Those damn art projects and urban revitalization

On an elist, Ann writes about this piece, "Space: It’s Still a Frontier" from the New York Times Opinionator Blog. The story is about "leftover space" in cities that can be made over into green space. While the current project is an urban design project, it's inspiration is earlier projects by artists. Ann writes:

My first thought when I read this was, "is this the highest and best use of urban land they can come up with?" And why does Arieff miss the bigger point altogether, about the need to DESIGN land patterns within cities, and within regions? Critical analysis using GIS or google earth is not new to New Urbanists - but apparently it is to others?

My response:

Critical analysis is difficult when you don't know what are the right questions to ask.

This is an artist driven thing (just like that Julia Christensen Big Box Reuse project which I have little interest in for similar reasons, there was nothing new in it really as repurposing property has been going on as long as the U.S. has been developed).

I had exactly the same reaction as yours to a similar kind of project in Baltimore a year or two ago. It wasn't GIS driven, but it was the same idea "how to use these empty city-owned parcels?" failing to consider the reason why the parcels are empty is because the neighborhood is disconnected from the metropolitan residential landscape, and that the solution to the empty parcel isn't green space necessarily or an art project, it's a healthy thriving neighborhood where that parcel is in demand for housing...

Courtesy Nicholas de Monchaux Visualization of Step 2 shows a Web interface that could be used to transform the site(s) identified by Local Code. Designers, community member and other users would be able to select from a palette of options (from benches, say, to plants). The online/social media component moves toward building digital democracy in community design and activism. Click to enlarge.

(Similar are a lot of writings about Detroit and its problems. Articles fail to make the connection adequately between sprawl, outmigration and continued exurban migration when the core counties have not grown in population over a 50 year period. As a result, suburban expansion means that the core is "deaccessioned" too.)

The crazy thing is that recently I got copies of a couple of Rolf Goetze's books from the 1970s (Building Neighborhood Confidence, Understanding Neighborhood Change) because since they are so little read, university libraries are deaccessioning copies so that now BNC is available relatively cheaply (a couple years ago, it cost more than $120).

I always talk up Belmont's Cities in Full as the best urbanism book since Jane Jacobs.

Well, I don't think there is any writing anywhere that is as clear about residential revitalization in center cities (especially because when he was writing, most every center city was a weak market) as the work of Rolf Goetze. People who have never really dealt with the issues on the ground about urban revitalization especially in weak markets have no clue really, and this project and story are but one example.