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October 24, 2003
The Charter: The Block, the Street and the Building
Today the blog focuses on the last of three key components of the charter as it relates to job growth.
The Block, the Street and the Building:
This is where it typically applies to tenants, to the employers. Streets, public areas and buildings that encourage human interaction best serve the high level of human networking needed for prosperous communities.
"A primary task of all urban architecture and landscape design is the physical definition of streets and public spaces as places of shared use (such as for business meetings, conferences and informal brainstorms.)"
"Streets and squares should be safe, comfortable, and interesting to the pedestrian. Properly configured, they encourage walking and enable neighbors (and employees) to know each other and protect their communities (grow their companies)."
"Preservation and renewal of historic buildings, districts, and landscapes affirm the continuity and evolution of urban society." This is the 'basic infrastructure' needed for establishing a high quality of life.
Posted by Neil | Link to Article
October 23, 2003
The Charter: The Neighborhood
Today the blog focuses on the second of three key components of the charter as it relates to job growth.
The neighborhood, the district, and the corridor:
The neighborhood is at the heart of the charter's principles. It also covers the 'district' and the 'corridor', but mainly to be comprehensive. "Neighborhoods should be compact, pedestrian-friendly, and mixed-use." "Many activities of daily living (and working) should occur within walking distance." "Within neighborhoods, a broad range of housing types and price levels can bring people of diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction, strengthening the personal, (economic) and civic bonds essential to an authentic community (and local economy)." "Concentrations of civic, institutional, and commercial activity (entrepreneurial centers) should be embedded in neighborhoods and districts, not isolated in remote, single-use complexes (e.g. office parks)." "A range of parks, from tot-lots and village greens to ballfields and community gardens, should be distributed within neighborhoods." Quality of life.
Image of Madeira Beach, Florida plan courtesy of DPZ & Company
Posted by Neil | Link to Article
October 22, 2003
The Charter: The Region
Today the blog focuses on the first of three key components of the charter as it relates to job growth.
The Region: Metropolis, City and Town:
Metropolitan regions are shaped by natural features, and are "made of multiple centers that are cities, towns, and villages, each with its own identifiable center and edges..." based on a transportation system that emphasizes "mobility throughout the region while reducing dependence upon the automobile." The preservation of natural features is a major reason why entrepreneurs move to Colorado and Silicon Valley. The "identifiable center" refers to the 24-hour mecca of nightlife in Denver/Boulder, and San Francisco respectively, and is another key entrepreneurial selling point. Transportation-wise, the freedom of easily getting from one place to another is yet another trait of the emerging mobile worker.
"Revenues and resources can be shared more cooperatively among the municipalities and centers within regions to avoid destructive competition for tax base and to promote rational coordination of transportation, recreation, public services, housing, and community institutions." Much of this stems from a municipality's often undying need to build bigger Walmarts and shopping malls to attract a neighboring jurisdiction's shoppers. It also recognizes the fact that surburbia drains city budgets faster per capita than urban areas, as well documented in Congressman Myron Orfield's book, American Metropolitics.
Image courtesy of DPZ & Company
Posted by Neil | Link to Article
October 21, 2003
The Charter of the New Urbanism
The Charter for the New Urbanism is essentially an executive summary followed by three sections focusing on urban design principles for the region, the neighborhood and the block. It is too long to completely list here, so I'll highlight its main points through this week and relate that to job growth.
"We stand for the restoration of existing urban centers and towns within coherent metropolitan regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts, the conservation of natural environments, and the preservation of our built legacy." This is speaking to quality of life, and we all know how key that is in terms of job growth.
"We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice." What may be rather surprising is that if you did a focus group with creatives, entrepreneurs and knowledge workers, you'd get much of the same vision. In fact, there's an entire study on it: Linking the New Economy to the Livable Community. See page 8 of the paper (page 10 of the pdf) if you want the 1-minute cliff notes version.
By the way, the charter is available as a book.
Posted by Neil | Link to Article
October 20, 2003
What does Smart Growth have to do with job growth?
A lot! Unfortunately, you wouldn't know it by reading the mainstream press. Hopefully by the end of this blog's week you'll have a resource to point to. But first, we need to define Smart Growth.
There's the Smart Growth Network's definition, representing a consortium of the most influential public and private sector organizations that can influence Smart Growth. However, because they are sponsored by a federal body (EPA), they can't advocate for specific policy changes. Then there's the policy-oriented coalition Smart Growth America's (SGA) definition. SGA focuses on sweeping changes to federal and state government policy, but not specifically focused on the municipal level.
The nonprofit urban design-oriented group, The Congress for the New Urbanism's (CNU) definition is by far the most specific. They even have a name for their definition: The Charter for the New Urbanism. Seeing as this was written with municipality by municipality implementation in mind (this is what it all comes down to), tomorrow I'll focus on what it means as the connection to job growth is eventually made.
Posted by Neil | Link to Article
