Dupont Circle Update/State of the Circle

Dupont Circle photo by Dick Hodgman.

Michael Schade is a resident of the Dupont Circle area and active in the Dupont Main Street program (which is how I met him). For going on six years, he has published an e-newsletter about goings-on/changes in the Dupont Circle area, and a little further beyond. His newsletter, Dupont Circle Update, is archived.

Since 2002, each year he has given a "State of the Circle" address, a la the "State of the Union." This year is no exception, and he gave the 2006 speech last night. It's an interesting sum up of the openings, closings, and changes of the past year, and like the photographs taken by Elise Bernard in the H Street-Trinidad area, it's a useful chronicle and archive of a neighborhood as well as community change.

Dupont Circle Street Recital and Fundraiser. Photo by Keith Stanley.

Michael takes the time to assess and reflect and gives his neighborhood (and us) the opportunity to consider these issues as we go forward into another year. From the "State of the Circle" address for 2006:

Those are the major changes in our neighborhood and beyond. Clearly, this is an unfinished symphony. 250 years after Wolfgang Amadeus's birth, wouldn't it be nice if walking down the street could be likestepping into one of Mozart's operas? Does the architecture tickle and delight? Do the shops sing the praises of love?

We want a streetscape that makes us break into song. That's why we celebrate the quaint and quirky, and why cookie-cutter chains threaten to make our neighborhood unexciting. W.H. Auden said "No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible."

Jazz playing at Dupont Circle. Photo via DCist.

Hank's Oyster Bar reflects this spirit. The design,the ambiance, the food all tell a specific story, one that's unique to 17th Street, and not one dictated by a distant corporate headquarters. Hank's shows that real progress is made one entrepreneur at a time. Dollar-for-dollar, mega-projects like the baseball stadium don't have the same impact as that perfect corner coffee shop, or bookstore, or bowling alley, or pool hall...

I would suggest that any public revitalization effort be both truly public, and scalable. A truly public resource is available to everyone. A park is available to everyone, as are the streets and the sidewalks....

And part of being public means sharing information. Transparency equals trust. Agencies should not have to be prodded by DC-Watch or a Freedom-of-Information Act request to share information; it should be part of how they do business. City agencies must expand what gets posted on the Internet.

There's more to Dupont Circle than Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe. Photo by furcafe.

Our greatest public resource, in terms of real estate, is our streets. Transportation holds the keys to revitalization. To once again paraphrase Winston Churchill, first we shape our streets, and afterwards our streets shape us. When the "car is king" mantra became unquestionable in the 60's, streets were widened at the expense of sidewalks. At intersections, the new standard was to have sweeping curves so cars could makes turns without slowing down. The goal was to create highways in our neighborhoods. We were no longer a destination, but a route. We must take every opportunity to reverse this mindset. When we reconstruct a street, let's design it for pedestrians. When we redesign an intersection, let's design for safety over speed.
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There's more and I think you'll enjoy reading the rest.

This year, he gave the speech at the Dupont Resource Center. For 2007, perhaps we should make it a blog meetup, with advance publicity...

(Also see this blog entry, "Changing Neighborhoods, Changing Businesses" and "Making Places" which caused a little controversy in some circles, because it repeated PPS's assertion that Dupont Circle can be improved.)

Dupont Circle by Yolanda Frederikse. 2001/lithograph.

Index Keywords: urban-revitalization; civic-engagement