Flint, Michigan. Image from the New York Times.
Across the rust belt, shrinking cities are asking themselves what to do about abandoned properties and the rapid rise of vacant lots, crime, neglect, and the high cost of providing infrastructure, both social and physical. Some cities are pursuing what they call “right-sizing,” acquiring and tearing down the empties, relocating the few remaining residents to neighborhoods that can be sustained at capacity, and turning the vacant lots into useable green space, urban gardens, and forests and parks.
Detroit. Image by Alex MacLean.
The poster child for this movement is probably Flint, Michigan, which has lost about half its population in the last 45 years. But similar programs are underway in Detroit, Youngstown, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Baltimore and many other places. Cities you know well, like our own – Rochester. Let’s have a little talk about this.
Last week I was fortunate to get an invitation to attend a half-day charrette at City Hall here. It turns out that three University of Rochester graduate students had a bright idea, and got the city to help them organize a gathering of 50 or so community leaders, and sustainability and urbanism types, to consider what is needed to create a greener Rochester. The students are currently transcribing the comments and suggestions (almost anything you can think of would help here – we’re not exactly on the leading edge of the next urbanism). But before the charrette began in earnest, there were presentations.
One of the presenters was a knowledgeable and thoughtful city planner named Chuck Thomas. He is leading an initiative here for the City called Project Green. Sounds good – we need some kind of Project Green here really desperately.
But it turns out that Project Green is Rochester’s tear-down program. This city has about 96,000 household units, and about 9,200 are vacant. The goal is to tear down about 3,000 of the vacant units over the next 20 years, at a cost of about $70 million. The target, we were told, is a vacancy rate of about 5%, instead of the current 10%.
While Project Green is a demolition plan, it’s called Project Green because the idea is to make all the vacant lots green – as in parks and gardens. We don’t have the oceans of abandonment that cities like Detroit and Flint are struggling with, but we do have locations that have had teardowns, and various places in the city currently have plenty of vacant housing units. Here’s a look at the proposed demo on Wilkins, between Hudson and Joseph, in the northeast quadrant of Rochester.
Wilkins is the very long block in the center of this image. Green colored lots are already vacant, and black colored buildings are the demo targets. This block, almost half a mile long (!! – maybe a factor?), will lose about two-thirds of the buildings once sited there. Here’s a better view.
There are a few other blocks like this one in the city, but most are blocks with only one or two empties scheduled for razing.
The rationale for all this, Chuck told us, is that market conditions and continuing sprawl in the region, combined with a stable regional population and declining city population, suggest no future demand for these abandoned places. Said another way, we have the same number of people here in the region, just more and more spread out – ergo sprawl and a swooning city.
Fair enough – we face the same dilemmas that trouble other older cities plagued with sprawl, and economic and social segregation. The neighbors who remain in many of these neighborhoods face a host of ills – crime, drugs, fires, health and safety issues, and others, and they need several kinds of help. But I wonder if demolition is the right approach.
Market conditions – that phrase troubles me. If we are basing our assessment of the need to reduce the housing count on current market conditions, we should probably just tear down the city. Rochester has sky-high taxes, depressed home values, dwindling services – all the usual contemporary urban ailments. Real estate does eventually sell here, but it usually takes quite a while. And think of how happy our suburban neighbors would be – tearing down the city would free up a lot of cash for even more sprawl.
But what if market conditions change?
Like what happens if, for example, gas goes to a much higher price? Or say, to a somewhat higher price. Which seems highly likely soon, and inevitable in the long run. Will this inspire folks to move into the city, to be closer to work and play? Will this fact alter existing patterns of retail, away from the malls and toward neighborhood options?
What we have here is greening by lowering density – tearing down the city to meet supposed market conditions while wrecking valuable existing assets. Isn’t this just plain wasteful, and a bit dim?
Maybe I am whistling in the dark here, but I do know that greening by demolition lowers density, and makes providing transit options even more problematic, as Ron Kilcoyne, CEO of Greater Bridgeport Transit, said recently. And not just transit.
Greening by lowering density makes providing all kinds of social and physical infrastructure more difficult. Fewer homes means less taxes, and less tax revenue means fewer cops and firemen and libraries and teachers and…. It’s a long list.
So what if we didn’t and couldn’t sprawl anymore? What if we realized that we absolutely cannot sustain the region’s sprawl – economically, environmentally, you pick? What if we realized that we can no longer pay to maintain and operate what we have, much less allow even higher taxes caused by the cost of increased sprawl? What if the market told us we needed to move away from a world shaped and driven (so to speak) by cars? What if only half of the dire predictions scientist’s offer for our environment come true? What if we really finally understood that our contemporary patterns of urban and regional living are absolutely and completely obsolete?
What if we realized that living in a dense urban setting actually begins to solve some of our problems? Would we begin to wonder why we started tearing down the city?
You say that
“I do know that greening by demolition lowers density, and makes providing transit options even more problematic”
This is true only if demolition occurs sporadically, where there are already vacancies. What is really needed is some sort of incentive for the remaining people to all relocate to the same neighborhoods so that certain entire neighborhoods can be demolished (and turned into parks or farmland or whatever). Then the density remains in the places that people do live, making things like transit and city services much more efficient. Shrinking cities is actually a great opportunity to reinvent how our cities work and make them denser, better communities.
Ryan, thanks for your thoughts. I understand your perspective – you and many others have articulated this way of thinking about our urban future.
I have found this a very difficult topic to consider, and I have really struggled to think about and write about this issue. As I have reflected, I have come up with at least a couple of concerns I would like to share. I just can’t get myself to believe that lowering density through demolition is a good idea. Let me explain.
First, the last time we implemented large scale relocations was in the 50s and 60s, and we called it Urban Renewal. In my home town of Chicago, the results were called Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor Homes, and they were cataclysmic failures of epic proportion.
And in Washington, D.C., where we lived for almost 10 years, Urban Renewal resulted in the demolition of fully one quadrant of the city – southwest D.C. So do we just go more slowly and at a smaller scale? Will this insure that the results are more fair and just? I remain very skeptical, but I guess we will find out – many cities are embarked on the path you advocate.
Next, I have found myself continuing to consider the story of density in this city. Rochester once was two or three times more dense, as I have said here previously. And as a result, many aspects of urban life were much more efficient, transit included. Proof may be seen in the fact that the city could support streetcars AND a subway. Not bad for 350,000 people.
As this region reached its peak population, that growth came at the expense of the city – the region filled up and the city emptied out. I can’t believe that further lowering our urban density by demolition is a good idea. It just seems like the opposite of what we need to do – like looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
I would rather offer incentives to stop regional sprawl and increase urban density. I understand what Chuck was saying about current market conditions and the lack of demand for these abandoned assets. But what if we change the market conditions through public policy? It has been done in other places with success.
And what if the market conditions themselves change, as they very likely will? Will we regret further lowering urban density? I think we will.
I don’t live next door to an abandoned house, but I can easily imagine that it’s a nightmare. And 9,200 abandoned housing units is a lot of nightmares for a lot of folks. I know we need to figure this out, and fast.
But the reduction in abandoned properties that Rochester seeks is scheduled to take place over 20 years. Not exactly a quick fix. And over the next 20 years will our urban future look quite different? I think yes, as we face increasing fuel costs, changing energy technologies, increased environmental pressures, and other defining forces.
For me, the answer is more dense, not less, and I am happy to have my elected leaders formulate policies, statutes, and incentives to make this happen. Thinking regionally is key here, both for the sake of the suburbs, and for the sake of the city. It’s a tall order in Rochester, but necessary.
As I see it, Project Green (which is a misnomer for sure) will increase densities, not lessen them. It will also increase the efficiency of infrastructure investment and service provision, not lessen it. These targeted blocks are inefficient, attract crime, and deter investment. There are few, if any, owner occupants. This skews the existing real estate market, depressing property values for all of us. Even if market conditions change, as you put it, it is simply too easy to get around Rochester to convince any sizable share of the suburban population to move to the city, let alone to Wilkins Street.
Believe it or not, this land is worth more without these houses than with them. These houses are mostly stripped, rotting, and completely useless. They will NEVER be revitalized and are a drain on taxpayer resources. Why should the overburdened taxpayers of the City continue to subsidize their existence? When market conditions change, developers are more likely to build new housing in these neighborhoods if they are “greenfield” sites than if they are pockmarked with vacant lots and burned out homes. With less resources being wasted in these former neighborhoods, the City will be able to spend more in those neighborhoods that actually have a chance. The City has spent 50 years in denial about its ability to regenerate dead neighborhoods; it’s time for a new strategy.
When you were looking at houses before moving here, did you look anywhere near Wilkins Street? Have you driven, or (because cars are bad) walked or biked down Reed Park since you arrived? From what I understand, you chose a neighborhood on the city’s fringe, practically in Brighton, with minimal racial or economic diversity, poorly served by transit, and with little to walk to. If someone of your intelligence, wealth, and awareness cannot make the decision to choose a dense, mixed-use neighborhood, how will we ever convince the average American to make “the right choice”?
One other thing, you talk about formulating regional policies, which I agree with 100%. Problem is, the City cannot force the County and its suburban counterparts to cooperate. You weren’t here a decade ago when former Mayor Bill Johnson ran a futile campaign for County Executive on the platform of Metropolitan Governance. He lost big, in an election with racial undertones and overt anti-urban sentiment. The biggest issue: suburbanites do not want to share their precious school systems with impoverished city kids. We must do something about our urban schools if cities are to turn themselves around. We cannot all be San Francisco, which is quickly becoming a child-free city. Rochester’s future success lies in its ability to attract and retain young families.
MAT, a couple of comments are in order, I think.
Aside from casting aspersions on my choice of location, about which you know nothing and about which you should probably remain silent, you make a good point. It’s pretty easy to find a neighborhood in Rochester that is not economically diverse, is poorly served by transit, and has little to walk to. Nearly all of Rochester’s neighborhoods are not economically diverse, nearly all of Rochester’s neighborhoods are poorly served by transit, and nearly all of Rochester’s neighborhoods have little to walk to. There are a couple of exceptions, but not many.
Have YOU visited Wilkins Street? If you haven’t, you should. Soon. Wilkins Street is not economically diverse, is not well served by transit, and has little to walk to. Make a visit.
But interestingly, Wilkins Street remains filled with viable homes amidst the few empties. Fixing up and revitalizing is in fact happening. The place looks much better than your words suggest – stripped, rotting, and useless, I think you said.
You suggest that we taxpayers should abandon this street, and these neighbors, but I for one am happy to “subsidize their existence.”
And who gets to decide which neighborhoods get abandoned, as you advocate, and which neighborhoods “have a chance?” Do we have some sort of tribunal? Sounds a bit autocratic to me, but then perhaps you know best.
I think much of what you say is wrong, but I will let my gentler readers make up their own minds.
I have been hoping you would post something about shrinking cities. I share your skepticism about the idea that a city can somehow demolish its way back to health. I have never heard of this ever having been successfully accomplished. I agree with the general proposition that the city needs to densify, that we need a dramatically improved transit system & perhaps most importantly, we need to engage in meaningful regional planning, possibly even including urban growth boundaries. In short, we need to be a lot more like Oregon. Unfortunately the city, on its own, cannot achieve any of these things. It has no control over what happens beyond its constricted boundary & it has no power of annexation. We live in a region that barely recognizes itself as a region. There is little interest in & may actually be hostility toward regional planning.
So what can the city do about its abandonment problem on its own? What it has been doing for years is randomly demolishing houses as they become vacant and fall into city hands. It has also been randomly demolishing vacant privately owned buildings after owners attend demolition hearings & fail to rehab their properties. There have even been instances of houses being demolished in order to create space for new Habitat for Humanity houses or Home Expo (a now defunct city program) houses. Project Green at least has the virtue of being an attempt to bring a coherent, strategic approach to this demolition. (Read about Project Green, including the final report at http://www.cityofrochester.gov/article.aspx?id=8589941695.)
If the choice came down to the random demolition we have now, which leaves pock-marked neighborhoods & discourages investment or a planned demolition program that results in new parks and places for urban agriculture, then I would choose Project Green. But is that really the only choice? Market conditions are likely to change much more quickly than we expect. A major report was recently released in Britain that predicts peak oil will occur in 2015 –2017, only 5 years from now. Gas prices could well be in the $5 – $7 range in just a few years. Circumstances will require that Americans live differently. Trends are already pointing in that direction. 2009 was the first year in history when the number of cars on American roads actually dropped – by 4 million. Demographic trends point to more interest in urban living. It is estimated that the US already has enough large lot single-family houses to satisfy demand for the next 20 years. Jim Kunstler says that peak oil will lead to the shrinkage of the large metroplexes even as they densify at their centers. In a place like Rochester, that could well mean shrinkage of the more sprawling parts of the suburbs as the city and inner ring suburbs densify. We are already seeing a significant increase in downtown housing. Real estate values in the city have been rising for the last few years. They are still well below the national average, but the trend is up. Houses in good condition in popular neighborhoods usually sell quickly.
Increased real estate values will translate into increased willingness to invest in city neighborhoods. Our low values have been a huge disincentive. Construction costs here are about the same as the national average, but values are low, so it makes little sense to invest in rehabbing a building if the cost cannot be recovered when the building is sold or rented. Our property tax system is also a disincentive. If a property owner lets a building go to rack & ruin, he is rewarded with a lower assessment and a lower tax bill. If he improves the property, the tax bill will go up. One thing the city could do on its own is adopt a land value based taxation system. In the purest form of such a system, property is taxed based on the value of the land, regardless of improvements. Under such a system owners of vacant land (like parking lots) would find themselves paying much higher taxes, which would provide an incentive for them to sell or develop their properties. Building owners would no longer be penalized for maintaining & improving their properties. Most cities that have such a system, such as Harrisburg, PA have a dual system that taxes both the land & the building, but the land is taxed at a higher rate. This is something Rochester should seriously consider. It could change the paradigm & greatly reduce the need for demolition.
Tim, as ever, thanks for adding to the conversation here. As always, I appreciate your terrific insights.
Herewith, a few further comments.
First, I am in agreement with your view that our tax system offers incentives for abandoning properties. I wonder: is there someone in our leadership who is trying to reform our tax policies as you suggest? Is there someone we can lobby? I have read the Project Green report you reference, and I have not found any mention of tax reform in their plan. Is this on the Project Green agenda?
By reforming the tax codes, and disconnecting property and land values, we not only could stop the incentives for abandoning buildings. We could even provide disincentives, by establishing minimum ratios between land value and real property value. If the real property value goes beneath x, and the land value remains at y, your taxes go up, not down. I am not a tax lawyer, thankfully, but perhaps we could get something like this to work. I need to think about this some more.
Second, I read an interesting report recently issued by the U.S. Department of Defense. The report is an assessment of global oil production, and in the report, the DoD says that surplus global oil production will end by 2012 – that’s in 20 months – and by 2015, global oil production will fall short by 10 million barrels a day – the entire current production of Saudi Arabia. Sounds like we’re cooked. A fast freight is headed our way, and we’re stuck on the tracks. Which leads me to wonder.
Many of us are acutely aware of the fact that our part of the world seems congenitally incapable of thinking regionally (we’re not alone, unfortunately). Apathetic at best, antagonistic at worst, we don’t seem to be able to heed the warning signs that are all around us. Regional (city, county, other) elected officials are going to be the prime targets when things really start to tighten up, so why no conversation about what is just around the corner? Why no action? This fact continues to puzzle me.
I guess we have gotten really comfortable. Schools are an important issue in all cities, as readers have observed, but $8 gasoline will trump everything, when it comes. 56 months to go, according to the DoD.
And then this morning, I read a piece in the newspaper about a very substantial push to construct wind farms in the Lake. And I read that people are largely opposed because of the way they will look. Huh? How exactly will we recharge our electric cars if nothing happens when we turn the switch?
Onward we go, at lightning speed, into a future that we are woefully unprepared to meet.
As always, a well-written piece and a thoughtful conversation.
I guess I don’t see demolitions as “reducing” density. We’re not demolishing occupied structures. These structures are vacant.
And, as Tim pointed out, we’ve been demolishing in an ad hoc way for the past 40 years, leaving pock-marked neighborhoods. If Project Green can bring some method to the madness, so much the better.
Project Green and other programs really need to do is resist the urge to “suburbanize the city” by combining vacant lots into larger parcels, especially within 1/4 of transit lines. Sadly, not everyone who works for the city or develops city policies believes in urban living.
However, my question to you then is this:
If strategic demolition is not the answer, what is? Yes, we can all hope for peak oil and a return to dense urban living. But bear in mind that one of Rochester’s much bally-hooed projects is the research into fuel cell technology. I fear that so much wealth and aspirational value has been invested in the auto-dependent suburban lifestyle that some technology, if not fuel cells, will be developed to take the place of the internal combustion engine.
Planners in places like Flint, Youngstown, Buffalo, Cleveland, Rochester, etc. have deluded themselves over the past 50 years, thinking that a population recovery is “just around the corner.” How much longer can we wait? Neighborhoods continue to decline. If not demolition then what?
Stabilizing and mothballing and securing these structures to await a return to the city, perhaps brought on by peak oil, is a significant expense, probably much higher than the $70 million to demo.
And, as sentimental as I am for old homes (I own an pre-1890 workingman’s cottage myself), I can appreciate that not everything that’s old is particularly well built. Yes, there is a lot of embodied energy in the brick, lumber, stone, etc. that is in these buildings, and the thought of sending that all to a landfill upsets me. So I hope Project Green is able to utilize “deconstruction” technology as much as demolition to remove these unwanted structures.
It’s a very thorny issue, one that planners and architects are unprepared for and not trained in. Schools of Planning and Schools of Architect presume growth and devise methods to harness that growth to achieve common good. But what do you do in the face of decline? The study of shrinking cities, from the US, to the UK, to Germany and Russia is a niche that fascinates me, being the native son of a shrinking city.
Jason, thanks for joining in. This is, indeed, a difficult issue, and answers are very hard to find, and usually equivocal. I respect what Chuck is doing, but I still do not feel comfortable with the idea of throwing away potential assets.
And I still do see this deconstruction plan as a lessening of density. Perhaps not of people, but of potential people, and of building stock.
Another empty got torched last night, on Bernard. When this happens, and the building is badly damaged, I think it has to be deconstructed. Thanks for pointing out that we really cannot afford to send all this building material to the landfill – it should be reused to the maximum extent.
So there are times when buildings simply have to be removed – they’re too far gone. And greening up after the dozers is a good idea, and should be planned in a thoughtful way, as Chuck and others are doing. But consider this.
If we are waiting for developers to come into the city and remake neighborhoods that have lots of empties, we are obviously wrong. Not going to happen – hasn’t and won’t. The development community is looking for ways to make profits, and profits are hard to find in poor neighborhoods that are seen as blighted and dangerous.
But I have continued to think about this issue, along these lines: how many of the buildings slated for removal are/were owner occupied? How many are/were owned by absentee landlords? I don’t know the answer, but I think the answer may be important.
My suspicion is that a fairly high percentage are absentee owned. So as Tim has observed, the tax situation favors a do-nothing approach to declining properties. Value of asset goes down, taxes go down.
And it may be true that developers like sites that are vacant. But I wonder if we could change the game somehow.
What if we reformed our method of taxation along the following lines. De-link property taxes from land taxes, as Tim suggests. Punish the owner who let’s the property slide. Add incentives for owner-occupiers to fix up, and add more incentives for those who would acquire and fix up an empty. While developers might be clean slaters, sweat equity folks can probably get further faster by renovating existing assets.
Baltimore has tried something kind of like this, with very mixed results. But in many cases, the buildings in question are so far gone, that even if you give them away, they won’t make it.
I have spent some time nosing around at the buildings slated for the wrecker here. Some are pretty far gone, as in Baltimore, and may not survive. So deconstruct, and with a plan.
But to my eye, as someone who has fixed up one or two old houses (or more), many of these buildings are not so far gone that they are unsalvageable with the right combination of help. Sweat coupled with incentives might make it possible to resurrect them.
If this renovation is calculated at market rates, it obviously won’t pencil. But if you figure in owner sweat equity plus incentives, it might work.
Maybe I am, as usual, whistling in the dark. But I would certainly like to think my way through alternatives to deconstruction. Something still feels wrong about the demolition part of the equation. More thought required.
And one more thing, while I’m at it – sustainability and substitution. You note that perhaps technology will allow us to substitute fuel cells for gasoline, so that we can preserve our wayward suburban sprawl way of living.
In the short run, this is clearly what will happen. But in the longer run, as 6 billion earthlings heads to 10 billion earthlings and beyond, building 3,000 pound transport devices, whatever fuel they use, won’t work. In older posts here I have tried to explore this a bit. We are, at some point, going to have to rethink much about how we live, as scarcity increases, and population continues to grow.
And that’s why I remain puzzled about the nature of the conversation here (and elsewhere too) about our region and city. There are big changes coming, by force, and not much is happening to explore how to adjust.
I am not one who puts much of our future stock in salvation by technology alone. Our history should teach us that this has not happened, and won’t happen. Instead, we need to understand the forces that are being and will be exerted on our home places, and make alterations, some radical.
My two cents worth.
I have been railing against sprawl (as opposed to suburbanism) on Buffalorising.com for several years now and getting attacked by sprawl apologists for for doing so. Sprawl is bad in the suburbs and it is just as bad in the city if not worse. We cannot attack this problem of urban decline as if it is only an issue for the core city. Until Americans see social issues as a issues in common we will continue driving on the same path even though we clearly see the cliff edge coming. Its like the suburbanites as passengers are saying ” The city is in the driver seat they can set their own course” and the city’s response is ” But the suburbs put the steering wheel in the trunk”
Creating new sprawl within the city by demolition without addressing new sprawl in the suburbs is a non starter. It is not a solution. Rochester is one of the most sprawled metros in the nation. Its 1.1M population is spread over 5 counties filled with expensive to maintain infrastructure which is ever increasing in scope. Rochester’s neighbor, Buffalo also continues to sprawl with declining population – not a good situation there either – But its metro covers only about half the land area. Erie county alone holds more than 2/3 the population of the the entire Rochester metro. There is no defense of continued increase in infrastructure in a metro like Rochester and yet it is defended and continues to soak up limited wealth and resources. The results are abandoned neighborhoods and under performing schools in the city and out of control taxes fr everyone.
Shrinking the city without shrinking or at least halting the spread of the metro is insanity and doomed to failure.
aandh,
I love these people who think windmills are ugly but that spewing coal plans and highways are just fine and all the other hideous things we build to support sprawl are just fine.
HAve you noticed the new sprawl-topian thing we are wating our money on these days? developers love to put there new subdivisions smack up against highways. This gives them lots of exposure and they can sell the convenience of being near the highway. Soon after the subdivision sells out the federal government puts up sound walls along the highway.
Nice huh? Why the Eff are my tax dollars being spent on highway sound barriers!!!!
Well, I heartily concur with not putting our future stock in technology alone. What I find fascinating about the European air travel chaos of the past week is how dependent so many people have become on one single form of technology that is uniquely vulnerable to, essentially, dust. Perhaps a lesson should be learned.
Reforming the tax system may be one of the better solutions to the problem of disinvestment and abandonment. Or at least a good idea worth attempting. But like so many good ideas in New York, it’s not purely a local decision. I doubt the city, even if it wanted to, could unilaterally amend it’s property tax system. It will likely require the action of our incredibly dysfunctional state legislature.
Still, a lot of the hope-for success of such a program depends on “sweat equity” types of people investing their time and efforts in revitalizing property. Certainly, we’ve seen that in certain neighborhoods already and with the right financial and tax incentives, could potentially see more. But I wonder just how deep that pool of individuals is?
As to the lack of a conversation about the big changes coming, as upsetting as that is to thoughtful people, I think the concept is just contrary to some part of human nature. I’m sure there were warnings in France in 1788, Russia in 1916, the American colonies in the early 1770s, and the waning days of the Roman Empire, etc. etc. But the power structure in place chose to ignore the warning signs and cataclysmic events ensued.
Mr. Steele:
Two comments:
The fact that Rochester’s metro is 5 counties and Buffalo’s is 2 is more of an accident of Census geography than any meaningful description of what is actually happening on the ground in terms of building and infrastructure. If you examine the actual urbanized area, the pattern is very similar.
“Creating new sprawl within the city by demolition without addressing new sprawl in the suburbs is a non starter. It is not a solution.”
I understand that. But as a practicing city planner, my plaintive cry is thus: given the system and rules in place right now, what are we supposed to do? Sit and wait for the county, region, or state to actually demonstrate some leadership to address suburban sprawl? That could be years. It could be never.
In the meantime, what can the city do? To continue your analogy, the steering wheel might be in the trunk, but we have to at least try to work with what we’ve got, maybe try to use a wrench on the stump of the steering column. It might not be pretty, and it might not even be particularly effective, but our job is to try and steer the bus with what we got so that at the end of the day, we know we did everything we could to prevent the bus from going off the cliff. Even if it eventually does.
David, how exactly does one apologize for sprawl?
In 2005 a friend, Robert Bruegmann (Professor of Art and Architectural History, University of Illinois at Chicago), published a book entitled “Sprawl: A Compact History.” Many saw his book as an apologia, but it’s a very good piece of work, and not an apology. Instead, it is one of the better examinations of the phenomenon. At first it sounds like he is simply rationalizing the mess we have made. And his tone is equivocal. But his analysis is excellent.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t deal in detail with the economic consequences – I wish he had. But I recommend a read – good exercise in fending off those who really are trying to apologize, or defend, sprawl. Bob is in fact a contrarian of the highest quality. Nonetheless, it’s a good read.
And Jason – I wonder too about how deep the pool of sweat equity types might be. But I am thoughtful about the fact that Project Green intends to remove the 9,200 units of abandoned housing over 20 years. 20 years might make it easier to find the interested ones, especially given the forces that are starting to push on us. We only need 460 a year….
The apologists don’t so much apologize as much as repeat talking points about property rights and the right to provide a life style free of crime with good schools. They tend to think of these things as things they have achieved on the back of their own hard work and sweat. They give no heed to the free ride they are getting. It is quite easy to have a crime free community when you make sure another community is used as a storage bin for all the regions social problems. That is never acknowledged however.
My debates with the sprawl defenders almost universally end with the sprawl-topian throwing insults at me and the them finally saying that they do not support sprawl. I have asked them all to write a story defending sprawl and I have gotten NO takers. Sprawl is only acceptable because we have accepted it and its consequences without question. When you point out the flaws in the sprawl model and ask people to personally defend those flaws they will not do it.
Ultimately demolitions with not strategy and no long term concept of how to deal with a regional problem are meaningless. The real solution is to point a very bright light on the failures and follies of our sprawl culture and not turn the light off. Public officials, university officials, planners and architects have to be vigilant and repetitive in pointing out the problem of sprawl.
David and Jason, I am now aware that Buffalo and Rochester are the Athens and Sparta of WNY. Can’t say which is which, but the rivalry is clear. So I did some snooping.
From the U.S. Census Bureau comes the following:
Buffalo: 69th largest city in the U.S. 68th worst in sprawl – 71.8 square miles.
Rochester: 99th largest city in the U.S. 66th worst in sprawl – 74.3 square miles.
Sounds pretty much like a standoff to me. Roch has more sprawl for its size, but Buffalo is pretty close behind. The difference is only 1,600 acres. Neither has much to brag about, from my reading of the stats.
Really bad, and really, really bad.
Oh, and Albany is ranked 75th worst for sprawl in the U.S., and Syracuse is ranked 90th, for what it’s worth.
High taxes, anyone?
Lots of interesting & thoughtful comments. The shrinking city is definitely one of those problems with no easy answers. As with most things in life, the solutions will probably come out of a combination of approaches. For instance, as Jason points out, mothballing vacant structures in the hope that they will someday be reoccupied could be hugely expensive. Yet if the greening plan ultimately designates certain areas for clearance, doesn’t it follow that the remaining areas are targeted for increased investment? Will demolitions cease in the non-targeted areas? If the answer is yes, then it follows that we will be doing some mothballing. If the answer is no, then the greening plan is worse than doing nothing as we will be clearing out entire neighborhoods and continuing with our random demolitions in the rest of the city. The city needs to examine as many different possibilities for attracting people as possible. Some cities have made an effort to attract immigrants with a degree of success. As I mentioned before, the property tax needs to be rethought. It could give the city a competitive advantage over suburban jurisdictions that continue to tax property in the conventional way. Believe it or not, NY’s disfunctional legislature did pass a law several years back to allow the city of Amsterdam to experiment with land value taxation, but they never took advantage of it. Connecticut is seriously considering passing such a law for Hartford. My point is that the city should not simply give up & start the demolition, but should examine ways to make itself more attractive to potential residents by at least removing as many disincentives as possible. Does that mean demolition will end? Of course not, but it could at least slow it down. The city commissioned a housing study just a couple of years ago that identified a growing market for city living if the right housing is made available. So instead of simply demolishing neighborhoods, we also need to begin broadening the array of housing types available in the city. A combination of approaches, which will densify some parts of the city, while de-densifying others may get us where we need to go. Finally, the greening plan is a 20 year plan – in a lot less time than that, circumstances will be very different. We should be prepared to alter our course when that becomes more & more apparent.
The ranking of sprawl is very hard to quantify. If you base the it just on built up area occupied or travel times you will get a skewed result. I believe both Buffalo and Rochester are much worse sprawl offenders than the statistic you show. How much land is used per person. It needs to take into consideration many factors like that including rate of population growth etc.
For instance look at a place like Las Vegas or San Diego. Look at the density of typical new subdivisions in those cities. They are very dense – in many cases as dense as almost any city neighborhood in Rochester. Now look at Buffalo, and Rochester subdivisions. They are very very low density. Sprawl is also a measure of land use planning and separation of functions and though all suburbs are pretty much the same these other cities have healthy active cores which are getting denser. Rochester and Buffalo have sick cores which are getting less dense. Lowering density where all the existing infrastructure already exists is perhaps the worst kind of sprawl.
Buffalo and Rochester practice the most egregious form sprawl – they grow their sprawl without new people to fill it up. So I really don’t see either of these tow being that low on the sprawl list.
Check out this graph showing Buffalo’s explosive land use growth over the last 60 years even as metro population has decreased (and you could add became poorer)
http://www.buffalorising.com/Sprawl-2-US.jpg
These people have increased Buffalo’s land use area by a factor of a bout 3 while its population has dropped by 200,000! And then they complain about high taxes. It is insanity. NO, Buffalo is not so low on the sprawl list. I would rank it with the sprawl elites.
old but a good read
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sprawl/main.htm
This is truely some wonderful discussion. As far as Project Green goes, D Steele sumed it up best, “Rochester and Buffalo have sick cores which are getting less dense. Lowering density where all the existing infrastructure already exists is perhaps the worst kind of sprawl.”
The Economy of Cities, anyone? A strong core leads to a strong region. And while I understand the intent of Project Green, it seems a bit sloppy (and frankly lazy) to me. It may be worthwhile to demolish vacant structures on particular lots, however this needs to be planned out strategically.
Howard pointed out that some of these blocks are impossibly long. If there are coincedentally vacancies located so that a walk thru can be created to break up the block, that would be a situation where demolition would be beneficial. The point being that leveling existing structures needs to be the means of a larger planning strategy, not just a means to get vacancy rates down.
As far as alternative solutions go, the land value based taxation system that Tim brought forth is brilliant. The current property tax code that incentivizes neglecting a property into ruin is poison for struggling neighborhoods. Adjusting the property tax code would go a long way to change this.
The other part of this conversation that was only touched on briefly is the immigration and population issue. Attracting more people is key to this entire equation. I am a huge proponent of urbanism and increasing density in Rochester, but it is impossible to be successful in creating real density (of people) without attracting more people.
The property tax solution is a great way to incentivize the cultivation of density from a physical capital standpoint, but what about the human capital standpoint? I dont have any really good answers so I will open that question up for discussion.
However, I would like to make one point. Rochester needs to take greater advantage of its university age residents. I think everyone can agree that Rochester has more than its fair share of colleges and universities (considering its size). Yet the “young professional” crowd is scant. Why is that? What can the city/region do to keep its graduates local?
Daniel, greetings. Let me address your question about the university and college population in Rochester for a moment.
There is a group here, of which I am a member, that has started something called ‘Reconnect Rochester.’ There’s a website, we’re on Facebook, blah, blah, blah. Our aim is simple: secure enhanced transit for this city. I have advocated from the very start that one of our best audiences, and best groups of potential transit users, is students. The young people in school here generally use the city, like cities, don’t have a ton of money for cars, and would likely use transit if it went easily where they wanted to go. Getting them to join us as transit advocates seems like the most obvious first step in coalition building.
And they vote.
And they may also need affordable housing as they start their careers here, if we can keep them.
What if we could entice them, not only with a streetcar to the University, or a Rapid Bus to RIT, but with inexpensive housing otherwise slated for demolition? I was out again this afternoon looking at board-ups, and I continue to feel quite strongly that many of the board-ups are salvageable. Some are in places that are a bit sketchy, but many are not. If you take a look at the Project Green maps, and then drive around and examine the properties, you can see that it wouldn’t be too hard to give a whole bunch of these places away to young grads.
Nice graduation present. “The City of Rochester says congrats, and here’s a free place for you to fix up if you would stay in our city and help make it a better place to live and work.”
And remember, in order to make the Project Green plan work, we only would need to give 460 of these away a year.
Let’s try this, people.
Love the idea of giving away houses to new grads. Love it.
Rochester, Buffalo, et al. have long wailed and gnashed their teeth about the “brain drain” of young professionals once they graduate. That’s most places folks. There’s only a few metro areas in the U.S. that see a net influx of young professionals (NYC, Boston, etc.).
While I wholeheartedly endorse streetcars, car sharing, emphasis on bicycle transportation, dense urban living, cafe culture, the arts, etc. etc. etc. none of these alone, or even in combination, will keep young professionals here. What they need are jobs.
Yes, we all hear about the mismatch between available jobs and the labor market in certain niches. But the ambitious young professional, or at least a substantial percentage of them, will logically chose a larger, more economically dynamic metro area with a broader and deeper job market for educated professionals.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that said young professional lands a great job in their field in Rochester. Wonderful. But what if that doesn’t work out? What are the chances of finding another one? Slim. What are their chances of career advancement? So-so. In NYC, Boston, or Washington, the chances are probably better. If this young professional has a partner/spouse who is also a young professional, then the equation doubles. It behooves them to move to a job market that is broader and deeper.
Rolf Pendall at Cornell has put forth the theory that if Buffalo-Rochester-Syracuse-Ithaca could be linked by high speed and effective transportation, then this mega-region of 3 million or so could begin to function as one job market, thereby increasing its depths and breadth, and increase the chances that more of the bright, movitivated, young professionals would stay. You could live in Rochester, one spouse commute to Buffalo in 40 mins, the other to Syracuse in 45, for example.
Anyway, there are plenty of places that are smaller and less important than they used to be (Venice, for example) and still are great places to live and/or visit. I’m not convinced we have to keep growing to necessarily be successful. There has to be a way to shrink gracefully and sustainably while maintaining the future option for “re-habitation.”
Jason, I think that Rolf Pendall’s way of thinking is excellent, and I appreciate your sharing his view.
High Speed Rail (HSR) is one of the tools we can use to change the way we think about scale in geography. A region, with HSR in hand, can suddenly be a series of connected nodes – existing cities – spread further apart than we would normally consider to be regional. Most of us do not think of Syracuse and Buffalo, let alone Ithaca, as part of our region.
As I consider our next urbanism, I find it interesting that my sense of scale jumps so wildly. Small – dense cities with all of the attributes that go with that. Substantially increased local living – local jobs, agriculture, tight webs of local transit. Then large – HSR connecting us to neighboring nodes that are likewise dense, etc. Then larger – access to the global events, markets, places.
Interesting.
In a related line of thinking, I often find myself wondering if one thing that will unfold in the months and years ahead is a new kind of job generation in our city/states that has to do with increased local living. For instance, suppose that energy costs rise sufficiently to put lots of imported things out of reach economically: food, durable goods, other consumables. If we want these kind of things, we will somehow have to find ways to produce at least some of this stuff near where we live. I wonder if this will induce new forms of employment.
Just musing.
Please read this op-ed by Roberta Brandes Gratz on Planned Shrinkage. RBG has long opposed shrinkage. This could be her finest effort yet on the subject:
http://www.planetizen.com/node/43826
Many thanks, Howard, for touring and commenting on abandoned city properties. And yes, many (nearly all I would argue) are salvageable. Salvaging abandoned properties is not on the policy menu, I am sorry to say.
I’m one of the “sweat equity” owners you’ve been discussing. I buy houses from the city’s property demolition list in the NE neighborhood where I live. I work specifically with “hopeless cases”. I’ve rehabbed several such properties so far. They are burned out, rotted, stripped, windowless, sagging and derelict from decades of landlords cheating on maintenance. They need everything. They cost an average $40,000 (ranging $20,000 to $70,000) to rehab. They are typically about 2,000 square feet. Each takes about 2 years of my time, plus or minus. All drywall and vinyl, right? Nope. When they are done, they have plaster and lath, wooden siding, replicated original woodwork and layouts that the original owners would recognize. They also get new roofs, insulation and high efficiency furnaces. I think the numbers say the cost of bringing back even the worst cases is not the issue.
The blocks in my neighborhood are generally between 33% and 67% owner occupied. Nearly all abandoned properties were rentals. A typical income property here has 2 flats and a small unit in back, $1,500 total monthly rent. At full occupancy, taxes are paid in two months. So in my view, taxes are not the issue either. Mortgage problems? Sure. Turnover costs? Absolutely. But the real problem is value. The perception is, these houses are worthless. I see them treated that way by everyone involved – landlords, tenants and especially the city. There is general indifference to bad outcomes – nobody seems to have a genuine stake in anything.
The city is far and away the most destructive force in my neighborhood. The structures destroyed by arson, looting, abandonment – all of it – pale even in total compared to the viable structures destroyed by Rochester city government. And in every way imaginable, from policies intending a single outcome to bureaucratic lockstep thinking to careless clerical errors.
Thanks for lending your voice to the issue of abandoned structures. It is what it looks like it is. The shrinkage strategy looks great at first, but doesn’t hold up to alternatives that are creative, flexible, asset- and community-based, and focused on the long term. All things that city hall is short on.
I think it’s important to form a reasoned response to this policy proposal, but I think it’s at least as important to say, in sufficiently large numbers, ‘we just don’t want it’.
TV
Ms. Brandes Gratz makes some excellent points about how various funding sources and other structural obstacles favor demolition over renovation.
However, I take strong issue with her theory that places like Flint, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, et al. can revitalize themselves just by “building on existing assets.”
Yes, these places all have localized success stories of re-invigorated neighborhoods that should be celebrated and replicated wherever possible. However, looking at the scope of the problem, I firmly believe that there are simply just not enough “warm bodies” to repopulate some of these places. It’s no longer a question of the city losing population to the suburbs. The entire metropolitan area is shrinking. Where are all these sweat equity/creative/artist types going to come from?
Furthermore, in some of these places, the actual built form is not all that great. Buffalo, for one, has blocks and blocks of wood frame singles and doubles with no rear (alley) access. I believe Jane Jacobs would call these the “gray belts” of cities. These neighborhoods, even at their peak, barely had the densities to warrant transit service. Why not think about reconfiguring the city to create areas that are truly dense enough to support transit and local retail? High density residential and mixed use corridors centered on transit with open space and agriculture in between? There are substantial areas that were formerly riparian and/or wetland areas in cities where the water courses were tunneled and filled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Now that we have the luxury of extra space, why not allocate in ways that make sense?
Can the Densities of Some Neighborhoods Be too Low for Transit to Work?
http://americancity.org/columns/entry/2239
An interesting commentary on density. To me, this theory helps explain, in some part, why the Rochester Subway failed. Certainly, the main reason was lack of investment in the system and a society that was becoming entirely automobile based.
However, Rochester and Brighton failed to “upzone” land around the stations, to allow the high densities that fixed rail transity requires. I believe this was a contributing factor in its demise.
Jason:
As much as I’d love to see Ithaca be part of a high-speed network, the first priority should be provide better rail connections along the current Amtrak/Canal corridor. At some point, though, it would make sense to tie in the corridor to a Southern Tier triangle (Ithaca/Triple Cities/Elmira-Corning) that would also connect to NYC through Scranton. As far as right now, you would think providing employment flexibility would have helped some of the smaller towns with thruway access and a central location, like Batavia, Geneva, and Waterloo/Seneca Falls, similar to the growth along the I-4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando, but it hasn’t really happened.
Some quick responses:
TV, thanks for telling us about your rehabbing work. And thanks for doing your rehab work! I had in the back of my mind an estimate of $50k to rehab a fairly decent empty, and you have confimed that I was not way off.
So at this cost – which may be lower than some of you imagined – tearing most of these places down simply doesn’t make sense. Using a synthesis of solutions, we can get these buildings back in operation, and back on the tax rolls.
The city could give them away to college grads, or sweat equity types. Or perhaps to neighborhood groups. If the rehab costs $50k, and the rent once complete comes to $1,500/month, it would take less than three years to repay the City for a downstroke to get them going. After that, the neighborhood has an income stream that may act as incentive, and may help to keep neighborhood properties in better shape.
So we need to redo the tax assessment method, offer incentives for keeping buildings in repair and disincentives for the opposite, and offer revolving-fund type programs for rehabbers or repairers.
Which brings me to the Roberta Gratz piece. I was glad to read her thoughts, but I think Jason is on to something in his concerns. The abandonment problem in Rochester pales by comparison to Detroit, or Flint, or Youngstown. In those places, it’s not just a few buildings here and there. It’s acres and acres of empties. Where will the people come from to fill these places, whether empty and abandoned or just plain vacant lots?
But I think here in Rochester, it’s a bit easier to imagine finding 500 or so rehabbers a year. If you combine the suggestions that have been made here with the forces that lie just ahead, it will get more and more attractive to live in the city, not less and less attractive.
Which brings me to the density piece that Jason references. In that article, urbanist Aaron Renn echoes the Rochester motto: “A City Where You Can Get Anywhere in 20 Minutes.” By car. Fine – smaller cities are easier to move around in.
But it will be interesting to see how our priorities get rearranged with $8 gas, which is coming soon according to almost everyone, including the Department of Defense. As in real soon: production shortfall of 10 million barrels a day by 2015 will surely yield much more expensive fuel, and will certainly get the attention of our more removed and sprawled neighbors.
And by then folks in the nearby and suburban-feeling Irondequoit may well wonder where to catch the streetcar or rapid bus or whatever transit mode they can find.
This is right around the corner. If we started tomorrow morning, we probably wouldn’t be ready when the crunch begins to be felt.
Which is true for demolitions, for enhanced transit, for high speed rail, for you name it. We are way behind in getting our home places ready for what lies ahead.
Hey, Howard. I’m up late obsessing about a big presentation I have to do tomorrow and ended up in my google reader, where I found this. I loved the piece, and the reference to Urban Renewal…which of course we’re old enough to remember…just….and most of the rest of the country is too young. When I think of the beautiful buildings that were just demolished. For Wal-Mart, as it happened in North Adams, Mass. Or was it K-Mart? They paved paradise and put up a big box store.
Hello there. Good to hear your voice.
And yes, we are old enough to remember Urban Renewal. For me, I recall the demolition to make way for Cabrini Green in the late 50s and early 60s. Same for Robert Taylor Homes. Before, these places were filled with broken down tenements, many without plumbing. We called them slums, and they were pretty sketchy places, but they were dense and filled with life. I am not defending the filth and poverty and injustice of these places, I am simply recalling their form of urbanism. Blocks, streets, buildings, alleys.
Because after, they quickly became Twilight Zones. I remember that it did not take long at all before they were the worst kinds of hells. Taylor was wedged between State and the Dan Ryan Expressway, and was essentially a block wide and miles long.
As for the big boxes, you are right – in my home place K-Mart lead off. I vividly remember the first one near us, and I also remember that I did not want to go anywhere near the place. It was just so cheesy.
Jason, we definitely need to meet and talk over a beer. Together we represent two main perspectives on the issue of shrinkage. Perspectives are important because with problems as vast and complex as this one, like the seven blind men and the elephant, no one perspective covers it all. Or should. As illustration, consider the destruction of the old filling station on Union Street in Marketview Heights. The controversy revealed three roles, each with its own point of view, each one correct, but none obviating the others: the city, which was burdened with the property and wanted only to be rid of it; the residents, who were tired of the crime, drugs and trash that the property drew; and the community. Residents often side with the city on demos as they are given no credible alternative. It was the community stakeholders that raised an outcry in opposition. I would argue that neighborhoods, comprising a much-neglected (when not overtly abused) layer in the civic realm, have a unique, perhaps inherent knack of focusing on the long-term. They trade on a mutuality of interests.
I believe strongly in the community-based approach to revitalization. It means empowering, organizing and supporting communities around the objective of having them identify and develop their own assets as they see them, as opposed to deciding from a citywide perspective that there are not sufficient assets to be worth saving. (I think that is more to Gratz’s point. And it’s what Duany is getting at when he talks about ‘subsidiarity’.) Ditto the notion that a single aggregated statistic such as total city or regional population should be the sole determinant of whether a given area, albeit a weak one, will be removed. A community-based approach can easily adapt to the emerging reality that neighborhoods must compete for scarce residents with other neighborhoods everywhere in order to survive. City government’s role is more as coach and less as referee.
Cities and their neighborhoods are historically prone to conflict. Jane Jacobs addressed it in “Death and Life”, in the chapter on city neighborhoods (Ch. 6). The remedy she proposed was to create districts, formed by grouping diverse neighborhoods such that the weaker ones would enjoy advantages by association with stronger ones. Consider CornHill, where I lived for two decades, which the city never bullies, versus weak neighborhoods like mine, which the city enters whenever it wants, beats the crap out of whatever it wants, then hauls it away in dump trucks. The point is not why, it’s simply that the fates of assets are decided at random from without, striking to the very heart of ownership and empowerment within. Those very necessary things are not easy to replace. Thus the city has its thumb on the scale when it blames weak neighborhoods for being weak.
When Bill Johnson created NET and NBN, they looked like an attempt at neighborhood districts, adapted to Rochester’s needs. But these, particularly NET, never fully formed. They were Tom Argust’s child, and Tom always had one leg in New Urbanism while the other remained in Urban Renewal, boasting in the paper about how many hundreds of homes he would destroy that year. Under the current mayor the mission of NET has evolved away from the earlier collaborative one, owing ostensibly to budgetary belt-tightening, but in reality to a lack of vision. Ditto the office of City Historian. Both could easily have been re-configured as net producers of revenue, or so I’ve thought.
Consider a case study of asset building in a weak neighborhood. Project HOPE is a community group created by Ibero-American Development Corporation (IADC) whose mission is to build healthy neighborhoods within a target area in the city’s NE. Health is defined broadly, taking in everything from individual health (healthy eating for example) to that of the entire community: housing, safe streets, youth engagement and the environment. The project is actively engaged in building social capital, by organizing block clubs, neighborhood events, “take back the streets”-style walks against drug activity and so on. At block club meetings, neighbors meet with local RPD and other community leaders and organizers. To this point, the discussions focus mainly on fixing problems: crime, drugs, housing. The strategy is to engage residents by appealing to basic needs, then building confidence and commitment by pushing stabilization relentlessly on all fronts. But increasingly, the strategy is transitioning toward building assets, beginning with small steps like localized food production, but moving toward becoming a self-sustaining community.
One wonders why the city couldn’t organize neighborhoods into districts, similar to the planning sectors created under NET, and then like Project HOPE, assume the role of organizing and mentoring neighborhoods to do what they do best: solve their own problems, identify and promote their own assets (many, like ethnic identity or neighborly interconnections are not visible from Google Earth). Rochester’s poor neighborhoods are surely sick, but they should not be euthanized.
I’m with TV. All the way. Enhance assets, don’t destroy them, whether people, buildings, neighborhoods, districts, communities, cities, or regions.
Let’s tend to the building up, the making better. We don’t have to give destruction any help – it’s all around us all the time, and does fine for itself.
I spent a good deal of time Sunday reading this lively discussion. I’d like to add my perspective on some of the isolated issues discussed here. Apologies if this isn’t very coherent.
To establish my base platform about the article, I never favor demolition over improvement of the existing structure. I feel older construction is largely of a higher quality, has more architectural merit, and is better programmed for quality urbanism. It also already exists (the embodied energy argument). There’s always potential in a neighborhood in restoring a set of significant houses or the corner commerical building. I dislike ‘clear the block, then build homogenously’ projects. I think we take ‘green’ too far a lot. Green space is not preferable to density in most cases in the city. People have been brainwashed to believe they want open spaces regardless of the quality of programming. There is no city if more is ‘green’ than not.
On some of the things brought up in the comments:
The urban farmland concept is not a very productive use of an established street grid/utility serviced zone. While I believe we must reestablish a meaningful agricultural relationship with local farms, I feel a better long term strategy is to reclaim land in suburban towns for this purpose. I suppose I won’t be running for County Executive anytime soon.
I don’t think Cleveland, Buffalo, and Rochester have as much in common with Detroit, Flint, and Youngstown. These motoring paradises were miserably designed for density from Day 1.
I know its hard to hang on to the population rebound hope, but I think peak oil (which may have already occured, hence the first oil bubble iteration/exurban housing foreclosure disaster) is really going to be the catalyst for redensification. And yes, we are woefully unprepared. We desperately cling to the comforts of the status quo. Meanwhile, we yearn for the opportunity to create more environmental catastrophes in the Gulf of Mexico (Drill, Baby, Drill). Disgraceful.
At the same time, I have little faith that any other clean energy source or combination of sources will ever scale up to enable the systems Americans are desperately dependent on to continue at the same level of operation. Redensification and conservation represent proactive behavorial change whereas technology is more like ‘wishing on a star’ in these matters.
Tim Raymond’s Georgist Tax Systems (named for Henry George) create tremendous incentive to improve properties at key strategic locations such as center cities. Instantaneously it is no longer economical to park cars for 8 hours (or the individual rate becomes oppressive which is fine with me too). How to implement? At the present, I believe property taxes are split between municipalities (some blend of City/County) and the school district.
I like Daniel C’s suggestion of adding some through streets in places where demolitions have already create the opportunity to break up exceedingly long blocks.
Engaging college students who don’t have a particular allegiance to the area can be challenging. Without administrative backing at the institute, I’ve found it difficult to even contact, much less sell a group at RIT called Engineers for a Sustainable World on a free offer of a presentation on Traditional Neighborhood Development.
TV, your work and dedication are just incredible. It is so important that you are doing the good work on the ground with urbanist perspective. You know exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it. I’d love to also meet you in person and potentially help out with your efforts.
-Bob
An interesting perspective on this, written by a local but for a national audience:
http://www.citymayors.com/development/demolition_usa.html
“While cities may be able to knock down a lot of buildings relatively cheaply, they cannot afford to simultaneously fix the underlying problems in every neighborhood: employment, economic development, health, public safety, schools, and racism — all must be addressed.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. We need to talk about demand.
Revealing itself repeatedly throughout this piece is the assumption of an economically ‘rational’ model for revitalization of urban communities:
“…renovation costs frequently exceed the market value of the improved property…” and the like.
That model won’t work. Property values in urban communities are at a low ebb. New construction means someone (public or private) fronts the six-figure cost – in neighborhoods where the typical assessment is below $30 thousand. It won’t happen. It won’t scale. With existing housing, the cost of a new roof alone is economically unjustifiable in the income-producing model. The pea just isn’t under that shell.
We need another model. Here’s mine: Why do I build a $1,000 deck off my house? So I can get more in return when I sell? Heck no, it’s so I can enjoy sitting out in summer. Ah, owner-occupants! So where do we find those? Middle class? Get real, studies show they want safety and schools first, and we’re broke. But wait, Richard Florida says we can appeal to the ‘creative class’. So we lure ump-teen 20-something professionals into Rochester’s inner-city neighborhoods, right? Not!
Fortunately for us, Florida’s creative class has two tiers. The affluent consumers of cultural authentica are a tier that moves into urban enclaves out of a desire to co-locate with the other creative tier – the cooks, musicians, artists and shopkeepers that are the purveyers of urban culture. And the really neat thing is, the producers are affordable now. They want much less. Problem is, we’ve got to stop tearing down the stuff they want: live/work space, funky old abandoned warehouses, all sorts of large, low-rent spaces.
I’m currently trying to buy a potential mixed-use property from the city that is apartments over a Victorian store front. Rehab it a little, it’s an artist’s loft over a studio. Rehab it some more, it’s a gallery or cafe or whatever. It’s flexible space, something you can’t do with new construction. The city of course wants to tear it down. Why? The roof leaks. I’ve heard it a hundred times, “It would cost more to fix than it is worth.” That translates to, “We’re looking for a white knight developer and you’re not it.”
There are other groups besides creatives, like college graduates, immigrants and urbanists like us who might be persuaded to buy a place, fix it up and move in. But the point is, you’ve got to make an appeal. You have to start where you are and build from that based on a plan. Organizing and asset-building lead to in-migration and more asset-building. Marketing of vacant properties (neighbors do this, with an assist from NSC) could layer onto public auctions. We need collaboration from the city. I know they’ve done it in the Susan B. district. A real alternative to demolition would be to share the savings of NOT doing the demo with the neighborhood group that acts to prevent it.
“…the only thing stopping people from moving to a neighborhood, or developers from building in a neighborhood, is their perception of the place.”
Now that puts the hay down where the horse can get it.
Bob,
I was wondering when you were going to weigh in on this issue. Thanks for the words of encouragement. If it’s okay with Howard (who seems to have disappeared), perhaps he can forward my email to you so we can discuss at length. I also have some cool ‘before and after’ project pics if either of you are interested (proud father here).
Now for “just incredible” you need to go to Buffalo and spend a day walking around with people like Harvey Garrett (director, West Side Community Collaborative), Aaron Bartley (director, PUSH Buffalo), Blair Woods (co-founder, Urban Roots co-operative nursery) or Mike Gainor (co-founder, ReUse Buffalo).
Have Harvey show you the place where he brought together UB volunteers and donated paint and put a period color scheme on an abandoned facade to help an absentee owner sell a problem property. Or the place that he convinced 3 architecture students to buy for a buck from the city and then rehab. That guy is amazing.
Or have Aaron show you the place where he arranged sweat-equity ownership for immigrants who did the rehab work. Have him describe how he got a construction union to back a program that puts troubled youth to work refurbishing properties by providing training and funding for workman’s compensation. You could tour the neighborhood farm (MAP) he helped create, and learn about the summer enrichment program for youth that’s held there.
You’d also want to have Blair Woods show you around ‘Urban Roots’, the nursery co-op he and his wife helped create. Urban Roots makes gardening products affordable and accessible to just about anybody on the West Side.
Or you could always visit Mark and Janice Stevens at Wilson Street Urban Farm, a new project which spreads over 27 vacant parcels on Wilson St in Buffalo’s East Side.
I’ve toured their projects and I was ba-lown away. How much can one guy do with his life? That’s how much. I just wish more people from here could glimpse what is possible. Not meant as a dis, but here we talk, there they just do it. Ask DSteele, he knows. They decide to raise chickens, they do it. When the city cites them, they go to Common Council and have the law changed. They are out there every day changing the paradigm.
Thanks again for the good words.
Sorry readers, I have been away for a few days in South Bend, looking at University of Notre Dame graduate thesis projects. Some interesting stuff.
So TV, yes, I will forward your email to Bob, so that you two can continue your gabfest. Oh, and I would love to see some before-and-afters too, if you would like to share.
I think this wonderful and very long thread of conversation has, with all your help, dear readers, come to the right set of conclusions. There are so many ways to reuse the abandoned buildings in this city, or Buffalo, or name-your-favorite-city – either with or without the help of the municipality.
Of course if this city helped in the logical ways we have outlined, life would be better, and easier, and fairer, and the city would benefit sooner rather than later from its wise action.
But if the city won’t do the right things, or thinks it can’t do the right things, than the least it can do is get out of the way and let people who can do this and do do this get on with the work. And refrain from tearing anything down – assets are assets, after all.
TV, I appreciate the references to Buffalo success stories. I cannot myself say much about what has or hasn’t worked there – I am just now barely becoming semi-conscious of what goes on here…. I have gotten to the point where it seems your observation about talking rather than doing has a certain ring of truth. More about that shortly.
And Bob, thanks for joining the conversation. I think you have it right, but I would have you go back and look at the original plan for Detroit. Try John Reps’ book. Good stuff, once upon a time, before Mr. Ford. Very good stuff.
TV, you’ve hit upon a difference I’ve observed between Buffalo and Rochester. In Buffalo, people are so acculturated to a dysfunctional and usually corrupt city government that community development happen through grassroots and non-profit leadership. Rochesterians, it seems, expect “city hall” to come fix things. Why is that? I attribute it to generations of the benign paternalism of Kodak. Sometimes, the best thing city hall could do is just get out of the way.
Many apologies if this has already been addressed in the comments, but have the students considered deconstruction as an option within their plan to demolish the buildings? If we want to talk about sustainability and greening, we should understand that demolition in the true sense of the word is destruction. Approximately 70% of demolished structures end are transported to landfills. Since this is a long term project, I hope the students and city consider a planned disassembly of the structures that can be sold to reuse centers or used on other building or art projects.
[...] credit: A Town Square ) [...]
I am the Director of Forward, the Architecture & Design Journal of the American Institute of Architects’ National Associates Committee. One of my authors would like to use the second image posted on this page, ‘Detroit.’ I am trying to track down the originator of the image. Can you please let me know where you obtained this image?
Thanks!
Christina
Christina, this image has been used by many, many sites on the web. The original image was made by the extraordinary photographer Alex MacLean, though I picked it up off of another blog site because of its ubiquity. I would suggest you contact Mr. MacLean, or at least credit him for the original image. If you do, you will be one of the only users who has…. I am now editing “A Town Square” to give him credit.
Thanks! I will get in touch with Alex.