Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

The Setback

One of the most basic principles of the New Urbanism and smart planning is the idea of creating a comfortable street space within which pedestrians feel safe and welcome. This flies in the face of modern sprawled commercial development where a network of roads and parking lots makes getting from  Point A to Point B on foot a truly treacherous experience.

A friend of mine who lives in England told me about the time during a visit to the United States when he exited his hotel on foot and decided to walk to a restaurant that he could see not 500 yards away. After a few minutes dodging traffic and attracting stares, a police cruiser pulled over and advised him to get in; "You don't want to be out here walking," he said. So much for exploring the environs around his hotel.

Typical commercial zoning restrictions force builders of commercial buildings to provide a set amount of parking, and the rules go further to actually require that the building be set back from the street in order to lay the parking lot right out front. The result is the familiar commercial wastelands seen all across America, where burger joints and tire centers are spread across the landscape with huge spaces between them. These commercial jungles are designed to be accessed point-to-point by automobile: it matters not that you can see your next destination as you exit the Border's book store, you have to get in your car to get to that Qdoba 200 yards away or risk life and limb traversing the asphalt.

In the book THE NEW URBANISM: TOWARD AN ARCHITECTURE OF COMMUNITY by Peter Katz there's an excellent SIMCITY-like series of illustrations that show how setback and non-setback commercial spaces develop (as always, click for larger image).

The three panels above show a typical commercial building that conforms to standard, excessive setback and parking codes (in this case, for the community of Riviera Beach, FLA). As a growth scenario is played out in successive frames, we see the familiar and hostile "sea of parking" develop.

A proposed new code aligns buildings of various sizes with the street edge and puts parking at the rear of each lot. There is also a continuous arcade above the sidewalk. As growth occurs under the new code's guidance, a real main street develops that can support pedestrians and cars.

A more "real-world" illustration.

Above, a street in Riviera Beach.

Next, a build-out scenario simulated using typical "setback" restrictions.

And, finally, a build-out simulation using a new master plan and codes.

Which looks more inviting?

Re-visiting my hometown: Wausau, Wisconsin through new eyes

I had the opportunity to visit my hometown of Wausau, Wisconsin on a sunny weekend that ended with a spectacular thunderstorm complete with hail. before the bad weather moved in, however, I was able to take a walk downtown with my dad, daughter, brother-in-law, niece and nephew. It was fascinating to "re-view" my hometown after reading James Howard Kunstler's books (see postscript below) on sustainable communities.

The picture above is the old Grand Theater as seen from 3rd Street, where I saw most of the movies that came out before 1984 (when I left for college). Of course, in those days the building didn't feature an odd digital marquee.

As you can see, a block of buildings has been razed and replaced with an attractive square bordered with trees. During winter it's frozen over and becomes a skating rink. (Click on any image to make it bigger.)

Looking north on 3rd Street you can see the row of storefronts across the street from the square; my back is to the section of street that leads to the Wausau Mall entrance. The street is narrow and allows angle parking. Cars simply know to proceed slowly on 3rd Street; it communicates "pedestrian area; proceed with caution."

Another block north on 3rd and you see an interesting juxtaposition: nice storefronts on the right side, and on the left ...

The abomidable First American Center, opened to great excitement and fanfare in 1974. This was back in the days before malls; kids and adults alike thought downtown would change forever with the appearance of this behemoth. Downtown changed, but not for the better. After a very short honeymoon period during which people gathered there out of curiosity, the place revealed its true nature as a modernist monster - - note the blank walls facing the street on the left side, which extends almost to the end of the block (before giving way to entrances to the below-grade "drive-up banking" lanes); the same sort of treatment faces 3rd Street, where the old bank building once provided a wonderful facing and sidewalk enclosure. When this building opened, the only thing inside worth visiting inside was Mother's Ice Cream (the first non-soft serve ice cream in town). Everything else was basically office space.

The Wausau Mall opened not long after, and it predictably sucked the life out of downtown's street. We used to await the Christmas display in the Prange's department store windows further north on 3rd Street, and the bustling scene looked exactly like the opening scenes of A Christmas Story. All that ended when everything moved into the sterile confines of the mall.

Downtown streets weren't particularly busy while we were there because of a kayaking competition and the farmer's market down by "The River District," which has been fabulously developed since the days I used to ride my Huffy to the shore and hold my nose (the Wisconsin River used to be quite pungent). Now the place is downright picturesque.

We ate lunch outside of a terrific deli situated on a portion of Jefferson Street that is basically newly created by the addition of parking ramps with commercial space on their ground floors. We sat under an overhang, and when it began to rain we were still comfortable. (When it began to hail we moved inside.) Across the street we could see an upscale bistro below the new multi-story Jefferson Street Inn.

The next day I went for a run through the old neighborhoods, which are a far cry from the stale wastelands of modern suburbia. Though certain areas are in downturn due to some rather reckless street widening (including close to may parents' house), there's still block after block of houses that come right up to the sidewalk, with real porches and alleys in the back. The old Wausau East High School is now completely renovated as condos. It's never looked better.

The real surprise came when I ran back down to the river and saw what we used to call "The Hobo Island Trestle." It's now a footbridge, and Hobo Island - - which was named such because, if you braved the trip across the trestle and didn't get squashed by a train, chances were good that you might run into a gaunt man who just hopped off the last Milwaukee Road boxcar  - - is now ribboned with lit paths and little placards to point out, for instance, the location of a lumber mill foundation.

And there's more in store. The city plans a multimillion dollar renovation of the Mall to better match the attractive streets outside, and the Plaza Mall is being converted to a mixed used commercial and condo complex at the cost of $9 million.

An odd POSTSCRIPT: I learned on the day that I left Wausau that J. H. Kunstler appeared at the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in nearby Custer, Wisconsin that very weekend. It's very likely that I could have passed him on the streets of Wausau that he inspired me to view through new eyes.

A bit more on Wausau, including a new tower going up, in a future post ...

The answer, evidently, is more asphalt

From The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial page today, this gem:

In my new almost daily commute home from Waukesha to Wauwatosa on I-94, everything goes fine until I get close to Highway 100. That's where the congestion from the bottleneck otherwise known as the Zoo Interchange starts. Some speed up while others slow down, watching for open spaces to slip into, everyone getting in each other's way. It's the state's busiest interchange, but Gov. Jim Doyle doesn't think reconstructing it deserves a higher priority. Maybe he should try driving it more often.

- By Ernst-Ulrich Franzen, associate editorial page editor / suburbs

This comes from a regular feature in the paper called "quick hits," so Mr. Franzen doesn't have a lot of space to clarify his position. However, it seems as though he has in mind some manner of improvement in his life's lot as a result of some more highway work.

Completely unmentioned here is the likelihood that Mr. Franzen is utterly alone in his car, surrounded by others who drive alone as well. If he is carpooling, hats off to him.

Mr. Franzen's complaint is elegantly indicative of the "free goods" concept that economists cite when explaining things like traffic congestion. Items such as parking, highway maintenance, and even gas are priced so low as to make an automobile commute attractive to most Americans ($3 a gallon has done nothing to dissuade us). Mr. Franzen is now facing an actual inconvenience - - a "non-free good" in that a slow-down at the Zoo Interchange is aggravating him. "Everyone getting in each other's way" !

Let us hope that more and more people get aggravated enough to see the wisdom in pursuing a commuter rail line that would eliminate Mr. Franzen's aggravation. Because it has been made clear over and over that the more asphalt you lay down, the more cars will come to fill it up (this is called latent demand). As traffic engineers say: "Trying to cure traffic congestion by adding more capacity is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt."

Link: JS Online:Quick Hits.

Journal of Markets & Morality tackles sustainable development

Get comfortable before clicking this link: it's a series of articles wherein New Urbanism topics are examined through the lens of organized religion -

New Urbanists contend that the main defect of standard suburban   development (a.k.a. sprawl) is not aesthetic or even environmental but social:   its tendency to undermine the building of community and intergenerational cohesion.   For this reason, they insist that the planning profession (at all levels) must   reinstate the community-forming elements of traditional neighborhood design   in new town development and urban renewal projects. Although the New Urbanists   claim that traditional towns and urban neighborhoods are more conducive to developing   community and provide more life choices than contemporary suburban living, their   critics counter that the New Urbanist designs are artificial, elitist, and open   the door to increased intervention by government. Regardless of which view one   takes, the interdisciplinary nature of the New Urbanist project coupled with   the fact that the movement raises important issues concerning the theological   and ethical dimensions of market activity and human anthropology, makes Markets   & Morality an ideal forum in which to explore further the possible promises   and potential perils of the New Urbanism.

Link: Volume 6, Number 1 • Spring 2003.

Amid the suburbs, an urban revival

Yaromir Steiner, one of the owners of Bayshore mall and the mastermind of the redevelopment predicts: "Over the next 25 to 30 years, all single-use developments will disappear. You will see mixed developments that I call urban hubs or town centers."

The old Bayshore, a low-slung shopping center surrounded by acres of asphalt, is being replaced by two-, four- and six-story buildings, canyon-like surroundings for the streets that will run through the 44-acre property. The tall buildings will soon have floor-to-ceiling ground-level windows, the kind that many downtowns used to sport. A modern-day version of the traditional town square will sit in the middle of the development, creating what owners hope will be the community gathering place that this bedroom suburb never had.

And an interesting comment regarding the South 27th Street development here in Franklin/Oak Creek:

Doug Seymour, Oak Creek's planning director, said an "urban village" planned for a six-mile stretch along S. 27th St. that is shared with neighboring Franklin would not have received support had it abutted residential subdivisions. The plans call for many of the same elements that Bayshore has incorporated.

"People realize that 27th Street is the economic engine driving our future," Seymour said. "The development is not a threat to existing homes or the economic vitality of existing subdivisions."

Link: JS Online:Amid the suburbs, an urban revival.

Sprawl-based planning is EXPENSIVE in Franklin, WI

From the book SUBURBAN NATION:

One such municipality, the city of Franklin, a Milwaukee suburb of 25,000, conducted a careful cost analysis in 1992. it found that a new single family home pays less than $5000 in property taxes but costs more than $10,000 to service.

Thus, the inefficiency of unchecked sprawling development was covered by a tax hike for all, including those who live in older, better planned neighborhoods. New subdivisions continue to be built all over the place without regard to any manner of street grid or master plan; the lesson did not sink in. The estimated population of Franklin in 2004 was 32,405.

This is not to say that the planning commission in Franklin is inept or evil in some way. They are having to cope with a variety of pressures and input from residents - - most times very self-involved input - - while attempting to please as many people as possible.

A couple hundred yards away from my house, a developer was allowed to build a dead-end street with houses. It contains no connection to my neighborhood, the nearby school, or the senior housing complex 100 yards to its north. The street has no chance of continuing west to 27th street, so it can only exit east onto a collector street; the west end of the street ends in an actual bulb-like turnaround, a physical admission that this collection of houses was built for pure profit with minimal input from the Franklin city planners. It's simply a 200 yard-or-so road with ten houses and a run-off pond built on it. As of now, they haven't even bothered to plant trees.

"The Bay" parries Bayshore juggernaut with inventive verve

WHITNEY GOULD of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writes:

I would be a very rich woman if I had $1,000 for every visionary design scheme I have seen that never got built. What too often happens is some variation on the following:

Architect offers proposal. Residents don't like this, don't like that. Community leaders listen to loudest, crabbiest voices. Client loses nerve. Design gets dumbed down.

As the pattern is repeated, endlessly, it's no wonder that some beleaguered architects stop trying to innovate. Timidity quashes faith in the future; a sense of place is lost to blandness.

Presented with plans for a drop-dead beautiful development on its main street, Whitefish Bay stands poised either to repeat that sorry ritual or finally break free of it.

Link: JS Online:'The Bay' parries Bayshore juggernaut with inventive verve.

Milwaukee Transit faces more cuts, higher fares

Proposed 2007 Milwaukee budget may not be enough to cover liability for retiree health benefits, official says

The Milwaukee County Transit System might need to cut routes far deeper or raise fares much higher than transit officials have proposed to balance its 2007 budget, warns county budget chief Steve Agostini.

Link: JS Online:Transit faces more cuts, higher fares.

27th Street Corridor Plan Webpage - - from 2004

I examined the homepage in haste and assumed it was a new website. Instead, it was evidently created by Schreiber / Anderson Associates, Inc., the firm hired by the cities of Franklin and Oak Creek to help plan the 27th Street development back in 2004. Many PDFs - some pretty unwieldy - posted, including the 123 page "South 27th Street Corridor Plan," but some interesting public comments throughout.

None of the pdf documents are DATED, unfortunately, so I'm sure more than a few visitors to this site might believe that it deals with the current 27th Street situation.

The Collector Road

One of the scourges we're subjected to in the age of sprawl is the lack of a road grid or, indeed, any planning for such.

In Franklin, the old mile-square platting remains intact; for example, heading south to north there is a major east-west road every mile. And NOTHING in between besides meandering roads that head into subdivisions.

These busy roads are called COLLECTORS, and they're one of the ugly manifestations of automobile-centric suburbs. Because communities like Franklin are created by developers who buy patches of land as they become available (a farmer sells, for instance) with no accounting for proximity to existing neighborhoods and services, they create their own wiggly roads within developments and subdivisions. For some reason, there's no city planning provision - - a COMPREHENSIVE MASTER PLAN - -  to ensure an open path between the major collector roads so intermitent north-south streets can be added at, for instance, quarter-mile intervals.

In the picture below (courtesy of GOOGLE EARTH), the busy COLLECTOR ROADS are red and blue. Note the developments inside the square.

There is no provision at all for traffic-relieving "grid roads" between the "East-West A" and "East West B" like this:

See how the developers built houses in a pattern with no relationship to the existing grid? You would have to buy and tear down dozens of new houses to get through the block.

Why is this a problem? Because access to the highway and everything commercial (big box stores, Starbucks, etc.) for the many new subdivisions sprouting up are all to the west on "North-South B", or 27th street, and "North-South A." As more and more housing subdivisions are built, all of the traffic has but one route per mile to get to the things people need. These collector roads were not built with that volume in mind, and the insane roadwork created by subdivision developers between the collector roads makes relief via "grid roads" impossible. Now there is no solution.

Why were these developers allowed to build houses and roads in such a haphazard manner? Why weren't they made to obey a superimposed gridwork like the one above so narrow grid roads could be built in the future to relieve the collector roads?

One mile south of the above map is another east-west collector road (one per mile, remember?); it's currently being WIDENED.

What a sorrowful "solution."