Plans
- Posted by ryan on October 14th, 2009 filed in Cities
Have a look at this. I’m sure it’s not perfect (I suspect environmentalists can explain lots of reasons why channeling the Anacostia would be a bad idea), but it’s nice isn’t it? Everyone loves Paris, and yet we scrupulously avoid trying build anything remotely like it.
Two things occur to me while looking at the plan. The first is that it’s headache inducing to think about the hurdles, and decades, something like this would have to go through to become reality. It’s depressing that America doesn’t really do grand anymore, but hey, that’s where we are.
The second point is more tangible. Confronted with a project like this, just about everyone would blanch and suck in their breath and say there’s no way the cost is acceptable. No way. But this proposal would create a lot of usable land that would be very valuable land. And it would increase the value of existing land, probably by a lot. And those value gains would persist for a long period of time, perhaps indefinitely.
Mention things like tearing down or burying highways, building new transit, or making major public improvements and the discussion is all about the cost. But if you make your city a more attractive, accessible, and usable place you enjoy benefits from that more or less in perpetuity. How long has Paris benefitted from being a beautiful place?
October 14th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
I think we do grand. Maybe not quite on THAT scale.
And when did we ever. Plans are plans. But things don’t often get built that way. It easily took 100 years for Washington to even realize the L’Enfant plan — and it’s not really what he planned anyway. Since East Capitol was supposed to be downtown. And where RFK is was supposed to be the wharf. The Plan for Chicago only ever got a small portion built. Although it did influence the network of roads and arterials.
But look at Battery Park, or the enormous plans SF has built and acted on recently — from the Mission Bay to the Embarcadero. And soon Candlestick Point and the Navy Yard. In fact there’s tons of planning around the Bay Area on that scale in relationship to base closings.) And Chicago is implementing a riverwalk that’s going to add a new waterfront area and pedestrian space. NYC has plans do redo the entire system of parks near the and paths along the East River. Miles and miles of parks.
Maybe DC doesn’t do grand like that but DC might not have the kinds of space left. It doesn’t have a lot of post industrial land to make reconnect to the city.
So I think this is great. It’s good to have to reach for the stars ideas like this. And slow implementation is even better, because that’s how real places evolve. And that’s how you prevent spaces from having cold anonymity or the disney world quality that comes when areas entirely developed at one time. (IMO, Arlington should have taken another 30 years to build out. Too big, too fast, makes it feel soulless.)
October 15th, 2009 at 12:47 am
My one comment would be to look closely at those CAD drawings - not that much land is actually gained from channeling the river. Most of the land shown with a new grid comes from re-purposing already existing land - the Navy Yard, Anacostia Naval Air Station, Bolling AFB, RFK Stadium, Kingman Island, etc.
Buras hasn’t ‘created’ new land anymore than I’d ‘create’ new land by proposing to build on the Mall or in Central Park.
I really like the scope and vision of the idea, but I think it’s a work in progress that needs some serious fine tuning…
October 15th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Certainly an ambitious vision. One issue I think with this sort of vision is the ability of the public to recoup much of the value created by the public expenditure. No doubt some is recaptured through existing taxes, but also a great deal is capitalized by the existing land owners. There are TIF schemes and such but those are generally only adequate for much more modest investments. I think if better funding mechanisms were being utilized to capture the value for the public we’d see more ambitious projects like this enacted.
October 15th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Looks neat. You’re right, we aren’t so into that collective action thing anymore, and we sure will socialize why not given a chance. But it looks like a cool thing to accomplish, were someone to accomplish it and how many accomplishments can you say that about these day?
October 15th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Replace the Lincoln Memorial with Thade.