Plat of Zion: Looking for Solutions

The Plat of Zion is the grid that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young imposed on all new Mormon settlements in the intermountain region.  As a tool of civilization, it was greatly successful.  But it was comprised of large blocks and wide streets that are not well-suited for 21st century urbanism.
 
In my previous post, I wrote about the oversized blocks and streets of Salt Lake City and the reasons they’re a challenge for urbanists.  In this post, I’ll write about some of solutions being offered, including one that shows the value of looking at a constraint with fresh eyes.

At the Helm of the Public Realm revisits the history of the Plat of Zion, finishing with a couple of examples of inefficient uses of the giant blocks and a conceptual plan of a more elegant approach.

In the Salt Lake City Tribune article that I also linked in my previous post, Steve Mouzon suggests converting the less accessible areas in the centers of the blocks to agricultural use.  I’ve become convinced that rooftop farming can work in urban settings.  But giving up land in the urban core for crops seems a poor use of resources.  Also, as several commenters note, it’d be difficult to find crops that can be successful given the elevation of Salt Lake City and the limited sunlight that gets past the surrounding buildings.

A design competition was held in conjunction with CNU 21, the annual meeting of the Congress of the New Urbanism that was recently held in Salt Lake City.  Several design solutions were on display at CNU 21.  They showed creative approaches with internal street systems inside the blocks that were rotated relative to the overall grid and other approaches that gave a distinctive character to the concepts.

But ultimately, the problem remains that no matter how well a block is divided and developed into a usable and livable neighborhood, it’s still only a 660 foot by 660 foot neighborhood confined by wide expanses of asphalt.  The outsized streets remain the ultimate barrier to good urbanism.

A developer in the Granary District is offering a different approach.  The district, which is only a couple of transit stops from the center of downtown, is an area of aging industrial buildings.  The structures have good reuse potential.  They also have established relationships with the streets that are worthy of being preserved.  Therefore, pushing curb lines toward the middle of the streets wasn’t a good option.

The developer turned the problem around and considered a different approach, reducing the street from the middle.  In a CNU 21 session, the developer discussed the evolution of the idea.  The initial concept was to convert the center of the street to parking, making the remainder of the street function as a couplet, a paired set of one-way streets running in opposite directions.

Once that idea was on the table, creativity took over.  Someone suggested making the parking tuck-under, with homes above.  Imagine living in the middle of a street.  Someone else suggested adding solar panels on top of the homes, meeting the energy needs of the district.  And then someone suggested taking the concept for a test drive by putting an open air nightclub into the middle of the street.

And thus Granary Row was born, with a stage for bands on one end, a beer garden in the middle, and a food truck court on the other end.  (See the photo above for the stage.  Those are shipping containers set on end framing the stage.  The photo is from the Granary District website.)  All of it adjoined by traffic lanes that remain in use.  The closing party for CNU 21 was held at Granary Row.  It worked well.

The Plat of Zion block size will continue to be a problem for 21st century urbanists, but it also provides opportunities for creative solutions.  And the solutions will provide insights for other urban areas.

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

Plat of Zion: The Challenge

Block length is an important element of urbanism.  As on so many urbanist points, Jane Jacobs was instrumental in pointing out that short blocks are better.  Short blocks add visual interest to the pedestrian experience.  They also slow cars, improving safety and comfort for pedestrians.   And they provide more alternative routes, improving pedestrian efficiency.

Using the walkability checklist that Jeff Speck provides in “Walkable City”, short blocks meet all four standards of useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting.

But the problem is that most urbanist projects occur within an existing grid.  It’s only the occasional outsized urban project that adds sufficient new streets to effectively change the grid.

Thus, cities with smaller blocks are expected to be the easier places to restart urbanism.  With most cities centers founded on block lengths of 300 to 400 feet, urbanists often point to Portland, Oregon with its 200-foot block lengths and 75-foot rights-of-way as an example of a place that is ripe for urbanism.  Thus far, Portland has converted on its advantage.

The same urbanists then point to Salt Lake City with its 660-foot block lengths and 132-foot rights-of-way as urbanism-challenged.  Anyone who has taken a walk in downtown Salt Lake City would agree.  The large blocks and wide streets often lead to single-use buildings served by surface parking lots.  Away from the primary pedestrian routes, walking in Salt Lake City can be a lonely experience.  And crossing a street requires moving with alacrity.

Salt Lake City has done some good urbanist things, but much of their effort has been required to overcome the hole in which the grid left them.

The Salt Lake City grid has a basis in history.  It’s called the Plat of Zion and was prescribed by Joseph Smith for all new Mormon settlements.  It became the dominant city grid in the intermountain region.

For its time and place, the Plat of Zion was a good solution.  As Wallace Stegner argued in “Mormon

Country”, the Plat of Zion was an integral part of the success of Mormonism in settling the intermountain region, creating a functioning civilization in a land that early explorers found desolate and unusable.

Some describe the Mormon settlements as among the most impressive civilization successes in history.  Religious commitment and the administrative skills of Brigham Young were important, but the Plat of Zion also played a part in creating a cohesive society.

However, the Plat of Zion didn’t anticipate the 21st century.  It was based around the concept of an agricultural society in which most property owners grew crops around their homes.  It wasn’t conceived as a basis for the modern cities that many Mormon settlements became.

Not unexpectedly, the question of what to do with the Plat of Zion was a frequent topic at CNU 21, the annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism, which was recently held in Salt Lake City.

Andres Duany, a figure of authority within CNU, offered several opinions on the Plat of Zion.  He argued that it was a mistake for Salt Lake City to have paved much of the 132-foot right-of-way width.  He suggested that the intention of Joseph Smith, and his successor Brigham Young, was to have a roadway that lay within the right-of-way, but had a lesser width and was aligned to avoid buildings or other improvements that might encroach on the right-of-way.

Duany also suggested that Smith and Young were urbanist geniuses for leaving large blocks that could later be redeveloped to meet changing city needs.

With all respect to Duany, whose urbanist experience dwarfs my puny efforts, I think he’s wrong on both points.  I don’t why Joseph Smith specified 132-foot wide streets.  (I reject the Salt Lake City folklore that Smith and Young wanted streets wide enough that a team of oxen could be turned around without resorting to profanity.)  But I don’t believe that there was an expectation that other uses would need to, or be allowed to, encroach into the rights-of-way.

And if Smith and Young had an accurate 19th century vision about the flexibility that would serve 21st century cities, they had a divine power that would also justify becoming Mormon.

Which leaves open the question about what to do with the large blocks and wide streets that the Plat of Zion created.  Luckily, there were a lot of people at CNU 21 offering creative thoughts.  I’ll touch on some of those in my next post.

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

Congress for the New Urbanism, CNU 21

There are many organizations promoting new urbanism.  Smart Growth America, StrongTowns, and Reconnecting America immediately come to mind.  And that’s barely scratching the surface.

But the organization that first came to my attention, and that continues to hold a primary place in my thinking, is the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU).  Its founders were among the leading lights in the early days of new urbanism and its “Charter for the New Urbanism” was the early manifesto.  Perhaps not up there with Martin Luther nailing his theses to the church door, but on the same list.

Shortly after I began this blog, a friend reinforced my interest in CNU and suggested that I attend a CNU meeting.  I didn’t give adequate weight to his advice and missed a CNU transportation conference last year in Long Beach that seemed to have been fascinating.

Unwilling to repeat the mistake, I returned late last evening from Salt Lake City where I attended the annual CNU meeting, CNU 21.  My friend was right.  It was inspirational.  And I met lots of great folks.

One blog post is inadequate to convey the breadth and depth of the meeting.  Instead, CNU 21 will be covered, explicitly and implicitly, in this space for long time.  But to whet your appetite for the urbanism buffet at which I feasted and am now eager to share, here is a partial list of memories and highlights:

·       The first morning, I found myself in the breakfast buffet line behind Ellen Dunham-Jones, the CNU Chair.  Dunham-Jones often jokes that she already has the urbanist name for the rock band she wants to lead in her next life.  I’d forgotten the name, so asked for a reminder.  It was the Underperforming Asphalt, a developer term for a parking lot that needs to be upgraded to a higher and better use.

To reinforce her rock dreams, she then did an air guitar rendition of the opening riff of a Talking Heads song.  As far as air guitar performances go, it was fairly sedate.  But one must remember that it was a breakfast buffet line.

·       Andres Duany, a seminal figure and now the aging lion of the urbanism movement, was in fine form for his plenary speech.  He argued that the American environmental movement had gone down a flawed path that, while successful for many years, was now running out of ideas.  He suggested that urbanism could be the savior of environmentalism.

When the CNU president tried to come onto the stage to tell Duany to wind up his speech, Duany asked for a show of hands of who in the audience wanted him to stop.  No one raised a hand.  The president accepted his defeat and returned to his seat.

·       Opticos, the consultant who helped develop the Petaluma Station Area plan, was honored with a CNU Charter Award.  The award was for work they’d done in Richmond, but the award spoke to the skill that went into the Petaluma plan.  For those who remember the Opticos team from the Petaluma meetings, the team members who were in Salt Lake City to accept the award were Dan Parolek, Ed Starkie, and Lisa Wise.

·       I watched the Charter Award while sipping on Wasatch Beers Polygamy Porter, subtitled “Why have just one?”  Salt Lake City has a surprising number of brew pubs.  I was consistently impressed by their quality.  I also noted, and several other folks confirmed, that, although the flavor was full, the alcohol content was surprisingly low.  (The Polygamy Porter is at only 4.0 %.)  The Salt Lake City brewing approach results in beers that can be enjoyed all evening with no ill effects in the morning, which is good for urbanism.  Many CNU folks did rigorous testing.

·       Charles Marohn, who did a video conversation with Petaluma Urban Chat in February, delivered the closing plenary.  It was much the same presentation that he shared with Urban Chat, with the addition of a several strong closing points.  The attendees gave him a standing ovation.

·       Last is a remembered picture of the closing party, held in a public space in the middle of a street in the Granary District of Salt Lake City.  (More about the location at another time.)  Duany, dressed in a vent-less cream-colored dinner jacket, was smoking a large cigar and looking with satisfaction over the gathering in which his career has had such a major effect. It was an image that will linger.

Perhaps the only downside of CNU 21 was the realization that I’ve been writing this urbanism blog for 18 months despite huge holes in my knowledge.  I think I’ve consistently tried to delineate the limits of my understanding.  But CNU 21 was a reminder to double and redouble my caution on that point.

For now, my primary goal at this point is to do justice to the knowledge that I gained last week.  And to figure out how to get to Buffalo in 2014 for CNU 22.

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