I am a product of inner city schools. Frankly, I have mostly fond memories of the Minneapolis Public Schools, particularly South High. Since I again live in Minneapolis and now have an 8-month old, I am concerned about today’s choices in schools. Minneapolis, like many cities, is a pretty cool place to be, but the public school system, although still very good in many ways, is suffering from declining enrollment and bad publicity.

I have written about schools in the past, and I will again. I will give one quick story from a recent visit I made to New York City. I was there to tour and write about Prospect Park, Brooklyn’s answer to Central Park. The Prospect Park Alliance was formed two decades ago to restore the park to its original glory, and a mighty fine job they are doing! Part of their community outreach in the past couple years has been to partner with the Gates Foundation and create four smaller high schools out of one larger school.

The original high school had a 30% to 40% graduation rate, but the partnership created specialized schools with smaller class sizes. The Prospect Park Alliance is part of a science and environmental school, and Prospect Park itself is used as a laboratory for students. Well, the first class is due to graduate this spring, and they expect 80% of the students to do so.

I find stories such as this heartening. They provide hope for gentrifiying cities that seem to have everything but their school district going for them. I hope with more efforts like this, young people who believe in the city will actually stay there.

Look for more about schools soon.

Placemaking is hard work, as I was reminded in an article called “Placemaking for the Creative Class” that appears in the February 2007 issue of Landscape Architecture magazine. James Richards makes a very good point that there is just so much that goes into it. Yes, as the article discusses, we need a compact urban grid, green space, “third places” like coffee shops, etc., and good public transportation. Mr. Richards is right to point out that placemaking is not programmatic. He interviews people who want all the right amenities, but also want just the right amount of grit and decay. And then you can attract the creative class. See how hard this is to do!?

Allow me to illustrate. Al’s Breakfast in Minneapolis is one such perfect urban place in many people’s minds. It is gritty, genuine, delicious. It is also utterly impossible for even the most talented and well-meaning planner to conjure up, which is exactly why it is such a special place. Built in the 1950s, it was at first a covered over section of alley, eventually built out, walled off and heated, with a grill and breakfast counter and 13 stools. Al’s urban surroundings are very important. It is located in a dense mixed-use district called Dinkytown near the University of Minnesota campus. The area has a good urban fabric. Buildings are built right up to the sidewalks, and are rich in variety, age and use. In fact, two of Al’s four walls are not actually their own - they belong to neighboring buildings. Not exactly the kind of place in you’d find in a separate use suburban greenfield commercial strip development, and truly part of its endearing charm.

First of all, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), an important and very relevant piece of legislation, would never allow a new building to be constructed quite like that. Places like Al’s have to be in older, renovated (or not-so renovated) buildings. Second, even most new urbanists don’t plan for an alley to be blocked off by a thirteen-stool breakfast counter. What makes Al’s so special actually comes down to business acumen and opportunity. Al’s is and has always been run by dedicated owners that allow for that good urban funkiness people love so dearly. More importantly, they also know how to cook fantastic food and run a business based on those thirteen precious stools.

A couple years ago I interviewed Henry Beer of Communication Arts in Boulder, Colorado, for an article in Urban Land magazine. He spoke of the “messy vitality” that make cities so attractive, exactly as Mr. Richards writes. As for placemaking, he said “anyone that thinks community can be engendered by front porches is f#!*ing insane!” How eloquent! He’s right. Just as front porches don’t do the trick without a whole host of other things including high density and narrow streets, they also require people to actually use them and thus, create the community. This is a very important point - messy vitality requires not just good planning but people to bring it to life.

Placemaking takes time and sometimes just plain dumb luck. No planner envisioned it all, first laying out the grid of streets and creating a zoning code for Dinkytown, then deciding precisely that an alley was to be converted to become the location of a breakfast counter and a legendary, delicious business.

An important point needs to be made here, in defense of planners and designers everywhere. Al’s needed to be allowed for it to exist. The urban fabric, density, sidewalk width, and surrounding type of uses are all decisions made by planners, landscape architects, city councils, etc. This urban fabric is a very major piece of the puzzle, and absolutely needs to be designed and implemented. Then they went away and let the real magic happen.

I have researched several master-planned communities in the past year, including Daniel Island in Charleston, South Carolina. The design of Daniel Island was influenced by Mayor Joe Riley, who insisted on a high-quality urban environment. Land planners Cooper Robertson & Partners and Design Works created a network of open space, sidewalks, trails and places to meet to encourage community interaction. The developer set up an association, but it was residents that actually formed the book clubs and hiking clubs that create community. Daniel Island is a good example that planners, developers, landscape architects, and public officials must provide for good places exist, but people must breathe life into them.  

Planners can provide the canvas and sometimes even the paint, but the market has to be allowed room to breathe and create the urban art. So what do cities need to do to attract the so called creative class that, like me, needs a Wi-Fi connection and easy access to a major airport? Peel away the layers and it is good, visionary urban planning, although it can be sometimes decades before the neighborhood matures. It is also a healthy dose of market forces to understand a basic human need like breakfast, and voila, a great urban place is born! In other words, a lot of hard work and then a stroke of luck. It all seems so simple, right? Cities trying to attract that magical “creative class” have their work cut out for them. They can provide a good foundation through sound urban planning, but great places don’t happen overnight.

Al’s Breakfast is one literally small example of a wonderful urban place. I have eaten at Al’s on average of one morning per week for that past several years. I am indeed lucky. A piece of Al’s goes with me wherever I go (likely stuck in an artery) and I am all the richer (luckily not larger) for having spent a portion of my life in a wonderful, gritty, genuine urban place like Al’s. There are many reasons why it is so wonderful, and good planning is but one. The rest, as they say, is history!

Three influential studies were released in the past year that I think are worth a mention. I attended the release of “One-Fifth of America: A Comprehensive Guide to America’s First Suburbs” last February at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. It was quite an event. Hillary Clinton spoke. There was talk of a national agenda on urban policy. The main idea of the report is first suburbs are aging (both people and buildings) and pose a major challenge with regard to urban policy. What struck me is here we were listening to members of Congress talk about how to deal with the various issues of inner suburbs, but there really is no momentum behind it, much less a true forum for urban policy at the federal level.

The other two studies are related. One, called “The Affordability Index: A New Tool for Measuring the True Affordability of a Housing Choice,” was also released by The Brookings Institution. The other, “A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families,” was released by the Center for Housing Policy, also based in Washington D.C. Both studies assessed the notion that the true cost of living is housing plus transportation, and that buying a home in a distant suburb may seem affordable, but the corresponding increase in the cost of transportation offsets the reduced housing cost.

The Center for Housing Studies focused on “working families” with incomes of $20,000 to $50,000 and found that, in 28 metro areas, they pay the same percentage of income for housing, but 10% more of their income for transportation.

I’m living proof of this. Living in an affordable neighborhood in the city, near light rail, has its advantages. After moving in to our house, I went an entire month before filling my gas tank. With no car payment and an employer (at that time) that paid for a transit pass, my true transportation costs were minimal. Combined with a reasonable mortgage and a great local coffee shop, it is a pretty sweet deal.

The Brookings study looked at the Twin Cities, and considered the cost of housing and transportation in four disparate areas of the metro. The household closest to the metro core and public transportation had the lowest transportation cost, whereas the distant suburban dweller had the highest. Interestingly, though, the household in the inner ring suburb had the lowest combined transportation and housing cost.

And so it all fits together. Investing in mass transit, affordable/workforce housing and mixed-use communities can help make the cost of living more reasonable for countless households. The core cities are an obvious target for this, but perhaps our first/inner ring suburbs deserve the most attention.

“One-Fifth of America” and “The Affordability Index” can be found at the Metropolitan Policy Program at www.brookings.edu.

“A Heavy Load” can be found at www.nhc.org/index/heavyload.

On a recent trip to Austin, Texas, I decided to check out the partially completed Second Street District redevelopment. It encompasees several blocks between the downtown core and Town Lake, and includes the new city hall and a seven-story apartment complex with ground floor retail.

I had most recently read about it in Big-Box Swindle, which I recommend, by the way. It discussed the redevelopment, and the fact that 17 of the 24 businesses are locally-owned. Anyone that pays attention to shiny new downtown development will notice that retail is often chain dominated.

Not that chains are evil, but some cities see virtue in local retailers, and part of the development agreement with the city of Austin is that the Second Street District will have 30% local businesses. So they have exceeded their mandate so far.

I checked out the district myself one cold sleeting day (yes, it was sleeting in Austin) and found Jo’s, a cool coffee shop, and the Royal Blue Grocery, a store that couldn’t be more than 1,000 square feet of floor space. It was tiny, but covered most needs, like wine and olive oil.

I briefly chatted with the cashier. They have been open for just a few months, and have a list of suggestions or requests. I took a look around and actually found most things I may need to be stocked - a little of everything. As an outsider I was impressed. Austin has made their decision, and in fact are the poster child for independent businesses. The Austin Independent Business Alliance (AIBA) is perhaps the most prominent independent business groups in the country. It seems to be working, and it isn’t just antique stores among the independent businesses, but grocers and other things that people need with more regularity.

And so on that cold sleety day I retired to the cozy warmth of the nearby Fado Irish Pub, yet another independent business in Austin, Texas, to sit by the fireplace with a pint of Guinness.