Last
week I read an article and watched a talk by Kevin Klinkenberg. Klinkenberg is
an urban designer from Savannah, Georgia. He shared some of his analysis that
the efforts by some to "repair" sprawl into more walkable, productive
environments is a poor investment. In essence he is looking at our municipal
dollars and performing triage, trying to get the most for our investment. You
can read the piece on this topic here.
Klinkenberg
does make the distinction that not all sprawl is created equal. Ex-urban rural
sprawl cannot be rehabilitated by his assessment, but residential
neighbourhoods built before 1950 can often be easily integrated into a more
productive urban fabric. His central thesis is fairly straightforward: with
limited resources we cannot possibly repair all the sprawl in our cities, given
that the best places to invest our money is traditional urban-style
neighbourhoods. To be clear he isn't exclusively talking about big cities. The
town downtown of a small town or smaller city is the safest investment by his
metric.
I
find that Klinkenberg has a certain rationale that is inescapable. Say the city
of Brampton has $1 million to spend on a local project. Does it make sense for
them to add sidewalks to a new suburb out by Mayfield Road, or to add better
pedestrian features or bike infrastructure to the Downtown? Simply by the number of people it would serve
I think the answer is pretty clear. Analysis done by Strong Towns and its
allies also suggests the tangible return on investment would be greater and
more tangible in more traditional/urban parts of the city.
The
one part I might differ with Klinkenberg is that I think there is a certain
point where municipalities are throwing good money after bad. I think it is
easier to do that in suburbia, but I can see it happening in urban districts as
well. Using Brampton as an example again, there is only so much the city could
invest in the Downtown before it addresses broader policy issues. Eventually
the easy things will be all done and then it will be necessary for a more
radical rethink. Brampton's Downtown is undersized, so the government should
look at expanding its boundaries to allow it grow its mixed-use development.
How does this align with transit and transportation policy? What role to
bicycles have in the Downtown area? How do we redevelop the low-rise properties
Downtown to more productive uses? These questions aren't tackled by adding
better street decorations, gardens, or share-rows.
This
is partially why I suspect suburban or sprawl retrofit is so popular. The easy
fixes are obvious and do not usually cost a great deal of money. As an urban
district grows and becomes more complicated it becomes harder to tinker with
it, while we have hundreds of suburban streets we could add sidewalks to, or
bike infrastructure, or improve pedestrian access. Still, I think Klinkenberg
is generally correct and as we look more to fixing or salvaging cities we will
have to take this approach.
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