Tactical Equity Collective Memory, the Communal Porch, and Creating an Architecture of Opportunity A Thesis
Emily Pierson The Catholic University of America Washington, DC May 2016
Š 2016 Emily Pierson. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to Catholic University the permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part.
Tactical Equity Collective Memory, the Communal Porch, and Creating an Architecture of Opportunity
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Architecture and Planning of the Catholic University of America in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degrees of Master of Architecture and Master of City & Regional Planning
Emily Pierson Washington, DC May 2016
Abstract This document summarizes a two-semester Master’s thesis in Architecture and City & Regional Planning that explores the possibilities of small-scale, affordable, and highly flexible interventions as a model of alternative planning and design implementation in Cincinnati’s West End neighborhood. A historically African-American neighborhood with a high population of low-income residents and public housing, high poverty and crime, and increased need for social services, the West End exemplifies many similar neighborhoods across the Rust Belt that have been systematically discriminated against with top down, disruptive planning policies, transportation and land uses initiatives, and urban renewal strategies that rarely take into account the full range of a community’s needs and desires. Even well-intentioned development strategies such as HOPE VI have been highly disruptive to communities such as the West End having cost millions only to expire with incomplete outcomes. This thesis intends to promulgate a more affordable and malleable approach that is directly informed by the community and that inverts the top-down model. By observing and learning from existing formal and informal spatial types already present within the neighborhood, planners may be able to identify more appropriate locations for architectural structures and for modular spaces that can be changed and adapted to adjust to the community’s everevolving needs. These affordable, self-sufficient, easily installed and manufactured modules can serve as the framework for gathering spaces and catalysts for future development within the neighborhood with minimal investment. Through this tactical urbanism-style intervention communities can begin to plant the seeds of their own revitalization.
Epigram “I believe that black people will make it. I believe that they only lack a chance to prove that they can… I’m confident that if the black people of this country are permitted to go for themselves, according to their own likes, they will go like nobody has ever dreamed.” — Roy Wilkins, former president of NAACP
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed unless it is faced.” — James Baldwin
“I think it is the chasm of our age, the challenge, for us to turn around from individualism and to know that if I really know I’m one with you then that’s going to affect the choices I make. And that is a spiritual practice as well as an economic practice. Pope Francis is doing a great job of this right now by saying that every economic decision has a moral component and that we are all needing to come together in community.” — Sister Simone Campbell, founder of Nuns on the Bus
Acknowledgements I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone in Cincinnati who took the time to speak with, advise, counsel, and provide guided tours for this out-of-towner: Professor Liz Blume, Alexis Kidd, Murphy Antoine, Jeff Beam, Jeff Raser, Kathy Schwab, Mahyar Arefi, Menelaos Triantafillou, Councilwoman Yvette Simpson, Valerie Daley, Denise, Kevin, and the boys of the projects. To my official and unofficial thesis committee: Hazel, Eric, and Ann, your guidance and advice to me as I navigated this incredibly rewarding, often overwhelming, and suprisingly enjoyable project was invaluable. For all the constructive criticism, intellectual arguments, and gentle goading, I am forever grateful. To the rest of the faculty and staff of the School of Architecture and Planning, thank you for your support and unfailing energy over the past three years. To my ad hoc thesis committee at the District of Columbia Office of Planning: Eric, Tanya, Patricia, Thom, Ed, and especially Thor, I could not have completed this project without your daily encouragement and intellectual curiosity. I have learned more in the year I worked in your creative embrace than I could ever have imagined. To the CUArch Council of Elders: this project is an infinitely better thesis than it would have been without your wise counsel. I am an infinitely better person than I would be without your dear friendship. To my friends outside of this building: let’s have a drink. I miss you all. To my sainted mother: this project is as much yours as mine. I could not have done this without you. To Tomar Brown: And now, our life begins. Pittsburgh, here I come.
Dedication To the people of the West End and in every struggling community across the country. Don’t stop speaking. Shout if you have to. Someone is listening.
Table of Contents 1. Towards a Theory of Tactical Equity
1.1 Problem Statement
Focal Point 1: Over-the-Rhine
1.2 Proposal
1.3 Intent
2. Where We Are and How We Got Here: The West End of Cincinnati
2.1 The Problem Defined
2.2 Scope of the Project
2.3 Laying the Groundwork
p. XX
p. XX
2.3.1 Life in the Basin: A History of the West End
Focal Point 2: The Disappearance of Kenyon-Barr
2.3.2 The Original Advocate Planners: Equity Planning in the Rust Belt
2.3.3 Civic Contention: A History of City Planning in Cincinnati
2.3.4 Doomed to Repeat Itself: Urban Renewal in Cincinnati
2.4 Case Studies and Precedents
2.4.1 “Moving Past 50 Years of Decline”: The Imagine Flint Land Use Plan
2.4.2 Thinking Inside, Outside, and Around the Box: Flexible Program Prototypes
2.4.3 Let Them Eat Vegetables: The Via Verde Development, Bronx, NY
3. Creating an Architecture of Opportunity
p. XX
3.1 The Basis for a Concept
3.1.1 Where Has My Neighborhood Gone?: The Failure of Large-Scale
Urban Renewal Projects
3.1.2 Beyond Temporary Bike Lanes: Tactical Urbanism
3.1.3 Form Supersedes Function: The Adoption of Form-Based Zoning in
Cincinnati
3.1.4 Defining Terms: Economic Development Is Not Gentrification
3.2 Analysis of the Site
3.2.1 General Conditions
3.2.2 Placemaking Analysis
3.2.3 Nodes
Focal Point 3: Union Terminal Station
3.2.4 Spines
3.3 Related Proposals for the Area
3.3.1 Neighborhood Plan
3.3.2 University of Cincinnati Urban Design Studio
3.3.3 Cincinnati Comprehensive Plan West End Element
4. Tactical Equity: The Manifestation of a Methodology
4.1 The Goals of Tactical Equity
4.2 Design Determinants
Focal Point 4: Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses
4.3 Basis for Design
4.4 Exploration of Design
p. XX
Concluding Thoughts
p. XX
References
p. XX
1. Towards a Theory of Tactical Equity 1.1 Problem Statement Our cities are on fire. The social and racial constructs that have been defined by and also helped to define our urban neighborhoods in the 20th and early 21st centuries have created places separated along color lines where severe economic depression, extreme poverty, and low educational outcomes lead to a myriad of other physical, social, and economic ills. How planners and architects can begin to address these issues in new ways forms the basis of inquiry for this project.
1.2 Proposal The proposal for this thesis is to design a series of affordable, flexible, sustainable, and interchangeable units that can accommodate a variety of programs in order to address specific needs identified in the West End neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio.
1.3 Intent All intentions are directed at creating quickly implementable solutions to the severe lack of economic prospects found in this neighborhood. Rather than a top-down, master plan approach to the project, the solution lies in community engagement and in understanding how the physical place overlaps with the social, cultural, and historical frameworks of the communities that comprise the West End. The project attempts to capture the language and scale of the historically complex neighborhood through an interlacing of the historic architecture, industrial fabric, and African-American heritage found here.
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Tactical Equity
Focal Point 1: Over-the-Rhine Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood was once a place upstanding citizens did not venture after dark. Rampant crime, homelessness, drug use, and abandoned properties created an unsafe and unstable environment. A victim of the loss of industry and population typical of many Rust Belt cities, this once thriving neighborhood of historically German immigrants began its decline in the 1950’s as the meatpacking and iron industries fled to less expensive areas, or collapsed completely and the city’s white population moved to neighborhoods further out of the city center. By the 1970’s Overthe-Rhine was in a state of severe decay which lasted for several decades. In the spring of 2001 racially charged riots ignited by the shooting death of an unarmed black man by a white police officer ripped through OTR and later that year Reason magazine dubbed OTR “Ground Zero in urban decline.”
Illustration by Jesse Lenz for Cincinnati magazine, 5 October 2015.
Beginning in 2003, things began to turn around for the beleaguered neighborhood. Through a series of investments prmpted by the formation of Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), a private non-profit real estate and financial development corporation funded by local corporations who head its board of directors, OTR has seen rapid development and revitalization. However, 3CDC has many critics who claim that its methods have been less than favorable to existing populations, particularly minorities and low-income residents. “3CDC has contributed to, rather than helped to ease, conflict between local institutions. Although 3CDC has held public information sessions, the organization has not engaged the public in any decision making and has provided no opportunities to create linkages with or among local residents…” The revitalized -- many would say “gentrified” -- streets of OTR are now lined with boutique shops, high-end restaurants, and fine art studios. As the near neighbor of Over-the-Rhine, the West End’s residents look several blocks to the east and are afraid of what they see. The fear of losing their heritage and their neighborhood to development is real. “Some interest started to come into the community years ago. We started to have conversations so that the community could get ahead of development. And the community said, WAIT a minute, we don’t want to be what we don’t want,” explained Councilwoman Yvette Simpson, president of the Cincinnati City Council and a West End resident. “There are lessons to be learned from Over-the-Rhine. They allowed development to take over.” As the citizens of the West End work through the process of renewing their community, it will be critical to decide from within what they want to be, rather than allowing others to decide for them.
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2. Where We Are and How We Got Here: The West End 2.1 The Problem Defined The West End neighborhood of Cincinnati has been the victim of top-down planning strategies for many decades. Due to a series of transportation, land use, and policy decisions made at the local, state, and federal levels, this once-thriving and prosperous neighborhood has become poorer, more racially segregated, more physically isolated, and in greater need of social services over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries. These conditions contribute to a drain on the municipality’s resources, an increased crime rate, and low health and educational outcomes for its citizens. Based on simple demographic statistics, the neighborhood is currently in serious decline and continuing to decline. However there are growing voices within the community and movements manifested in local social and political organizations looking to revitalize and renew this downtrodden place. The challenge lies in connecting the people’s concerns and desires with sound, learned planning and placemaking techniques. While experts in the fields of planning and architecture must be involved in the holistic development of any portion of the city, the citizens must not only be invited to participate in but to lead the revitalization of their own neighborhood. This marriage of grassroots efforts with intellectual rigor will result in more positive outcomes for both the West End community and the city’s interests. Large-scale master planned efforts to intervene in the West End have produced, for a variety of reasons, unsure outcomes. These projects cost many millions of dollars, much of which cannot be guaranteed; require years of planning, design and implementation; and are disruptive to the community in terms of construction, displacement, and potential alienation of stakeholders. New solutions must be explored that allow the community to determine its own outcomes, not only through the typical planning process, but through testing physical, programmatic solutions to identified needs.
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Tactical Equity
The city of Cincinnati, Ohio, is comprised of 52 neighborhoods, many of which were once villages since annexed by the city. The West End neighborhood is located to the north-west of the central business district, just north of the city’s southern boudary at the Ohio River.
2.2 Scope of the Project This project encompasses the West End neighborhood of Cincinnati, focusing on the main section east of Interstate 75. The West End is composed of five distinct areas whose disparate needs and goals have contributed to the challenge of defining the future goals for the neighborhood. The five areas are: Brighton, the industrial sites to the north and west; The Dayton Street Historic District in the upper northwest; the Betts-Longworth Historic District to the southeast; and the general fabric of both rowhouse and public housing residential areas that encompass the center of the West End. Part of this fabric includes City West, a mixed-income, mixed-tenure urban renewal project completed in 2004 which often functions as a separate residential area. These districts are separated geographically from one another, but are more distinctly separated by the physical, economic, and social systems at work within them. There is currently little overlap between the historic fabric, the primary base of both low-income and owner-occupied residential zones, and the industrial interests concentrated to the north and west. This thesis aims to address these separations and to identify commonalities and areas of overlap in order to achieve more desirable outcomes for all user groups. The project will also strengthen the physical connections to the larger Cincinnati downtown areas to draw on the economic investments currently responsible for the revitalization of Downtown and Over-the-Rhine.
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Current boundaries of the West End and surrounding neighborhoods.
CUF
(Clifton Heights, University Heights, Fairview)
The West End
Overthe-Rhine
Queensgate
Central Business District
Oh io
Riv e
r
Covington, KY
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Tactical Equity
2.3 Laying the Groundwork 2.3.1 Life in the Basin: A History of the West End The West End neighborhood of Cincinnati is one of several that comprise “the basin,” so called due to the dramatic topography of Cincinnati which lays flat along the river’s edge then increases sharply into a series of hills. Originally the site of farmland and stockyards to support the city’s meatpacking industry, the West End then became the location for “country” homes for wealthy entrepreneurs. As the city expanded in the early 19th century, the basin began to fill in with tenement housing occupied by a diverse population. Whites and blacks lived side-by-side though racial tensions persisted throughout the city, primarily over jobs. As the city grew, overcrowding and poor living conditions forced the city’s expansion into the hills above the basin, aided by technological advances like the inclines that allowed for easier access to higher ground. Beginning in 1870, white residents, with greater means and mobility, began to move into the hill neighborhoods into larger, single-family homes. By 1940 the white population of the basin was a mere 11%. Left behind were the black residents, who lacked the financial resources to relocate further outside the basin. After the Civil War, the West End became poorer and blacker and was repeatedly cut up by industry, transportation, and urban renewal projects. Today, the West End neighborhood is a shadow of its former self, in desperate need of careful and considered planning to return it to its former glory.
Aerial perspective of downtown Cincinnati in 1920.
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Evolution of the West End This series of diagrams illustrates the evolution of the neighborhood known as the West End from its inception in the early 19th century as a support system for the meatpacking industry to its current urban state, sandwiched between the interstate and Downtown. Residential, industrial, and transportation interests continue to compete for attention and resources throughout the neighborhood.
1830: The Basin Cincinnati formed around Fort Washington as the entry to the Northwest Territory. As the commercial center grew, pioneers settled in the basin, flat lands along the Ohio River surrounded by hills.
first residences: “country” homes for wealthy industrialists area encompassing “the basin,” flat land along the river’s edge
dramatic topographic rise
West End
Over-the-Rhine
agriculture/ stockyards
German immigrants
Central Waterfront
Central Core business
East End Factories
meatpacking industry
transportation
Ohio River Kentucky 16
Tactical Equity
1860-1910: Growth and Decline
1930: Urban Renewal
Out of spatial needs, black and white residents lived side-by-side in the overcrowded basin, but with the invention of the inclines in the early 1900’s, white residents quickly fled to cleaner, higher ground.
By the early 20th century, conditions in the basin had dramatically declined. The first urban renewal project in the country displaced hundreds of black residents under the guise of “slum clearance.”
te hi
industrial development to support the railroads and meatpacking industry
n tio ra 1910-1940 g i
tm
ou
w
fine-grain rowhouse typology
expansion of the railroads
urban renewal site: first public housing project in the country.
1933 modern-day West End boundary development of the railroads
opening of Union Terminal
on-street railroad tracks
1960: Infrastructure
2001: Urban Renewall II
From 1941-1963, construction of I-95 tore through the West End displacing over 20,000 primarily black residents. At the same time, more rowhouses were being replaced with pad-ready industrial sites.
In 2001, the city received a HOPE VI grant to conduct an urban renewal project in the West End. The public housing of the 1930s was replaced in phases with more contextual New Urbanist fabric.
industrial pad sites for transportation and warehousing
original public housing site historically preserved
expansion of industrial sites conversion of Union Terminal to City Museum
former Kenyon-Barr neighborhood
urban renewal site: conversion to mixed income housing
Interstate-75
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Timeline of Cincinnati Events and Population
1829
cher orn nist
1836
1841
Cincinnati Riots Cincinnati Race Cincinnati Race of 1829 spurred Riots of 1836 Riots of 1841 over by increasing between Irish and drought-induced black population. blacks over jobs. competition for jobs.
1825
1843
Cincinnati Steam Paper Mill established.
Whitewater Canal built.
1850
1853
24,831
9642 4.5%
4.4%
46,338 By 1840, 46% of the pop. is foreign-born. 4.8%
10%
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Tactical Equity
1859
Cincinnati The first Riots of 1853 horse-drawn caused by streetcars are religious strife. introduced.
The black population doubles between 1825 and 1829 causing racial tension and sparking the city’s first race riots.
115,435
161,044
Out of necessity, all of Cincinnati’s residential areas are fully integrated. 2.8%
1900
1865
Cincinnati celebrates with bonfires at the end of the Civil War.
2.3%
1870
The first municipal university (the University of Cincinnati) is established.
216,239
1877
Cincinnati Southern Railway begins operating.
1884 1889
Cincinnati Streetcar “Courthouse” system begins Riots of 1884. operating electric streetcars.
255,139
296,908
1902
325,902
3.8%
Martha, th last passen pigeon, dies the Cincinn Zoo.
363,591
Starting in 191 leave the basin industrial city Migration brin American resid
From 1870 to 1940, the black population of the basin increases by 704%. 3.0%
1914
First reinforced concrete skyscraper built: the Ingalls Building.
4.2%
4.5%
5.4%
“The history of African Americans in Cincinnati is tied to the development of the city, the city-building process, and the theoretical constructs, definitions, and policy formulations of those urban leaders who shaped the physical environment and determined, in part, where blacks lived within that environment.” -- Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., Race and the City
1933
1925
Cincinnati writes the first comprehensive plan in the U.S.
4
Cincinnati Union Terminal opens.
1926
1937
Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railway in operation.
he nger s at nati
401,247
451,160
1950
1962
Construction on I-75 concludes.
1951
455,610
503,998
12%
1990
Race riots in Avondale.
Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal opens.
2001
502,550
452,525
2003
City dismantles the Planning Department.
385,460
364,040
331,285
22%
28%
34%
38%
43%
Making Little Plans to Affect Big Changes
2012
Construction of the Cincinnati Streetcar begins.
296,945
As the population of the city steadily decreases, the black population increases due to lack of mobility and financial means, as the city and country invest in highway development and single family homes outside urban centers.
16%
2001-3
Cincinnati HOPE VI project in Race Riots the West End replaces of 2001. public housing.
Cincinnati’s first African-American mayor, Theodore M. Berry is elected.
By 1940, 67% of Cincinnati’s black population lives in the basin.
11%
1967-8
1972
Last line of the Cincinnati streetcar system is abandoned.
Ohio River flood of 1937.
10, 86,659 white residents n for areas further outside the center. Simultaneously, the Great ngs thousands of new Africandents to the Northern states. 7.5%
1941
Construction on I-75 begins displacing 19,000 residents.
45%
19
Focal Point 2: The Disappearance of Kenyon-Barr The Kenyon-Barr neighborhood once stood at the foot of the West End in an area now known as Queensgate. The area originated in the 1800’s, developed by corporate barons due to its proximity to the growing industrial downtown. Built in the same Italianate and Second Empire style as much of the West End, these stately houses comprised a significant portion of historic Cincinnati fabric. As the Industrial Age wore on, the more prosperous residents moved further uphill and away from the industrial city center. As the primarily white, wealthy outmigration continued, Kenyon-Barr became a center for African-Americans looking for work at the turn of the 20th century. By the 1950’s much of the West End was fairly rundown, but still populated with close-knit community and historic architecture. Beginning in 1959 with the completion phase of Interstate-75 and the continuing urban renewal projects in the West End, the city demolished thousands of buildings and displaced nearly 20,000 residents, effectively erasing the Kenyon-Barr neighborhood from the map. Prior to demolition, the city systematically photographed and catalogued every building. The interstate and pad-ready industrial sites replaced much of the original fabric, however, as the photographs to the right illustrate, some of the sites remain empty — a neighborhood, a heritage, and an architectural treasure simply erased.
B A The extents of the KenyonBarr neighborhood in 1956 prior to demolition. The fabric of the neighborhood echoed that of the other neighborhoods in the West End to the north.
C
1956
B A
This satellite image shows the current context of the former Kenyon-Barr neighborhood. Not a trace of the original fabric remains.
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Tactical Equity
C
2015
A: 747 West Court Street
Courtesy Cincinnati Historical Society.
Photograph by Nick Sewell.
B: 1055-1057 Clark Street
Courtesy Cincinnati Historical Society.
Photograph by Nick Sewell.
C: 703 Cutter Street
Courtesy Cincinnati Historical Society.
Photograph by Nick Sewell.
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