Urban Redevelopment

A North American Reader

Barry Hersh, Barry Hersh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317663065
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Immobilien

Urban redevelopment plays a major part in the growth strategy of the modern city, and the goal of this book is to examine the various aspects of redevelopment, its principles and practices in the North American context.

Urban Redevelopment: A North American Reader seeks to shed light on the practice by looking at both its failures and successes, ideas that seemed to work in specific circumstances but not in others.

The book aims to provide guidance to academics, practitioners and professionals on how, when, where and why, specific approaches worked and when they didn't. While one has to deal with each case specifically, it is the interactions that are key. The contributors offer insight into how urban design affects behavior, how finance drives architectural choices, how social equity interacts with economic development, how demographical diversity drives cities' growth, how politics determine land use decisions, how management deals with market choices, and how there are multiple influences and impacts of every decision.

The book moves from the history of urban redevelopment, The City Beautiful movement, grand concourses and plazas, through urban renewal, superblocks and downtown pedestrian malls to today's place-making: transit-oriented design, street quieting, new urbanism, publicly accessible, softer, waterfront design, funky small urban spaces and public-private megaprojects. This history also moves from grand masters such as Baron Haussmann and Robert Moses through community participation, to stakeholder involvement to creative local leadership. The increased importance of sustainability, high-energy performance, resilience and both pre- and post-catastrophe planning are also discussed in detail.

Cities are acts of man, not nature; every street and building represents decisions made by people. Many of today's best recognized urban theorists look for great forces; economic trends, technological shifts, political movements and try to analyze how they impact cities. One does not have to be a subscriber to the "great man" theory of history to see that in urban redevelopment, successful project champions use or sometimes overcome overall trends, using the tools and resources available to rebuild their community. This book is about how these projects are brought together, each somewhat differently, by the people who make them happen.

1 History and trends

Barry Hersh

History of urban redevelopment and renewal

Cities have always reinvented themselves; urban land has constantly been redeveloped. Today, urban redevelopment is an ever-growing phenomenon in North America, more and more urban communities are reinventing themselves; land that was built upon, utilized, then as times change, structures are demolished and new ones built, land was reused over and over. There is a worldwide heritage of city rebuilding; visit Jerusalem, and see layers of history, as each conqueror built their own house of worship atop the old. Walled cities expanded, the defensive value of walls diminished, but the castle and the core of the city remained.

It was Baron Haussmann (1809–1891), on behalf of Emperor Napoleon III, who gave new meaning to government led urban redevelopment, by building wide boulevards and public places, demolishing existing structures in their path and making Paris a modern city.

In North America, after World War II, in part due to government highway and mortgage policies, suburban growth exploded while the center of many cities struggled with economic losses and racial discrimination. By 1948, the US federal government created a further extension of government city redevelopment called Urban Renewal, two perfectly good words that are still stigmatized by the “federal bulldozer” approach of that program, clearing acres of urban neighborhoods designated as blighted and taken by eminent domain, to build “superblocks” often of public housing and sometimes with new private development. Robert Moses the long-time “Power Broker”¹ of New York came to epitomize this approach, building highways, public housing and parks often by demolishing large swathes of often low-income and minority communities.² In the 1960s, Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities,³ became Moses’ nemesis by stopping a proposed highway through Greenwich Village and giving voice to the “ballet of the sidewalk” and the virtues of historic neighborhoods.

Figure 1.1 Public housing on Urban Renewal site

Source: Pruitt-Igoe St. Louis Housing Authority.

By the late 1960s, urban renewal was unpopular and, in 1974, was superseded by the Community Development Block Grant Program. The new construction of low-income family public housing was partially replaced by the Section 8 voucher program and also by tax credit programs for historic preservation and low-income housing.

Urban renewal efforts in the latter half of the twentieth century had successes and failures, developments that did revitalize some cities, but others failed. While there were many great individual city projects, ranging from Boston’s Faneuil Hall to San Francisco’s Buena Vista, cities often struggled, even a decade after the turn of the century; suburban growth, especially in the sunbelt, continued to dominate. Federal efforts were curtailed, and much of government urban regeneration was left to states and cities themselves. The 2004 Kelo v. New London United States Supreme Court⁴ actually upheld, by a 5–4 vote, the use of eminent domain to promote economic development; the political storm that ensued marked the major shift away from government use of eminent domain towards more contextual, public-private partnership forms of community redevelopment. In the 2017 Supreme Court case, Murr v Wisconsin, Justice Kennedy’s decision proposed a complex analysis of the parcel, its physical characteristics and economics in determining regulatory taking.

Despite all the efforts to promote so-called smart growth, it was not until after the 2007–2010 financial crisis and ensuing “Great Recession” that a new pattern in urban redevelopment became clear. While federal efforts were more limited, local and state governments aggressively pursued economic development for both job and tax revenue growth. Economic drivers had changed dramatically: it was technology, media, education, arts and health care that employed the new millennials, and it was an amenity-rich, transit oriented and more urban lifestyle that now competed for the next new thing in technology and quantitative finance. Perhaps most importantly, communities are leading their own reinvention, envisioning changes, using land use and environmental planning, and working with private developers, as well as government, to effect change. While changes in administration matter, the pattern, led as much by communities, local and state government as federal programs, continues beyond election cycles.

Moving from history to urban redevelopment in the twenty-first century first is a look at trends in urban redevelopment as of 2015, especially the varying views as to the extent of a new urban renaissance as compared to more suburban preferences. This is followed by a “case study” an idiosyncratic perspective by Rod Stevens that includes a notable time chart of urban redevelopment efforts.

Baltimore as a model

It is hard to talk about American urban redevelopment without discussing Baltimore. The redevelopment of the Inner Harbor became a planning model for downtown and waterfront redevelopment. Starting in 1958 with the Charles Center downtown project, this urban renewal project then transformed the adjacent decrepit waterfront of deteriorating piers into a major tourist attraction. On July 4, 1976, eight tall sailing ships from other nations visited Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, attracting a huge number of tourists. This interest helped spur the development of other attractions – including the National Aquarium and Maryland Science Center. The Rouse Company’s Harborplace festival marketplace opened on July 4, 1980. The nearby Baltimore Convention Center and Hyatt Regency Baltimore Hotel added to the services and resulted in population density and visitors. In the years that followed, Baltimore worked to expand its redevelopment efforts, focusing on near downtown neighborhoods such as Federal Hill and Fells Point, though there were efforts elsewhere in the city. Oriole Park at Camden Yards, adjacent to downtown and opened in 1992, became another model of creative historic adaptation and the use of sports and entertainment venues as catalysts for redevelopment.⁵ In many ways, Baltimore became the model of successful urban renewal.

Figure 1.2 Transit Oriented Development has become one of today’s approaches to urban redevelopment

Source: National Transit Institute.

Baltimore’s success was largely credited to exceptional leadership, starting with Jim Rouse, successful commercial mortgage and shopping center entrepreneur, who became the private sector champion of the development effort. After retirement, Rouse went on to create Enterprise Communities, one of the largest non-profit developers and financiers of affordable housing in the country. Donald Schaefer, Mayor of Baltimore from 1971–1987, Governor of Maryland from 1987–1995 and Maryland Comptroller from 1999–2007, became legendary. Many of the designers, David Wallace of WRT, James and Jane Thompson and Martin Millspaugh, the redevelopment director, went on to consult and design. Baltimore became a model of urban revitalization exported and emulated in Boston, New York and other cities around the US and the world.

Figure 1.3 Baltimore Inner Harbor

Source: Baltimore.org.

Yet the Baltimore of David Simon’s HBO series The Wire, with drug dealing, political payoffs and crime, still exists. Some neighborhoods including Sandtown-Winchester and East Baltimore remained stubbornly mired in decline despite redevelopment efforts. These neighborhood issues became more of the focus. In 2012, Ronald Daniels the President of Johns Hopkins said “If EBDI (the East Baltimore Development Initiative) fails, then my presidency at Hopkins fails.”⁶ Hopkins effort to improve the increasingly dangerous adjacent East Baltimore neighborhood is substantial, totaling over $1.2 billion. Started in 2003, EBDI takes pride in having community residents on its board and having properly relocated only 534 families in preparing its 31 acre site. Projects include a new Hopkins Biotech Center, being developed in conjunction with Forest City (large Cleveland-based firm whose projects include Pacific Park/Barclay Center in Brooklyn and former Stapleton Airport in Denver). Another arm of Johns Hopkins moved into an 1876 renovated police station. There have been objections, including a group led by a former Hopkins doctor, but the project is proceeding somewhat slowly with new Hopkins facilities, graduate student housing, and both new and affordable housing for residents completed or under construction.

In 2015 Baltimore, or more precisely some neighborhoods in the city, exploded with the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. Despite all the redevelopment, a series of generally well-regarded mayors white and black, and a police force that is over half minority⁷ – poor, predominately black communities such as Gray’s Sandtown-Winchester felt isolated and not benefiting from all these efforts. Baltimore is still recovering, but there are $2 billion of new projects, mostly near downtown and Hopkins, moving forward. Another noteworthy new effort is in the Port Covington neighborhood, led by local success story Kevin Plank founder of Under Armour, to redevelop a neighborhood including a new headquarters. Primarily a privately funded effort, the project may involve Tax Increment Financing (discussed in Chapter 8)...