Tag: civil engineering

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News The Fly-By

Hip To Be Square

CREDIT: Joan Gomez Pons | dreamstime.com

Real estate entrepreneur Leland Speed was once told that “certain sermons are best delivered by a visiting minister.” And so it was that the Jackson, Mississippi, native found himself in a Hernando church last week, talking to a visiting “congregation” about selling good design.

“You’ve got to have a town that’s attractive or no one is going to live there,” he said. “Quality sells today. Commodity … Having linear streets and you think you’re creative because you threw in a cul-de-sac, that’s history. That’s 30-years-ago kind of stuff.”

Until recently, Speed was head of the Mississippi Development Authority, a statewide agency charged with economic development. He is also a consultant with the city of Jackson. And, as members of the Memphis regional branch of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) sat on pews, Speed talked about the economic benefits of citywide curb appeal.

When Speed came back to Mississippi after more than two decades away, “frankly, I wasn’t real happy with the stuff I saw,” he said. “I remembered small, vibrant communities. I came back to find dead communities.”

People kept asking him when he was going to bring their town a factory. But, to Speed, that’s the old way of thinking.

To prove his point, Speed told a tale of two towns. One “won the lottery”: An auto assembly plant relocated there. The other didn’t get anything of the sort but eventually had to declare a moratorium on building permits because it was growing too fast. The town with the factory didn’t.

“What are those two towns? Canton and Oxford,” Speed said. “You can say it was the university, but eight out of 10 university towns do not grow inordinately.”

So what was it? Speed traced Oxford’s growth back to the opening of Square Books.

“What it is is the square. The university is an amenity to the square, not the other way around. People go to the square every day,” he said. “The square is magic.”

And Canton? “Canton is not viewed as an attractive place to live so people don’t live there,” he said.

In a world of PILOTs, tax incentives, NAFTA, and the creative class, urban leaders are beginning to understand that atmosphere can be just as important as industry for an area’s fiscal health.

Speed advised communities to deal with their “cruel realities,” “quit worrying about what you don’t have,” and “focus on what you have.” A city doesn’t have the best school system? It might matter less than you think. Citing the rising number of single people in the United States, Speed said, “Where do single people want to live? Do they want an acre lot? … No.”

In fact, Speed thinks the defining factor is whether a city is cool or not. “The trends are in our direction,” he said. “We need to use our creativity and culture as an asset.”

Unfortunately, he was talking about Mississippi, but I think this applies to Memphis, as well. Memphis has an authenticity that can be leveraged in a world of Wal-Marts and Costcos. But Memphis also needs to prove that it’s a great place to live. Or a cool place to live, as the case may be.

Speed spoke of Pascagoula, a Mississippi town on the Gulf with roughly 11,000 shipyard employees.

“Ten percent of the employees live in Pascagoula,” Speed said. “Twenty-five percent live in Mobile. Mississippi residents are paying taxes to bring jobs to Mobile. How long should taxpayers subsidize that situation?”

The converse is if Marion, Arkansas, had won the Toyota plant that eventually went to Tupelo, Mississippi, some of those workers surely would have lived in Memphis. But some of them also might have lived in DeSoto County.

Cities aren’t just competing for companies anymore; they’re competing for workers. For inhabitants. For those people who make a house — or a city — a home.

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News The Fly-By

Leafing for Good

CREDIT: Karen Schaber

Maybe, as local architect Lee Askew put it the other day, Memphians simply can’t see the forest for the trees. Literally.

Though residents may not notice just how many trees grow in Memphis, visitors are often
surprised at how green the city is. Maurice Cox, a former mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, and associate professor of architecture at the University of Virginia, was certainly surprised. “This seems like a city within a park,” he said.

Cox and Askew were two panelists at the University of Memphis’ “Urban Design and Placemaking: A Dialogue for Change” symposium last week. Held in connection with the university’s Turley Fellowship (created last year by developer and Flyer board member Henry Turley), the symposium brought local leaders together with experts from Harvard and the cities of Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Nashville to start a dialogue about placemaking in Memphis.

“Every building has to be understood as a building block of the community,” said J. Stroud Watson, an architect in Chattanooga. “The streets, the sidewalks, parks, and plazas are all public space, but the buildings are what frame it.”

During a day-long discussion, the panelists spoke on a variety of topics, including the importance of building structures that can be used for more than one purpose, both for the sake of the physical environment and the city’s collective psyche.

“Yesterday we were shown a historic building that the developer wasn’t sure could be saved,” said Cox. “I was looking at a building that I know can be saved and is the very embodiment of the downtown fabric.”

According to Ann Coulter, the visiting Turley Fellow and the driving force behind the symposium, the panel did not have a set goal when it began. “We didn’t want to hem in the discussion,” she said. “The focus is not just on what you do, but how you do it.”

Recently, in partnership with neighborhood groups, the University of Memphis launched the University District Initiative to address social, health, urban design, and safety issues in the neighborhoods surrounding the school.

“I crossed the street yesterday to go to the Holiday Inn,” said panelist William McFarland, director of the Atlanta Renewal Community Coordinating Responsibility Authority. “[We’re] on a college campus?! It was frightening.”

Even though only 10 percent of students live on campus, the University of Memphis has tried to create an environment that doesn’t shout “commuter college.” The school doesn’t want students to feel like they could simply drive up to their classes. But that perhaps has created a sea of parking lots surrounding the campus, which, to some of the panel, isolated the school from the rest of the city.

“Universities have a way of weakening and collapsing the neighborhoods around them. No one wants to live near loud parties,” said Askew. “There used to be houses from here to Poplar. Now there’s a parking lot.”

But if there’s a time for change, it’s now. “These were professional observers, and they saw it immediately,” said Coulter. “The panelists from out of town commented over and over how the timing is right. The city is ready. The university is ready. The development community is ready. Everyone’s really excited about the opportunities they see.”

Coulter said the group is first taking time to reflect — and to transcribe all the comments — before they decide their next steps. I hope it somehow includes Cox’s idea of Memphis as a city within a park.

I’ve heard enough people mention the city’s wonderful tree canopy to think that Memphis may be overlooking an untapped opportunity.

Frank Ricks, principal of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, mentioned that he has heard that one of the main reasons people leave Memphis is a lack of recreational activities. But maybe the city needs to frame the question — or the answer — better.

“Instead of wishing for mountains or an ocean,” added Askew, “we should see what we have.”

What if the city committed to the vision of a city inside a park? What would it be like to live in a uniformly lush, yet urban environment? Would people feel more inclined to visit Memphis? It may be last week’s Earth Day talking, but tree-lined streets seem marketable to me. Especially as the country becomes more urban.

A group of arborists and activists recently approached the City Council about applying for the Tree City, U.S.A. program, a designation that says a city commits to a certain level of tree management.

Memphis is the largest city in Tennessee to not have this designation. The administration didn’t make any promises — cities have to spend a certain amount on tree maintenance each year — but it could be a good first step.

Especially if it would mean turning a concrete jungle into an urban forest.

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Opinion

Playing Placemaker

A visionary is someone with a healthy ego and big ideas who agrees with you.

In its never-ending efforts to better itself, Memphis has engaged at least a half-dozen consultants in the last few years to tell us what to do with our parks, downtown, Shelby Farms, waterfront, and bike paths. Whether any of them are visionaries depends on where you happen to be standing.

Want to tell Memphis what you think? Get in line. Recent visitors and their sponsors include city expert Ken Jackson (Urban Land Institute), park experts Alexander Garvin (Shelby Farms) and Charles Jordan (Friends for Our Riverfront), and waterfront experts Cooper, Robertson & Partners (Riverfront Development Corporation, or RDC).

Last week it was Fred Kent’s turn to take a whack at the waterfront. A New Yorker most of his adult life (he organized Earth Day in 1970 when John Lindsay was mayor), Kent’s Project for Public Spaces has turned Placemaking with a capital “P” into a brand of sorts. Sixty-something, easy-going, and casually dressed, Kent and his son Ethan, who is in the family business, log something like 150,000 miles a year compiling lists of places good and bad. Their big idea is that big ideas for city improvements are often wrong, especially if they’re architectural monuments. The Kents think a lot of little ideas from a lot of “stake-holders” usually produces a better result. They call it the “power of 10,” as in 10 destinations that each have 10 things to do

Not surprisingly, Fred Kent is no fan of The Pyramid or the proposed $27 million Beale Street Landing with its floating pods in the Mississippi River at Tom Lee Park.

“That will be one of the great design disasters that will haunt you for 20 years before you have the guts to take it out,” he predicted. “And The Pyramid — what a bad symbol for a city. I would tear it down. The only question is, will you do it 10 years from now or next year.”

The Kents came to Memphis at the invitation of Friends for Our Riverfront and Memphis Heritage to tape a television interview and run one of their patented Placemaking workshops for about 140 people last Saturday. We split up into groups and headed via the trolley to seven downtown destinations, pencils and report cards in hand. It was Saturday morning, and the rain hadn’t blown in yet. The COGIC funeral and the ballgame at AutoZone Park were far enough away that they didn’t interfere. The downtown parks looked like they usually do — generally well kept but lightly used except for the Kemet Jubilee parade that was winding down at Tom Lee Park.

“You guys are going to come up with all these amazing ideas,” Kent said.

Well, maybe. At the cobblestones, my assigned destination, I trekked along the sidewalk on Riverside Drive and down the steps, averting a thrown-away sanitary napkin. I crossed the stones that group leader Susan Caldwell told us were once used to balance the loads in riverboats. A few cars were parked near the tour boats, and two powerboats and a kayak glided through the brown water of the harbor.

“It’s not attractive to the eye,” said Sybil McCrackin, from the Kemet parade.

That was the consensus of our group, too, when we summarized our scribbling at lunch. Short-term suggestions were to remove the utility poles, put in historic markers, eliminate parking, add a patch of grass, and put public art on the long gray wall beneath the sidewalk. Long-term ideas included a floating restaurant, Wi-Fi, paddleboats, and concession stands. As RDC president Benny Lendermon told me later, however, a floating restaurant failed several years ago, MudIsland is experimenting with boat rentals, and the Landmarks Commission objected to painting the wall.

“We wanted all of that,” said Lendermon, who also played the game and met for an hour or so with the Kents. Beale Street Landing, the RDC’s signature project, is still a go, but the underground parking garage has been scrapped.

There was much similarity to the seven groups’ suggestions (seewww.friendsforourriverfront.org) — vendors, bathrooms, and street performers, which made me wish Flyer columnist Tim Sampson (All Mimes Must Die!) had been there. No one pledged the first $1,000, but the total bill wouldn’t have approached $27 million.