Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Do planners plan? Are planners allowed to plan?

"In the United States, the phrase 'urban planning' is an indefensible euphemism. Despite the existence of a large profession which bears this name, urban planners do not plan. They follow along behind the parade of those who do -- the land developers. The role of professional planners is to sweep up and organize the dung."

From The Elephant in the Bedroom: Automobile Dependence & Denial: Impacts on the Economy and Environment, by Stanley I. Hart and Alvin L. Spivak

A provocative statement, to say the least, and one I'm going to present to the various planners and developers that I'm interviewing in the days ahead. I'll post some of their reactions as they come in. (There is also an ongoing discussion of this topic at cyburbia.org.)

Wha... ?

I've read this opinion piece three times and still don't quite know what Ms. Erbe is trying to say. Perhaps all will become clear in "part 2."

USNews.com: Opinion: Bonnie Erbe: To the Contrary: 'Smart growth' turns dumb (Part 1)

It is the demon with many names. It goes by"vertical sprawl," "smart growth," the "new urbanism," or "transitvillage." These descriptions refer to the new phenomenon that pits tree-hugging environmentalists against liberal champions of the inner-city poor. Karl Rove himself couldn't have devised a more effective wedge between two normally simpatico groups. Instead, lefties themselves are jaggedly split over how, whether, and when to promote neighborhood revitalization through increased urban density.

For decades, tree-hugging lovers of green and open space have campaigned against suburban sprawl, pushing so-called smart growth to preserve rural America. Smart growth promotes high-density development that, in one incarnation, revitalizes decaying innner-city neighborhoods by putting skyscrapers on large, empty, or low-density tracts. A new liberal movement, however, threatens to set back smart growth's popularity.

Some progressives are campaigning instead for the property rights of long-time denizens of those decaying inner-city areas. This group espouses a greater affinity for battling wealthy developers seeking to replace urban decay with expensive apartments. They stand up for the property rights of elderly and poor residents against dispossession through eminent domain.

A San Francisco-based website Culturechange.org describes a local battle thusly: "Living next to a subway station and a redevelopment project area (currently under construction: 10-story office tower, 240-room hotel, 20-plex theater, and a proposed "transit village") gives a particular group, Neighbors For Responsible Redevelopment (south of San Francisco, Calif.), a personal perspective on what can go wrong with 'smart growth.' We understand firsthand the necessity of protecting existing communities from economic opportunism."

Up next:  Kiss and make up, boys and girls!

Link: USNews.com: Opinion: Bonnie Erbe: To the Contrary: 'Smart growth' turns dumb (Part 1).

The Mighty, Mighty Edge Node

Continuing my observations on Anoka, Minnesota (the hometown of Garrison Keillor, and partial template for the fictional small town of Lake Wobegon):

I discovered the Riverdale Village Edge Node about three years ago, just as it was coming into nearly full flower. It became my regular "road office" while visiting my in-laws in Anoka because there's a Starbucks and Kinko's in proximity to one another - -  not to mention a Border's Book Store, Best Buy, Old Navy, Qdoba, Noodles, Target, Einstein's Bagels, etc. I was drawn by the Siren's call; all this stuff in one place was irresisible to me. I confess that I never considered exploring downtown Anoka for an adequate workspace with WiFi or a wired internet connection because the idea of taking a break wandering the stacks at Border's was just too hard to pass up.

From the Developers Diversified Realty website:

Riverdale Village is an 872,507 square foot hybrid shopping center consisting of a cluster of discount stores, lifestyle tenants and traditional mall anchor tenants, which combine to create a truly unique tenant mix in a convenient and easy-to-access, open-air format.

Well, that's one way to look at it.

From ground level, however, Riverdale Village is downright purgatorial; a bewildering maze of big box stores, chain restaurants, chain coffee shops, and asphalt that stretches in all directions with no discernible pattern and no regard for pedestrian traffic. You simply cannot safely walk from one place to another, even if you can clearly see the place you need to go. One must get back into a vehicle and attempt to negotiate the completely arbitrary-seeming network of curvey, loopy roads that seem to lead everywhere but where you're trying to go. This is not one-stop shopping; you need a car to get there, and you need a car to stay there.

If my mother-in-law is any indication of overall shopping behavior (and, in this case, she seems to represent the majority) Anoka's downtown is losing an incredible amount of traffic and business to Riverdale Village, which is only a mile down Highway 10/47 with two exits that deposit you into the middle of a commercial cornucopia.

Downtown Anoka - - at least to my mother-in-law and her contemporaries - -  is "too expensive, full of boutique stores." The Minnesota shopping ethic is much more in tune with Target, Wal-Mart, etc. They don't even bother with the cafes and lunch spots downtown anymore.

And, in this case, They're not only spurning Anoka's downtown - - they're spending money just over the city's border in Coon Rapids. Ouch.

An aside: Kinko's no longer offers free internet connections (tip: go to Panara, which does), but I used to spend hours at a desk there (generally the spacious corner space) working on whatever project was pending at the moment. Almost invariably, no matter what time of year I was in Anoka, an older gentleman would come in and park at the desk next to me with his laptop, portable printer and blueprints, and start working the phones on behalf of some sort of condo development in Florida. He would give me a familiar nod every now and then, recognizing me from months earlier, and months before that, etc. It was impossible not to hear him speak on his cel phone, and I noticed that his company's name changed nearly each time I crossed paths with him. He would sometimes wink at me if I got caught looking in his direction during one of those calls. It was very Glengarry Glen Ross.

PREVIOUS POST: AKA Lake Wobegon

Trying not to act its age

Wisconsin village area has eye on makeover

By BRANDON LORENZ
Special to the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Aug. 5, 2006

Brookfield - Can a neighborhood go through a mid-life crisis?

Brookfield's Village neighborhood was starting to show some of the signs. Stretching along Brookfield Road, it predates the city's incorporation in 1954.

As a child, Kathy McCartan would walk to Brookfield Road from her home on Pleasant St. to shop. At the time, the area was the commercial heart of the community.

"When people needed hardware or groceries, this is where they came,"  McCartan says.

But construction of the Ruby Isle shopping center, in 1963, lured many of the neighborhood's long-standing stores away, McCartan says. Today, the shopping center near City Hall is home to 30 stores and restaurants.

So what does a city do when one of its landmark neighborhoods - home to many of the city's historic homes and commercial buildings - enters a mid-life crisis?

Give it a makeover.

Link: JS Online:Trying not to act its age.

Little touches add up

Milwaukee's newest urban development comes with some unexpected amenities

By FELICIA THOMAS-LYNN
[email protected]

Margarett Sinclair's two-story house has spacious rooms, a large eat-in kitchen and a feature found in the homes of many well-to-do families: an elevator.

"I feel like I am one of these elite people who lives out in the suburbs," said Sinclair, 48, gleaming. "God has blessed me with a gorgeous house that I could never pay for."

The amenities in the home that Sinclair shares with two of her children are part of an innovative City of Milwaukee Housing Authority project for low-income residents.

When completed, Highland Homes, one of Milwaukee's newest urban home developments, will have 46 homes that reflect the city's traditional architectural styles, while meeting the needs of contemporary family life.

Plans call for about half of the homes, which will be sprinkled in among existing residences, to be sold on the open market.

Link: JS Online:Little touches add up.

New players on Oak Creek land

2 out-of-state firms to develop blueprint for tract along lakefront

By TOM DAYKIN
[email protected]

A California-based real estate developer and a Colorado firm that helps finance environmental cleanups are to create a master development plan for an area in Oak Creek that overlooks Lake Michigan.

The two firms - Industrial Realty Group LLC, based in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, Calif., and International Risk Group LLC, based just outside Denver in Littleton, Colo. - have formed a partnership known as IRG Oak Creek LLC, said Doug Seymour, Oak Creek's community development director.

The Oak Creek Common Council this week designated IRG Oak Creek as a master developer for the city's lakefront area, bordered roughly by Puetz Road, 5th Ave. and Bender Park.

The area is also known as Lakeview Village.

As master developer, IRG Oak Creek will investigate the need for environmental cleanup and prepare a detailed master use plan for the area.

Industrial Realty Group has been involved in redeveloping polluted properties across the country. International Risk Group helps finance environmental cleanups connected to developments.

Oak Creek city officials have long envisioned a redevelopment of the city's lakefront area.

In 2001, the city approved a conceptual redevelopment plan for Lakeview Village.

The long-range plan envisions the eventual creation of upscale housing, including condo high-rises, a hotel, restaurants and other commercial developments.

But that plan has not yet been implemented, in part because Milwaukee County's plans to create a $17 million championship golf course at Bender Park stalled when the county ran into financial trouble.

Bender Park remains undeveloped, and developer Richard Platt's plan for a high-end housing development that would have bordered the golf course has been dropped.

Platt last year sold his property to Herget Plavsic Development LLC of Brookfield, which plans to create 149 lots for single-family homes and 80 condominiums on a site east of Chicago Road between Fitzsimmons and Oakwood roads.

Oak Creek Mayor Dick Bolender, in a statement, said public access to the lakefront would be a cornerstone of any lakefront redevelopment.

Link: JS Online:New players on Oak Creek land.

AKA Lake Wobegon

My wife's hometown is Anoka, Minnesota, which is also Garrison Keillor's hometown and the inspiration for his ode to life in a small community, Lake Wobegon. Anoka hosted the first Halloween parade in 1920, and in 1937 city officials persuaded Congress to officially grant their city the title of Halloween Capitol of America. It has become a sort of de facto template for small town America. We traveled there this past weekend for a wedding, so the next few posts will explore Anoka and surrounding environs.

Here's a 2003 "pre-revival" image of Downtown Anoka I found at "Todd's Photo Galleries." The city has since done much to energize their main street, so it's anything but dead at this point (as always, click for larger pictures):

However, Anoka is a growing community and not immune to the pressures of far-flung residential and commercial development at the expense of its main street.

A new branch of the Anoka County Library was recently completed and dedicated. But it's not located in the downtown area - - it's about two-and-a-quarter miles away (as the crow flies):

Plopped down in the middle of nowhere. Had I done a full 360-degree circle, you'd see more of the same emptiness with the exception of a high school across the highway. Desolate and uninviting. A single-destination car trip.

I've circled the library site in yellow below, and from this aerial perspective you can see what the city planners might have had in mind. Creeping in from the periphery are subdivisions that may or may not eventually come into closer contact with the library property (none of these residential areas, unfortunately, are currently within the quarter-mile radius -- or "five minute walk"  -- that represents the transculturally-common distance that the average person is willing to routinely travel on foot).

One thing is fairly certain, however - - the entire area is likely zoned to prohibit commercial development, so the only public space that might possibly join the library would be parks and play structures. In other words, the library is sited for automobile access:

For further perspective, here's a view SOUTH, showing where downtown Anoka is situated in relationship to this library branch as well as the next closest branches (the Rum River and Crooked Lake Libraries). Perhaps there is a library branch downtown that is not listed (I consulted the Anoka County Library web site); if not, so much for making downtown and main street a community crossroads:

Anoka's downtown also faces pressure from a purgatorial commercial edge-node called Riverdale Village, which clings to the highway a few minutes east of town in Coon Rapids. More about that particular gem in a later post ...

An affair with urban policy

Just came across an affair with urban policy site while researching Minneapolis's Hiawatha Line transit system. Excellent and comprehensive.

Coincidently, today the site features pictures of Milwaukee's dreary Amtrak Station by Zachary Korb (via Flickr). Fortunately, plans are in the air to renovate the ugly building.

Link: an affair with urban policy.

Thanks!

Thanks to  Walkable Neighborhoods for making Sprawled Out their July site of the month.

Link: Walkable Neighborhoods: July Website of the Month: Sprawled Out: The search for Community in the American Suburb.

If you HAVE to build a gas station ...

From Whitney Gould's column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

It wasn't too long ago that the designs for competing development proposals in Milwaukee ran the gamut from mediocre to dreadful.

It's a mark of how far we've come that the two developers vying to buy and develop a county-owned parcel in the Park East corridor have both generated beautiful architecture. As Bob Greenstreet, the city planning director, puts it: "I won't be disappointed either way, because the city ultimately wins, whichever gets built."

While Greenstreet says he has no preference for either scheme, both of which incorporate hotels, I do. For its capacity to integrate first-rate design with sensitive urban planning and historic preservation, I'd give the edge to Ruvin Development's proposal. (More about that in a minute.) Its rival, a plan by Rana Enterprises, is lovely also, and it includes the most ethereal gas station you've ever seen, its pumps and transparent canopy tucked discreetly between a scrim of trees and a glassy office building.

It's that gas station that has a lot of people scratching their heads. Did we really tear down the Park East Freeway spur to put up a gas station? "It could be the Taj Mahal of gas stations," says Ald. Mike D'Amato. "It doesn't fit." D'Amato says this is not a permitted use on that site under city guidelines for the Park East, and he vows a fight. Greenstreet, on the other hand, says there is nothing to prohibit a gas station there.

Link: JS Online:Better design melds new, old.