20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 9

Continuing from my last post, discussing my 1992 fall article on Portland Maine's downtown and the mall, I was discussing how Portland's peninsula pedestrian brick fabric was a great lure as all the mall was not.

You get the idea, everything downtown was historical, craft, emergent, regional, experiential. We had weather and very high quality urban experiences to use to draw people in. In fact both the mall and downtown could grow together by being opposites.

Here is the second half of the article as published back then:

Growth guidelines

Back in the city, lets’ establish a few guidelines to planning:
-Rule number one: Never build more than 10 subsidized housing units in one place and allow at least one mile between those places. If you create hell, you get hell, not a big surprise.
-Rule number two: It’s OK to bust up hell. Eminent domain and public redevelopment are OK in areas with profound social problems, but not in others.
-Rule number three: Design as if you made $8.50 an hour and had a wife and two kids. If you blow a head gasket your finances are shot for a year. But if you had a bike path and a light rail system to help you get around then things will be OK and you needn’t be too upset.

A “bread and circuses” policy would emphasize free outdoor concerts and festivals, skating on the pond and other activities that make life for your family delightful without costing you money. A beautiful city is part of that policy.

Now we can work on the orchestration of the beautiful city.

Let’s envision Portland as a city where a light train carries people from the mall to Union Station and back. Bike paths link surrounding towns with the city. Automobiles arrive at high speed along I-295 and at medium-high speed along Franklin Arterial, Washington Avenue, High Street, State Street and St. John Street.

-This brings us to rule number four: Where two paths intersect, each carrying a different load, the less powerful load is not interrupted. Therefore, Franklin Arterial, High Street and State Street are moved underground at their intersections with Congress Street.

Vital central avenue

Congress Street, as the city’s spine, will control and support the experience of being in Portland. 

First, a continuous running trolley moves from Union Station to the Eastern Promenade and back. The whole street is pedestrian oriented, with the area from High Street to Franklin Arterial pedestrian only.

As development occurs, pedestrian-only sections of the street are added. Streets such as Cumberland Avenue, Free Street and Federal Street- re-established across Franklin Arterial- are designed as delivery streets to support Congress Street.

Plaza-to-plaza mapping can start at Congress Street with the existing Longfellow-Congress-Monument squares used as a base. With Franklin Arterial underground at Congress, a new Franklin Square could be the next plaza. Other new plazas could appear at Union Station and at the intersections of Congress with Deering Avenue, North Street and the Eastern Promenade. 

In this pedestrian-oriented city, the streets running parallel to Congress Street would be service streets, oriented to motor vehicles. Beyond the service streets, more plazas could be established along the second streets down from Congress such as Spring Street (west of High Street), Middle Street and Oxford Street (re-establish across Franklin Arterial).

The system of alternating pedestrian-only and service streets could be altered to create pedestrian-only parts of Fore Street and Exchange Street. Commercial Street could accommodate both autos and people. More plazas could be established on the water.

The establishment of plaza could proceed along these lines: The city identifies intersections as good locations for plazas in a master plan. When activity picks up enough at one of these intersections, merchants petition for the city for “plaza” status. A contest is held to create a sculpture that celebrates some aspects of the city and is built with city funds. Lamps, benches, trees, and brick or stone paving are installed by the city, usng a different design for each plaza.

The key to successful Portland is activity along Congress Street. As I drove along the street one night recently it was dark and no one was around. The feeling of being in a city at night with no people in sight was very unsettling.

We need to provide incentives that will encourage development of appropriate nighttime activities. These businesses include hotels, restaurants and theaters.

Stores would be encouraged to remain open later if police foot patrols and hotel-restaurant-theater activity gave people a sense of security during the evening. A new convention center close to Congress Street would help.

I hope this article has stimulated dialogue and revived dormant ideas. It is possible to build the path of least resistance, both physically and emotionally.

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 8

1992 Maine Sunday Telegram article.

Before leaving to study in London, still in the 92 recession, I felt that if everyone loved the mall then downtown could grow by emphasizing how it was the exact opposite. That if the mall was a hermetically sealed indoor private conditioned shiny auto destination then downtown could be promoted as an outdoor, brick sidewalked pedestrian wonderland. So I wrote an article published in the Insight section of the Maine Sunday Telegram in the fall of 1992 while I was starting studies at the Architectural Association in London.

Maine Mall object in empty sea of parking vs. Portland waterfront spaces between buildings.

Here is the first half of the article as it appeared:

Downtown, mall can feed each other

By Michael Belleau copyright 1992

Two sources of energy dominate the relationship between Portland and the communities that surround it: downtown and the mall. By understanding the source of each one’s energy, we can begin to understand how the city relates to its suburbs and find ways to help the city grow.

The mall is a product of the suburb, itself a product of our love of nature, our distrust of the city and our drive for self-sufficiency.

Self-sufficiency is at the core of our collective conscience, and the single-family home and single-owner car are its means of expression.

Once we were all independently driving around, we needed a place to drive to. First came the drive-in, followed by the supermarket, and finally the mall, where we can do our shopping in one comfortable location.

Now the easier-to-park-at-and-more-comfortable-with-everything-you-need mall has wholesale warehouses springing up around it, providing us with the lowest prices. Nearby we find office parks to centralize our activities further.

All are guided by the maxim: Easy to get to. The mall’s powerful lure is predicated on the use of the car to run errands: a definition of suburbia.

The city has historically been a place where we could walk through the streets from shop to shop to run our errands. But now it is easier for most people, who live in suburbs, to shop at the mall.

The city has become a place for doing business, a place for people (mostly young) to get to know each other. It is a place to find graphics centers, banks, and bistros for schmoozing.

It is easier to find a good restaurant in the city. It is easier to find cultural events and attractions. It is easier to experience beauty in built form, as you are walking or sitting. And it is easier to strike up a conversation in the city, because you’re probably not in your car.

The city’s power lies in culture and human interaction, with man-made buildings and plazas its stage.

For Portland to grow in the future it must copy the mall in some ways and strive to be opposite in others.

If the mall is easy to get to, then Portland must be easy to get to as well. If the mall has public toilets, pedestrian-only streets, is well lit, and has security patrol, then downtown must also have these amenities.

On the other hand, if the mall area is ruled by the car then the city can emphasize the pedestrian. A light-rail link between downtown and the mall seems to be the ideal solution to the mall-downtown equation. The mall area is for cars and parking; the city for people and walking. Bother are for bicycling.

By building brick by brick, a pedestrian dreamscape in the city, the city will strengthen its natural source of power. Not only can it emphasize culture, but also intimacy, the kind of day-to-day interaction with others that the suburban lifestyle has nearly eliminated. And, with a little ingenuity, it could compete on the mall’s home turf: shopping.

The city can never compete with suburban shopping centers for wholesale-priced business unless city stores can move the merchandise to the customer’s house by delivery. Then only a showroom is required, and the customer is free to roam without bags.

Next we need to make roaming the city fun.

Escape to the city

As the mall area grows into a behemoth of endless parking lots and warehouses, signs of varying degrees of loudness act like a thousand television commercials simultaneously screaming for our attention. Driving through this zone we become anxious, confused and physically taxed. The city can offer relief.

Let people hop on a rail line or bicycle and come into town to shop amid a complex of beautiful plazas and pedestrian-only streets carefully orchestrated to provide the most soothing experience.

Conversely, for the mall area to strengthen the city as the opposite face of the same coin, steps must be taken to boost the source of its power: the countryside.

The mall area now is an anarchic free-fire zone that is rapidly dissolving into an anywhere-USA-but-most-likely-New Jersey. Residents of South Portland and Scarborough may wish to think about the identities of their towns and how they would like their towns to look in the future. A good theme for development here could be “A peaceful drive through the countryside.”

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 6

Diagram showing potential new plazas as red dots in string along Congress St. 

and red arrows showing reconnecting streets.

Continuing previous blog entry discussion around my 1992 article, "Portland: Back to the Future":

I advised we could create string of plazas along Congress Street up to the Eastern Prom to make a seamless pedestrian experience using the existing Longfellow Square- Congress Square- Monument Square sequence to build upon. Thus, pedestrians would always be moving from one great public space to another.

(from the article:) "This means: sidewalks of brick with lampposts, benches and trees; buildings with ground-level shops and architecture that engages the passer-by; street widths that allow for across-the-street conversations and window shopping; plazas at every square and major junction, like Monument Square; a master plan of linked plazas along Congress Street that continue up to the Eastern Promenade and down to the Greyhound station as well as along Commercial Street and into every pocket of the city."

In addition, the "urban renewal" created in 1960's by the removal of delicate urban fabric for the Franklin Street Arterial smack in the middle of the peninsula and the similar destruction of building and streets by the Spring Street arterial I suggested back then, should be repaired. These gashes in the urban street and building fabric of the city required careful stitching back together. The red arrows in diagram above show my suggestion back then to reconnect all the cutoff streets to establish proper urban block sizes.

I offered this example for how to start revitalizing the at the time poor Munjoy Hill area which would be part of a Congress Street plaza sequence as noted above:

"Munjoy Hill would be a good starting point for the definition of communities. A central plaza, office building, cultural center, and light-industrial facility would be a good start. With a clear, long-term development plan, banks might loan on a longer time frame."

And finally at the end of the article I suggested Portland could use an economic symbol, what is called "brand" now to communicate world wide:

"In addition to egalitarian zoning and development, it is necessary to provide a commercial symbol to anchor Portland’s place in the global community.

Just as Zurich has banking, Oslo has shipping, and Houston has oil, Portland should have a symbol by which to communicate with the rest of the world. Wood products might become such as symbol. 

Then by taking up this symbol and focusing on becoming an international center for this commodity-product-service, an identity can emerge over the next 50 years or so. No hurry."

Although I received almost no response in the community, the seeds had been planted.

Congress Square redesign

Last night the city of Portland held a meeting to gather public input regarding redesigning Congress Square. Congress Square currently is a sunken empty tar covered space filled often with vagrants. This situation is not unique to Portland and follows closely the history of Copley Square in Boston. In the sixties, Sasaki Associates won a competition to design Copley Square and responded with the trendy sunken plaza with angles and steps. Back at turn of last century, the plaza had been home to all of Boston's cultural stars such as MIT, Trinity Church, Museum of Natural History, Library, etc. Some of these institutions left and the 60's design was supposed to make this a jewel to celebrate the great location. Here's a shot of a proposal for Copley in mid 1800's:

Unfortunately, the sunken plaza became a great place for vagrants and drug dealers. Sound familiar? So Boston held another competition in the early 80's to redesign Copley Square and the result is a very successful flat park with a big lawn, trees, benches, lighting and a signature fountain. 

Copley Square also hosts a farmer's market:

Portland can learn a lesson from Boston in this regard.

Proposals suggested at the workshop last night included: Andy Graham's wonderful idea of a winter garden, useable year round to be with plants; a suggestion of a major water feature and a major sculpture; a suggestion of a flat plane filled with large trees with their branches removed up to a fairly high height as seen in St. Petersburg, Russia; and to make the place nice enough that restaurants would put tables there or street vendors would set up.

All were in favor of making sure some kind of authority would care for the upkeep and cleanliness of the  space as the Portland Downtown District does for Tommy's Park.

By eliminating the sunken plaza and making a flat-like surface at level of Congress St. sidewalk and putting in plenty of trees, we can only succeed.