Cutting Edge May Be Cool, but Not the Best Use of Resources

In my last post, I wrote about how the High Line project in New York City is affecting the conversation about parks in North Bay cities. Some citizens suggest that North Bay cities should be capable of High Line-type projects.  However, the suggestion ignores the uniqueness of both the High Line setting and the deep pockets that were available in Manhattan.  The suggestion also overlooks that North Bay cities are facilitating park improvements that, when measured on a cost per resident basis, aren’t dissimilar from the High Line.

But it’s not only in the small to medium-sized cities where the High Line has undermined rational conversation about park priorities.  Metropolises, which might actually have the resources to chase after the High Line chimera, have also been influenced.  Below, I’ll offer three examples of big city projects that are trying to follow in the footprints of the High Line but which, although I’m sure I’d enjoy visiting the resulting parks, could well become poor uses of resources.

The Garden Bridge in London would be a pedestrian/bicycle crossing of the Thames, with much of the bridge deck dedicated to various forms of greenery, including theme gardens.  After an initial flush of enthusiasm, public ardor for the bridge soon began to fade as costs climbed, security rules were established, and periodic closures for corporate events were suggested as a way to balance the books.

In New York City, a proposed $130 million garden park on piers over the Hudson River has been dubbed “Treasure Island” by citizens.  (If the link doesn’t work, this Google search should have the article as its first result.)  The public response seems uncertain and the funding source isn’t obvious.

Lastly, with an idea that has dual parentage in the High Line and the closing of Times Square to cars, a New York City architecture firm is proposing the conversion of forty blocks of Broadway into a garden belt for pedestrians and bicyclists only.

I think all three of the ideas would create enjoyable places, but I’m not convinced that any would be a good use of funds.  As a comparison, consider South Cove Park on the Hudson River side of Manhattan, near the tip of the island and adjoining Battery Park.  (All the photos are from South Cove Park.)

South Cove Park is a more conventional park, although still expensive because it’s occupying valuable real estate and because construction is always expensive in Manhattan.  Although not cutting edge like the High Line, it’s comfortable, well-used, and seemingly well-loved.  Also, it’s now part of the Big U of parks intended to help protect Manhattan from the surge of climate change-enhanced storms like Sandy.

Overall, South Cove Park may seem unexciting and conventional, but seems a better and less risky model for cities to follow, whether New York City or Santa Rosa, London or Petaluma.  The High Line is fun and creative, but many fun and creative projects are better left as one-offs.

I spent the earlier years of my career in the field of hydroelectric development, at a time that the rules for the permitting of hydroelectric projects were changing greatly.  One afternoon, I chatted about the evolving rules over a beer with an attorney for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  His words about those eager to take advantage of the changing regulatory environment were “Those on the cutting edge often bleed.”

The High Line was a remarkable accomplishment, but attempts of others to seek similarly remarkable outcomes may result in blood at a time we can’t afford to bleed.

For my next post, I’ll return to induced traffic.  It’s a subject on which I’ve touched many times, but remains worthy of revisiting, especially as new information comes forth.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Getting Seconded with Authority

A few posts back, while poking fun at my habit of tallying the states I’ve visited, I suggested that counting cities was a more appropriate measure of travel because cities have been more important to civilization.

The heart of my argument was “The history of civilization begins with Babylon, Athens, Sparta, Rome, and Carthage before continuing onward to Venice, Vienna, London, Paris, Philadelphia, and Boston.  Cities are where learning, government, and culture all took root.”

Thus, it was with delight that I came across an article by another writer starting with this phrase, “Although history is not usually taught this way, one could argue that cities have played a more important role in shaping the world than empires. From Athens and Rome to Paris and Venice to Baghdad and Beijing, urban ideas and innovators have left indelible marks on human life.”

We must have been working from the same syllabus.

The other writer was Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, writing in Foreign Affairs magazine.  Wow, my motion was seconded with authority.  (Yeah, that may have a bit too much hubris.)

The Foreign Affairs article can perhaps be found here.  However, the link, no matter how many times I copy it, doesn’t seem to work for me, for reasons I can’t discern.  Foreign Affairs must use some kind of cloaking device.   But a Google search on “foreign affairs city century” seems to work just fine.  Free registration is required to access the article.  Going through the multi-step registration is worthwhile.  The article is that good.

Building on his great start, Bloomberg goes on to make assertion after assertion with which I bobbed my head in enthusiastic concurrence, so many solid assertions that I had to restrain myself from copying the entire article and smashing the “Fair Use” standard.  So I’ll limit myself to just a few points.

Bloomberg argues that some authority will move back toward cities in the future.  In his words, “Influence will shift gradually away from national governments and toward cities.”

And that’s a good thing because cities like to experiment, “Mayors are turning their city halls into policy labs, conducting experiments on a grand scale and implementing large-scale ideas to address problems, such as climate change, that often divide and paralyze national governments.”

And cities are also better at experimentation than nations, “cities tend to be more nimble than national governments, which are more likely to be captured or neutralized by special interest groups and which tend to view problems through an ideological, rather than a pragmatic, lens.”

Bloomberg goes on to offer a list of ways in which cities can tackle climate change, from bike sharing to better solar policies, that are beyond most national governments.

Seriously, it’s a great article.  Go through the hassle of the free registration and read with enthusiasm.  You’ll be rewarded.

Before closing, I should make a couple of observations about what the Bloomberg/Alden hypothesis about the coming power of cities (once again, too much hubris) means to the cities of the North Bay.

I foresee a future where San Francisco sets the tone for the Bay Area.  Sacramento would still have power; civilizations can’t function without nations and their subdivisions.  But here in the North Bay, we would be satellites of San Francisco, not Sacramento.  (Sorry, Oakland and San Jose.  Yes, you may have more people and land than San Francisco, but you lack the geographical authority of the city that guards the Golden Gate.)

But even though North Bay cities may look to San Francisco for guidance, we would also have our own urban power.  Much as Bloomberg write about the accumulation of intellectual power in large cities, North Bay cities would have their own local accumulations, committed to building vibrant local economies, to addressing local problems, and to formulating solutions that can be promulgated elsewhere.

And urbanism would be a key element of that power, both as a solution to local issues and as a way of creating intellectual ferment through daily interactions on the sidewalks that are the marketplace of ideas.

To illustrate the sea change, I predict that the mayor elected by Petaluma in 2052 will come not from a single-family neighborhood, but from a downtown mixed-use community, such as Haystack Landing.  And that will be a good thing.  (For the record, I’ll be 99 in 2052, so am not planning on running for mayor.  But I am planning on voting for the Haystack Landing candidate.)

Thanks again to Mayor Bloomberg for having my back.

A few posts back, in recounting some final moments of insight from the annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism, I noted the creative tension between the structure required for the coherence of an urban plan and the anarchy in which creative fringe of urban concepts can be explored.  It’s a topic which I’ve long pondered.  I don’t have any grand conclusions to offer but, in my next post, I’ll expand on the question and on my evolving thoughts.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)