Where does a revolution happen?

In an historic sequence of events for the nation of Egypt, massive demonstrations were held at the Nile View mall in suburban Cairo. Protesters began gathering outside of J.C. Penney in late January. Within a week the parking lot was full, and traffic was backed up for miles with eager activists waiting to enter. The food court was taken over as a makeshift shelter, and new vendors popped up to compete with Sbarros and Panda Express to feed the demonstrators. When Hosni Mubarak agreed to step down, the elated crowds moved into the multiplex movie theater for celebration. Historians believe this may be the first revolution in world history entirely set to the soundtrack of smooth jazz.

No, wait. None of this is happening.

Photo taken by Flickr user Ramy Raoof

Democracy for the nation of Egypt was won in Tahrir Square, right in the heart of Cairo. Tahrir Square is surrounded by museums, governmental offices, universities, stores and hotels, and many, many compact neighborhoods, making it a natural epicenter of human activity and the obvious site for political action. Being one of the mostly densely populated cities in the world, thousands of protestors can converge in the center and meet with others from across the socio-economic range. Protestors flooded into the square through the Egypt Metro system, one of the busiest in the world. Although authorities tried to quell the demonstration by blocking the square’s Metro stop, many of the participants have been getting off at nearby stops and walking the rest of the way in.

Edward Glaeser pointed out in the New York Times last week that “it’s always the urban pot that boils over.” Cairo, Egypt and Tunis, Tunisia are only the latest installments in the tumultuous story of cities.

“Cities are places of revolution, because urban proximity connects organizers of opposition. Large urban populations create the scale needed to initially overwhelm local law enforcement … The constant interaction of human energy in dense clusters creates innovations in every area of human life, including politics.”

All the tweets and texts flying through the airwaves have not changed the fact that a physical place, a public square in the most literal sense, will always be a necessary stage for any kind of action. You know, in reality.

Here’s Sarah Goodyear writing in Grist,

“The government of Hosni Mubarak could shut down the internet. It could shut down cell phone service. It could force Al Jazeera, which has been providing superb coverage of the events in Egypt, to close its Cairo bureau. It could arrest journalists and seize their equipment.

But the streets of Cairo themselves have been the medium that has carried the message of the Egyptian people. So have the streets of Alexandria, Suez, and other Egyptian cities. And the government's efforts to keep people off those streets have failed completely."

And Tahrir Square was not just a convenient place to hold a rally. Hey, we're about equidistant between most of our homes, plenty of space to work with, let's start gathering here. No, the fact that the message was brought to the center of the capital city itself conveyed meaning. The central public square is likewise the impromptu location for celebration.

An historic day for Broadway

New York City mayor Bloomberg has announced yesterday that the Broadway public space experiment through Times Square and Herald Square will, after an eight month trial period, be made permanent. From the press conference:

"I think the issue is, are the roads for multiple uses – everybody, pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists – or are they just for motorists? And in this day and age, if you go around the world, all the other great cities have already tried to reduce the number of cars on their streets and convert some of the open spaces into space for other people."

Janette Sadik-khan, the city DOT commissioner, expressed the intent to "transform the plazas into iconic spaces worthy of their iconic setting."

To show how historic this decision is, I've dug up a couple of Times Square illustrations from previous decades. The first drawing of Times Square is from the the 1974 book Pedestrian Revolution. The source is not cited, so I assume it is the vision of authors:




This 1981 drawing of Times Square is from NY Office of Midtown Planning:



Finally, the illustration released by NY DOT last year:

A visit to Roanoke City Market

Earlier this week, we stopped in to the City of Roanoke for some dinner. Of course, I wanted to find somewhere in the downtown, and, being spoiled with Charlottesville restaurants, preferred to find a place with outdoor seating. This brought us right into the heart of downtown, the historic City Market. This public space is a wonderful amenity to the city, and I don't want to be one to rush to criticize a place I've only visited once, but I was struck by one exceedingly strange reality: the central square is being used as a parking lot (at least while we were there).

I counted 26 spaces in the lot. That's it. Later, I found in a study conducted with DPZ in 2006 that there are 1500 parking spaces in the immediate vicinity of the market. This small lot right in the middle is a drop in the ocean, yet it creates an outsized impact on the public space. While eating my dinner about five feet from a pick-up truck bumper, I imagined what a central public square could look like. Maybe two prominent street trees with benches sitting in the shade, bricks and stone shaped into an ornamental pattern. Currently, there are only about five or six outdoor tables pushed up against the building, all of which were occupied on this Tuesday night. With the empty lot being fully utilized, the outdoor seating could pour out into the center creating much more vitality.

I understand that parking is a major problem for Roanoke. 93% of residents in the city commute by private vehicle, and the other 2/3 of the metro area that lives outside of the city are surely even less likely to walk, bike, or bus in. The downtown is walkable, but it's an island. The inner neighborhoods are pretty well cut off from downtown by an interstate, a moat of surface parking lots or vacant industrial lots, and a railroad track. Even so, if only 26 people could be convinced to leave their cars at home, the city could enhance it's core greatly. This seems like a reasonable possibility.

While the DPZ plan stops short of eliminating the parking lot, they did say this:

"The design team noticed that walking around City Market Square requires pedestrians to wade through a maze of car bumpers. Although to some degree, wagons, cars and trucks parked in the Square have always been part of its history, avoiding those vehicles does not provide a truly first-rate pedestrian experience."

Based on their recommendations and renderings, it's hard to see how the parking lot could coexist in any way. They recommend enlarging the farmers' market stalls, turning the City Market building "inside out" with seating and vendors, adding a stand-alone ticket kiosk to the square, encouraging outdoor festivals and musical entertainment. All of this requires space and an aesthetically pleasing urban environment. Even if shoppers have to walk an extra 50 yards, I can't imagine how this plan would not be a great benefit to vendors in the market.

A trip to Annapolis

This weekend I visited some friends in Annapolis on my way back to Virginia, and I had some time to walk through many of the downtown streets. Witold Rybczynski writes about the the original plan for the town in his book City Life. When the governor of Maryland, Francis Nicholson, needed to found a capital for his colony, he did what many of the educated class in colonial America would have done; he drew his ideas from the baroque designs of the Old World, specifically Paris.

Streets were laid out in a radial pattern, emanating from two major central squares. The plan clearly emphasized public space, with the institutions of civil government and church given the prime locations within the circles. Each street, even many of the alleys, had distinct terminus points providing a clear sense of direction and progress for those walking along it. Thanks to extensive efforts of historic preservationists, the center of town can still be experienced in much the same way today.

As it turned out, Annapolis and Williamsburg (the only other early baroque city in the U.S.) were commercial failures, and this tradition of urban design was thoroughly trumped by the more efficient and egalitarian grid of New York City.

Looking down the commercial Main Street toward the Annapolis harbor. The water is a clear terminus point.

The view from the other direction up Main street concludes with the Church at the top of the hill.

The residential East street points to the State Capitol.

The residential areas are extremely dense by today's standards, yet they are kept up nicely. We came across one average-sized residence on the market for $1.1 million. Even outside a major metropolitan area, it appears as if people are willing to pay an extraordinary premium to live in a walkable urban neighborhood. The rest of us, on the other hand ...

A Visit to Troy

Inspired by two recent KunstlerCast episodes on Troy, New York, I thought I would take some time to explore this fascinating city myself. I spent the first several years of my life there and just returned for a wedding this past week.

When the Hudson river was a main artery of the adolescent United States, Troy's location on the banks of the river was the perfect setting for a manufacturing powerhouse. That all changed, of course, and Troy became as dessicated as any other former industrial center - only, in the case of Troy, the timing was very fortunate. When more prosperous cities made decisions to cannibalize themselves in the name of renewal, Troy had to watch from the sidelines. Many of their own feeble attempts at self-destruction never really got off the ground. Today's result is a wonderful urban environment with much of its fabric still intact, some buildings restored nicely directly adjacent to others with considerable restoration potential.

Here are some annotated pictures of my trip:

Blocks and blocks of Victorian row house are maintained. The architectural variety offers a colorful diversity while still blending together.

Some newer buildings are more successfully knit in than others. A new bank, built in the Georgian style near this picture, looks like it was just dropped in from Williamsburg. Someone must have believed that as long as it was old it would fit.

The Troy Music Hall is apparently one of the four "acoustically perfect" music halls in the world, the only one in the United States approved by Steinway for recordings. It shares the building with a bank.

Service alleys like the one pictured were always a great way to offer additional connectivity.

Monument square is clearly the central "living room" of the city.

Also on the square, this central focal point is strung with Christmas lights.

The concrete slab of a city hall constitutes the third side of monument square (Monument triangle?). It was apparently cool when it was built, but it's now being taken down. I've heard conflicting reports of what will go there. Some say open space, others a mixed-use building, or some combination of the two.

The "Grand Staircase" was once the connection between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) on the hill and the city. Now it dumps you into the back of a motel parking lot.

The view from the top of the stairs. Notice the intentional symmetry with main street, with the off-center motel in between.

My father tells me highway engineers, in the mid-60s, wanted to run an expressway right at the bottom of the staircase. This was before the era of grassroots opposition when highwaymen got pretty much what they wanted. In Troy the plan apparently fizzled due to lack of finances.

The Center of Bismarck, North Dakota

The "Where is the center?" project is a series of posts based on my visits to various towns across the country. My goals are to determine where local residents consider the heart of their own town to be and make some outsider's observations about it. Do you live in this place? Please weigh in on your answer to the question.

Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota, with a metropolitan area population of roughly 100,000. I spent about a week there and asked a number of different residents where they would consider the center of their town. A few responses emerged as the most common.


A - The Capital


North Dakota's Capital building is very distinctive. Built during the depression, state legislators opted to conserve resources by adopting a modernist style and using concrete. Dubbed the "skyscraper on the prairie", the capital is the dominant landmark on the horizon for miles around the city. This makes it a good visual focal point.

The capital, once well to the north of downtown, is now quickly becoming closer to the geographical center of Bismarck. This is because the lion's share of new development, mostly in the form of big box stores and suburban subdivisions, is occurring on the northern end of the city around I-94 access points.

One young man, who works as a photographer, added that the capital grounds have become a cultural and social center. He said you can always catch a frisbee game there if you want to. Shakespeare in the park was playing on the capital grounds during my stay. Bismarck takes a lot of pride in their system of city parks, and the capital grounds may be considered a capstone in this system.

B - Main Street area

Several people mentioned a few points in the general area of main street, around the historic downtown. The Radisson hotel was mentioned specifically as a landmark that could constitute the center of downtown.

One obvious feature of the downtown area is that it has over time been retooled to meet the needs of automobile users. Two huge parking garages seemed out of proportion with the size of the downtown, and on a regular business day many of the parking spots were unoccupied. As a pedestrian there one afternoon, I spent quite a while going from bank to bank looking for an ATM I could use. The only one I could find was a drive-thru teller, which led to the surreal experience of waiting in a line with cars in order to use the machine.

There are some nice historic neighborhoods in the vicinity, but often there is no pleasant walk available to downtown. Custer park, for example, is a wonderful city park in a residential section, but the route to downtown goes through two blocks of abandoned buildings and rundown auto part shops. It appears as if most people drive there.

There are efforts underway to revitalize the historic downtown. The state-wide renaissance zone project allows for the rehabilitation of buildings on the national historic register. Since most of these are in the downtown area, it amounts to an economic boost to this infrastructure. There is also a street fair and market called the Urban Harvest which was taking place during my visit. The brochure states that the central intersection of 4th and Broadway is usually very quiet. Urban Harvest transforms this spot into a lively public square. It is fairly small but very well attended, which suggests that it will grow in time.


C - Kirkwood Mall


One person mentioned the mall right away, but another person I asked just as quickly said "not the mall!" without any prompting. So this one is a bit controversial.

Unlike most malls built in the 1970's, Kirkwood mall was not placed on the periphery near a major highway but rather right in the center of Bismarck. It's a suburban styled mall in an urban setting. A civic center arena has since been built adjacent to the property. In recent years, it has been losing its retail dominance to the newer generation of retail box stores, which, as I mentioned, have all been concentrating to the north of town.

The Centers of Sheridan and Gillette, Wyoming

The "Where is the center?" project is a series of posts based on my visits to various towns across the country. My goals are to determine where local residents consider the heart of their own town to be and make some outsider's observations about it. Do you live in this place? Please weigh in on your answer to the question.

Everyone in Sheridan unanimously agreed that Main Street was the heart of their community. Our hotel receptionist quickly circled the downtown on our map. Our waitress told us this was the place to be to see friends. The trolley driver concurred, downtown is for residents and tourists alike. Even the satellite picture gives little doubt about where the concentration of development is.


Main Street



Of any town I've ever visited, Sheridan fits the bill as the prototypical western town. Most of the original two-story mix of storefronts are preserved, giving an eclectic and colorful backdrop to the street. There are multiple shops dedicated to nothing but boots and hats, and they are not merely peddling tourist kitsch. One person told us that the upper-floors are mostly being used as "really cool condos" for those who prefer urban living. Clearly, the citizens take pride in the particularity of their heritage. The fast-food joints and Walmart were tucked safely away on Coffeen street by the interstate, not to be confused with Sheridan proper.

All of this contrasts sharply with the numerous faux-western towns out there. Deadwood, South Dakota, for example, may look similar at first, but a closer examination reveals that casinos had bought out entire blocks and gutted the interiors. The second-floors were abandoned and used to store junk. Sheridan, on the other hand, is no Potemkin village.

A downtown shopkeeper told us the story of how a mall on the outskirts of town was fought off in the 70's. She said it was mostly the old-timers who rallied together to preserve the Sheridan they knew. The downtown coffee shop sells "friends don't let friends go to starbucks" stickers. Unlike most other communities around the country, Sheridan had the wherewithal and civic pride to keep their downtown alive. They actually won the battle.

An impressive collection of public art is sporadically placed along Main Street, some of it western-based and others fairly whimsical. The historic Sheridan Inn, along the train tracks, is in the final stages of renovation, and Kendrick park, right in the residential core, holds regular concerts and events. There is plenty of evidence that new developments are being concentrated in the Main Street area, keeping the same compact and walkable boundaries around the town. The urban sprawl is fairly limited, and really only extends to the south of town.

Gillette, Wyoming

The next town to the east of Sheridan with a comparable population is Gillette. The contrast between Sheridan and Gilette is immediately apparent. When I asked at a gas station for directions to the center of town, the clerk just looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. She turned to her co-worker, "He wants to know where the center of town is." Her co-worker just shrugged and told me to get off at the next exit.

The next exit led me to South Douglas Highway, a typical wide street of parking lots and chain stores. A strip mall named "central square" on the other side of the interstate would seem to function as the practical center of town, although I couldn't tell if said square actually exists.

I might be a little unfair. There is a small downtown along Gillette Street, and it looks as if there has been some effort to draw people in. But it only extends for a couple of blocks and seems very limited in scope. We didn't spend enough time in Gillette to get a clear picture of how this downtown functions in the community.

So what could have caused these two towns to shape themselves in very different ways? Perhaps Sheridan, being closer to the Big Horn mountains, draws more tourists and thus has an incentive to maintain a quaint and unique environment. Maybe the types of industry in each town led to different development patterns. Maybe Sheridan developed earlier, before the era of the automobile, while Gilette had its growth spurt when different development patterns were in fashion. It could simply be that the concerted effort of a small group of citizens in Sheridan had a lasting impact on the built environment, and Gilette may have lacked this movement. I'm not sure, but it certain is an interesting question.

The Center of Helena, Montana

The "Where is the center?" project is a series of posts based on my visits to various towns across the country. My goal is to determine where local residents consider the heart of their own town to be and make some outsider's observations about it. Do you live in this place? Please weigh in on your answer to the question.

When I asked Irene, an insurance company receptionist from Helena, where the center of town is, she paused for a while to think. This is the reaction I would get from almost everyone I asked. There didn't seem to be any obvious answer.

"I don't think I can answer that question. Helena is really growing up around the edges," she eventually told me. Pressed a little further, she did say that the historical center was around Last Chance Gulch. As a tourist I may be more interested in visiting this part of town, but I never got the impression that this was the same answer for local residents.

Based on several people's responses, I've identified four possible locations for the center of Helena, none of them an indisputable answer to the question.

A - Last Chance Gulch

Pattie at an Albertsons grocery store quickly pointed me to Last Chance Gulch, the historic downtown. A gas station attendant whom I later questioned hesitated for a while but did tell me that the historic downtown was the most interesting place to see.

Originally founded as a mining town, the historic center of Helena is unique in that it directly abuts the hills where the mines were located. As the city expanded, most of the developable land was to the north of town in the valley. Eventually, the old downtown found itself on the geographical margins of the city. Blessed with a number of fine buildings left over from the mining boom of its earlier days, the Last Chance Gulch and surrounding area is sitting on a gold mine (no pun intended) of architectural resources.

Urban renewal did hit this spot pretty hard. In the 1970's a number of beautiful historic buildings were razed in an attempt to usher the downtown into the modern age (this website provides an impressive collection of pictures and information from this era). The hotel pictured is a perfect example of this hubris. Turning away from the street and placing a solid brick wall against the public space, it doesn't even attempt to blend with its surroundings and is devoid of context and character. During the same time, the main street was converted into a pedestrian mall, and it still remains as one of America's few surviving examples of this popular trend. The pedestrian mall is very well landscaped and adorned with interesting sculptures that recount its mining history.

At the time of our visit, city officials were considering uprooting many of the trees on the mall to open up the view, but the consensus at the Firetower Coffee shop was that this was an awful idea. For a Tuesday in the middle of the day, I would hardly call the Last Chance Gulch bustling. Everything was clean and the businesses were well-kept, but there was a conspicuous lack of vitality. This empty store was not the only one on the block. In the last few years, Helena citizens have narrowly voted to prevent the pedestrian mall from being opened up to automobile traffic.

Blaire and Bill see new life for the Last Chance Gulch coming. They have purchased the tallest building in the city, an historic residential building named the Placer, and are renovating it into condos. Their vision is motivated by Smart Growth and New Urbanism, and they are banking on a downtown with a symbiotic relationship between the existing commercial establishments on the ground floor and new residential condos above. Blaire even envisions the renovation of a jazz club and artisan bakery in the building.

B - Women's Park

This was the answer our friend Caitlin gave us. She felt that this was the social center of Helena. It's the location of the farmers market as well as numerous summer concerts and community events.


C - Great Northern Town Center

Ok. I'm cheating here. Nobody I talked to gave me this as an anwser, but the developer of this new pedestrian-oriented district with an entertainment focus is clearly positioning itself for this title. It's anchored by a large hotel, a multiplex theater, and a carousel that is obviously well-used. It has the advantage of being located adjacent to Caroll College. The only trouble is that it is not yet very well integrated with other streets.

D - Shopko Parking lot

Our friend Larson is an economist, so he gave his opinion of strictly what the geographical center of business activity is: the Shopko parking lot. All of the standard box stores have opened up in the last couple of years around the intersection of North Montana and Custer Avenues. Since the main area of growth is exurban sprawl in valley to the north of town, it may not be long before these businesses also find themselves in the geographical center. I didn't take any photos, but the character of the location is fairly evident.