Opinions

Online : www.hillsdalecollegian.com

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By Jacob Fox

There is a stark difference between the quaint shops and historic architecture of N. Broad Street and the sprawling parking lots along W. Carleton Road. On either side of Hillsdale College’s campus, there exists a perfect microcosm of 100 years’ worth of urban planning policies. N. Broad Street is characterized by closely packed shops, adorned with varying colorful facades and ornamentation. The street terminates at the beautiful post office and City Hall, drawing the careful observer’s eye to an attractive focal point. W. Carleton Road, on the other hand, is filled with generic, boxy stores set so far back from the road that they need large, flashy signs to catch the attention of fast-moving traffic.

The historic downtown of Hillsdale is a perfect example of traditional urban development: slow, calculated growth that maximizes land usage to reduce transportation time and infrastructure costs.

Old urban policies naturally incentivized efficient development due to constrained modes of transportation, such as walking or cycling, as well as a limited municipal budget funded by local property taxes. Builders cared about ornamentation and style because those experiencing the town on a human scale would enjoy it, increasing a building’s property value. Mixed-use zoning allowed people to integrate their work with their domestic life, bringing the community together through plenty of shared spaces like neighborhood restaurants and cafes. The city itself was also incentivized to create attractive landmark buildings for its government offices by the increase in surrounding property value and subsequent tax revenue.

However, Hillsdale’s modern development, no more than a few blocks away, tells a very different story. Once Americans became dependent on cars in the 1950s, work and home no longer needed to be geographically close, assuming that there were enough parking spaces. Hillsdale expanded outward as fast as concrete could be poured and with it came big corporations brandishing trademark American consumerism. Living space segregated itself from commercial developments to escape the added noise of traffic, and ornamentation ceased as businesses changed from aesthetic designs to flashy branding to appeal to consumers. Parking lots destroy architectural beauty no matter the building and parking requirements make them mandatory. Several urban planning policies enabled this new approach