Here are some comments from an on-line conversation about suburban retrofit over the last week or so. I mentioned it here . As such threads go, they are not entirely coherent: Person B answers A on one point and then C answers B on another point, and so forth. People wander. Email conversations often do not offer a clear thread. Yet I think the comments which others might find interesting.
My personal conclusion from the conversation is that
• there is no existing (i.e. in existence now) example of any locality been willing to try and been able to succeed at reversing a 180 degree reversal from high-speed (40-50 mph) auto strip arterial to walkable "main street;" (and admittedly "main street" may give a mis-leadiing picture. I'm just looking at something, anything which is walkable.
• there are numerous energetic attempts being made but are all in progress;
• there seem to be a number of non-arterial auto-dominated areas which are visibly advanced and I cite one, Mercer Island, Washington:
Two particularly interesting insghts:
• per Ellen Dunham-Jones, some planning agencies don't have much institutional memory. That's because elected officials move on or lose or retire and so do staff. So developing and maintaining public support for walkability, and better planning in general, is of critical importance to overcome the inertia of the junk (my interpretation) which surrounds us. That's basic poli-sci but important to remember.
• per Jeff Speck, which if I got it right, he asks: If considering the huge financial/political effort, and the inertia and uncertainty, whether transforming a genuine high-speed arterial should be urged as a priority? In essence, triage. When the situation is currently so far from being a walkable environment, and the hurdles to transform it are so large* is it worth trying? At least as a first priority?
(* And the only scenario I can visualize is along the lines of an Alan Jacobs' et al multi-lane boulevard with slow-speed lanes separated and parallel to the higher-speed though arterial. That's by no means like Boulder Dam but there is enormous social and political inertia,)
•••
Here is the thread, somewhat edited, but still lengthy and I think worth reading if you care about this issue, which you should:
Sucher:
I have a question.
Have you ever seen a strip-mall arterial ever evolve into a 'main street?
'Specific examples?
Either a small or large part?
Either by market dynamics or governmental planning?
I don't mean plans for how it might happen: but how it has actually happened?
Jeff Speck:
Hi Ellen and Victor. I am forwarding a question from David Sucher.
I have seen 100 visualizations of strip mall corridors becoming main streets. Mad some of 'em myself. Has it ever happened? Not mall to main street, not improved traditional main street, etc, but strip mall corridors.
Incidentally, if this hasn't happened since we did the first visualizations 20 years ago, maybe it's time to stop doing the visualizations!
Ellen Dunham-Jones:
There are a few built examples of corridor retrofits – but they may not meet your definition of a “Main Street.”
June and I show a few images of Cathedral City, CA in our book. Twenty years ago their Main St, also a state highway, was killed when DOT widened the road. It became a commercial strip arterial with pretty dead shopping centers. When the DOT came back to widen it again, the City said No, we want our Main St back. They took back ownership and built a 4-block multi-way boulevard lined with palm trees, wide sidewalks,and diagonal parking on the service lanes. They built a new city hall and park on the boulevard and attracted two hotels. THEN the folks who made the changes all got jobs elsewhere and when I went to interview the folks in the planning office they were somewhat confused as to
Why I thought this was amazing,How to continue the vision.The head planner had just allowed the hotel to do a standard sprawl drop-off, not face the boulevard, etc. Friedman, Tung & Bottomley did the plan. They’ve done a lot of other corridor retrofits in CA with similar intentions. Most of the time, it has resulted in streetscaping rather than the full boulevard. Still, it would be worth checking in with them to see what’s actually happened in Redwood City, Mendocino, L.A., etc.
The other corridor retrofit I’m excited about is Columbia Pike in Arlington County, Virginia. Victor did the plan working with Geoff Farrell. I took some photos there two weeks ago and saw the incremental progress plugging along. The plan calls for 4 nodes along a 5-mile stretch (most of which is strip shopping centers but also includes some 40’s-60’s apt buildings, as well as a 1920’s-40’s theater. A form-based code upzones the nodes – but also tapers heights from 10-4 stories as they integrate into the neighborhoods. The taxes from the new buildings is to support a streetcar. The main node’s streetscaping is in as well as 5 new 5-10 story buildings. In between the nodes, the existing apt bldgs are expected to remain as affordable housing. The new ones are intermixed with gas stations and motels in quite a funky mix right now. It’s hard to say if it will ever fully resemble anyone’s idealized vision of “Main St” but I find it very real and moving in a great direction.
There are also loads of examples of individual strip malls that have been retrofitted into mixed-use places – but, sadly, many of them don’t fundamentally change the frontage on the corridor. Ala Santana Row, they create a new Main St perpendicular to the arterial, where they can control the views and make a quite wonderful place – but then put big boxes or parking lots facing the strip.
Sucher:
I am very interested in the Columbia Pike endeavor; I visited Columbia Pike years ago. As I remember my initial take was "With all that arterial traffic, a State highway department and limited possibilities for on street parking...wow, make it easy for me!" my initial reaction was to try to develop pedestrian nodes perpendicular to the arterial, as apparently being in Santana Row (?) which I don't know and which interests me a great deal. But if they have been able to do more at Columbia Pike, then great!!
Of course I am interested in suburban retrofit -- it is very clearly THE big issue; yet as to through arterials (and that is the major issue I started with) I cannot see a feasible, practical and INCREMENTAL scenario for such transformation; after all, who wants to develop first? Amidst all that dreariness? I certainly wouldn't; and coordinated development of a large area (many property owners is the key) just not in the cards right now. Nor would I personally want to invest to do such redevelopment personally much less using TIF or condemnation. (Yes I am a retrogradist.) so we are stuck. Arterial redevelopment make brownfield projects look very very easy. Simple, in fact.
And Ellen notes: ongoing, continuing support for good urbanism -- my major concern is that even experts don't understand.
Dunham-Jones:
To clarify – not many retrofits of ENTIRE CORRIDORS have been built yet. Many are underway. (This is how I understood your original question.)
What HAS already been built are retrofits of individual parcels – many individual big box stores, strip shopping centers, enclosed malls, office parks, edge cities, garden apt complexes, park-n-rides, car dealerships, the golf courses of former golf course communities as well as a few residential subdivisions. Those completed before Jan 2007 that June Williamson and I were able to find out about are documented in our book. We’re continuing to collect more and more examples.
BTW – redevelopment or urbanization is one of 3 retrofit strategies we monitor. Re-inhabitation with more community serving uses and regreening are the other two.
Sucher:
Yes that is the exact question though maybe "some length" rather than "entire."
Btw now I remember, I saw Cathedral City last winter and it struck me as still-born: making a valiant attempt but not quite making it. I don't remember the details.
And you speak of "underway." I wonder how they do it. It is such a difficult problem. When I think of Seattle, say Aurora, the core of the problem is on-street parking. So small and yet huge.
For background I found some other posts to give you more sense of the place:
http://publicola.com/2010/03/23/the-manhattanization-of-mercer-island/
http://publicola.com/2010/03/31/walkable-suburbanism%E2%80%94if-not-mercer-island-then-where/
There is also an NYT article:
A Rich Island Polishes Up Its Downtown - New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/realestate/08nati.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1295107421-sxLxGFt3x8qKhJMaQNJCLQ>
However I think that there is more to say about Mercer Island and the go-to guy is Mark Hinshaw, also cc'd here. He wrote the Town Center Plan. He shared some remarks which I will share:
Hinshaw:
What happened, in my view, to transform the pattern was a combination
of several things:
1. The City totally redesigned the streets and sidewalks. Travel lanes
were actually removed (yes!) and sidewalks were more than doubled in width. (All within the same right of way)
2. The City increased allowable development yield by significantly lowering parking ratios, increasing height, and allowing for full site coverage. Housing is "bonused."
3. The City adopted a new set of design standards that called for urban development, not suburban.
4. Because zoning allowed for much more intensity than before, the market worked to raise land values enough so that building new surface parking ceased. Parking has even gone from being placed in grade level structures surrounded by other uses to being placed underground.
5.The City made a commitment to downtown and focusing development into a tight core area within it.
6. For the most part, several good developers came in. With one glaring exception seen at the northwest corner of 27th and 77th.Its not terrible but it looks like it belongs in Orange County. (the architects were actually in OC!)
Sucher:
Mercer Island is about as close as I've seen in a major retrofit. In Western Washington is there anything comparable? Not just revitalizing an existing traditional 3 Rules core with 'good bones,' but a 180 degree reversal? And there are some interesting factors to remember and I think are sui generis:
• The extremely tacky, junky downtown was
• amidst great wealth (Paul Allen of Microsoft lives there, when not on his 400' yacht)
• ideal location on an Interstate
• between two major employment center
• with no through-arterial (the Interstate performed the same function and it was isolated in a trench with terrific landscaping)
• during a boom time.
It will be much more difficult in other places to do what Mercer Island is doing, which while well launched, it has just begun. Beyond the general lack of development in many places -- basically, "no development = no change" -- to me "the problem of the arterial" is the overwhelming one and Mercer Island was blessed by not having one.
Dover:
Hi Anonymous. Mercer Island's your place, so fill me in. This conversation began with David S asking for an example of a commercial arterial strip that has been transformed to be more Main Street -like. Ellen and I told him Col Pike is underway on that. He replied with Mercer Island. Isn't that a downtown road diet, not a suburban strip retrofit?
I will cc you with my reply to his Col Pike questions.
Anonymous:
No quick explanation...
Wasn’t actually a “strip,” but WAS grid of overly big 1950s blocks-- deep parking lots with tiny footprint buildings. The problem with the scheme was that they didn’t add new streets to reduce block size, so with traffic now calmed by perceived street narrowing, many well-heeled Islanders now just bypass the MI town center entirely, get on the freeway and zoom off to other more easily accessed strips and big box areas in Bellevue, Issaquah, etc.
I was at the Charrette with Lennertz and led the tour for the team. It’s the place that gave rise to my term: “Lamborghini plan, Yugo code” (eventually done badly by city staff, over Bill’s objection to save $$$; It (very watered down) was adopted painfully, years after the charrette).
I may have some MI before pictures in Ektachrome, but buried deep in boxes, as may Lennertz, copied here.
Sucher:
If I gave the wrong impression, yes, absolutely, MI was never a suburban strip. The interstate functioned as a US Highway (10) until it became an Interstate (90) but as I remember -- and I was there -- that Hy 10 never went _through_ MI. MI was always a bypass. Or was there direct frontage on Hy 10? Well in that case the Highway people got rid of the strip arterial problem for us. :)
Bit in any case, in the late 80s-90s, MI did not have the problem of the arterial, which is a decisive problem, I think, not to have.
My initial question, as Victor says, related only to strip arterials. My only response was sideways -- that the only 180 degree reversal that I have ever seen is Mercer Island and of course well-started but still just-started. (and maybe there other '180 reversal' -- that's why it was a question).
Now Anonymous seems to think it's so poorly-done as to not worth considering. True? Certainly his criticism that big blocks were not broken up into small ones. I suspect that resistance to property owners was the key -- perceived loss of value and not understanding "smaller blocks = more street frontage = higher income potential."
As to Islanders bypassing the MI core for big boxes -- don't people who live in "urban villagey" places also bypass local stores for big boxes _when_ they are looking for a big box store? (Not many appliance stores left in neighborhoods anywhere except on an auto arterial.) Yes I think they do. So not sure I understand that crit.
But let me get into my car right now and take a look: have a cup of coffee at the Starbucks -- i will look for S'bux alternative and yes a sad sign of urbanism if there isn't something besides a Starbucks -- and I will write back later with photos. Fresh off the boat photos.
Sucher:
Sure MI has some flaws. Lessons to be learned. Some may be correctable, some not likely. I'm an on-street parking freak and I'd say "not enough."
But overall huge progress in MI and a genuine _start_ of a 180 degree reversal. Here’s an example of what I saw:
One of the keys, as Ellen alluded to, will be that over the decades whether people _desire_ walkable urbanism and _understand_ what spatial arrangement allows it.. I am struck by the Cathedral City experience and hope to see it again.
Ellen has got me thinking, there needs to be a simplification of small-caps new urbanism basic to the civic DNA. Many people still think it is picket fences.
P.S No alternative to S'bux (two in fact within a bock of each other) except a Noah's Bagels, which had a long line.
Anonymous:
Never said MI wasn’t worth considering. It has lessons certainly....
The biggest lesson hasn’t been touched upon here—the uniform 5-story buzz cut height of all the buildings (4-story stick construction over a concrete podium), despite the aim of varied building heights (a preference expressed by citizens during the charrette).
Another was the issue of feasability: They invited Mark Hinshaw and a few of his developer colleagues to model several demonstration projects within the plan so that they’d know it was a “buildable plan.” But still it sat for 8-9 years before the market heated up enough for anything to happen, and then every parcel was developed almost at once (or at least within 3-4 years).
Why? Because 5 stories was way ahead of the market when designed; it created paper value for the property owners, but because of the huge overentitlement, a virtual building moratorium resulted because once approved at those densities, no one wanted to leave money on the table. So, as said before, all waited till the market would give then the full bang for their speculative buck. Anywhere but MI, there would have been a lot of empty buildings when the music stopped. But I’m told everyone sold out; as said by others before, it’s a pretty gold-plated community.
When I grew up there, the residential housing stock was pretty distinctive (with a few gaps, like where I lived), but the downtown was pretty much of a dump. With the upgrading of downtown, that apparently has changed.
Also, the vehicular bypassing of downtown mentioned in my earlier note is mostly a result of changes to the road network from when the interstate was tunneled under the downtown (about 15 years before the downtown was upgraded), making it really easy to just zoom past the downtown on 3 of the 4 main feeder streets to the interstate. It was done at a time when downtowns were still trying to do bypasses to get rid of all that pesky traffic.
Attached is a PDF showing buzz cut from afar and an image from charrette showing a more varied streetscape than what resulted.
Hinshaw:
Another interesting point. The MI City Council was stunned to discover no true retail shops were put into the Island Square development on 78th.
Plus, no public spaces were very significant.
Neither condition was what they had envisioned for their "main street." I was hired to come in and do some "forensic" investigation, so to speak.
I discovered that their own code (written by others) allowed things like condo rec centers (even if private), medical services, and lobbies to count. And the requirement was only 50%. So low andbehold, the entire frontage is taken up by:
A real estate office
Generous lobbies
Big rec room
Dentist office
Nope, no retail.
And the developer and architect showed the public spaces in planonly, counting all surface areas into the calculations. In fact, about half of the area was in stairs or under low overhangs... Not really usable space.
Moral?
1. The devil (or god) is in the details.
2. When people cheat like this, what happens is that electeds and
staff get cynical and suspicious of ALL developers.
The City has since revised their code.
Dunham-Jones:
Thanks for all the history and photos on MI.
Just thought I'd reiterate the importance of looking at corridor retrofits -
in particular - over the long haul. Those I referenced in my first email
were shorter stretches where you can actually see some of the results. A few more worth watching - although they won't happen quickly - both because of the economy, NIMBYism and the zoning/valuation problems that Anonymous described in MI:
-State Road 7 in South Florida (mostly Broward County.) A 10-year process to get multiple communities to agree to a new vision along a 26-mile stretch is STARTING to bear fruit w/ new zoning for more and more of the length, coordination of comm'y plans w/ reg'l plans, and some new public buildings and private redevelopments.
-Burlington County, 20 miles of NJ's "River Route Corridor Plan" has been underway since 1999 with a net gain of 4,446 hsg units, the redevelopment of Willingboro Plaza into Willingboro Town Center (with mixed results -but a very nice green conversion of a Woolworths into a public library) and overall preparation for a planned eventual light rail line along the corridor.
-Albemarle County's "Places29" plan for north of Charlottesville, VA's retrofit of Route 29 proposes a 20-year planning horizon for 4 suburban/exurban neighborhoods to adopt compact m-u zoning. After 5-years of public meetings, it's seeking county approval right now.
-Mission Road Transit Corridor, San Marcos, CA: 10-year retrofit of a low-income, latino neighborhood with light rail starting to see redevelopment now.
Dover:
Some Pike images, attached.
Goal in '02 was to act quickly, to get something-- anything-- going, since scarcely anything had been built for 30 years there. It worked, fast. DC has been at least partially spared in the real estate collapse, so the success is now stoking concerns about displacement, especially once the streetcar pushes values still higher. We just resumed planning work, expanding the geographic area affected by plan; goals now include improving the chances of sustained mixed-income outcomes.
The vision always included a road diet / street makeover along with the infill/redevelopment/densification. Onstreet parking is coming, along with the streetcar (all in engineering now); the streetcar was a mere figment of our imaginations in '02!
Speck:
If indeed this has never actually been accomplished, despite the probably hundreds of expensive charrettes with that purpose, and the whole visualization industry it has spawned, this is truly something to give us pause. NU'ers have certainly accomplished many near-miracles, but perhaps we should stop encouraging communities to try turn their strip commercial corridors around.
The successes I know, like 5th Avenue South in Naples (DPZ) began with moribund main streets that had not yet succumbed to either the DOT reaming nor the front-parking-lot lot blight.
So, one last request for real-world examples before I reach my conclusions. . .?
Sucher:
"Pause," perhaps, but solving the problem of the arterial is the holy grail of American planning. No one should feel abashed. The inertia is staggering.
People have been looking at the issue since the problem was "discovered" (I think) in the late 1960s.
And no solution anywhere; it is so big that only the New Urbanists (big caps) have had the nerve to even try.
You hear Gehry or Koolhaas talking about ever trying to solve real human design problems?
And btw how many of those charrettes were aiming explicitly to 180 degree reversal?
Speck:
Indeed. I don't mean to be negative, but I would rather see us take on projects where we can have a higher batting average. There are lots of promising designs, and lots of individual sites within strips (as per Victor's examples) where better buildings have landed. But to turn a strip into a main street. . . We all have hopes for Columbia Pike. We'll see.
Sucher:
In general, much depend on the ROW dimension and/or how much money a community is willing to spend i.e. political will. Allan Jacobs inspired me with converting strip arterials into multi-lane boulevards -- high-speed traffic in the middle and then outboard (both sides) you have 10-20 mph auto traffic and on-street parking. I put together a profile for a typical section of Aurora Avenue North in Seattle and it seems to work. Especially when you can do a little bit of traffic calming, which in many cases we have roads posted for 40 mph and designed for 50 mph -- drive aisle width must be in accord with desired design speed.
Ellen also mentioned a good idea about walkable 90 degrees to the arterial.
Hinshaw:
I believe that this has indeed been accomplished in many places.
But not in the "pure" form advocated by NU's. That is part of the dilemma, in my view -- that turning strips around requires a complete transformation. If that's the expectation, its going to be quite rare.
But just in the Pacific Northwest, I've seen examples ranging from the Madison Valley in Seattle to the Alberta corridor in Portland to the Kings Highway in Vancouver, B.C.
Are these places gorgeously photogenic with mature street trees, coordinated,handcrafted buildings, and people always living above stores?
Nope.
But they are walkable, pleasant, convenient to transit, and diverse with many wonderfully varied --albeit not always "tasteful" --designs.
I think its unrealistic to hope that we can ever remake communities to look like NU renderings. The world is too complex and unpredictable for that.
Dunham-Jones:
Frankly, Jeff I think you’re mis-stating the goal. I don’t think the goal is to turn commercial strips into Main Sts. Who’s seen a 5-mile, let alone 26-mile Main St? The goal is to turn them into various less auto-dependent alternatives (grand avenues, transit boulevards, transit routes with nodes, etc.) Fixing former Main Sts into a couple of blocks of good urbanism is a valuable, but altogether different agenda. The long-term transformation of the arterial is not worth giving up on just because it has a long duree.
Tell me more about 5th St in Naples.
Hinshaw
I completely agree with Ellen.
Sucher:
Mark, are you suggesting that Madison Valley is a good example of "moribund revival?" If so, I agree. But do you also agree that it's not an example of 180 degree reversal?
I know Madison Valley. I built a house (for myself) and developed several commercial projects there and the basic good bones of traditional urbanism existed from the start. There was nothing along the entirety of Madison Street (from Elliott Bay to Lake Washington) like Aurora Avenue North. Madison was never even remotely a through-arterial with parking lots 200 feet deep.
Madison Valley was much more as Jeff Speck describes "... moribund main streets that had not yet succumbed to either the DOT reaming nor the front-parking-lot lot blight." That situation can be overcome, and I was not even remotely suggesting otherwise.
Reversing moribund? That's relatively easy if the demographics exist, as Mad Valley did.
Reversing Aurora? Hold on, pardner. Ae you suggesting that such has been done? Perhaps I misunderstood.
Sucher:
Ellen, You are correct. No one must try to turn a 5 mile strip into a main street and no one has asked. (Though strip arterials do function as the mains streets of our day.)
And I'd be happy to see just a real half a mile of reversal.
I was using "main street" as a metonym for "walkable urbanism; even the things you are talking about (grand avenues, transit boulevards, transit routes with nodes, etc.) must be walkable. Or at least for my money; and if the things you mention are not walkable then why bother? And if we agree they must be walkable then we are back to the question Jeff raises.
Dunham-Jones:
I agree - but would rephrase it that the point is to reduce the auto-dependency associated with the arterial. If Columbia Pike ends up with a 5-mile streetcar route and walkable nodes - but is not especially walkable in-between the nodes I'd still count it as a success. (Fact is they're building the widened sidewalks along the whole route - but I doubt they'll get the pedestrian-oriented frontages along the whole route. That's ok -- especially b/c much of what's in between the nodes are affordable apartment complexes with a lot of seniors and the county's trying to see that they aren't gentrified out.)
Sucher:
Fair enough.
I guess the scenario -- in my mind -- is still murky. :)
Then again I am sanguine about Satisficing if (as is typical) we can't maximize.
Speck:
I agree with Ellen too! I'm just a little concerned about the possibility that we mislead clients with visualizations of what may be possible but is accomplished so rarely that it amounts to a false promise. That said, maybe it couldn't EVER be accomplished without the images. Maybe we should keep using the photos, but stamp them with ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS in big letters.
You asked about 5th avenue south. DPZ did the plan in '93 (good timing) and we transformed a mostly 1-story dead main street to a 2- to 3-story lively main street. By re-striping the poorly organized rear parking lots, we generated hundreds of parking spaces out of thin air. These were put on a pool and given to free to the first people to build upstairs housing.
Speck to Anonymous:
Turn that 7-laner into a 5-laner with parallel parking and we can talk.
Sucher:
Hi Anonymous. It is improving; I refer to the "lining" of Bel Square (with the Crate and Barrel at the corner) as an excellent example of urban repair -- on one site and without as you mention the lack of on street parking. And no State highway. That will be huge positive factor.
But there is only one thing where I semi-disagree: the main drag was never a genuine _through arterial._ Not like Aurora. (Sorry folks it's so local.) maybe that's what Anonymous means by "semi-nasty strip."
So your qualified praise -- "slowly morphing from a semi-nasty strip into what could become a fine main street."-- is just about right.
(Bellevue could have a serious psychological shift overnight -- literally -- if it allowed on street parking, which it could but people there are car crazy. And the irony is that even Bellevue C of C is pining for a "people place" (remember that phrase?) and a walkable Bellevue. They could shift the place overnight. And if it didn't work, put the signs back up.)
Moreover, because of the enormous economic, political and power of Kemper Freeman aka Bel Square, along with its institutional memory, the situation is somewhat sui generis. Lining Bel Square did change that intersection and no one else could have done it; the market power of Bel Square is huge. And of course Crate and Barrel understand urban retail.
Getting warm but no banana. :)
Sucher:
One more point about Bel Square:
I believe that Keeper Freeman et al missed a teaching moment. He should, and still can, of course, have explained the spatial dynamics standing there right at the corner of NE 8th and 104th NE -- using "the 3 Rules" or by whatever name you prefer such as "enfronting the street" -- to create walkable urbanism.
There must be a core of people (non-wonks) who understand these extremely simple-though-not-necessarily-easy dynamics.
3 Rules thinking (or equal) must be internalized by the crucial 2- 5% of citizens to create second-nature ongoing political support.
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