CITICHAT 40/2007 - 5 October 2007
IDA Conference and quotable quotes
Just to wrap up on my recent trip to the USA and then, next week, back to Joburg and we’ll look at what’s been happening in Joeys over the past year.
This week, some thoughts from the International Downtown Association’s 53rd Conference and World Congress 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 we work-shopped with,.
IDA partners with a number of international urban bodies to expand its Annual Conference into a World Congress every 3 years. The first of these was in Coventry, England in 1997 and since then the Congress 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 whilst 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 1000 delegates from all over the world. The conference theme was ‘Big Dreams, Bold Ideas’. Preceding the conference there were tours and professional development workshops ranging from retail to branding, law enforcement to Improvement District establishment and management. 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 7 or 8 parallel periods) where the biggest problem was which session to attend. 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 with 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 show my personal growth from ‘clean and safe’ ten-plus years ago to ‘place and space’!
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, 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”
• 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 livable cities in the world.
Comments made by Paul Levy (Philadelphia Center City District)
The quality of public spaces does matter. There are things that you can influence – litter and grafitti; 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 on parks
• No urination in publlc
• 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. (Washington DC – 20% of people live below the poverty level; 36% are functionally illiterate: 8% unemployed although there is agreement that the actual figure is way higher than the official number!) There appears to be a very strong approach to now 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; 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/square foot but this prejudices commercial development. Vacouver, if I remember correctly, puts a surcharge on middle/upper income development of (Canadian) $16/sq ft for low income housing and related infrastructure.
Quality of Life
Dan Doctoroff, 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 quality of life issues. (OK, OK, we attract more people with no related tax increase but that is largely because of non-enforcement at our borders, etc!) You need a multi-faceted approach, he said, focusing on transportation, housing and public space.
Whilst NYC lost the 2012 Olympic Bid to London, they have proceeded with the 5000 affordable housing units that had been planned for the Olympic Village through a partnership between the city and 7 real estate 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 NYC are being completely overhauled to become safe and attractive spaces for rich and poor.
Doctoroff emphasised In realtion to quality of life how parks in NYC are being completely overhauled to become safe and attractive spaces for rich and poor.
Hugh Hardy (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 diffferent surfaces, hard and soft
• Landscape – everything must bond together
Quoting Jane Jacobs – “we’re good for each other” he re-iterated that “cities are all about people wanting to be together”
Walkable Urbanism
Chris Liebenberger of Brookings Institute spoke on “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 and early Philadelphia where less than 1 in 50 lived more than a mile from work to modern cities that generally exist “in a world made safe for a car” . Today, in the US, for every 1% population growth there is 8 to 12% 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 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)
• Infrastructure and dependency on oil
Conclusion: we need a new way to develop the built environment – we must invest in walkable urban infrastructure!
Richard Bradley – Executive Director, Downtown DC BID, Washington
“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 – Executive Director, Central City District (CCD) BID, Philadelphia
“ You never say its 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 – its only bad if its badly designed”
“Give the politicians all the credit – I don’t need to be re-elected every few years”
Vincent van der Poole – Secretary General of 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 – Deputy Mayor, Economic Development, New York City
“ We will steal anyone’s ideas as long as they are good!”
Dan Biederman – Bryant Park Coro/Bryant Park Management Corp, New York City
“Be patient – some of these initiatives take time”
“Don’t fall in love with a vendor” ( referring to suppliers / service providers etc )
OK, so, after all these truisms its back to Joeys and reality next week,
Cheers, neil
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