8 Common Values of Successful Downtowns
August 9th, 2008
Urban designer Alex Krieger of Chan Krieger Sieniewicz in Cambridge, Mass. is working with the City of Baton Rouge on a new master plan for their downtown and offers up his eight rules for a successful downtown. It is interesting to read the full article and see how the eight values are applied to Baton Rouge. It seems that the downtowns of Baton Rouge and Oklahoma City have a lot in common as far as the renaissance they have both experienced over the last decade and similar problems that both downtowns continue to attempt to solve. Check out the full article if you have the time, if not, here is a summary of the list.
8 Rules for a Successful Downtown
- Cities are for living in – to make downtowns work, you need a critical mass of urban residents. The article states, “It takes 5,000 people to reach the next level of market demand to attract retail and other amenities.”
- Understand who cities are for - “An urban residential lifestyle isn’t for everyone; many people, particularly families, like the suburban model just fine. Krieger says cities appeal to folks in their 20s and 30s, along with empty-nesters who prefer easy access to restaurants, museums and amenities over a golf course.”
- Mixed-use environments - “You don’t want people to come downtown for one experience,” DiResto says. “You want them to be able to enjoy an entire day or evening.”
- Think Compactly - development needs to be compact and provide an environment that makes walking not only possible, but enjoyable.
- Invest in culture - make room for artist studio space, galleries, cultural institutions, etc. Often these uses get priced out as the downtown becomes more successful.
- Conservation - “Green space is a big deal for many cities, even Houston, one of the world’s great monuments to urban sprawl and unchecked development. Everyone likes a little shade, and trees are prettier than concrete. But squeezing green spaces into an urban environment takes a little creativity. In Chicago, which also has an air-quality problem, green roofs are popular.”
- Mobility - connecting not only various districts within downtown, but connecting downtown to the outlying areas of city.
- Creative use of history - creating a historic narrative that connects people to the history of their city. This is something Baton Rouge considers one of its greatest strengths. Oklahoma City could probably do a better job of highlighting what is a very unique history.
So what is your assessment? What do you think of the list? Which of the eight is OKC doing a good job on and where could we use some more work?
August 17th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Our biggest problem, I suspect, is mobility: we’re building a free-floating island of urbanity in the middle of the city, which is good, but most people are going to find themselves cut off from it, because they don’t know what’s where, or how to get to it if they did. (We had an office party in Bricktown one year, and nearly a third of the staff had no idea how to get there.)
August 20th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Yeh, we definitely need to improve the connections between MANY nodes of activity. Downtown is the most important of these nodes of activity, but we have to create similar “places” at the neighborhood and/or district level. These local nodes become the familiar places of people living in those areas and can serve as gateway for people taking transit to other areas of the city. Of course, to do this we need some sort of real transit system, even if it is improved buses or bus rapid transit (BRT). If someone is traveling by car then it can be as simple as a larger highway sign…though it is not necessarily an elegant solution.
August 31st, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I don’t think that’s Baton Rouge’s skyline, which is probably about the size of the Medical District in OKC.
I think that the basics of building a successful downtown have been rewritten in OKC. Yes, you must invest in culture, history, mobility, focus on quality urban design that attracts the Creative Class basically, BUT..
The basics of OKC’s renaissance have been:
1. Get the entire community both urban and suburban behind a downtown renaissance by putting stuff for everyone in downtown.
2. Use downtown as an icon for all of your city’s positive vibes.
3. Invest in stimulating the “downtown experience” by doing little things here and there to surround downtown visitors in urban sophistication and leave an impression on non-urbanites.
4. Downtown is an area of the city with just as much residential potential as say, Edmond, so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have as many new units built each year.
5. It should be a cultural experience in every sense of the term.
Of COURSE what we need to focus on more is MOBILITY and CONSERVATION.
August 31st, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Nick –
You are absolutely correct – good eye. It popped up on a search for Downtown Baton Rouge images, but I did a little more digging and found out this is actually Miami. Miami…Baton Rouge…umm, yeh, probably a small difference in skylines :).
I really appreciate your enthusiasm for the great things that OKC has done to revitalize its downtown. I agree with much of what you say. Still, we need to try to balance are excitement with for what has been accomplished with a desire to continuously improve and take it all to the next step. We seem to be going through a period where we are unsure how far we want to take this thing, with no clear vision as to what is next and what we are ultimately trying to accomplish. MOBILITY and CONSERVATION are two issues that could use more attention and should be addressed as soon as possible. Also, it is still difficult for us to argue that our downtown is completely viable when there continues to be a dearth of both neighborhood and destination RETAIL. Regardless, it is an exciting time and so much of the work done over the last 15 years has paid off – we just need to keep working!
I guess I will leave the Miami image as a monument to my error, but here is the real downtown Baton Rouge for those that are interested: