Rethinking the Urban: Small and Big

Posted by on December 14, 2006

In its survey of 2006's most influential ideas, the New York Times magazine spotlights Youngstown, Ohio, and its new mayor's unconventional approach to urban growth: promoting "creative shrinkage." Once nurturing a population of 170,000, Youngstown is making efforts to transition gracefully to a size of 80,000, by coordinating and limiting the construction of new housing, turning vacant lots into "pocket parks," and planning to eventually cut off sewage and electric services to fully abandoned tracts of the city. "The city and Youngstown State University are implementing a blueprint for a smaller town that retains the best features of the metropolis Youngstown used to be. Few communities of 80,000 boast a symphony orchestra, two respected art museums, a university, a generously laid-out downtown and an urban park larger than Central Park."

Not all new urban ideas are small, however. The Times also highlights a trend toward "big urbanism": the planning and execution of large-scale planning projects. As evidence, the Times cites the New York City Planning Commission's approval of the Atlantic Yards project, plans for a significant revitalization effort in downtown Yonkers, Atlanta's purchase of the Bellwood Quarry and its plans to make it into a 300-acre park that will "become the linchpin of a 22-mile belt-line corridor of rails-to-trails" (constituting a 50 percent increase in city park space), and the Denver Art Museum's Libeskind-designed $110 million expansion. In this trend, the Times finds a surprising companionship between the ideas of Robert Moses, proponent of big sweeping plans for cities in the 1960s, and Jane Jacobs, his opponent who advocated against architectural master plans and inspired "a generation of planners, architects and activists intent on restoring, rather than drastically reshaping, the urban fabric." Today, however, "the cautionary lessons of Jane Jacobs, who died in April, have been reinterpreted by a new generation of designers, developers and civic officials who hope to bring a vibrant urbanism to large, new developments. Skeptics wonder whether tall towers and developer-engineered neighborhoods can truly create the lively streetscapes Jacobs loved. Even so, it would have been difficult to predict 40 years ago that the legacies of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs would one day find common cause."