Having it Both Ways

While we've moved to downtown Frederick, my wife and I also find ourselves in the heart of the sprawling Metro DC burbs, itself the southernmost outpost of the sprawling Washington-Boston megalopolis. And this quote from a Washington Post article (registration required) about suburban development fights in Howard County, between DC and Baltimore, is one reason why:

"People here have chosen a specific lifestyle, and they don't want it eroded."

Even if that way of life is what's causing the erosion. It seems the only thing that pisses folks in the cul-de-sacs off more than sprawling development, is proposing denser development to alleviate it. As developers had the audacity to do in "downtown" Columbia, one of America's prototype "planned communities:"

"Though most of the county was asleep early last year when the Howard zoning board voted to kill a plan for housing in downtown Columbia, it was a hard-fought victory for development opponents. The five-member County Council, sitting as the zoning board, rejected Rouse Co. plans for a density increase in Columbia."

The bastards. And it is hardly a new phenomenon on the NIMBY front. Here's a Metro Pulse piece I wrote about a similar instance in Farragut, the closest Knoxville comes to Columbia:

"That last bit—the sewer plant—apparently has quite a few people out Farragut way pretty ticked. And it’s led to my acquaintance with what may be a unique species of activist: the pro sprawl anti-sprawl advocate. It goes something like this: If they build that sewer plant, then next thing you know they’ll be building houses everywhere. Maybe even townhomes! Why, it perverts the natural order of things—a septic tank and a half-acre slice of heaven, or something like that. I don’t quite follow the logic beyond the broad strokes: Sprawl isn’t really sprawl as long as it’s really, well, sprawling.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in any hurry to see townhouses take over the tiny amount of farmland left around Farragut. But if that same land is carved up into “estate” lots that are too big to mow and too little to plow, is it really any better?

Perhaps if Farragut and its environs had been a little more densely developed in the first place, West Knox County wouldn’t be in the dilemma it’s in: running out of room to build and struggling to accommodate the traffic that knits its far-flung fabric together.

Worse, beset by the prevailing mentality that density is the root of all evil, our solutions to runaway suburban development have been, largely, to run farther away. The setbacks get deeper, the landscape “buffers” get bigger, the uses more separated; separation of use is the golden rule of suburban development, a planning concept meaning that you live here, work there, shop over there and drive everywhere. And yet the same people who demand all this crap are mystified as to why we’re running out of undeveloped rural land?

“We are never,” writes critic and curmudgeon Jim Kunstler, “going to save the rural places or the agricultural places or the wild and scenic places (or the wild species that dwell there) unless we identify the human habitat and then strive to make it so good that humans will voluntarily inhabit it.”

Unfortunately we’ve allowed most of those habitats—our traditional towns and cities—to become so rundown that, as Kunstler observes: “Anyone with the means to do so has fled, shrieking, to dwell instead in either a rural setting or the mock-rural setting represented by suburbia.”

The irony is that as every square inch of West Knox County is being paved over and developed to the point that even the sprawl-dwellers have become anti-sprawl, large amounts of Knoxville’s center-city have more or less returned to nature. I got an email yesterday from someone working on a project to tackle the large number of abandoned houses and vacant lots in the inner city. Step one was compiling a neighborhood-by-neighborhood list of such properties, which was what the email was about. I sent him back a list of 24 addresses, more or less off the top of my head. That’s 24 abandoned, boarded-up houses in just one neighborhood. And that’s not even a complete list, or one that even counts vacant lots. Hell, it wasn’t too long ago that some people actually moved into downtown for the peace and tranquility (Boy, were they mad when the music started...).

So fight to stop townhomes from taking over Farragut if you want. Me, I’m hoping someone starts building townhomes in town."

Just Like Mickey?

The Milwaukee article I posted yesterday got me to thinking, once again, about what may be the real divide in downtown redevelopment - the bourgeoisie vs. the bohemian (or, if you ascribe to David Brook's "bobo" idea, the various shades of bobos sorting out their place in the pecking order). In that context the debate over gentrification and affordable housing is really a matter of set dressing and the poor are themselves relegated to extras in the BG, adding texture to the scene. Some thoughts on the subject I wrote awhile back in Knoxville's Metro Pulse. Note that I've cut out some of the lead, context involving Chattanooga's surprisingly divisive mayor's race:

the real rift, it seems, was over the “authenticity” of the city’s rejuvenated downtown. “Downtown is like Disney World to me now—nice looking but too manufactured,” said one former resident of downtown Chattanooga in a recent Chattanooga Pulse article on the divide over downtown’s development. And it’s an attitude that, according to the article, apparently mirrors many of her contemporaries who called downtown home either before it was cool or when it truly was (depending who you ask). “A lot of us thought Chattanooga seemed poised to be a hip town with artists and musicians, but bohemian types can’t afford to live downtown anymore,” said the same resident who dissed downtown as Disney-fied.

You can hear similar arguments here, of course. The shape of downtown development—albeit on a more conceptual than concrete level—was certainly a factor inKnoxville’s 2003 mayor’s race. And, as more and more downtown redevelopment projects push forward, the debate seems far from over. Just the other day a photo on the local weblog South Knox Bubba of some picturesque urban decay along Jackson Avenue elicited the following comment from a poster:

“That picture really works your sense of longing, either for the archaeology of the scene’s past, or for its possibilities. I spent the weekend in Asheville and, for all the primped and trimmed corners of its downtown, I’d never sensed what Asheville was really like until late last night, when some friends of mine walked me through an industrial back lot not too unlike this one, up some clangy wrought iron stairs, and into a dusty letter press studio where some zany looking folks were playing ukulele and mandolin. Anyway, I had the same sense then that your photo gives me aboutKnoxville, and how you find your history in the secrets of stockyards and ghettos. And you hope that sort of indelible history gets written into whatever redevelopment lies ahead…you know, maybe create something out of its industrial vibe, like studios and such, instead of just dormitories for yuppies.”

Now, it should come as no surprise that I too have a soft spot for urban decay (for what it’s worth, the desktop photo on my laptop was once an artsy-fartsy shot of the neon “air-conditioned” sign that graces the crumbling façade of the Fifth Avenue Motel). But I also realize that “archaeology” becomes more than just a metaphor if downtown’s picturesque ruins remain unrepaired for too long. Note that even the preservationists who pushed to save the S&W wrote off another of the block’s historic buildings as too far gone to save.

And, as much as I like Asheville and its funky alternative attitude, I’m not sure that “authentic” is the adjective I’d use to describe it. The same goes for zany folks with letterpresses and ukuleles. Interesting? Yes. Authentic? Well, not exactly. Or, to bring this back to whether a downtown has to be “Disney” to be a cartoon, consider this: The works of counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb may have been edgy and avant-garde. And they, perhaps more importantly, made the squares uncomfortable. But at the end of the day they were still pictures drawn with pen and ink, just like Mickey.

Are the Bohemians also Badguys?

Badguys assuming you're against "gentrification," that is. Some interesting thoughts on the role of artists in the gentrification cycle in this article from Milwaukee.

"Artists who just want a space of their own obviously have difficulty with the idea that their own way of life might drive them and other people out of a neighborhood.

For instance, some anti-gentrification anarchists in West Philadelphia were accused of aiding gentrification when they tried to buy an old YMCA building for their community in a mostly black neighborhood. One of the anarchists, James Nasti, said "Gentrification is a touchy thing because regardless of what we, a mostly white radical community, regardless of what we're doing, all that is needed to start the ball rolling [for gentrification] is our white skin. The artists and radicals move into a neighborhood and the white faces make it safer for others to follow."

New Urbanist architect Andres Duany and, to my knowledge, everyone else who has commented on gentrification, agrees with Nasti. It is not the iconic "rich" professional who starts the gentrification process. A study by the National Endowment for the Arts has shown that downtown gentrification in cities all over the US increases in proportion to the number of artists in the area. This trend has been observed in Milwaukee too: students, artists and other "bohemians" settle in depressed, low-rent districts and then complain about the influx of yuppies that follows them, driving the bohemians out as prices rise. But it is the artists and other bohemians themselves who set up the conditions for the process that unfolds.

Like the Philadelphia anarchists, from the perspective of the urban poor (usually minorities) and elderly people on fixed incomes, the bohemians (who tend not to be minorities) are the first wave of gentrification...

...Bohemians like to think of themselves as connected with their community, but their definition of community is often very restricted. Most aren't homeowners and do not have children in the local schools, so they don't have stakes in the most influential political and economic institutions around them. This shows in Riverwest where the "bohemian participation quotient" in neighborhood, homeowner, and business organizations is basically nil. And despite bohemian disdain for yuppie/bobo consumption habits, both groups favor a local economy centered around things that are widely perceived as non-essential "speciality" items: arts and crafts, health food, micro-brewed beer and rock bands.

By and large, these are not the kinds of products that sustain and appeal to urban minorities and members of the working class. They are things that appeal to bobos who truly have more in common with bohemians than anyone else. This could change if specialty stores, food co-ops, and artists diversified their products, taking steps to reach a wider market oriented to the local, domestic economy of working class people, retirees, and minorities. But barring major changes in the defining traits of artists and other bohemians, it would seem that they have to accept their role alongside yuppies and bobos in the gentrification process and look for ways to make it less disruptive as an endless cycle of displacement."

AN ADDITIONAL COMMENT: I love this bit from the article:

"Perhaps gentrification will not hit Riverwest as hard as it has hit other communities. Riverwest is not like highly underoccupied and depressed areas that have rapidly gentrified."

"Highly Underoccupied?" Sounds as if gentrification isn't the only thing driving people out. Why is it that no one seems all that concerned about displacement from poor neighborhoods until the yuppies start showing up.

It's enough to make one think the poor are just an excuse, not the real issue.

It's Called Downsizing

My wife and I recently relocated, heading from Knoxville, Tennessee to her hometown of Frederick, Maryland. Not that the move changes our perspective on "renewal" all that much. We've essentially jumped from one neighborhood that might be called "transitional" to another. From one racially mixed block with rental on either side of us to another. And, while the new house isn't condemned as our first was when we bought it, it is older, circa 1870 as best we can figure, compared to 1889 for our previous Victorian.

There is one big difference in jumping from Red to Blue America, however. Our fixer-upper in downtown Frederick cost almost as much per square foot as finished lofts do in downtown Knoxville. Or about two and a half times per square foot what we sold the Knoxville Victorian for. Which explains why we've gone from 2800 sq. ft. to about 1500.

Some old thoughts on Kelo

It's a bit late to add onto the blogosphere heap piling onto the Supreme Court's Kelo decision, but I thought I'd offer up something I wrote awhile back, in Knoxville's Metro Pulse, before the ruling was handed down. Partly because I think what has gotten lost in the debate over what constitutes "public use" is an even bigger problem: the use of "blight" as a blanket designation. Sure a neighborhood may be "blighted" but it is often only a small number of properties dragging the rest down. Blanket condemnation, rather than help cities, does more harm, eroding the confidence of the one thing most cities need more of: small property owners:

Viagra for Neighborhoods

A developer in New London, CT—home to Pfizer, the makers of Viagra—wants to erect something big on the former whaling port’s old waterfront. I forget exactly what—a planetarium, maybe. Or a convention center hotel, perhaps… You know how it is.


However, it seems that a somewhat battered and blue-collar neighborhood, home to the feisty descendents of Portuguese fishermen and a smattering of Pfizer yuppies that went trolling for Pfixer-uppers, inconveniently occupies the same stretch of waterfront. So the city of New London has graciously tried to use its eminent domain power to run off the riff-raff and clear the site, since it will generate more tax revenue for the city’s coffers (and the front-end cost of running a hundred or so homeowners out of town? Well, why quibble?). The homeowners, understandably less inclined to be civic-minded, filed suit. The case is currently winding its way through the U.S. Supreme Court where the Bush administration (“ownership society” and Republican property-rights rhetoric aside) has filed briefs in support of the city and the developers (NOTE: I was in error, the Bush administration considered filing a brief but ultimately declined). Which, predictably, has led to lots of Internet chatter debating whether eminent domain is ever justified if the end result benefits the private sector.


Well, in my opinion, the New London case is certainly an egregious example, a simple attempt by the developer to do an end run around the real estate market. But, in small doses, eminent domain can pump new life into limp real estate.


Take this George Barber-designed Victorian in Parkridge, for example. Cut up into apartments, run through the slumlord rental wringer, condemned and abandoned, six years ago this house was a wreck. But it was still private property, even if the owner seemed satisfied to let it sit and rot. So the city stepped in, using its eminent domain authority to acquire the house and sell it to a private owner, in this case a small-scale developer who totally restored the house and sold it to a new homeowner.


The private sector profited, but there was also public benefit. Not only does the place generate more taxes (which, unlike the slumlord, the new owner actually paid) the restoration transformed what was once a rundown ruin into a showstopper that stacks up against the finest Fourth and Gill or Old North Knoxville has to offer.


From the five fireplaces complete with tile, grates and oak mantles (salvaged by Knox Heritage from several houses demolished in Fort Sanders) to the beautifully refinished hardwood floors, ladder-back doors and the original built-in cupboard in the butler’s pantry, the house is loaded with historic detail. There’s a clawfoot tub in the master bath, too. Modern updates from the restoration in 2000 include a new kitchen with adjacent breakfast room, laundry, central heat and air, plumbing and electrical, dimensional shingle roof and guttering. In fact, the only thing left undone is the large two-story stable out back—1,400 square feet of additional storage space that could be converted into a garage/guesthouse, studio or workshop. 


Who knows, if New London exercised more eminent domain of this sort, the city might not be in the sort of financial fix that makes it easy prey for developers proposing big silver-built projects whose risks often outweigh returns.

Fumbling Towards Renaissance

Where to start? Perhaps with the basics. As things currently stand, commerce is a complicated thing from the urban POV. It seems so many of the folks who've chosen to live in inner/center cities look down upon the crass commercialism of suburbia. And are highly suspect of its intrusion into the inner-city (particularly if it is brought by "developers"). Which makes me wonder, sometimes, how much some people grasp the crucial role commerce has always played in urban life. It is, essentially, the key ingredient, as I consider in this piece originally published in Knoxville's Metro Pulse

Revival, then Renaissance
From the Dark Ages to Downtown Knoxville

Read a little about downtown redevelopment and you’ll stumble across the word “Renaissance” a lot (remember “Renaissance Knoxville?”). No mystery why. An age of great art, great architecture and, most of all, great cities, it’s easy to see why writers are anxious to paste images of the European Renaissance onto efforts at injecting new life into American downtowns that, like Knoxville’s, have been moribund for much too long. But I’m starting to think that, by invoking the era of Da Vinci and Michelangelo, we may be reaching for the wrong metaphor, or at least getting ahead of ourselves.
As dead as many of America’s urban centers supposedly are, it’s not the first time in Western history that the cities have hit rock bottom. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, most of Europe’s cities were a hollow shell of their former selves. Populations shrank, cattle grazed among the ruins of the Roman Forum (history’s first brownfield was, oddly, a pasture…), and cities would have died altogether if not for the presence of institutions such as the court, the church and monasteries. “In short,” writes Sydney Painter in A History of the Middle Ages, “...although the ancient towns lacked real urban life, they were centers of both lay and ecclesiastical administration.”

The missing ingredient was, largely, commerce. It is no coincidence that the primary centers of the Renaissance were also the medieval world’s principal centers of trade and industry: northern Italy and the Flemish and Dutch low country. The Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries was grand, producing profound works of art and science, but it would never have occurred but for what scholars call the “Commercial Revolution” of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries.

What does any of this have to do with Knoxville? Well, consider those dying cities of the dark ages that were mere “centers of administration” and take their institutions of court, church and monastery and replace them with government, hospitals, social services and the university—sound familiar? Sure, downtown’s residential market is booming, and a select few inner-city neighborhoods are becoming gentrified, but without an accompanying revival of commerce, those efforts will eventually prove futile (even somewhat feudal if they remain protected enclaves of wealth among overwhelming poverty).

That’s one reason why I was encouraged by the recent announcement that Mast General Stores, a regional chain that’s participated in several—dare I say, downtown renaissances—is opening a location on Gay Street. But as difficult as reviving Gay Street retail will be, it’s hardly the toughest challenge Knoxville faces. Downtown may have been dead from a retail standpoint, but it has never totally disappeared off the community’s radarscope in the way that much of the center city has—thought of, if at all, as a domesticated third-world that’s part charity case, part crime scene.

Yet there’s hope for commerce of the legal sort, even in the inner city. Consider this month’s issue of Inc. magazine, which features the street-smart magazine’s annual profile of “The Inner City 100,” a list of 100 thriving companies located in some of the nation’s most struggling neighborhoods. And I do mean thriving. Compiled by the Harvard Business School’s Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, the 100 companies on this year’s list—in industries as diverse as manufacturing, software development, retail, data storage and management, even charter schools—boast four-year revenue growth ranging from 151 percent to more than 7,000 percent, and revenues of as much as $227 million (for The Piston Group, a 370-employee auto-parts manufacturer founded in 1996 in one of Detroit’s toughest neighborhoods).

But don’t let those numbers fool you. Sure, inner-city companies may enjoy advantages such as the availability of labor and unmet local market demands, but business isn’t always easy. Not only are there perceptions of crime and an under-skilled workforce to overcome, there are issues with bureaucratic red tape and the occasional bit of misguided activism from those still stuck viewing the inner-city through third-world lenses. For example, a 45-employee development and construction firm in Cleveland (No. 92 on the list), had to forego expanding its offices onto the vacant lot next door after it encountered fierce opposition from a charity seeking to build a homeless shelter on the same site.

So, I guess I’m saying that while it may not be as sexy as the Mona Lisa, or as good for the soul as the Sistine Chapel, when dreaming of downtown Knoxville’s renaissance, let’s not forget the crucial role of commerce.