Whatever happened to planning when it comes to civic assets, public facilities, revitalization?

I am dealing with something in Salt Lake, and it's frustrating because my fellow board members don't have a reflexive inclination to plan, but to react and do.  It reminds me of my line for many years that "an RFP--request for proposals--isn't a plan."  I am trying to work out a problem that's been festering for going on 5 years, because of instead of doing a plan, they issued an RFP.

It's a request for proposals and while the RFP probably lists desires and preferred outcomes, it's still not a plan, and likely it'd be better to do a plan.

I'm writing this in reaction to an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun, "Harborplace reinvention: Baltimore needs a task force to get it right," about Harborplace. 

It was written by Ted Rouse, son of James, who created it. Harborplace was an early example of what are called Festival Marketplaces and for many years it was considered an international best practice.

But a failure to keep renewing the space, a fall off in tourism after the Freddie Gray riots in 2015, and the unfortunate occurrence of a lousy property manager buying the complex combined to drive it into ruin. It's creeping out of bankruptcy ("Court order finalizes sale of Harborplace to Baltimore investment management firm," WBAL-TV).

-- "Baltimore's Harborplace in bankruptcy and what that says about certain development trends in urban revitalization," 2019

There have been a bunch of reports and concept papers in the interim.

From the op-ed:

Baltimore has a wonderful opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons as my father, James Rouse, used to say. He also used to say, “Every problem is but a challenge, and a challenge is an opportunity in disguise. And when confronting a problem start by thinking first of what things would be like if they worked and let reality compromise you later.”

The current state of Harborplace is for sure a sad one. Tearing down the existing pavillion buildings and replacing them with Harbor East style high rises, with new first floor tenants (hopefully this is not being contemplated), might make the spreadsheets work, but it will not produce the lemonade that Baltimore needs. And the lemons that we need to confront are even larger than the decisions involved in how to revive Harborplace.

... So in thinking about how to make the Harborplace renovation work, we can’t just think about building for rich people who want to live or work in high rises. We need to think big and capture and captivate those visitors to our Convention Center and our stadiums with a good reason and an easy way to come visit the Inner Harbor. As American Visionary Arts Musuem founder Rebecca Hoffberger has suggested, we should celebrate Baltimore heroes along Conway and Pratt streets with sculptures and imaginatively written quotes from Frank Robinson, Cal Ripken, Edgar Allan Poe, Billie Holiday, Frederick Douglass, Elijah Cummings and others.

...  Both pavillion buildings should be saved, and green and/or solar roofs should be added. Take every opportunity to educate about global warming mitigation. Tearing down buildings is not green!

Baltimore’s mayor and Maryland’s governor need to appoint a task force that looks at both the ideas that work in other great cities around the world — such as the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Sydney Opera House, The Charles Bridge in Prague, the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen and Pikes Place Market in Seattle — and ideas that have been proposed for Baltimore’s reinvention, such as the Baltimore Lift, which would use gondolas for mass transit and also offer a fun ride and way of seeing the city. An Inner Harbor Bridge between Fells Point and Federal Hill has been proposed in various forms by several people and groups. The Baltimore Museum of Art once proposed opening a branch in the Power Plant.

The task force should include David Cordish of the Cordish Companies, which has created great urban entertainment in many American cities, including Baltimore’s Power Plant Live!; and Mike Hankin and Laurie Schwartz, who have done a terrific job with The Waterfront Partnership in reinventing Rash Field. Perhaps the task force could ask Janet Marie Smith, who saved the warehouse at Camden Yards and put Baltimore on the map for inner city stadiums, to recommend urban planners for the job of sorting through and presenting the best possibilities for a reinvented Inner Harbor.

We need a new vision for our Inner Harbor, not just new buildings for Harborplace. Let’s start by thinking about what things would be like if they worked for all Baltimore’s residents and visitors. Where there are problems, there is opportunity. Getting the Inner Harbor right is an opportunity that will not come again in our lifetimes; it offers the chance to create an economic and perceptual transformation.

Instead of a task force.  Do a plan.  Have an advisory committee with developers and key organizations.  Have a public process.  Include transportation, arts and culture, and tourism planning elements.

Don't dumb it down.  And yes, reference the great projects around the world, which ironically often referenced Harborplace to justify their efforts.

This journal article in particularly highlights Harborplace as a model for waterfront revitalization efforts in Europe.

--  "On the Revitalized Waterfront: Creative Milieu for Creative Tourism," Sustainability Journal, 2013

Baltimore used to have a pretty robust planning arm, although it was somewhat beleaguered in the face of all of Baltimore's other needs.  This might be a way to amp up the planning function.

And combine it with other initiatives around transit and other ways to re-attract residents and business to the city.

-- "Transit agenda for Greater Baltimore," 2021

Baltimore's Harborplace in bankruptcy and what that says about certain development trends in urban revitalization

The Light Street pavilion at Harborplace, the view from next to the USS Constellation. Zach Phillips, Baltimore Business Journal..

The Baltimore Sun and Baltimore Business Journal ("Harborplace put into receivership, opening door for new ownership") are reporting that Baltimore's Harborplace development is in bankruptcy.

Baltimore's Harborplace, a set of retail buildings on the waterfront of the city's Inner Harbor, was the first example of what was then called a festival marketplace, a conglomeration of retail and restaurants aiming to draw visitors--in-area and people outside of the area ("tourists")--to the "inner city" and the waterfront.

It was done by pioneering developer James Rouse, whose development company has since gone through a couple acquisitions, although Harborplace hasn't been controlled by a Rouse-successor firm for many years.

The property owner is in the process of "returning the keys to the mortgage holder," which is a form of bankruptcy for the property.  It's cheaper for the developer and the bank to take over the property in this manner rather than to go through a bunch of litigation.

Baltimore's problem is that Harborplace has needed refreshing for a long time, the current owner, Ashkenasy Acquisitions (which also has the leasehold for Washington's Union Station retail section) isn't well placed to do quality and innovative redevelopment.

This is further complicated by the post-Freddie Brown period of unrest in the city which has seriously impacted visitor numbers, combined with a Republican-led state government, many other pressing redevelopment needs within the city that aren't on the waterfront such as Park Heights, and a focus elsewhere in the city by other developers.

WRT how extending the waterfront makes Harborplace less competitive, there has been competitive waterfront development in "Harbor East" and Canton, where the cruise terminal is, and  the owner of Under Armour, Scott Plank, is heavily invested in redeveloping a different section of the city's formerly industrial waterfront ("The Port Covington Redevelopment Project Examined," Baltimore Sun) has contributed to the property's failure.

-- "Cordish: 'Courageous' city leadership needed to help fix Harborplace," BBJ
-- "'I would love to see it replaced': Mayor Young weighs in on Harborplace," BBJ

What's happened with Harborplace is important for at least three reasons.

1.  It was the first example of the "festival marketplace," and the concept has been employed elsewhere in the US as an approach to spark revitalization, including the prominent examples of Faneuil Hall in Boston and South Street Seaport in New York City.

Illustration from a c. 1983 New York Times article on the South Street Seaport.

Although the attempt in NYC was never very successful, probably because it was too ersatz and the city already has so many other destinations and attractions to offer.

Other developers, such as the redevelopment program of the Ferry Building in San Francisco, used the same model.

-- "Formula for "Festival Marketplaces"," Washington Post, 1986

2.  It was one of the earliest examples of adaptive reuse of maritime and industrially used spaces on a waterfront employing a real estate development strategy focused on attracting visitors to buildings redeveloped with restaurants, retail, and attractions, often with a maritime focus including ships, museums, etc.

The Inner Harbor development sparked similar ventures world-wide ("On the Revitalized Waterfront: Creative Milieu for Creative Tourism," Sustainability Journal, 2013).  For example, in Liverpool and to some extent, Hamburg.

3.  More recently, Ashkenasy Acquisition, a real estate development firm, has specialized in owning these types of properities in NYC, DC, Boston, and Baltimore.  But they take a non-unique approach, often replacing locally owned businesses with chains.

Waterfront redevelopment projects continue apace. Cities large and small ("Rust Belt Cities Turn to Riverfront Development for Economic Boost) ," US News & World Report) continue to pursue retail-led redevelopment of waterfront properties.

DC has two such developments, The Wharf in Southwest and Navy Yard in Southeast.

The Chicago River has a wide variety of development initiatives alongside, including various placemaking projects initiated by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Some communities have done revitalization initiatives along rivers and canals that aren't traditionally navigable, such as the Bricktown Canal in Oklahoma City and San Antonio's Riverwalk.

Problems with the "product type. But as the Baltimore example proves, this product type has issues.

Tension between developer-led initiatives and public planning.  Developer-led programs can be overly real estate focused, like Harborplace, which is restaurants and tourist-oriented retail, complemented by some separately run visitor attractions elsewhere on the waterfront.

Public planning initiatives can do a better job of integrating a variety of uses, including some maritime uses like docks, piers, and marinas, and cultural uses such as museums like the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool or other uses, such as the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in HafenCity Hamburg or the Villa Méditerranée exhibition hall in Marseille ("Marseille's £6bn Capital of Culture rebirth," Guardian).

Maintaining maritime uses.  Rarely, some communities, such as Portland, Maine, which still has a "working waterfront," with seafood-related businesses "working the waters" aim to keep a maritime focus ("Fishermen launch campaign to protect Portland's working waterfront," Portland Press-Herald).

In Hoboken, New Jersey, there is tension between the city, which wants to redevelop an active industrial site, and the maritime business that is based there ("Hoboken Nonprofit, Ferry Company Clash On Dry Dock," Patch).

Constant refreshment may be required.  One of the problems with retail-oriented waterfront revitalization is that it tends to be highly touristified with ersatz experiences that aren't super authentic, so after awhile local residents stop visiting and then somewhat later, the experience becomes tired and may require frequent refreshment.

For example, at Harborplace, over time local businesses tended to be replaced with national chains and establishments like California Pizza Kitchen don't provide much in the way of unique experiences.

-- "Waterfront revitalization: The Wharf in DC and Baltimore's Harborplace," 2016
-- "Rebooting the Festival Marketplace," Design Observer, 2008

A related lesson is that the mix of retail and attractions with a focus on maintaining relevant local identity and experience needs to be constantly planned for and adjusted.

Maintaining maritime attractions is expensive.  Another problem is the cost of maintaining maritime-related attractions, specifically, "ships" ("D-Day draws attention to WWII ships veterans aim to save," USA Today); "Baltimore’s WWII-era Liberty ship could be homeless soon," Associated Press).

John Brown Liberty Ship.

From the latter article:

The John W. Brown, named for an American labor-union leader, was built in 41 days and launched from Baltimore’s Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard on Sept. 7, 1942 — one of 384 Liberty ships built here. After making 13 trips during the war, it was loaned in 1946 to New York City. There, it served as a maritime high school until 1982.

After floating dormant in New York and, later, Norfolk, the ship found a home, and the people to care for it, in Baltimore. It arrived here in August 1988 and following extensive renovations, almost all accomplished with volunteer labor, was back to sailing under its own power in August 1991.

The ship moved last week from Canton’s Pier 1, where it had been berthed for much of the past 30 years, to the nearby Pier C. Pier C is currently a secured pier, meaning public access is limited. John Brown officials say they are working with Rukert to ensure the public can continue visiting the ship regularly.

For most of its years here, the John W. Brown has offered trips down the Chesapeake, usually to the bay bridge and back — 110 such cruises since 1991. Staffed with actual crew as well as actors portraying military personnel and others — the Andrews Sisters, comedians Abbott and Costello, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gen. Douglas MacArthur — the hours-long journeys do their best to evoke the war years.

Most communities lack the financial resources necessary to keep ships in good working order, which because they are in water, need constant maintenance and occasional full overhauls in drydock, the latter being complicated by the fact that there are few such facilities remaining in the US that can do the work.

(In DC, such ships used to be berthed at the Navy Yard, but the cost of doing so, and reconstruction of the South Capitol Bridge isn't designed to accommodate sea-going ships, led the US Navy to cease doing so.)

Cruise terminal in HafenCity, Hamburg.

Catering to cruise ships.  While some cities like Venice have "too many tourists" and are especially overrun by day trippers from cruise ships, cities less popular as tourist destinations, such as Liverpool and Hamburg, have developed cruise terminals on their downtown-adjacent waterfronts, and this helps bring in visitors.

By contrast, in Baltimore, the cruise terminal is in Canton.  While there are probably navigation issues, having a cruise ship terminal in the Inner Harbor could have added additional vitality to the waterfront.

The River Spirit Hotel and Casino is surrounded by flood waters from the Arkansas River on Friday in Tulsa, Okla. Tom Gilbert | Tulsa World.

Climate change/flooding.  Superstorm Sandy wiped out waterfront developments in New York City and New Jersey, including the South Street Seaport.

Today, unprecedented flooding in the Midwest and the South impacts waterfront development in a slew of cities including Tulsa, Oklahoma and Davenport, Iowa--the latter city had previously been heralded for creating a waterfront that would accommodate floods, but today's floods have overwhelmed it.

Tulsa has been a pioneer in watershed and flood management, after flood in 1984 resulted in 14 deaths ("From Roof Top to River: Tulsa's Approach to Floodplain and Stormwater Management," Tulsa Partners). That city has a pioneering Citywide Flood and Stormwater Management Plan.

Need for good advocacy groups.  Not only are there issues about fishable-swimmable, but about development and management.  While the latter can be criticized as being real estate focused, Baltimore's Waterfront Partnership functions as a business improvement district for part of the waterfront and they seem to be doing interesting work.

National Tourism and Travel Week 2019: DC recap | DC needs a tourism development and management plan

May 5-11 was National Tourism and Travel Week with the theme "Travel Matters," and I wrote a bunch of pieces on the topic.

"(US) National Travel and Tourism Week, 2019: May 5th-11th " was an overarching piece while these pieces focused specifically on Washington DC.

-- "(US) National Travel and Tourism Week, 2019: DC's tourism tax revenue stream should support sub-city efforts" (Saturday)
-- "DC's local museums and sites need a combo pass for visitors" (Friday)
-- "DC should create an annual city-wide Doors Open event" (Friday)
-- "A visitor centers agenda for DC" (Thursday)
-- "Transit Wayfinding lessons from Japan" (Wednesday)
-- "While I do advocate for a strong local cultural plan for DC, there's something attractive about distributing busts of former presidents around the city?" (Sunday)

While my pieces definitely argue that DC proper could do a lot better in tourism development, management and marketing, ironically, last Thursday ("Record 21.9 million domestic tourists visited DC last year") the Washington Post reported that DC tourism experienced a record year in 2018, although the government shutdown was not an auspicious kickoff to 2019 ("DC hotels survive off-peak shutdown," WTOP-radio).

Of course, DC tourism does well, even with a nativist Executive Branch, because it is a key place for telling the national story of the United States, is home to high quality (but for the most part, not necessarily world class) federal museums, etc., and this is important to both domestic and international visitor markets.

The questions few people seem to be asking are around how good a job is DC doing in developing tourism as an element of the city's economic development programming and are there gaps that can and should be addressed within the offer?

The collective point of these entries is that DC needs a comprehensive Tourism Development, Management, and Marketing Plan.

I first made this point in 2005, in the blog entry, "We are all destination managers now." The basic point is that if we make places great "for us," they are attractive to others.

Having tourism discussed as part of the Economic Development Element of the Comprehensive Plan isn't enough. Although the National Capital Planning Commission, which is responsible for the Federal Elements of the DC Comprehensive Plan does have a Visitors and Commemoration Element.

It happens I've suggested a sub-city plan for Capitol Hill for at least 8 years, but the elected officials I talked to about this never really seem to grasp the point.

Tourism development plans. The first city tourism plan I ever came across was for Charleston, SC although the first iteration focused almost exclusively on transportation demand management. The second Charleston plan was comprehensive but had some recommendations that were justifiably criticized, such as its recommendations for accommodating cruise ships.

Many people argue about the touristification and overtourism within the city. In fact, last Wednesday's New York Times Food section had a great piece about this concerning the restaurant sector ("As Mainstays Depart, Charleston Asks Where Its Restaurant Scene Is Going") in Charleston, South Carolina.

But that's something plans can and should address.

Tourism development planning.  Most states and provinces in North America do quite a good job at tourism development, sponsor annual conferences, technical workshops, distribute technical assistance publications, etc. and that includes area states like Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.  Many cities do this also.  But DC is a laggard.

The right sidebar heading "Tourism Resources -- General" lists a number of such resources.  Although the list is likely in need of updating, and it's hardly comprehensive.

Kathy Smith's Capital Assets: A Report on the Tourist Potential of Neighborhood Heritage and Culture Sites in Washington, D.C. is a great starting point for assessing opportunities within DC, although as discussed in the series of entries, there are plenty of other gaps in the offer that need to be address beyond asset development.

For me, the point would be to have a standalone city-wide plan, not just a section in the Economic Development Element of the Comprehensive Plan.

It should also include sub-plans for specific areas of the city, such as Capitol Hill, Georgetown, and the "Trail Towns" along the Anacostia River.

And a recognition that how the tourism tax revenue stream is utilized needs to be broadened beyond the Convention Center and related assets, including direct support for destination development and marketing sub-districts of the city.

Washington DC section of attraction brochures, City of Fairfax Visitor Center


Cultural heritage tourism.  The kind of work that Kathy Smith did falls under the rubric of "heritage tourism."  The National Trust for Historic Preservation used to have a unit doing this kind of work and like with Main Street commercial district revitalization, they would help communities interested in pursuing this by pulling together a resource team to come to the city and produce an assessment and opportunity plan.

DC's rowhouse neighborhoods are a distinctive element of the city's architecture and uniqueness.

While tourists seeking out cultural sites and experiences generally "spend more and stay longer" the reality is that DC is in the odd position of being consumed almost exclusively for its place in the telling of the national story.  So the city needs to work doubly hard to promote the local experience as complementary to and a line extension of the national narrative.

Cultural landscape as an organizing concept: managing the city as a whole.  A key concept in the planning of heritage areas--there are various federal, state, and local designations for heritage areas and parks--is treating the entire area as a "cultural landscape" and planning and managing resources at that scale.

-- Heritage Areas: Background, Proposals, and Current Issues, Congressional Research Service
-- Managing Historic Cities, UNESCO World Heritage Centre
-- THE ROAD TO SUCCESS - A NEW APPROACH TO THE MANAGEMENT OF HISTORIC TOWNS, URBACT
-- Economics of Uniqueness: Investing in Historic City Cores and Cultural Heritage Assets for Sustainable Development, World Bank
-- Alliance of National Heritage Areas (it used to include members of state and local heritage areas, not just federally designated heritage areas, but that's changed)

I argue that DC doesn't need to be a formally designated heritage area to manage itself like one.

Touristification

Notions Capital calls our attention to an article about the downsides of touristification in Barcelona ("Mass tourism can kill a city – just ask Barcelona’s residents," Guardian).

There has been a lot of academic and other focus on the issue for the last 15 years or so, especially in places like Venice ("Why Venice should charge every tourist €30," Art Newspaper) and with the publication of much literature including the tome The Tourist City, published in 1999.

Venice tourist tax

Venice did levy a tourist tax effective in 2011.  To do so required a change in national laws.  It's not clear if there is a tax on cruise visitors (probably) separately.  The tax is on the first five days of overnight stays, and varies according to the season (high and low), location, and type of accommodation.  (E.g. a hostel-based visitor doesn't pay, although that is scheduled to change next month.)

Interestingly, while off-loading large groups of tourists from cruise ships causes a lot of intense use, it doesn't appear that the city charges a dis-embarkation fee on cruise ship-based visitors.

The Travel Weekly story "Ports of Contention," discusses anti-cruise ship organizing by local residents in Charleston, Key West, and Venice.

Public markets as tourist places.  Other places where touristification can be problematic are public markets, like Pike Place Market in Seattle.  Because so many of the visitors are tourists, the food vendors don't sell that much food, and over time more of the sheds have been converted to non-food retail.

But part of the issue too is the shift in how people shop for food in the US, mostly through supermarkets, but also combination stores (like Walmart or Target) and the purchase of prepared foods, making it harder for public markets and farmers markets to compete and making tourist visits an increasing proportion of total visits.

Touristification vs. embedding (sustainable tourism).  It's interesting because obviously I was just in Germany (bad wifi connections in Hamburg meant I didn't do any blogging from there), but on the plane coming back turns out there was a colleague who had been on a trip in Denmark (the plane to the US left from Copenhagen but sadly I didn't get to schedule the trip in a manner to be able to spend time in Denmark) who had traveled with friends in Denmark and the Baltic states--with one of the places they stayed being a cottage on the Baltic Sea, one of the many places that they stayed in having been booked via airbnb.

... anyway, we discussed being tourists but experiencing places more as part of the local way of living versus the more traditional big hotels-cruises method.  E.g., by staying in an apartment or house or cottage in a neighborhood as opposed to a branded hotel in a tourist district.

I stayed in hotels, but unique ones (Motel One is a hotel chain in Germany that is pretty cool, I stayed there in Essen--oh, the quality of the coffee!, made from a machine) even if part of chains or hotel groups that happened to be amazingly close to the city's main train stations, and not that expensive, in a way that allowed me to be more "embedded" in the local community (e.g., I learned that Germany has a third discount supermarket chain called Penny and wandering through a square (platz) by the hotel to take photos, got propositioned, but before 11am -- I guess it was a "sex-oriented" district--but a block from the train station--judging by the number of shops promoting "kino," slinky clothing, and other stuff) than you can by "big tourism."

Although the extent to which you are embedded in the local community versus being a mass tourist comes down to your own attitude.  Researchers call this "the tourist bubble" when tourists visit other places but are most comfortable consuming the new place in familiar ways (which is why chain restaurants, not local establishments, are often big in tourist destinations) rather than in "adventuresome" ways, etc.

It happened on Saturday I wandered through both Hamburg Family Day (climbing contraption right) and the Alster Lake Carnival just by chance, because of how I wander around in a city center when I arrive in a place as an "urban" or "city break" ("Development of Thessaloniki, Greece as a City Break tourism destination") tourist.

Similarly, in Essen over the weekend they had their big music festival, a bunch of music stages with a variety of types of music scattered throughout the city's pedestrianized shopping district (apparently Essen was Germany's first pedestrianized city core shopping district).

Still, a music event like Essen Original is hard to pull off in a mixed use district with lots of residents because residents would not stand for having loud music outside their doors til not quite 1am.

This isn't a great video (just from my old Kodak camera) but is an example of the loud music played on some of the stages.  This was at Weberplatz, which is next to a church.  I just can't imagine a similar concert next to one of Downtown DC's big churches or residences.  I think it's the band Rockstah.  And it happened that my hotel room looked out onto Kennedyplatz, where the main stage was located, although my room was to the back of the stage.

Managing tourism while preserving locally-serving retail

It happens that on the plane I was reading Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns by Dover and Massengale on the plane (not 100% but very good on the experiential qualities of what our road network should be--a review to come) and they have an extensive case study on Nantucket.

I didn't realize that because the whaling industry died in the 1840s-1850s, that Nantucket Island began repositioning as a resort area starting in the 1870s, and has issues similar to places like Barcelona, Venice, Charleston and Key West, although not with regard to cruise ship offloadings.

The Island has strong preservation standards (dating to earlier than the 1970s) and more recently they've instituted formula retail restrictions, which is rare for any community. BUT, even as problems with touristification have risen, at least they only have one main shopping district, so there can still be "useful retail," because the retail area is concentrated.

Managing the negative effects of tourism is tricky.  There are at least three elements.  One is "overuse" or consumption of spaces that have limited capacity.  The other is how the retail mix shifts to focus on tourists and away from serving residents.

The last issue is the mitigation of retail shift and how it is dependent on the maintenance of a large contingent of residents.  The ability to maintain locally-serving retail is dependent on how many residents still live there (you can't support a hardware or grocery store without customers), escalating rents, and controls on retail uses.

For example, Nantucket has a very strong "formula retail" ordinance which means you'll never see a McDonalds or Starbucks there; Laguna Beach, California has a "neighborhood serving retail" zoning overlay to help protect bookstores, hardware stores, and similar uses from being displaced, etc.

Maintaining a core traditional shopping district.  Essen and Hamburg (left, Spitalerstrasse) have a bunch of shopping centers, but at the same time, they've maintained an important core shopping district in the center of the city, and in both cases, anchored by the main railroad station, which in each city is a very active hub for 100s or 1000s of rail trips--subway, tram (in Essen), suburban railroad, regional railroad,  intercity (national) railroad, and inter-country railroad trips (depending on the station), plus local and inter-city buses and tourist buses.

A key element of the success of these districts is a concentration of retail along a pedestrian prioritized core.  Parallel to Spitalerstrasse is Monckebergstrasse, which is a "transitway" for sustainable modes--bus, taxi, bike, pedicab--with regular car traffic banned (except overnight).  That also concentrates potential customers for the retail.

In the US we have too much retail space per capita generally.

But as long as planning-zoning is mostly laissez faire and retail can be built everywhere, the old spaces keep being outspanned by newer and usually further out spaces.  (Store at right in Essen, Germany.)

It also doesn't help that most retail categories are dominated by national chains, and with consolidation, fewer and fewer representatives in each category.

By contrast, there are plenty of retail chains in Germany, but less consolidation.  And there are plenty of European and US chains active in the market too, like H&M or TJ MAXX.

Train stations as urban hubs and customer concentrators.  Hamburg is big but two-thirds the size of New York City in terms of land, and with much less population, about 1.8m residents versus 8+ million residents, with 5 million residents in the metropolitan area which crosses a couple states.

When I got out of the train station (on the wrong side from my hotel, but where the retail is) I was amazed at the number of people.

It felt like NYC.

The train station was so so busy, like Grand Central or Penn Station (helped of course by the deep and wide local, regional, and national rail transit networks).  That activity extended outside, around and past the station, into the central shopping district.

But according to Wikipedia (photo by Ameins), the Hamburg train station is the busiest in Germany, with 450,000 passengers moving through the station each day.  Penn Station has 600,000 daily riders moving through the station.

There are only a few places that feel that busy in DC--Connecticut and K Streets NW, Georgetown, and the area around the Verizon Center.

Having such a traffic generator so tightly integrated into the shopping district significantly supports its success.

Interesting resource: Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice

-- website

The articles are open access.

National Travel and Tourism Week started this weekend

 Press release

One of my earliest blog entries, from February 2005, is about "town-city" branding.  I was heavily involved in the Main Street commercial district revitalization movement then, and I made a succinct point that "we are all destination managers now" because regardless of what consumer segment--residents, office workers, in-region visitors, out-of-region tourists (by definition, a tourist is someone who spends a night in an accommodation), we'd best focus on "managing" the quality of place.

And that making places great for residents also makes them attractive to others, that the revenue stream from tourism can be used to support local placemaking initiatives.

For example, while most of DC's tourism tax revenue stream (hotel taxes, restaurant taxes, arguably some of the parking taxes) pays for the Convention Center, it could be used more strategically to fund strategic improvement in culture and other placemaking initiatives, as well as for transit improvements.

I've written about that in terms of cultural planning, here:  "Cultural resources planning in DC: in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

But this book, Tourism Development Handbook: A Practical Approach to Planning and Marketing by Kerry Godfrey and Jackie Clarke, is an excellent resource on tourism planning and how to make tourism development work for local communities.

A different resource from Nova Scotia, the tourism development assessment workbook, is particularly good with regard to self-assessment (internal review and analysis) of communities.  While it's focused on tourism, I think it's relevant to commercial district revitalization too because a big problem with neighborhood- and community revitalization is that most people are focused on image building, community building and cheerleading--"we're great!"--rather than being honest about weaknesses and need for improvement, not just strengths.

In terms of its being relevant beyond tourism, the section on restaurants is just as relevant to locally-focused commercial district revitalization.

New York City is the #1 tourist destination in the U.S.

and has achieved its goal of 50 million annual visitors 4 years early. See "New York's great tourism leap: The city draws more travelers than anywhere else in the U.S.from the Los Angeles Times.

From the article:

At $47 billion a year, tourism has grown to be New York's fifth-largest industry and the fastest-growing sector of its economy, which the mayor has said softened the effects of the Great Recession on the city. Tourism dropped 3% in 2009, but picked right up again and now is responsible for 320,000 jobs.

It helped that dozens of new hotels sprouted in all five boroughs, many in Manhattan's old Garment District, so that the city now has 90,000 rooms with another 7,000 in the pipeline. The average hotel stay costs $314 a night.

Statistics from 2010, the last full year for which numbers are available, stand out. Not only was New York America's most popular destination, outpacing Orlando in domestic travelers, but the city also accounted for 33% of all overseas travel to the United States.

Together, Los Angeles and Miami — the second and third most popular destinations — got fewer foreign visitors in 2010 than New York did.

Really good article on tourism marketing

Was in last week's Baltimore City Paper, "Happy?: Baltimore's latest tourism campaign rekindles the city's ongoing branding issues."

One of the best I've read in the popular press, the story covers the topic very thoroughly in a limited amount of space and makes an interesting distinction about how destination marketing organizations have to market to outside audiences, but the inside audience is the most judgmental about the campaigns.

Prnewsfoto/Visit Baltimore, Diane Bondareff

More than 250 people set a new world record for the largest human smiley face in the Inner Harbor May 13 to help launch visit Baltimore's "Find Your Happy Place" campaign.

Interesting newspaper series on tourism and local economic development

One of the reasons that I love newspapers is that in their heyday, they had reach--a lot of potential impact-- and depth--they could devote time and space to important issues. TV is pretty much worthless, they focus on images and shock--the medium doesn't lend itself to deep consideration of anything, except in documentaries, and most people don't have the time to watch a documentary, but most importantly, documentaries or long form television takes a lot more time and money than it does to do the equivalent with words and photos.

It's not available online anymore, but newspapers like the Philadelphia Daily News and the Camden Courier Post ran great series on local redevelopment issues. PDN's series was called "Rethinking Philadelphia" and the Camden paper ran two special sections on future visioning. And in fact, the Youngstown Vindicator was one of the founders of the Youngstown 2010 effort, focused on repositioning and resizing that otherwise shrinking community.

This week, the Vicksburg Post in Mississippi has run a series of stories on tourism, the local economy, and opportunities for improvement, based on a project done by the paper in conjunction with a team of journalism students from Mis. Too bad we aren't getting this kind of enterprise reporting locally (of course, corruption and government failure make for much better copy, and since there is so much of it, the local newspapers don't have time to get to more in depth projects maybe...).

Part 1: If you build it, they will come

Part 2: Military park looks ahead to 150th anniversary

Part 3: Vibrancy for residents might hold key to city future

Part 4: Limited public transit is a driving concern

Part 5: No crystal ball on convention center hotel

Part 6: Nature a great natural resource in area

Part 7: As a draw, music offerings could use real 'juke joint'

Part 8: New recreational parks could equal 'major bucks'

Vicksburg Tourism: 'Immersion' experiences increasingly important

Movies and tourism and touristification

After the movie Sideways, featuring a journey of a couple friends in the wine country not of Napa or Sonoma, but Santa Barbara, tourism skyrocketed, and the local tourism agency created a wine tour-trail based on the movie. See "Sideways: Wine Country movie has tourism only headed up" and "Have Movie, Will Travel" from the American Way airline magazine.

- Touristification
- Sideways, The Winery Tour

In today's Seattle Times, Emerson Richards writes in "Don't let 'Twilight' suck the life out of Forks" about his worries that Forks, Washington, featured in the Twilight series of vampire stories, could get wrecked by people going to find what doesn't exist (vampires, werewolves, Bella, Edward, etc.) and the town being made over in response, in order to maintain appeal to tourists. From the article:

The tourists going to Forks are choosing to do so not for the real, natural beauty and sincere character of the town, but rather to try to relive or recreate or be a part of fictional vampire love affairs. This is yet another marker that our society is choosing escapism. Art as "Twilight" series author Stephanie Meyer has called her artistically and intellectually bankrupt pulp fiction — should inspire and beget more art, not the commercialization, and therefore, degradation of genuine America

Parents should not send their children to Forks until they can appreciate it for what it is. Do not let Forks become disingenuous. It is not the home of Edward and Bella. It is not a land protected by Native American werewolves. Do not turn this honest town into another Silver City, where the only remnants of the advertised Wild West past lay alongside the bones buried in the Comstock Cemetery in the desert outside of town.

Forks is purer than that. Forks has its own natural enchantments. Forks is what is left of true America. It is America without Starbucks, America without Disney and without superficiality.

Forks is all that is right with America set in beautiful landscapes of rock, tree and moss. And that is why Forks should be visited.

Please, do not let Forks suck!