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The internet has taken over Big Boxes
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An Extra Week a Year
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Five reasons to live Urban
Urban living is a simple concept so we’ve tried to package the idea into 5 reasons we live urban. Life’s not always like that, but when you live urban it boils down to a few basic principles that have improved our lives.
Reason #1: More Free Time
The average American spends almost 50 minutes driving to and from work everyday. That’s about 8 days a year. If we made the decision to live in the urban core closer to work we might gain a week out of our lives back every year. I’m not sure if you can put a price tag to that since time is one thing we can’t get back once it’s gone.
Reason #2: Urban saves money
The average suburban resident spends 25% of their income on transportation, while their urban counterpart spends around 9-15%. That’s a savings of around $6,000 to $10,000 a year for the household income. That could afford someone an extra $60,000 on a traditional home mortgage.
Reason #3: Urban is Green
Driving less, walking more, using less waste and living in a pre-existing part of town is a start to living a more sustainable lifestyle. The average urban home uses 20% less water than the traditional suburban home and if you live in a loft it can be as much as 40% less. What I call a village density, not the condo canyons most people think when they consider higher density actually saves green space because the same amount of people live on less land. If you drive less, there are fewer emissions and other waste. There are others, but I must move on.
Reason #4: Urban reconnects you back to the community
When you reenter the urban realm, you start to see the community in a different light. Uses aren’t separated and a more diverse world opens up. It might seem different at first, but one truly does get an authentic sense of where their community came and where it’s going when you get back to the roots of where the heart of the community lies. If your community doesn’t have a heart, get out, it will most surely die. It’s not too late.
Reason #5: Urban is healthier
Driving less = Walking more, which if nothing else increases your level of health. Once you’ve broken that seal, most people look at other ways to be healthier. Most downtowns have farmers’ markets now which not only helps with buying local, but eating healthier improves you overall health.
These are just a few, but very important ways that living urban can help you improve your health, wealth and overall quality of life.
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Tagged Sustainable Development, Urban Living, Urban Revitilization
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Keeping It Real: Why suburbs should stay suburbs and core areas remain core areas.
I’ve noticed a recent trend in and outside redevelopment articles referencing “retrofitting” the suburbs and even a book called theSprawl Repair Manual. I’d like to know when the suburbs went on the defensive. These articles and books speak mainly to the idea of altering the development and infrastructure pattern of the suburbs to look more like town centers. Such changes range from minor 1st tier suburbs of the 50′s to major overhauls of the exurbs of the recent decades.
My first thought is, why? Have we learned from history or are we bound to repeat it? We talk about what a waste of time, energy, and money we spent trying to make our downtowns look like the suburbs during the 60′s and 70′s. A trend we are currently working hard to reverse at a very high cost. The cities that fared the best were those who stuck to who they were, like Savannah and Charleston.
Too much money has been wasted making downtowns look like the suburbs during an earlier period in our history. The infrastructure expense will be enormous attempting to make our suburbs more urban. My thought is to encourage each segment of our developed areas stick with what they were originally developed to be and improve on that. There will always be a segment of the population wanting the suburbs and those wanting a more diverse mix in the core areas.
Place vs. Event City
For a city like Daytona Beach it is easy to escape back to an idea like more big events when times get tough and businesses are hungry for economic stimulus from anywhere. It is fear of the unknown and locally untested options that forces them to seek this. Currently we are in a time when a paradigm shift toward place must occur in order to reboot your city’s path toward quality of life driven economic development. Paradigm shifts aren’t easy, especially for the whole community to embrace and undergo. This is not to say that events don’t play a role in your city’s plans. They just aren’t the drivers in what determines who your city is. Place is a basic idea based around a consistent location that draws visitors, residents and businesses. More often than not this place is a thoughtful process with values and a mission. Places are static and like any good relationship require years to develop, foster, nurture, grow and evolve into authentic experiences. Great events should complement great places. That symbiotic relationship will create a much more sustainable path for the event and quality of like that is not compromised, but enhanced for the resident and business.
The Tale of the Shark and Deer.
When people think of dangerous, fierce animals they rarely consider the deer. It even boggled my mind when I learned that you are 300 times more likely to be killed by a deer than a shark. Perception and reality are rarely running on the same track. Otherwise one of the most feared movies of all time wouldn’t be Jaws, but Antlers or Hooves. The reality is that because of deer and car collisions the number skyrockets to the level it is at.
I’m not writing this piece to convince you to swim more or venture out into the wilderness less. My goal is to show you a relation and how bowing to perceptions can have adverse affects. As a redeveloper, I am continually hearing from a perspective downtown resident that they don’t live or come downtown due to the safety factor. Their response was to move to the suburbs where they feel safe and there are fewer homeless. I cannot dispute that they feel safer and there are probably fewer visible homeless. My argument goes back to the relationship of the deer and the shark. I would say that downtown is the shark and the suburbs are the deer. While downtown can be perceived as scary, the truth is getting in a car and driving more as one does in the suburbs greatly increases their chances of being injured or killed in a car accident. Their flight from perceived danger has actually increased their chances of injury. This is the basis for my argument that deer are more deadly than sharks and that downtowns are probably the safest places to be.
The Dark Knight of Urban Renewal
This is a story straight from the comic books. A twist on a classic tale of good vs. evil, but unlike any comic tale yet released. Batman, the Dark Knight, is not just fighting the evil villain, the joker, he is also representing a trend going on throughout America right now. ..the trend and continued crusade known as Urban Renewal. Amidst the explosions, fun gadgets and saving Gotham City from villains, the movies underlying theme has urban renewal painted all over it.
Be The Change - Mahatma Gandhi once said,” Be the change you want to see in this world.” this is a fundamental principle to urban renewal and revitalization. No one better exemplifies this than Bruce Wayne and his heroic masked character, Batman.
Instead of pointing fingers at what the police aren’t doing or what the city should be doing, Batman dives in (literally) to be part of the change that must take place in order to clean up and make Gotham city great again. Batman understands that in order to see change through he must be a part of that change.
Bruce Wayne moves downtown! That’s right in this most recent movie, Bruce Wayne up and leaves the Wayne mansion for for a more central location in the heart of the urban core. If you want to make change somewhere, sometime you have to move to it.
Think Globally, Act Locally - I have been a huge Superman fan since I was a kid, but one human can’t save the world. Bruce Waynes’ Batman is a Gotham die hard. This is where Batman truly acts locally, of course there is a whole world of problems happening outside Gotham, but Batman’s major focus is saving Gotham City from urban rot.
The Spark the ignited the Flame - To think that Batman has the power to save a city is even absurd. He even admits to that. His purpose in all of this is to serve as the spark or icon of change. If the powers that be within the city or community don’t buy into Batman’s persona, nothing will happen. It takes a symbol of change or the belief within the citizens and politicians that things change for the better before they really can.
Pop culture has a way of working in trends long before they are mainstream. The Dark Knight and Batman have definitely become a promoter of urban renewal and a supporter of redevelopment. I would venture to say that the next Batman movie will continue to provide us signs of urban change and maybe more people will begin to be a part of that change, even they aren’t’ included to wear a mask.
Urban Economic Gardening (Part 2)
The final three steps involve require a bit more drive, creativity and gumption. In the world of urban economic development, you literally can’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.
Number 3. Plant the seed. Of course before anything grows it is a must to put the seed in the ground. This seed is an indication of what kind of plant you will have when the further steps are taken. It is important to determine the right seed for the right kind of soil. While this may sound very simple, how many times in urban economic development have we failed to plant an incentive to grow a business or attract a new business and how many times have we seen no attention being given to identifying the types of businesses you are trying to attract. Too much effort has been put into prepping the soil and not enough to what type of plant you want.
Number 4. Water the plant. Wow, again a no brainer it seems, but we see it over and over again where we spend years reviving an area or attracting a business and once it finally comes we don’t sufficiently support the business. We don’t water the seed we are trying to see grow into a business. Businesses need business in order to grow, much like plants need water. If we want a business to succeed we must feed and support it.
Number 5. Maintain the garden. Taking a step back, we cannot only look at one plant and fail to see the garden as a functioning entity. If we only function on the health of one plant and let the others die, eventually weeds will replace the dead plants and will choke out the one plant you are keeping alive. This is the same with Urban Economic Development. Take a step back look and plan the whole city, make sure each area of your urban economic garden is healthy and is working as a system and not in a vacuum.
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Urban Economic Gardening
While sifting through a plant bed yesterday in Orange Alley (our little urban garden next to our office building) I realized the connection of real gardening and the buzz word many people throw around called Economic Gardening.
Add in the mix of redevelopment into this green thumb recipe and it is a feat chalked full of challenges, but with great rewards. Here are a two of my five steps to successful urban economic gardening.
1. Eliminate the Weeds. The first step in most anything is to remove the bad stuff. These elements can cause harm to the new plants that will be brought into the new garden. In an economic sense in order to attract new businesses it is necessary to remove the elements that will prohibit this new growth.
2. A New Foundation. The second step is to bring in new soil or til the good soil that already exists. Before the beautiful flowers can grow a proper foundation must be laid. In an economic sense, this is the planning. To have a successful urban revival proper planning must be in place before the seeds can be planted.
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Why we have to fight now
In many facets of our society we have had a “flight” mentality. In that I mean when the going got rough, we left. That idea has created so many problems for us that has been compounding for years. Just infrastructure alone has caused us to almost go bankrupt based on years of moving out. We abandon an area and have to build a new area with new infrastructure and services and all the things that go along with new and still have to maintain the old infrastructure. The flight mentality is no longer an option for us anymore. Some of us are saying now, it stops with me….I won’t fly, I will fight.
I find this more and more throughout communities. They are beginning to say, lets face our problems, we have no choice, we can continue to sweep them under the rug and watch our community deteriorate or we can face them head on and slowly chip away at the problem. Chattanooga in 1969 was considered the most polluted city in the United States. It was then they decided to fight this stigma, face it head on and it became a rallying cry for them to redevelop their city. They faced it with deciding to focus on clean technology and a city by nature. Today they lead the green charge and are attracting new and exciting green technology.
How can we face our challenges and how can we decide to fight the previous problems we let linger for so long?
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