Do Small Western U.S. Cities Plan In An Adolescent Fashion? (Commentary)

[M II A II R II K]

The adolescent West


Jul 01, 2011

By Dennis Hinkamp

Read More: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion...t-art.html.csp

Logan, Utah, isn’t too anything. It’s not too big or too small, but it’s also not just right. Like many Western towns and small cities of about 50,000 people, it’s as confused as a hormonally challenged adolescent. Policy moods swing wildly between pro-development mayors and ones who want to go back to family-friendly neighborhoods. We want to restore the downtown, but we keep building more big-box stores on cheap land near the city boundaries. We put in parking meters, then rip them out, like kids throwing tantrums. We’re like teenagers who change their hair color to fit their mood. We just don’t know who or what we are yet.

- While there are many desirable things about youth, fickle, irresponsible behavior is not one of them. Adolescents long for popularity and often do embarrassing things to achieve it. I know I was thrilled to get a Lowes, Home Depot and Starbucks in town for my own selfish consumptive reasons. Gone were those trips to the big city for provisions. Many other locals applauded the arrival of Old Navy, PetSmart and Chili’s as signs that Logan was maturing into a metropolis. But every binge is followed by the next morning, with its painful hangover and feelings of regret.

- Most cities east of the Rockies have had several hundred years to mature into their current personality. They lived through the raging hormones of industrialization, and many of them have reinvented themselves from fishing and farming economies, becoming business centers, art communities or tourist destinations. They built trains, subways and other means of mass transit to simplify commuting, not to save energy. There are cities where people use public transit because they don’t own cars. These are cities where people pay more to park their car than the car is worth.

- I grew up in long-ago sepia-toned St. Louis with a corner store, laundry, hardware store and, of course, a corner bar nearby. Most Western neighborhoods don’t even have definable corners because the original grids were based on agriculture and irrigation, not commerce. But we are beginning to show some signs of maturity. Have you been to a farmers market lately? Farmers markets are thriving because people want someplace to go to find good local food, and they want to enjoy local art and flavor, even if some of that art is sometimes bland. The “locavore” movement is only partially driven by environmental concerns. It’s also a sign that we want to settle down and live within the boundaries of our hometowns.

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[vid]

We've sort of experienced this in my city, but leaning more towards the pro-development/pro-urban side lately. The key is finding a way that fits in everything. Instead of removing parking meters, we added a few hours of free parking on weekends. Instead of preferring just suburban sprawl or just urban renewal, we've supported both (we're building a new corridor to support new suburbs, and renewing our waterfront and the urban area near it to increase the neighbourhood's population by about 30% and support its businesses to foster a mixed-use, 24hour environment). We've made developing multi-use buildings on arterial streets and intersections easier, while limiting the size and scale of developments in low density residential areas to "preserve" them.

The result is, moderate growth and a lot of stability and predictability for local business. It's not a perfect model, but it isn't a bad one, either. They key is to find a balance between both sides. When the only real complaint about your new zoning by-law is that Tim Hortons can't build drive-throughs beside a bedroom window, you're probably doing something right, I think.

[Buckeye Native 001]

A popular bumper sticker in Flagstaff says: "Don't PHX FLG"

[WilliamTheArtist]

Sounds a lot like Tulsa in many ways. But I think we are turning the corner and finally beginning the process of becoming a more mature, well rounded, city. Once our new comprehensive plan is in place, we will many more areas that will be zoned to infill with pedestrian/mass transit friendly developments. And of course there are still areas that will be allowed to have the usual sprawl. We still have room to get some of the fast, quick cheap suburban development, but also realize we are starting to run out of room for that and will have to grow by infill more and more. We very much want that urban infill to be high quality.

[min-chi-cbus]

I'm not sure this is exclusive to the SW states.....a lot of suburbs and small towns in this country have been taken over by mega-corps. like Best Buy and Wal Mart and don't necessarily plan smart -- ESPECIALLY the medium sized cities (pop. ~50K) that are not associated with a bigger metro......they take what they can get for the most part.

[Strange Meat]

Funny, Denver has a grid system and tons of corners definable in the way the article described. I guess technically though we ARE east of the Rockies...

Anyway, the author doesn't seem to have a very good grasp on various grid systems and why they exist, either.

And I would also have to imagine, that in a place that has seen rapid growth but only in recent decades, of course things are going to move in that are more national chains as opposed to established mom and pop type places. I'm not sure, at all, why anyone is surprised by that. Basically, say a big company sees a place like Phoenix exploding, yeah they'll move in, and they'll do just fine because of a few reasons, such as the lack of established establishments, and that they are likely at least somewhat familiar to someone who is a transplant.

[Expat]

Originally Posted by Strange Meat

Funny, Denver has a grid system and tons of corners definable in the way the article described. I guess technically though we ARE east of the Rockies...

Denver is a big city. The article is about small cities.

Don't get me wrong, I am not defending the article as I know little about small western cities. I will leave the discussion to you guys that know.

[Thundertubs]

The Western US has a lot of small cities such as Bend, St. George, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Flagstaff, Nampa, Tri-Cities, etc... that have doubled in size or more in the last few decades. It's a very different built environment than older small cities such as Racine, Lancaster, Hagerstown, Muncie, Woonsocket, Duluth, etc...

[WilliamTheArtist]

Originally Posted by Expat

Denver is a big city. The article is about small cities.

Don't get me wrong, I am not defending the article as I know little about small western cities. I will leave the discussion to you guys that know.

Perhaps its confusing because the thread title says "Small western US cities". I consider Tulsa to be a small city. At 380,000 its certainly not a big city. Denver, depending on where you draw the line could be considered a medium sized or yes even a small city.

[Expat]

Originally Posted by WilliamTheArtist

Perhaps its confusing because the thread title says "Small western US cities". I consider Tulsa to be a small city. At 380,000 its certainly not a big city. Denver, depending on where you draw the line could be considered a medium sized or yes even a small city.

Yes, but in the article he mentions population of around 50,000. From that perspective, Tulsa is a big city.

But, then he goes on to relate his memories of St. Louis which is an unfair comparison to towns 50,000. I concede, the article is muddled.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Thundertubs

The Western US has a lot of small cities such as Bend, St. George, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Flagstaff, Nampa, Tri-Cities, etc... that have doubled in size or more in the last few decades. It's a very different built environment than older small cities such as Racine, Lancaster, Hagerstown, Muncie, Woonsocket, Duluth, etc...

Yeah, from what I remember of places like Ft. Collins and Bend, it seems like what you often find is a small, but fairly vital downtown surrounded by a huge amount of very new sprawl relative to the original core, sometimes with some decent bike infrastructure going by beige "special" walmarts, if you know what i mean. It all is usually very new and clean feeling (at least to me), even the historic downtowns, and mildly copasetic as the mountains in the background always seem to blunt the impact of the kudzu like sprawl. There is usually some kind of frought development concern dominating the local paper and the old people talk in the cafes... although I'm sure the tone sounds more familiar to midwestern ears of late: jobs. I know Bend is hurting, I'm not sure exactly what the economy was based on before (it wasn't just beer), but I imagine it had A LOT to do with development, especially being on the sunny side of the mountains.

It's hard for me to pick on Bend, seems like they try harder than some other towns, at least with infill and the little core. When that much development is (was) blasting out of the nozzle, you gotta try even harder, I guess. Bike paths, sidewalks, and tighter sprawl (which almost seems like the mantra out there) isn't enough.

[UpNorthMI]

This article describes my little city perfectly. Yet, I am nowhere near west of the rockies but instead in northern Michigan. We've ripped up four lane roads and replaced them with two lanes and a bike lane and then complained about how traffic was too heavy on that same street. We've complained about the big box stores and all of the subdivisions on the fringe of town. But when somebody wants to build over four stories downtown, we all come together to denounce the "Detroit-ization" of our podunk town of 60,000* people.


*Just to be clear, Traverse City proper is only 15,000 people, but when you add in the surrounding townships there are 55,496 people.

[jcchii]

at least there's some recognition of a possible "right" and "wrong" way to develop, or at least "more desirable/sustainable" vs. full-open sprawl

I'm sure hard to contain things when a town matured in the last 20 years with a lot of available land.
Even Chicago fringe burbs developed badly, with hundreds of wal-mart, applebees, chipotle, chilis, olve garden blobs - repeated every 10 miles.

now of course the subdivisions are half empty and the stores will close