EXT: A NEIGHBORHOOD CORNER STORE
A lively setting: people walking, talking. Store owners chat with customers on the sidewalk.
EXT: A NEIGHBORHOOD CORNER STORE
20 years later, same location. A lonely street: buildings boarded up or turned into low-rent uses. Few people seen walking around. Generally dismal.
It’s a common theme or scene in so many movies. (The movie Back to the Future comes to mind for me) The old neighborhood, once thriving and lively, is now a virtual ghost town. We’re left to think this simply is how life is. The sands of time turn what was once something good into something bad, through the mysterious process known as change. It’s inevitable, right?
Or is it?
Today’s feature: how to bring about this change, in 3 simple steps. Want to ruin your neighborhood, town or city? Then all it takes is to follow the method outlined below, as countless places have done.
- Change the streets so it’s safe for cars to drive really fast
- Force new buildings to ignore the street
- Welcome any and all development – it’s all good
Need some more direct guidance? Just look at the intersection of 39th and Broadway, in Kansas City, Missouri. At one time, this intersection was one of many thriving, walkable places in Midtown Kansas City. Serviced by streetcar lines running east-west and north-south, the streets were a lively mixture of transit users, pedestrians and cars. Visiting it today, it’s virtually impossible to imagine that scenario. Here’s what happened:
- The streets were modified so that cars could drive really fast. Streetcars were removed, parking lanes removed on 39th street, and both roadways maximized the number of traffic lanes.
- Development regulations (primarily zoning) put in place over the years emphasized suburban-style approaches. Buildings were to be set back from the street, parking minimums were required, and entries were shifted to parking lots instead of the street.
- As the city became less prosperous over the years, the mentality that any development is good development took over. In the name of rebuilding, generous tax incentives were given, and city officials became weary of putting any restrictions on developers, for fear that it would drive investment away. A poverty mentality settled in.
So what are the results? 3 corners of the intersection have been rebuilt in the last decade, and not a single corner has a door along the sidewalk, in the middle of the city. The intersection has gone from being a lively, urban crossroads to a no-man’s land that feels unsafe and ugly. It’s a place to get through, instead of a place to get to. Despite the good intentions of many people, this is nothing but a colossal failure of planning and zoning. Cue the images:
A Walgreen’s sits on one corner, in the typical fashion that suburban-style drug stores dot the landscape all over America. But it’s ok, it has a wonderful “pedestrian amenity” on the corner. That clearly makes it all better.
The new Gomer’s liquor store across Broadway turns a blank side to both streets, and has its entry on a parking lot. The building it replaced was dilapidated, but at least it had several entries facing the streets.
A new Jimmy John’s opposite 39th Street replaced a horrible Popeye’s Chicken a couple years ago. Only problem – the building sits back off the street, behind a parking lot. Note the lovely fence along the sidewalk, clearly there to protect the parked cars from the unruly types plying the sidewalk.
In many circles, it’s considered radical thinking that areas such as these (again, in the middle of the city) should be bike and pedestrian-friendly, and that we should take direct measures to make them so. For example, make the cars slow down, put back the on-street parking, place buildings and entries along the sidewalk, provide quality transit, and on and on. Heaven forbid! How will people get around?!
But the truly radical thinking was to willfully destroy so many places to begin with. Through acts small (like this example), or large (ramming freeways through urban neighborhoods), we purposefully ruined thousands of neighborhoods, towns and cities, in an effort to be “modern.” We took models of human settlement that have worked for thousands of years, and forced a radical new paradigm that suggests we should have a lifestyle assisted by a machine.
If we’d laid out a plan to destroy our cities, we could hardly have done any better. If the city fathers of Kansas City had hatched a plan forty years ago to ruin this intersection, they could hardly have done better. If you want to do the same for your town, just follow the three simple steps.
Just a few blocks to the east - what 39th Street used to look like
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I started reading this entry without knowing it was you, Kevin, and even before you got to your 39th and Broadway example, that’s exactly what I thought of.
I live eight blocks from the intersection and travel through there often. The new Gomer’s is a real disappointment, particularly in light of the fact that they are good merchants. This is truly a failure of the architects who designed these buildings and the professional planning staff at the City. But,of course, your statement about “any development is good development” is particularly true because of the State Line that bisects Greater Kansas City and assures the absence of any real planning on either side of the line. As a consequence the thirst for maintaining or increasing sales tax revenue trumps all other public policy.
I always appreciate your observations, Kevin.
You’re ignoring the reality of the situation. This design will keep a tight lid on the property in an area where you NEED a tight lid on the property. The design lessens the chances of break-ins, discourages robberies (cameras, lots of lights), and takes the “public street” out of the equation…no thugs hustling customers with their “I forgot my bus fare” song-and-dance.
Remember Christopher Bartholomew? He was murdered at 39th and Broadway in May, 2007. Remember the shootout at Chubby’s? (also 2007). So don’t preach your “new urbanism” in an unsafe neighborhood. In that area it means iron gates and bullet-proof glass.
It’s easy to get swept up in the nostalgia of the past, and as a result you’re not even thinking about the current state of the neighborhood surrounding it.
Quit thinking about how cool 1947 was and join us in the on-your-guard, safety-first twenty-first century.
i read alot of book discuss about this. i agree with your write in this blog. street is important value for the city. succesfull of design the stree impact 1/3 success of design a city (book: great street by jacobs). this evolution of car make street for car not for human.
like to read your observation and opinion
Batty – I can only hope you’re being sarcastic. Murders and crime happen everywhere, including Target parking lots in the suburbs.
Fear and a fortress mentality only will make things worse.
Batty, indeed, smart streetscapes increase foot traffic, which puts eyes on the street and reduces crime. As I sit on 20th and 7th Ave in NYC on Thanksgiving eve there is lots of foot traffic, eyes on the street and the lowest crime rate in the nation.
Kevin – spot on. Hope this gets in the Planetizen weekly digest soon if it hasn’t already.
@Batty – guessing from your perspective that you’re the proprietor of Gomer’s midtown. Nice whiskey selection man. But defensive architecture tends to worsen street crime in subtle yet significant ways.
If you’re interested in better understanding the relationship between civic space and civil behavior start with this:
http://streetswiki.wikispaces.com/Eyes+On+The+Street
It’s a well documented, well understood crime inhibiting design principle.
Nice post, Kevin. I drive and walk by this corner every week (and have since 1995) and I am appalled at the slow decline of this intersection over those 16 years. The loss of the florist ~3 story building on the NE corner for a Walgreens was sad. The Jimmy Johns is prettier than the old Popeye’s/Winchell’s on the SW corner, but no better from an urban standpoints. But this new Gomer’s building is sad. So sad. The exterior materials are so poorly chosen and the details are amateur. I assume the contractor designed it because no architect I know could do that bad of design work.
This building breaks all the rules for urbanity and crime prevention (as mentioned above).
@Batty: More and better lighting can help. So can cameras. But those things are masking bad building –to-neighborhood relationships. I am sure the building is designed to be better hardened against crime inside the store, but a better building design could have lessened crime outside the store as well. The “big picture” was completely ignored when this building was designed.