Having visited four cities in the Land
of Dreams, I'm not sure where US-style urban planning is heading. Two
of the cities are growing cities and two are shrinking, however I'm
not sure whether lessons are learnt. The cycles of growing and
shrinking will affect most cities over time, however I'm unsure whether
urban planning is up to the challenge of simultaneously planning for
both rise and fall, as growth often is followed by decline.
The prosperity of downtown Philadelphia
slowly reaching the inner suburbs
Philadelphia was the first city I
visited on my recent trip, staying a week one mile south of downtown,
in a mostly mono ethnic (black) inner southern suburb, made up of
townhouses from around 1900. The still prosperous and diverse
downtown is squeezed in between two rivers a mile apart, giving the
city an historical urban density that still remains. Most of the
wealth of the city is still there, in our just adjacent to downtown,
including shops, apartment buildings, townhouses and two major
universities with their enormous hospitals. Philadelphia's poorest
neighbourhoods are further out, areas that I failed to visit.
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| Philadelphia's 30th Street Station as a cathedral of light, marble and bras anno 1933. |
Parks and squares increasing quality of
life in the big apple
In New York I stayed first in
Chelsea/West Village and then in Downtown, by World Trade Centre and
Battery Park. Spending four days in Mid- and Downtown, I had the
opportunity to explore the stunning pocket parks, piers and riverside
parks of the lower Manhattan, primarily along the Hudson, partly by
boat, partly by bike and partly on foot. The signs of wealth and
prosperity are overwhelming, with private or public investment
visible on every other street corner. Globalisation has benefited the
city on the scale of only three other places on earth, London, Hong
Kong and the twin cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Downtown Cleveland going its own way
I arrived in Cleveland by car from
eastern Pennsylvania. Squeezed in between the southern shores of Lake
Eire and a buckling river, the present city centre is only a dozen
blocks in either direction, the rest of the former warehouses
adjacent to downtown mostly turned into acres of car parks. There are
virtually no shops and few apartments downtown, but a new convention
centre and park, three stadiums and many major hotels brings some
kind of life to the centre. Most wealth and shops have migrated to
the suburbs (outside the administrative city limits), leaving a rim
of poor inner city suburbs of townhouses, small apartment buildings
and sub-standard schools. However, the population of Greater
Cleveland is stable, despite that the (administrative) city itself
has lost over half a million people, or more than half its population
in half a century.
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| Chicago's wealth and prosperity encaptured in the design of a luxury store on Michigan Avenue anno 2012. |
I arrived in Chicago by Greyhound bus
from Ohio, staying in the southern part of downtown, one block south
of the overground loop transit train. Downtown extends maybe two
miles north-south and half a mile east-west, but is as dense as
Uptown or Downtown Manhattan, much of it residential, including a
major university hospital, many times the size of Europe's largest
new hospital building in Whitechapel, London. Central Chicago is
super wealthy, with suburbs stretching in three directions as far as
the eyes can see. And the high density of downtown allows for high
frequent train services deep into the suburbs, a little bit like in
suburban London, where dense row housing and parks dominate.
What can be learned from my brief visits
to four very different US cities?
Very high rise city centre buildings
are maybe not so appropriate in mid-size cities, including declining
or shrinking cities. The newer highest buildings of Cleveland and
Philadelphia are somewhat inappropriate, in cities struggling to keep
or bring prosperous life to their city centre streets, avenues,
squares and parks. Having acres of car parks adjacent to very high
rise buildings make little sense, opting for medium high densities on
a European scale is maybe more appropriate, where big prosperous
cities in particularly Germany have succeeded in accommodating the
car, high density living, high-tech production, high end service jobs
and major retail.
Attract small households from the
suburb to the inner city
Keeping and bringing wealthy single and
small households back to the city centre is maybe the most important
factor in retaining or attracting city centre retail and prosperous
city life. The moment middle class singles and small households
prefer living in the suburbs, the city centre may experience an
endless spiral of economic decline. Getting wealthy elderly to
relocate from the suburbs to the centre is equally important, as they
make up the largest (and at present in the western world the most
prosperous and growing) proportion of small households.
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| Public realm at the station plaza in Philadelphia with flowers, parasols, cafe furniture and chaise longues for anyone to enjoy anno 2013. |
Subsidising inner city housing to an
extent that poor people outnumber middle class residents is a recipe
for disaster. If poor people make up 15-20 per cent of the population
of the US or the EU, they must live somewhere, but for them to
congregate in vast areas in inner city suburbs is maybe not such a
great idea. The approach of London, with small pockets of extreme
poverty is maybe a better solution, than the US, Greater Paris or
East London solution of vast areas of inner city poverty. But
shifting the poor even further out will only work if their quality of
life and their job prospects are as high in the countryside as in the
big cities. Sadly, this is often not the case for ethnic minorities,
who experience or feel they have a higher quality of life near people
of similar ethnic background.
Hospitals and universities are major
inner city catalysts
The extreme size (and cost) of
education, sports and health facilities in the US, means that they
are more important to the economy of the inner cities of the US than
maybe to the rest of the world. However, locating these facilities as
close to the inner cities as possible is still very important
everywhere, as the city life and logistics associated with these
facilities are major economic boosters, even if on a slightly
different scale in the US than elsewhere.
