-economic exclusion, discrimination, drugs, and violence. The young man’s mother explains:

“Grand Paris” and the Banlieue As the post-riot tension eased, Sarkozy began hinting at changes to French immigration and integration policies. Still, many wondered if the riots would usher in new beginnings between Paris and its urban periphery or if these ideas were just attempts at amelioration. In 2008, there seemed to be an answer. Continuing his

Paris of “1000 projects” which would increase accessibility and mobility of the region.

The plan’s centerpiece was a transit system design to strengthen connections between the peripheral suburbs and the center of Paris (RSHP 2008). Rogers sought to create a freer moving, multi-nodal city where jobs and services could be accessed from any point in Paris. The longstanding exclusion

“Why do you think the young have revolted?” she asked. “There is no exit, no factories, no jobs for them. They see too much injustice, too, too, too much. Society no longer offers them anything - no values, no morality, no place” (Sciolino).

On October 27, 2005, the accidental deaths of two teenagers while fleeing police in the Clichy-sous-Bois suburb ignited controversy.

This event was the boiling point for many Clichy-sous-Bois residents, an impoverished banlieue to the east of Paris in which 50 percent of the population is under 25 years old and 25 percent are unemployed (Ossman and Terrio 2006). Rioting started in Clichysous-Bois and spread throughout Paris and eventually throughout France. The riots were further instigated by conservative party president Nicolas Sarkozy’s initial reactions famously calling the two teenagers “delinquent scum.” The impacts of the conflict were immense: thousands upon thousands of cars set ablaze, arson cases, injuries, and thousands of arrests. The fiery uprising lasted until a second state of emergency was called on the twentieth day of rioting, November 16th. The social upheaval in 2005 garnered the attention of the press worldwide. As Ossman and Terrio describe: “If the French riots of 2005 so dominated international news… It is that they are an occasion to explore a reconceptualization of the spaces of danger, culture, territory, and sovereignty that is taking place” (2006).

The type of civil unrest exhibited in France, especially in the Banlieue of Paris, had not been seen in the western world for some time. Countries like England and the United States whoed a direct need to understand cause of the riots because the social conditions of the Banlieue are shared by many populations in their respective countries. After 30 years of demonstrated struggles, the riots served as the first real wake-up call to Paris, and the western world about its treatment of the people in the Banlieue.

Uprising in the Banlieues

reversal of previous thinking, President Sarkozy decided that it was time for a great change in Paris and called upon ten of the world’s top architects and planners to create a vision for a “Grand Paris.” He was convinced that bold, spirited vision could bring France out of the world-wide economic crisis. Over the next nine months, the ten teams generated an array of work hoping to provide a solution to the greatest planning problems facing Paris. Planners unveiled their designs in March of 2009 and many of the plans focused on the Banlieue and how it could be better integrated with the city proper (Daou 2009). This signaled the first large government rethinking of the Banlieue in twenty years, since the closing of Banlieue 89. Two of the most prominent master plans that incorporated the banlieues were done by Richard Rogers, a 2007 Pritzker Prize winning architect, and Roland Castro, architect and founder of the Banlieues 89 program.

Richard Rogers collaborated with the London School of Economics and Arup to craft his vision for a Grand Paris. His master plan envisioned not a single grand project, but a

of the Banlieue would slowly be erased as it blended into a modern, polycentric metropolis.

As part of strengthening the peripheral suburbs alongside the transit system, Rogers also created smaller-scale community plans focused on land uses and urban design. The pilot project for these would be Clichy-sousBois, the epicenter of the 2005 riots. Great consideration was given to developing the troubled area into a mixed use community to broaden amenities, job opportunities and allow for greater accessibility. Rogers made a powerful statement about the future of Paris by combining big ideas for transit design with local community plans.

Castro’s master plan, much like Rogers’ work, was regional in scale, but incorporated many localized features. At the regional level, his plan called for Paris to be split into wedges where each region would have specific foci for growth. Castro also paid special attention to ecology and green systems in order to tie the banlieues into the urban fabric. Part of his scheme included a park system similar to Frederick Law Olmsted’s emerald necklace.

The green ring would provide park space

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to the banlieues and double as a growth boundary for Paris. This would increase the density of the urban periphery and allow for a mix of people and amenities. In Castro’s plan, the banlieues would still be high rises, but modernized and brought into a vibrant urban system.

When the plans were announced in March of 2009 in the middle of the economic recession, many people inside and outside of France through these grand visions were simply a marketing campaign that would be pushed aside. In April of 2009, Sarkozy shocked many when he announced a $35 billion euro rail plan designed to unite Paris and its urban periphery. While most of the world was rescaling its spending, Sarkozy hearkened back to Daniel Burnham’s “Make no small plans” when he said, “The economic crisis can only be beaten by grand projects.”

Along with this plan, he stated the need for more monuments like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe in the periphery of the city (Lichfield 2009). The banlieues were no longer invisible. Sarkozy understood

that the plans for a Grand Paris focused on the suburbs for a reason and he seized the opportunity to not merely create a legacy for himself but to truly make a Grand Paris.

Conclusion There is much to take away from the story of the banlieues. It is a reminder that, like many urban planning issues, an ideal solution in the present is not always ideal twenty years later. Not only must one plan for the future but one must be ready to quickly adapt to change. While many cities across Europe faced similar problems among their post-war urban periphery, Paris’ problems with the banlieues have been the most apparent. Some of these issues might have been out of Paris’ hands but many others were largely due to a lack of understanding between natives and immigrants, between lower and upper classes and to the inability of cities and governance systems to adapt to rapid urban change.

The problems faced by the banlieues also speak to the importance of comprehending geographies of inclusion/exclusion and the many structures in place that keep “the

other” separated from the city. There are many similarities between the issues faced in the Banlieue and the American ghetto (Loic Wacquant 1993). The fiery tipping point of the 2005 Paris riots lays witness to the violence, frustration, hopelessness, and despair these spaces of social-economicpolitical-geographic exclusion can create. In the face of the riots, the similarities between Paris and other cities must be taken seriously.

The evolution of the banlieues and how Paris and the French state evolved with them is a vital story in the canon of planning case studies. Many problems still exist in the Banlieue and the progression towards change has been labored and spiked with tension.

Yet the 2009 Grand Paris designs represent a key transformation in placing planning at the forefront of strengthening the Banlieue’s relationship to the city and creating a better whole. If the city can follow through with these bold visions, the Banlieue, the invisible space of Paris, will one day become an addition to the visible tributes to Paris’ planning successes.

The Dead End: The Failure of Cincinnati’s Subway, and The Potential of Future Urban Revitalization Through Historic Infrastructure.

By Ryan Bash “This is our first chance to seize…the opportunity to actually DO SOMETHING with the subway” –The Cincinnati Post, 1 November 1946 “We cannot make this a modern, efficient city by pouring new millions into an obsolescent form of urban transit…present discussion seems pointless.” –The Cincinnati Enquirer, 20 November 1948

bibliography Daou, Marc. 2009. “Grand Paris Proposals

Unveiled.” Accessed November 2009.

www.france24.com.

Lichfield, John. 2009. “Sarko’s 35bn Plan for a

‘Greater Paris.’” The Independent. Accessed

November 2009. http://www.independent.

co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkos-euro35bn-rail-

plan-for-a-greater-paris-1676196.html Marklund, S. 1990. “Structures of Modern Poverty.”

Acta Sociologica 33 (1). pp 125-140.

Ossman, Susan and Susan Terrio. 2006. “The

French Riots: Questioning Spaces of

Surveillance and Sovereignty.” International

Migration 44(2), pp. 5-21

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Pearsall, Jon. 1984. In Martin Wynn, ed. Housing in

Europe. New York, St. Martins Press, Inc. Preteceille, E. 1973. La Production des Grands

Ensembles. Mouton, Paris.

Power, Anne. 1993. Hovels to High Rise: State Housing in Europe since 1850. London, Routledge.

Reader, Keith. 1995. “After the Riot.” Sight and

Sound. November, pp. 12-16.

Roberts, Marion. 2000. “Banlieues 89: Urban

Design and the Urban Question.” Journal of

Urban Design 5(1), pp. 19-40.

Romanos, Michael C. 1979. Western European Cities

in Crisis. Toronto, D.C. Heath and Company.

Sciolino, Elaine. 2005. “Immigrants Dreams Mix

with Fury in a Gray Place Near Paris. New

York Times, December 12.

Siciliano, Amy. 2007. La Haine: Framing the Urban Outcasts. Toronto, ACME Editorial Collective.

Waquant, Loic J. D. 1993 Urban Outcasts: Stigma

and Division in the Black American Ghetto and

the Frenc Urban Periphery. Joint Editors and Basil Blackwell Ltd. White, Paul. 1984. The West European City: A

Social Geography. New York, Longman Group Limited.

Wynn, Martin. 1984. Housing in Europe. New York,

St. Martins Press, Inc. Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners. 2008. “Grand

Paris.” Accessed March 2011. http://www.

richardrogers.co.uk/render.aspx?siteID=1&navI

Ds=1,4,25,1690.

Potential. This single word summarizes the city of Cincinnati at the turn of the twentiethcentury (CBD Photo). The city was one of the ten largest in the country, and it continually saw decennial population growth of fifteen to twenty percent. Like many important cities of the Progressive Era that faced this growth in population, it began to respond by fighting incompatible neighboring uses of land, controlling staggering development, curbing political corruption, developing infrastructure, and managing sewer and water. Cincinnati was also similar to other major cities in that it began construction on a subway system in 1917. But, distinct from New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the subway system was constructed but never opened. In fact, nearly one hundred years later, the system has never had a single passenger.

There are multiple reasons for the failure that has been dubbed, “Cincinnati’s white elephant” (Singer 2003). Some are political, and some are economic; but the poor timing and the city planners’ inability to consider the line an important part of the city infrastructure are the most puissant causes. Moreover, it is asserted here that this breakdown in infrastructure planning is a cause of Cincinnati’s population decline and the economic degeneration that has plagued the city since the end of World War Two. This often-untold story of failure is an important waypoint in the history of American transportation planning, and it holds lessons for developing and revitalizing cities across the country. Specifically, it highlights the difficult and highly rewarding task of navigating and anticipating economic hardship, future need, politics, construction, funding, and popular beliefs; all of which are required of the planning profession in order to positively impact a city and its legacy.

The Graphic Dream and George Kessler In 1885 a local magazine called The Graphic published a simple drawing that sparked the dream of a Cincinnati subway system.

The magazine discussed its distaste for the Miami-Erie Canal, a transport line that ran through a section of the city. By this time

the canal had fallen into disuse and been outmoded by the interurban rail line that provided faster and timelier service. The Graphic, disliking the rail line, proposed draining the canal and turning it in to a new transportation line with a parkway above and subway below. The magazine used a Victorian image resembling an idealized London to spur interest. This enticing, idealistic idea, although popular, was put on hold as the city recovered from the 1884 Courthouse Riot that resulted in hundreds of injuries and fifty-six civilian deaths. In addition, at the time, the city was plagued by political corruption and lacked a clear voice allowing such an undertaking as the conversion of the canal to proceed (Singer 2003).

During this time of social turmoil, the streets of the city were equally chaotic. The mixture of trolleys, horse-drawn vehicles, pedestrians, and the newly-invented automobiles were too much for the narrow, congested city roads (vine and 3rd streets photo; view from mount adams photo). By 1907, after a series of violent pedestrian deaths, city hall commissioned and received A Park System for the City of Cincinnati, written by notable Kansas City landscape architect and city planner George Kessler (1862-1923). In line 69

with au courant City Beautiful ideals, Kessler recommended an increase in roadways, public squares, parks, and playgrounds. His most notable recommendation however, was the creation of a grand boulevard on top of the abandoned Miami-Erie Canal, much as The Graphic recommended twenty years earlier. This parkway was to be 150 feet wide, and have a road on either side of a central green space that contained fountains, benches, gardens, and sufficient walkways for pedestrians (Kessler 1907). Kessler, however, did not address a rapid transit line.

Boss Cox and Good Government These advances in planning were not met with equal progress politically. At this time—the late nineteenth century—the old boss-driven political system was alive and well. It would take both Henry Hunt’s (18781956) mayoral ascension in 1913 and the rewritten City Charter of 1926 that called for a reduction of elected council members from 32 to 9 to topple the corrupt political body (The Charter Committee of Cincinnati 2006).

Importantly, the council changes reduced the influence of George Cox and his republican followers, who ran the city by drawing upon their political connections. A key “Charterite” who led the reform was Murray Seasongood (1878-1983), who was elected mayor by the new council on January 1, 1926. He was as dedicated to positive change as any mayor had been in the city up to that point; when questioned by a reporter about his hobbies, Seasongood replied, “good government” (McKay 1979).

By 1913, with the political tide turning, the city was ready to begin the progressive process of planned infrastructure development. With Henry Hunt as mayor, Cincinnati sought to carryout Kessler’s plan. However Hunt did not want to merely copy the plan; he sought to add to Kessler’s recommendations. Namely, he was inspired to develop a rapid transit line beneath the central roadway just as Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Boston had already done. To study the feasibility, City Council appropriated $50,000 to commission a report from George F. Swain (1857-1931)

of the Boston Rapid Transit Commission and Boston city engineer F.B. Edwards (Electric Railway Journal 1914). In 1914, they published the Report on Plans and an Estimate of Cost of a Rapid Transit Railway and Interurban Railway Terminal for the City of Cincinnati, Ohio (subway station photo).

By the spring of 1917, a $6 million bond was issued by City Council and citizens, inspired by images like the aged one from The Graphic, overwhelmingly approved the rapid transit construction (subway ballot photo).

Unfortunate Setbacks and Oversight However, foreshadowing the pace of the project, construction did not begin immediately. The United States entered World War One in June 1917. Not only did much of Cincinnati’s workforce take up arms and fight overseas, but because no capital bonds were issued during the war, construction did not begin until January 1920. Immediately, the project encountered its second setback: construction costs nearly doubled after the war. For example, the excavation of the subway was estimated in 1915 to cost $0.80 per cubic yard, but was contracted at $1.25 in 1919 (Singer 2003). Despite this financial impediment, construction continued to proceed, but by 1927, with little funds remaining and only 24% of the subway line completed, the city commissioned the Beeler Organization of New York to estimate the additional cost required and the future returns should the project continue. The report determined that an additional $10.6 million would be needed and that the revenue from the rapid transit line would total approximately $391,326 in its inaugural year (The Beeler Organization 1927), an amount that pleased the report’s recipients.

Despite any potential profits to be made from the subway, the plan was also fighting another disruption. The 1925 Official City Plan of Cincinnati included Chapter VII entitled “Rapid Transit” that targeted the already faltering line. The shortest chapter in the plan, it asserted that rapid transit was useless in the city because it did not service

Post showed that many citizens had forgotten about the subway and the arrested construction underground. Unsurprisingly, with both the economic depression of 1929 and World War Two in 1941, no further progress was made on the subway. The project unofficially ended after one final blow: a 1936 survey conducted by the Engineers’ Club of Cincinnati. It concluded that, “[the rail line] should be forgotten—as part of the toll of progress” (Singer 2003).

This sentiment reigned for the next forty years, during which time many proposals surfaced that sought to reuse the tunnels, but no action was taken.

The 1916 special referendum that dedicated $6 million to the construction of the subway. It was overwhelmingly approved.

citizens as directly as the trolley system.

Moreover, it stated that the number of people who would benefit from the line was not sufficient to justify the cost. It ended the chapter by asserting that, the construction and operation of the balance of the Rapid Transit Loop will undoubtedly remain a financially undesirable undertaking within the life of the present generation, to say the least…it is confidently believed that the money that would have to be spent in completing the loop could be far more profitably spent in developing main radial thoroughfares… . (The City Planning Commission of Cincinnati 1925) Therefore the popular belief that the automobile and bus were the waves of the transportation future infiltrated infrastructural planning in 1925 Cincinnati.

On the political end, Seasongood, who was now mayor, gladly “[threw] the baby out with the bathwater” as it were and effectively shut down construction. Because many of the project’s advisors and profiteers were associated with the corrupt “Boss Cox” party, preventing further work on the line, in his view, was in effect curbing corruption and the old political system (Radel 2003).

The emphasis on the roadway and autodependency was advanced with the completion of the Central Parkway road above the subway in 1928. It became so popular that a 1940 survey by The Cincinnati

A Dream Deferred: Timing, Funding, and Planning The question remains as to why exactly the subway system failed to be successful in Cincinnati in a time when other major cities successfully implemented rapid transit lines.

Although the city faced unfortunate setbacks, including the World Wars, Great Depression, and political infighting, these issues were hardly Cincinnati-specific. It appears that there are three reasons: the relatively late planning and construction of the system, the means with which the project was funded, and the planners’ early acceptance and reliance on the automobile.

In relation to the other large cities of the day, Cincinnati was at least a decade behind in creating any sort of rapid transit line. The first of Chicago’s elevated lines

opened in 1895 (Borzo 2007), and Boston, which has received credit for the first true American subway, carried its first passenger in 1897. The Boston line was so popular upon opening than an estimated 111,000 riders-- approximately 20% of the city population-- took a trip within the first six hours of operation (The Boston Daily Globe 1897). Philadelphia and New York City were relatively late to the game, with New York City’s first subway opening line in 1904 (New York City Subway 2005) and Philadelphia’s opening in 1907 (Smerk 2008). Each of these lines was established and operational before Cincinnati’s construction even began at the end of the 1910’s. The ten-year discrepancy overlaps with both World War One and the invention and subsequent rise in popularity of the Ford Model T, a car with a price tag and efficient assemblage that made it affordable to the masses. With the rise in popularity of the automobile in general during this decade, the Cincinnati subway was poorly timed.

Moreover, Cincinnati differs from New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago in how the projects were funded and in which sector controlled the initial development.

Specifically, each of these four successful rapid transit lines were initially developed privately and only in the mid-twentieth century did they come under public or city control. For example, the South Side Elevated, Lake Street Elevated, Metropolitan

West Side Elevated, and Northwestern Elevated railroad companies (later consolidated to form the Chicago Rapid Transit Company) operated as private firms from 1892 until the publically owned Chicago Transit Authority assumed all assets and operations on October 1, 1947 (The Chicago El 2005). Similar chronologies applied to Philadelphia (whose lines were privately held until 1960, Pawson 1979), Boston (privately held until 1947, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority 2011), and New York City (privately held until 1953, Metropolitan Transportation Authority 2009).

With all, or most of the funding for these coming from private capital, construction arguably proceeded more quickly and with less political involvement than Cincinnati’s line. Moreover, with approximately half a century of time to operate as for-profit entities, these lines captured and maintained the attention and momentum of investors eager to make a profit. As private entities, the Philadelphia, Chicago, New York City, and Boston lines all became mature and efficient, which ensured their sustainability in the respective cities. These exist in contrast to Cincinnati, which was a purely public conception and was funded only through capital bonds.

But, the timing and funding of construction alone does not explain the failure. Cincinnati planners both in 1925 and in 1948 simply did not view rapid transit as practical. It was this

An image of the subway tunnel today. Despite the flooding litter, the system is still in operable condition.

View of downtown Cincinnati in 1908.

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responding to their environment and the real, physical need to move people around the city, decentralize the population, and make provisions for a growing preference for personal motor transport.

View of Vine and Third Streets with the Burnett House in the foreground, circa 1900. Note the multiple modes of transportation present on the street.

lack of perceived viability, along with the surging popular interest in the automobile, which resulted in the subway’s failure.

As mentioned earlier, the 1925 city plan rejected the subway because it was thought to be a poor investment and an outdated idea. Instead, the plan focused on roadway construction in the city and its environs; and, while it supported trolley service and buses, it rejected infrastructure that had already received a substantial investment and had been partially constructed. Moreover, the subway was again neglected in the 1948 Cincinnati Metropolitan Master Plan, which concluded its chapter on public transit with, “the idea of completion of the Rapid Transit Project as such should be abandoned and the existing tubes put to other use” (The City Planning Commission of Cincinnati 1948).

The news media seemed in support of this conclusion. The Enquirer reported, “we cannot make this a modern, efficient city by pouring new millions into an obsolescent form of urban transit” (Singer 2003). Instead the newspaper supported the proposed massive expressway, “the expressway program will come much closer than the subway to doing the whole job that needs desperately to be done” (Singer 2003).

Therefore, the Cincinnati subway failed to be completed because of its late construction—brought on largely by the lack of governmental leadership— and resulting setbacks brought about by war and economic conditions. The situation was aggravated by the American population’s fascination with the automobile after the Second World War. Finally, the reluctance of planners and policy makers in the city to invest the additional required capital to complete the job and their unwillingness to view the subway tunnels as anything but an artifact of earlier times only accelerated the decline of the rapid transit system. It should be noted that although it is easy to view the actions taken by the planners as naïve or simplistic, they were 72

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Do Something! Economics, Society, and Opportunity The lack of a subway line has not only economically damaged the Queen City but has also slowed the development of cultural identity and civic pride. As the nation entered the twentieth-century, Cincinnati was one of the wealthiest and largest cities. However unknown at the time, the lack of rapid transit in a city of this size has had multiple, lingering negative effects. Rapid transit has the potential to increases tourism, and attracts corporate headquarters, marketing firms, and other professional services. On the other hand, congested roadways can increase the cost of labor through delays. , while roadway congestion actually increases the cost of labor via resulting delays. Moreover, on a citywide scale, transportation accounts for 6-12% of its gross product (Oregon Department of Transportation 2004). Therefore, Cincinnati’s decline in ranking and prominence is in no small part due to its lack of rapid transit.

The missed economic opportunity does not only apply to passenger rail in the city of Cincinnati. In 1947, a plan to lease the subway for freight use was put forth but ultimately rejected for fear of irreversibly altering the lines, thus preventing future use for passenger transit (Singer 2003). To have used the lines for manufacturing and freight transportation would have increased the distribution efficiency and provided for greater economic growth as transportation developed. The large economic benefit in using the rail thus would have been provided for by two factors. First, the market size for industry would have increased. This growth would have been accomplished through the improvement in production, distribution, and consumption (Rodrigue 2008). Second, the Cincinnati based industries at the time would have become more productive as they were able to access a larger and more diverse base of inputs (materials, energy, labor, and parts), and a broader market for outputs (Rodrigue 2008). While it may have been both expensive and difficult to convert the lines to freight transportation, the rejection of this use for a vague notion that the rail lines would one day be used for passenger transport highlights the imprecise and blurry vision that existed throughout the life of the project.

Ironically, the congestion of Cincinnati’s roadways in the 1950s and 60s was largely a result of the emphasis placed on road construction. It has been estimated that if the

existing subway line had been completed and used for passenger transit, it would have added approximately $911 million dollars in benefits to the area’s economy by 2030. This value is in stark contrast to the $85 million in estimated benefits that have been made by expanding the roadways (Radel 2003).

When adjusting the 1917 cost of subway construction to 2011 dollars, they are even more startling; $6.1 million in 1917 is worth approximately $104.2 million today (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011). Therefore, although this is a simplistic calculation, had the project been finished it would have been a lucrative investment.

It is clear that a rapid transit line was fundamental in developing a modern, competitive city and that the lack thereof resulted in loss of people, industry, and wealth. The missed economic benefits as a result of never completing and opening the line for use as either passenger rail or freight transportation have drastically altered the shape, size, and function of Cincinnati.

Perhaps instead of depopulating, it would have today ranked in the top-ten cites based on population, as it did in 1917 when construction began.

On a social level, it has been suggested that the lack of rapid transit has left the city an under-formed identity, distinct culture, and regional pride. As one Cincinnatian observed, it’s both amazing and frustrating to think how close Cincinnati was to having rail transportation…undoubtedly, a completed subway would’ve had profound social, cultural and economic effects on the city… we’re left with only highways and roads to commute and travel through the region, it’s fascinating to think how transportation in this area could’ve possibly benefitted from the subway. (Bombay 2010) While rapid transit often serves to link a city’s important businesses and cultural and historic landmarks and to convey people to these sites, it also takes on its own identity.

City natives base some of their local pride on the unique character of their transit lines; with self-described lovers of the New York Map of Subway

Subway, and the Philadelphia SEPTA system (PhillyGurl and MustLoveSepta 2010). A rapid transit line not only carries people en masse but it also links itself with the emotional and cultural health and satisfaction of the citizens; it provides an amenity that many value. While Cincinnati does not lack public transit altogether, the city’s heavy reliance on cars, buses and highways has created a more decentralized, disjointed society in which public interactions are rarer. A concentration in this independent mindset may disunify the city. While this is much more speculative, the opinion of the Cincinnati resident quoted above demonstrates that a rapid transit line brings cultural, societal, and economic benefits, and provides a certain amount of immeasurable, local pride.

Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: Conclusion The failings of the Cincinnati Subway System are clear. While the city faced misfortune, unforeseen economic hardship, and political corruption, it is the timing of construction, the funding source, the heavy reliance on automobiles, and the city planners’ focus on roadway construction that resulted in an unfinished rapid transit line.

The negative economic and social health and decreased civic pride resulting from these decisions catalyzed the decline of city growth

bibliography Author Unknown. “Proposed Rapid Transit Road at Cincinnati.” Electric Railway Journal (October 31, 1914): 1027.

Author Unknown. “Experience of the First Subway Riders in Boston.” The Boston Daily Globe, September 1, 1897.

The Beeler Organization, Report to the City of Cincinnati on a Rapid Transit Railway. New York: The Beeler Organization, 1927.

Bombay, Gordon. “Cincinnati’s Subway.” March 8, 2010. http://queencitydiscovery.blogspot. com/2010/03/cincinnatis-subway.html (accessed October 30, 2010).

Borzo,Gregory. The Chicago “L”. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2007.

The Charter Committee of Cincinnati, “History of The Charter Committee of Greater Cincinnati.” 2006. http://www. chartercommittee.org/history (accessed October 30, 2010).

The Chicago El, “The CTA is Created: A New Era Begins (1947).” 2005.http://www.chicago-l. org/history/CTA1.html (accessed February 16, 2011).

The City Planning Commission of Cincinnati, The Cincinnati Metropolitan Master Plan.

and wealth through the 1960s. Although more modern plans have been put forth to make use of the lines, the city to date has not acted (subway today photo; micklenborg cropper photo). So, it is to be determined, just as it always has been, if Cincinnati will ever make use of a vast resource that is literally waiting beneath its feet.

Abandoned Infrastructure, Planning, and Revitalization Unfortunately the story of Cincinnati, while rare, it not unique in American transportation history. For example, Rochester has a two-mile subway line that operated from 1927 until 1956. Today the line sits unused, similarly waiting for something to happen.

The sentiment of some Cincinnati residents is echoed by people in Rochester, “it’s [the subway] either a giant hole waiting to be filled with dirt or an impressive asset in a city that needs to revitalize its downtown” (Mercer 2007). This assertion is an important lesson that should be noted by planners across all concentrations. Community and economic developers recognize these abandoned systems and other locallyunderutilized infrastructure as a potential catalyst for urban regrowth, public and private developers are increasingly focusing their work around transit-oriented developments (TODs), transportation planners work to make systems efficient and

Cincinnati: The City Planning Commission, 1948.

The City Planning Commission of Cincinnati, The Official City Plan of Cincinnati.

Cincinnati: The City Planning Commission, 1925.

Kessler, George E. A Park System for the City of Cincinnati. Kansas City: George E. Kessler and Company, 1907.

Massachussetts Bay Transportation Authority, “The Chronicle of the Boston Transit System.” 2011. http://www.mbta.com/ about_the_mbta/history/ (accessed February 16, 2011).

McKay, Bob. “Rut.” Cincinnati Magazine, June, 1979.

Mercer, Laurie. “Rochester Ponders Future of Once Vibrant Subway.” October 31, 2007. http://www.constructionequipmentguide. com/Rochester-Ponders-Future-of-OnceVibrant-Subway/9527/ (accessed February 13, 2011).

Metropolitan Transportation Authority, “New York City Transit: History and Chronology.”

2009. http://www.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffhist. htm (accessed February 16, 2011).

New York City Subway, “IRT: The First Subway.” 2005. http://www.nycsubway.org/

View from Mount Adams looking down upon the city. Circa 1900-1910.

green, while land use planners seek compact, sustainable urban regions.

Therefore, this historic artifact, and many other little known stories are nothing if not modernly relevant; they speak to many issues upon which planners will need to apply their skill-sets in our increasingly urban world. The Cincinnati subway speaks to the importance of the planning process, publicprivate partnerships, political efficiencies, and public support. It loudly proclaims that a fine balance between these must be met.

irtsubway.html (accessed October 30, 2010).

Oregon Department of Transportation, “Transportation and Economic Growth.”

Oregon Transportation Plan Update (2004): 10.

Pawson, John. Delaware Valley Rails: The Railroads and Rail Transit Lines of the Philadelphia Area . Willow Grove: Pawson Publishing, 1979.

Radel, Cliff. “Life Under the City.” May 24, 2003. http://www.enquirer.com/ editions/2003/05/24/loc_radel24.html (accessed October 30, 2010).

Rodrigue, Jean-Paul. “Transportation and Economic Development.” 2008. http://people. hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch7en/conc7en/ ch7c1en.html (accessed October 30, 2010).

Singer, Allen J. The Cincinnati Subway. San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing, 2003.

Smerk, George. “How Philadelphia’s New Subway Changed a City.” 2008.http:// www.npr.org/templates/story/story. php?storyId=92716701 (accessed October 30, 2010).

United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, “CPI Inflator Calculator.” 2010.http://data.bls. gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl (accessed October 30, 2010).

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Image Citations the chicago metered parking system concession agreement: how the windy City Sold its parking rights, revenue, and responsibilities Meter Alone. Source: jeffseltzer/flickr.com Meter Down. Source: dmnyc/flickr.com Meter Fail. Source: ehfisher/flickr.com Meter in Chicago. Source: kookybites/flickr.com Meter Revenue. Source: swanksalot/flickr.com Meter Row. Source: jasper_vk/flickr.com Meter Toppled. Source: 969707@N03/flickr.com Meter Twins. Source: 71288712@N00/flickr.com Meter with a Note. Source: aye_shamus/flickr.com Chicago Skyway. Source: kaes_photos/flickr.com Climate Action Plan. Source: Chicago Conservation Corps.

investing in the electric grid smarter technology or increased capacity?

Energy Source Maps. Source : NPR.

timing and visibility: the failure of the High line improvement district and its implications for the reading viaduct Renderings courtesy of Emily Leckvarcik.

Highline at At fall. Source : anthonyling86/flickr. com

segregated los angeles: historical residential patterns and the psychology of Space Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Source: Photopedia.

Los Angeles Neighborhood Map. Source: Los Angeles Almanac.

Geffen Contemporary MOCA Museum of Art. Source: Los Angeles Architecture Photo Archive.

the gendered city: a response to sexism in the built environment Salary By Gender. Source: APA. Boston’s North End. Source: Lost girls world.

All other images courtesy of the author.

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Panorama 2011

Reactions to Kelo v. City of New London and the Impact on PostKatrina New Orleans Toledano. Source: Preservation Resource Center, Advocacy Department Fight Blight. Source: Global Green Overgrown. Source: Global Green Code Enforcement Sweep. Rusty Costanza, Source: The Times-Picayune Flooding.

New urbanism vs. landscape urbanism The battle overt the future of urban design Kentlands, Md. Source: Duany PlaterZyberk&Co. Parc de la Villette, competition entry. Source: OMA High Line, 2009 Photo by bbanauch/flickr.com “Conversions XVII, Suburban California, 2008” Photo by Christoph Gielen

fair or foul: ballparks and their impact on urban revitalization Opening Day at Petco Park. Source: wikipedia. org /OpeningDayPetcoPark Camden Yards. Source sabroffice/flickr.com Citizens Bank Park. Source: pvsbond/flickr.com Citizens Bank Park. Source: epler/flickr.com

utmost annoyance or blessed convenience? it depends on Implementation: An Examinition of the Past, Present, and Future of Skip-Stop Service in New York City 1 Train. Court. Source 2: MTA New York City Transit. (2009) J/Z Train Timetable [Brochure].

“Announcing 1 and 9 skipstop. service on the BroadwaySeventh Avenue Line” Source : Subway Nut

Back to the Future: Solving Philadelphia’s Water Problems with historic ingenuity Aerial Photo. Source: Library of Congress.

Green Roof. Source: lblanchard/flickr.com/ Rain Barrel. Source: picasaweb.google.com/ buildgreeninfrastructure/Philadelphia View of the Schuylkill Waterworks Looking Southeast. Source: Library of Congress.

dallas tod: fact or fiction?

A study of transit-oriented development near dart red and blue line rail station - 1995 to 2005 Image Name: Access Mode Distribution Source: NuStats DART Ridership Report 2008 Image Name: HH Income Distribution Source: NuStats DART Ridership Report 2008 Image Name: Market Segment Income Distribution Source: NuStats DART Ridership Report 2008 Image Name: Station Group Stats Source: John Tatum Image Name: Regression Results Source: John Tatum

invisible paris: urban planning and the banlieues La Courneuve. Source : by a magic monkey!/flicker. com La Haine. Source: Screenshot.

Paris Riots. Source: no such nina/flickr.com.

Les Bosquets – Montfermeil. Source: Jakub Franek Montfermeil with birds. Source: JR-Art/flickr.com

the dead end: the failure of Cincinnati’s subway, and the potential of future urban revitalization through historic infrastructure Cincinnati CBD View of downtown Cincinnati in 1908. (Source: US Library of Congress.

A map showing the proposed and built sections of the Cincinnati rapid transit line. Source: Mitch’s Geography Blog.

A view down a subway tunnel in 2008 Source: Jake Mecklenborg)Subway Station Diagram Source: Cincinnati-Transit.net Subway Today. An image of the subway tunnel today. Source: Cincinnati-Transit.net The original line would be incorporated in to the Red Line. Source: Metro-Cincinnati.org View from Mount Adams. Source: US Library of Congress Vine and Third Streets 1900. Source: US Library of Congress