October 15, 2007
By Neil Fraser
JUST to wrap up on my recent trip to the USA; then, next week, it's back to Joburg and we'll look at what's been happening in Joeys over the past year.
This week, some thoughts from the 53rd conference and world congress of the International Downtown Association (IDA) held in New York City from 14 to 18 September and some quotes, many of which are relevant to us, from various articles, speakers or people with whom we work-shopped.
The IDA partners with a number of international urban bodies to expand its annual conference into a world congress every three years. The first of these was in Coventry, England in 1997; since then it has alternated between the UK and the States. The next one is to be held in London in 2010. Thereafter it starts to go global with Montreal, Canada in 2013; 2016 will be our turn in South Africa, with the main conference probably being held in Cape Town but with Joburg also featuring strongly.
This year's conference/congress was held in the heart of Times Square, New York City, and was attended by over 1 000 delegates from all over the world. The theme was "Big dreams, bold ideas". Preceding the conference there were tours and professional development workshops ranging from retail to branding, law enforcement to establishing and managing improvement districts.
The conference programme itself provided a number of plenaries with key-note speakers (six) and then a huge variety of sessions (95 in all during seven or eight parallel periods), where the biggest problem was which session to attend. It is impossible to bring you even a broad feel of content but here, firstly, are a couple of issues that I resonated with and, secondly, some quotes from a variety of people we met or heard speak (with thanks to Ashwin Daya from the Mandela Bay Development Agency, who managed to capture them).
Reviewing the issues that interested me shows my personal growth from "clean and safe" ten-plus years ago to "place and space"!
Lars Gemzoe (Gehl Architects)
Keynote speaker, Lars Gemzoe, who is a senior consultant and associate partner in the Gehl Architects practice and a senior lecturer in urban design at the School of Architecture in Copenhagen:
- "All cities have statistics and information and departments that deal with cars, but no departments or statistics on public space and pedestrians."
- "The people in the city tend to be invisible and poorly represented in the planning process."
Public space, he pointed out, fulfils a number of needs:
- Pleasure - "one of the pleasures of daily life is to walk and bicycle";
- Economic - "great public spaces are highly valued by people, businesses and property owners";
- Recreation - "urban recreation where the presence of other people provides social interaction";
- Social - "the city is a meeting place, people-watching is one of the great attractions of a city - both watching and being watched"; and
- Democratic and fun - "public space is democratically driven and adds an open society dimension to cities. Empty streets are not inviting nor safe -public space adds a general human dimension to a city offering sheer fun and surprise".
Gemzoe says that if public spaces provided are of good quality, people will come. "The city is a gallery for contemporary art and we need policies that promote active ground floor frontages."
He made an interesting comment about Melbourne, saying that it is like any other modern city of the world but when it comes to street life and public space it is like Paris, one of the most liveable cities in the world.
Paul Levy (Central City District BID, Philadelphia)
"The quality of public spaces does matter. There are things that you can influence - litter and graffiti; customer friendliness; night time lighting; visitor signs; special events; neglected facades; roller shutter doors. You need public standards and these need to be enforced by the police. Police are especially trained in this kind of work - special protocol outreach teams (Spot) deal with behavioural and health issues. A special services police team deals with homeless and behavioural issues."
"Enforcing standards of public behaviour means:
- No night sleeping in parks;
- No urination in public; and
- No public feeding."
Housing the homeless
I was interested in the change of approach that has come about in some American cities over the last decade in relation to the issue of homelessness. High proportions of Americans living on the street have mental problems or substance abuse problems.
(In Washington DC, 20 percent of people live below the poverty level; 36 percent are functionally illiterate; 8 percent are unemployed although there is agreement that the actual figure is way higher than the official number.)
There now appears to be a very strong approach to providing appropriate housing and moving away from the "shelter" approach. New York calls this type of housing "supportive housing", and it consists of fully furnished and equipped one-bedroomed units in blocks that offer in-house support services. The buildings provide vegetable gardens, teaching space and courtyard playgrounds.
Services include a nurse, psychiatrist, case management, clinical management, and housing assistance all on site.
Expensive? I don't think it should necessarily be so. We provide all those services from centralised government funded departments - surely it would be better to decentralise into practical hands-on involvement?
The capital costs seem to be generated in different ways in different states - some states appear to adopt a surcharge on commercial development of $10 (about R68) a square foot (about 0,09 square metres) but this prejudices commercial development. Vancouver, if I remember correctly, puts a surcharge on middle/upper income development of C$16 (about R112) a square foot for low income housing and related infrastructure.
Quality of life
Dan Doctoroff, the deputy mayor of economic development and rebuilding of New York, whom I quoted a couple of weeks back, said in his keynote address that one of the most critical issues for a city to aim for is "quality of life".
It attracts more people, they help the tax base increase and there is more money to invest again in quality of life issues. (Okay, okay, we attract more people with no related tax increase but that is largely because of non-enforcement at our borders, and so on!) You need a multi-faceted approach, he said, focusing on transportation, housing and public space.
While New York City lost the 2012 Olympic Bid to London, it has proceeded with the 5 000 affordable housing units that had been planned for the Olympic Village through a partnership between the city and seven property developers on a non-profit basis and an agreement with the trade unions for "second tier" wages for this kind of housing.
In the latter regard, parks in the city are being completely overhauled to become safe and attractive spaces for rich and poor.
Hugh Hardy, of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, spoke about "Place making 101" and gave these six key issues for design of good urban spaces and places:
- A clear plan;
- Character - personable but not overpowering;
- Colour - not only quantity but also range;
- Tactile - you must be able to "feel" the difference;
- Diversity - incorporate different surfaces, hard and soft; and
- Landscape - everything must bond together.
Quoting Jane Jacobs - "we're good for each other" - he reiterated that "cities are all about people wanting to be together".
Walkable urbanism
Chris Liebenberger, of the Brookings Institute, spoke about "Walkable urbanism - the new benchmark", and traced a fascinating history of how cities developed from Sumer in 5500 BC, where everything was planned within a walking distance of 1 500 to 3 500 feet (about 457 metres to one kilometre), and early Philadelphia, where less than one person in 50 lived more than a mile (about 1,6 kilometres) from work, to modern cities that generally exist "in a world made safe for a car".
Today, in the US, for every 1 percent population growth there is an 8 to 12 percent land-use consumption. The unintended consequences of this are a lesser quality of life, through:
- Auto dependency;
- Poor access to jobs;
- Social segregation;
- Exclusion of non-drivers from society;
- Secession of the elite;
- Nimby (Not in my backyard) neighbourhood groups;
- Land consumption;
- Air and water pollution;
- Climate change;
- Obesity and asthma;
- Injuries and deaths from car-related accidents;
- Impact on family finance;
- Impact on fiscal finances (subsidies); and
- Infrastructure and dependency on oil.
In conclusion: we need a new way to develop the built environment - we must invest in walkable urban infrastructure.
Richard Bradley (Downtown DC BID, Washington)
Richard Bradley is the executive director of the Downtown DC Business Improvement District (BID) in Washington DC.
- "Capitalists look for opportunity and certainty."
- "A brand is a promise of an experience."
- '"Clean and safe are basics that you never move away from."
- "Thank heavens for bureaucracy - we would otherwise not have a city."
- "The solutions to most of our problems are partnerships."
- "Social workers are the ‘glue' of our social welfare problems in the city."
Paul Levy (Central City District BID, Philadelphia)
Paul Levy is the executive director of the Central City District BID in Philadelphia.
- "You never say ‘It's not my job!'"
- "I don't open my mouth on an issue unless I have a solution to it!"
- "What excites me is the ability to have an impact on the environment."
- "Buildings should shape public spaces.
- "People attract people."
- "Big is not always bad - it's only bad if it's badly designed."
- "Give the politicians all the credit - I don't need to be re-elected every few years."
Vincent van der Poole (Caribbean Tourism Organisation)
Vincent van der Poole is the secretary-general of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation.
- "Advertising works best when it reminds people of something positive that they have heard of."
- "There is no greater promoter of an area than a real estate developer."
Dan Doctoroff (New York City)
Dan Doctoroff is the deputy mayor of economic development of New York City.
- "We will steal anyone's ideas as long as they are good!"
Dan Biederman (New York City)
Dan Biederman is from the Bryant Park Coro/Bryant Park Management Corporation in New York City.
- "Be patient - some of these initiatives take time."
- "Don't fall in love with a vendor." (Referring to suppliers, service providers and so on)
Okay, so after all these truisms, it's back to Joeys and reality next week,
Cheers, Neil
PS: The long awaited four-star Mapungubwe Hotel Apartments officially opened on Monday, 1 October. Located in Marshalltown, Johannesburg, on Anderson, Ferreira and Marshall streets, Mapungubwe is positioned down the road from Standard Bank's head office and directly across from Anglo American's head office. It is a sectional title scheme that combines 91 hotel apartments with an additional 37 residential flats. Many of the owners of the residential flats have already occupied their new homes. More in a future Citichat.
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