Step up and vision an interconnected public realm

I guess my biggest problem with the cultural side of economic development in DC is that major opportunities for leverage are often missed.

With regard to cultural assets, the fact that the Arts and Culture element of the Comprehensive Plan is but a grab bag of ideas is a real problem. The lack of a solid parks and recreation master plan is another problem. Not to mention the relatively vision-less Capital Space Plan for federal and local parks planning. (I haven't had a chance to review the release of the National Park Service's plan for the National Mall.)

So is the fact that DC doesn't do what we might call sub-district planning--sure we have 'small area' plans, but small area plans are basically development guidance, they aren't comprehensive community-wide plans--becomes a real problem since breakthrough planning ideas and concepts usually come around only once in a lifetime. And if you miss the opportunity, it's gone forever (at least for a couple generations).

I have mentioned before that I was fortunate to see a presentation by David Barth of AECOM (formerly Glatting Jackson) at the 2005 APA convention on best practices park planning via his framework of what he calls "city revival" -- which combines City Beautiful ideas of parks planning with smart growth ideas and new urbanism.

He continues to refine these ideas even though the City Revival framework has not been published in textbook form (one place it can be read is in this appendix of the City of Tampa Parks Master Plan).

I was working up a concept for the bicycle and pedestrian plan for Baltimore County that I call "Signature Streets" -- combining smart growth and livability/quality of life/placemaking concepts, the county's commitment to investing in existing areas (Maryland's Priority Funding Areas, along with the county's "Renaissance" and community conservation revitalization programs), sustainable transportation (walking, biking, transit), and "complete streets" principles -- as a way to justify the financial cost of reworking particular roads as complete streets and I came about a more recent presentation by Barth and Carlos Perez, Leadership and the Role of Parks and Recreation in the New Economy.

Pages 6 and 7 of this presentation blew me away in terms of how they depict graphically the idea of "The Public Realm as an Interconnected System" and how sidewalks, bikeways, trails, streets, greenways, and transit are the links between the various components.

This is exactly the idea I was trying to convey with the "Signature Streets" concept--that it is more than a "complete street" it's about the public realm and civic assets and placemaking more broadly.

It's also relevant to the discussion touched off by Philip Kennicott in the Sunday Washington Post, in "In siting a national Latino museum, the best view is the long view about a proposed National Museum of the American Latino, and how if located in the Banneker Overlook area of L'Enfant Plaza, with the right set of additional components, could be an augur of improvement and revitalization of the public realm in that area. From the article:

The Juggernaut of Museum Politics is moving again, straight toward the Mall. This time it's a proposal for a National Museum of the American Latino, and the momentum is coming from a commission created by law in 2008. The 23-member panel is studying the feasibility of a museum in Washington to celebrate "the art, history and culture of the Latino population of the United States."

The commission made its first formal presentation to the National Capital Planning Commission on July 1, sharing with the planning oversight group a shortlist of possible sites for the museum. The NCPC will respond in August, and the museum commission will report back to Congress in September.

But things are moving fast, even at this preliminary stage. In April, there were nine possible locations on the list, according to Henry R. Muñoz III, a San Antonio-based designer and entrepreneur who is the commission chair. Now the shortlist is down to four.

And they are all on or adjacent to the Mall. Anyone who cherishes the thought that the Mall is "a substantially completed work of civic art" -- the phrase was used by Congress in 2003 in legislation meant to limit new construction -- will find little comfort in the current course of events. There is always a loophole, especially if an interest group is powerful enough to lobby Congress. Witness the appalling plan to construct an unnecessary visitors center for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, one of the most shameless land grabs in the history of the deeply contested Mall.

Washingtonians need not look to the Fenty administration, either, for much comfort. The District's Office of Planning bounced questions about the new museum over to the mayor's office, whose spokesperson e-mailed this: "The District hasn't taken an official position."

Instead, we're likely to get another museum crammed into the National Mall, and lose the opportunity to extend the quality and depth of the city's public realm.

Just as how Roger Lewis wrote in the Post, "Southeast D.C. Project Asked Too Much of the Private Sector" about Poplar Point and how DC needs to put forward a plan rather than expect a great master plan to be provided by the private sector, the city ought to step up. From the Lewis article:

Asking the private sector to plan and carry out the redevelopment of large, publicly owned tracts of land might seem like a good idea, but it can be the wrong idea. Sometimes cities themselves must do the work and shoulder the responsibility for planning new neighborhoods. ....

Several years ago, the National Park Service agreed to convey Poplar Point's federally owned riverfront parkland to the D.C. government. The District sponsored a competition to select a master plan and master developer that would finance front-end site development. The theory was that return on that investment would be generated through greatly increased value and the sale of developed parcels. ...

The company's withdrawal illuminates the fallacies of the District's Poplar Point strategy. Given the economic climate, the developer was asked to predict, promise and risk too much. It was unrealistic to demand a visionary program and plan whose feasibility was questionable from the outset and then expect the developer to provide all the financing. ...

But the city should not conduct another competition. It should prepare and adopt its own framework plan of streets, blocks, civic spaces, parks and key public facilities. This is the kind of plan for the city that Pierre L'Enfant created at the end of the 18th century, and it's a planning tradition that should continue.

Because it establishes the pattern and character of the public realm for generations, an urban framework plan must embody a long-term vision. It must incorporate design criteria and guidelines governing the form of development -- building mass and height, density and streetscape design -- and flexibly accommodate many land uses.

With such a plan, private and public investments can produce projects block by block, street by street, parcel by parcel. Inevitably, market and financial conditions, not preconceived schedules, determine the pace and type of development.

Without providing an alternative and thorough conceptualization of arts and cultural development across the city, in part as an "interconnected public realm," the city likely will continue to lose out on opportunities that most other cities will never have, because of the fact that DC is the national capital.

I think it's ironic that the New York Times reports how many cities across the country are being influenced by New York City's High Line project, see "After Elevated Park's Success, Other Cities Look Up" just as how some cities found inspiration in Chicago's Millennium Park project (see "Acres of Art" also from the New York Times), while DC cultural planning efforts seem to be stuck.

There is no question that it is a delicate balance between large arts institutions and ground up efforts that support arts production. Still, the right plan can work to do both, by taking advantage of the fact that many arts and cultural organizations want to locate here, because it is the national capital.