Intensification of land use

People are afraid of density, sometimes justifiably so.

Harvey Molotch explains the Growth Machine agenda in his seminal paper, City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place. The abstract summarizes the paper:

A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a consequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine. The relevance of growth to the interests of various social groups is examined in this context, particularly with reference to the issue of unemployment. Recent social trends in opposition to growth are described and their potential consequences evaluated.

But all "intensification of land use" isn't a bad thing. Too much development in the city is inappropriate for the urban context and wastes precious land.

The Comp Plan revision draft makes the point that of the city's "69 square miles," 8 square miles are water! Plus 39 square miles are utilized by the federal government. That leaves 22 square miles for everything else.

So projects like these, as written up in the Washington Business Journal by Sean Madigan, seemingly make sense:

-- Developer to turn H Street site into mixed-use project;
-- 14th St. center to give way to $100M redevelopment.

The first piece makes the point that the center of H Street isn't seeing a resurgence. There the resurgence will require a wholesale change in the business mix and the quality of the retail offer. However there are key exceptions:

1. The H Street Connection strip shopping center, no different in concept and effect from the Nehemiah Center on 14th Street NW which is now being redeveloped, is a revitalization opportunity to the nth degree.

2. So is the west side of the 1100 block south side, with some empty lots and an indequately utilized corner shop--one story, squat, and not built to the lot line.

3. The Autozone lot on the south side of the 1200 block again is a great opportunity, and the site qualifies for New Market Tax Credits besides.

This demonstrates the necessity of Catalytic projects (see this planning brief, one pager, on Implementation), something that wasn't covered in the H Street Strategic Development Plan in 2003, although you could argue that the Streetcar system, as outlined in the plan and in the H Street Transportation Study is such a catalytic project.

(The National Capital Revitalization Corporation has also created a proposal for such catalytic projects for H Street but this should have been included in the original plan.)

If this doesn't emphasize the primacy of Urban Design in planning and developing the city, I don't know what does.

Index Keywords: urban-design-placemaking