Catholic City, University Rises in Florida

Ave Maria, Florida is a lot of things.

To its developer, it will be a “compact, walkable, self-sustaining” city of 30,000 people.

To Ave Maria University, it is home to their new campus, the first major Catholic university constructed in the U.S. in 40 years.

To its founder Tom Monaghan, it will be a conservative Catholic city on a hill, where there’ll be no porn on the cable system, no condoms in the stores, and no contraceptives in the pharmacy.

To bitter faculty of Ave Maria Law School, it is the “edge of Corkscrew swamp” where Monghan and his supporters will forcibly relocate them from Ann Arbor.

To conservationists, it is the first implementation of an innovative “market based” rural land stewardship program.

Lastly, it’s an enormous construction site in southwest Florida where thousands of homes, millions of square feet of office space, and a 100-foot tall Cathedral are all under construction under legal arrangements similar to those used to develop Walt Disney World. To top it all off, it’s even been on the Pope’s mind: Newsweek magazine reported it was the first thing Pope Benedict XVI asked the Provost of Ave Maria University when the two met.

> Naples Daily News Ave Maria Story Index
> Ave Maria Developer’s Website
> Newsweek: “Halfway to Heaven: A Catholic millionaire’s dream town draws fire”
> Wikipedia: Ave Maria, Florida

Top photo courtesy Planning magazine, the second from the developer’s website, and the last the is from this set of images

Announcing Planetizen’s Interchange

All too often when I tell people I am studying urban planning, my statement is met by a blank stare. Some will mumble something about a city they’ve been to, or admit they don’t know much about it.

Urban planning’s lack of visibility extends to the web, where there is a depressing lack of good websites and blogs about the field. To a certain extent this should not be surprising, since the field is dominated by government officials generally limited to addressing local issues, and university professors who are either unable or uninterested in communicating to a wider public. However, I think the profession is more important than ever in today’s troubled and highly urbanized world, and writers like Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford have shown there exists a huge audience of people interested in building better cities.

Given that context, I have long been a fan of the website Planetizen. One of the web’s best websites on urban planning and development issues, their discussion forums, job listings, news features, and other sections provide an essential resource for the profession. Today they launched their newest feature — a new blog called Interchange, whose contributors include some of the the field’s best-known thinkers and writers. The list includes University of Pennsylvania Professor Eugenie Birch, Next American City editor-in-chief Adam Gordon, innovative scholar Joel Kotkin, and many others. They hope the blog will help provide exposure to new ideas and create discussions that bridge disciplines.

I’ve also been invited to participate. My first post was on the Washington, D.C. library system: “Public Library in Limbo in Washington, D.C.”

> Check out Planetizen Interchange

Analyzing Washington’s Block 450

For a recent assignment for a class in urban design I am taking, I analyzed a block in downtown Washington, D.C. The block is located at Mount Vernon Square, bounded by New York Avenue NW, 7th Street NW, and L Street NW. The block is part of the original L’Enfant plan, square 0450 in modern records. It has an assessed value for 2008 of over $93 million. I have uploaded the owners and assessments of all of the properties in the block from the city’s assessment database. What follows is a detailed analysis of the block’s shape and use.

Context

To the south is Washington’s downtown, a commercial district with tall buildings set on larger lots. Historically few people live in this area. To the north and northwest are residential neighborhoods composed of 2 and 3 story row homes. To the east, New York Avenue and the railroad right-of-way leading to Union Station have historically been major transportation arteries into the city. Immediately adjacent the block is two large institutional buildings. A wedge-shaped corner of the block fronts the northeast corner of Mount Vernon Square, the location of the city’s 1903 Carnegie Library. The block is also across 7th Street from the Washington Convention Center, which opened in 2003. This context influences both the design and function of the block.

Historical Development

The odd mix of uses seen today are in fact consistent with the history of the site. Located between industrial, residential, and commercial zones in the city it is the natural place for furniture, hardware, and small warehouses. Indeed, today the block contains a furniture store, warehouses, and an art gallery called “Warehouse.” Located near major transportation routes and the busy downtown the block has been the site of liveries and carriage and car storage and repair since at least 1880. Lastly, located near instutional uses that draw visitors (first the library, now the convention center) the block has always contained small shops and today even bars. It is this unique context of both the block and specifically the wedge-shaped building at the corner that have made it attractive to political candidates looking for a high profile yet neutral headquarters for their campaigns.

Here is a brief analysis of the historical development of the block, using Sanborn maps.

I was able to find two photos of the block in the Library of Congress’s online image library. This photo from 1927 shows the livery that creates an uninterrupted facade on New York Avenue. The hardware stores in the foreground are on land now occupied by a parking lot and billboard. The women standing to the left of the truck appear to be waiting for a streetcar.

This aerial from 1992 shows the large parking lot that existed across the street from the early 1970s until the Convention Center was constructed. Both 7th and 9th Streets sustained heavy damage during the 1968 civil disturbance, and the city used eminent domain to acquire this property.

Street Analysis

Each side of the block has a distinct set of uses and physical form.

The northern edge of the block bounded by L Street NW contains a series of buildings of fairly uniform height. Some are abandoned and others are being used as warehouses, and some it is difficult to evaluate their use. The sidewalk is very wide and few trees exist. At the far northeastern corner is a 1-story building occupied by an Eritrean cultural organization. The western edge contains one abandoned structure, one building used for storage, and a parking lot.

The southern edge, along New York Avenue, contains a range of uses. The block contains parking, a restaurant, two nightclubs, an auto repair shop, and a vacant building. The three parking lots are interspersed between taller buildings. According to the historical maps these lots were used for parking as early as 1959, and before that used as livery stables for horses.

The western edge, fronting 7th street, presents the most uniform façade of buildings, ranging from 2 to 4 stories. Although the most northern half are entirely boarded up and vacant, this block also includes a furniture store, small offices, and art gallery and café. It has the highest pedestrian traffic and the width of the sidewalk, street trees, storefront scale, and even the Convention Center across the street make the space feel enclosed and welcoming to the pedestrian.

The structure at the corner of 7th Street and New York Avenue works to define both the form and character of the rest of the block. The sharp corner and tall vertical façade responds to the convention center and Carnegie Library directly, and the downtown district indirectly, and defines the form of the entire block. The roofline projects a hypothetical line down each block, unifying the varied sizes and gaps present to provide the illusion of solidity. The structure also responds to the pedestrian character of the street and the neighborhoods to the north. The prominent door and “bumped out” display windows strongly defines a pedestrian zone at the sidewalk level, inviting passersby to look in.

Mapping Development in College Park

Today at Rethink College Park we launched an interactive Google Map of all the various development projects we have written about so far on that website. It also serves as a graphical index to the site, since each point is linked to a page containing all our posts on the project.

While it’s not as robust as some of the sophisticated GIS systems used by more forward thinking governmental agencies (see the City of Alexandria’s development viewer), since we developed it in a few days at no cost, I’m pretty happy.

> Rethink College Park Development Map

Discuss D.C. Neighborhood ‘Turf Wars’ Thursday

This event featuring a new book about the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood caught my eye. It’s the first I’ve heard of the book which sounds quite interesting. As a note, Mt. Pleasant was also the subject of Brett Williams’ 1988 work, Upscaling Downtown: Stalled Gentrification in Washington DC, meaning it has been “gentrifying” in somebody’s mind at least as long as I have been alive.

Discussion Forum with the Author of the Book:
Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place.
Thursday, February 22nd, 6:30 to 8:00 pm
(Busboys and Poets)

Gabriella Gahlia Modan discusses and signs her new book, Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place. Turf Wars is a fascinating and innovative ethnography of Mt. Pleasant, an urban neighborhood undergoing rapid gentrification. It is a story about how the members of a multi-ethnic, multi-class Washington, DC, community use language to project conflicting images of their neighborhood. By waging wars around such issues as public toilets and public urination, the “morality” of co-ops & condos, and characterizations of “good” girls and “bad” boys, community members create identities for themselves as legitimate community members (e.g., as tough urbanites or sophisticated historic preservationists) while creating identities to discredit others (e.g., “People who belong in the suburbs”). Turf Wars provides insight into the ways that local activity shapes larger urban social processes. Cultural anthropologist and linguist Gabriella Modan offers a detailed, rich, and highly engrossing ethnographic account of a neighborhood and the people who live and work there. She also provides readers with a little background in linguistic anthropology, cultural geography, and urban anthropology. This event is co-sponsored by Sol y Soul, Sol Y Soul promotes, nurtures, supports, and presents the work of socially-conscious established and emerging artists. This event is free and open to the public and will be held at Busboys and Poets which is located at 2021 14th St. NW. No pre-registration is necessary.

> See my Books about 20th Century Washington, D.C.

The White Elephant of Shaw Redevelopment

The Washington Post had two stories today evaluating the economic impact of the Washington Convention Center on the city and its impact on Shaw. The Post reports that attendance at the convention center is flat and with an annual operating cost to taxpayers of roughly $20 million is generally not performing as well as supporters had hoped. A companion article by Paul Schwartzman describes how Shaw remains a “renaissance thwarted.” While discussing some of the causes of the blight, including property speculation and negligent institutions like Shiloh Baptist Church, the article omits mention of a major contributing factor: the neighborhood is home to almost 1,400 housing units of subsidized Section 8 public housing.

As I illustrated in July 2006, these projects line 7th, 9th, and 14th streets like a massive Maginot Line against gentrification across the District.

The high concentration of these projects and very low income of their tenants can make the neighborhoods look less appealing to businesses conducting research. According to data from the Washington, DC Economic partnership the median income of the population in Shaw is $25,000, as opposed to $31,000 for H Street NE or $69,000 for Dupont Circle. Secondly, although it generally goes undiscussed, these properties can share some of the problems associated with government-owned large public housing buildings, such as concentrations of crime. One of the murders earlier this year in Shaw occurred in the stairwell of a Section 8 building, and last year a man was murdered just steps from a Metro entrance, which happens to be adjacent a cluster of four Section 8 buildings. (The man police arrested for the murder lived in a nearby Section 8 building.) Police response to a recent jump in crime in the neighborhood has been focused on these buildings — including the decision to station patrol cars 24 hours a day at the 8th Street Metro station exit and patrol the troublesome Kelsey Gardens heavily with cars, a “light tower” of floodlights, and even a horse patrol.

My point here is not to dwell on the crime, but instead invite a dialogue about the connections between revitalization, crime, and housing. Crime is a complex problem, but de-concentrating the affordable units and investing in social programs — not horses and floodlights — seem like logical first steps.

(As a side note, D.C. passed an inclusionary zoning ordinance last year, which am planning to examine later.)

> W. Post: “Convention Center Not Living Up to Lofty Goals”
> W. Post: “A Thwarted Renaissance Near the Convention Center”

Also see these related posts:
> Where is the Convention Center’s Retail?
> Mapping Shiloh Baptist Church’s Properties
> D.C. Gentrification and Section 8 Subsidized Housing

Is D.C. Filling Up?

Is the District running out of land to put new development? The Brooking Institute’s Christopher B. Leinberger made that argument during a recent presentation at the National Building Museum. As part of his presentation, he proposed modifying the long-standing height restriction on D.C. buildings as one way to accommodate more growth in the city.

The proposal to tamper with the height restriction spiraled into a larger debate including a follow up story in the Post, post on DCist, and much discussion elsewhere. In my view, Beyond DC had the most nuanced view, pointing out the change would likely not impact most areas, only where district officials chose to modify the zoning to allow it. After pointing out changing the height downtown might have a detrimental impact, he speculates, “if skyscrapers work in Arlington, why shouldn’t they in Anacostia? Could Tenleytown and Brookland one day become uptown districts rivaling or surpassing near-District nodes like Bethesda? Would that really be so bad?”

Indeed, while so many were preoccupied by the potential impact of taller buildings, few seemed to note the root cause identified by Leinberger: a lack of space for growth. This space problem has been on the minds of District leaders for quite some time. I think the four major districts in the city currently experiencing intense redevelopment (Mount Vernon Square, Swampoodle/NoMa, Baseball Stadium/Navy Yard, Southwest waterfront) can be interpreted as a coordinated effort by both real estate interests and the city to use zoning changes, tax subsidies, and outright investment (baseball stadium: $611 million) to maximize the density of development in some of the few remaining underutilized contiguous districts with appropriate infrastructure for intense development. However, with plans in these four areas largely complete and individual projects under construction, it’s not difficult to imagine the city with them complete. It’s anyone’s guess what would happen then. While it may spur increased investment at a small scale in poor neighborhoods, it seems most developers would be more likely to simply move beyond the District to the far-out suburbs where land is plentiful and politicians cooperative. Perhaps it is Washington’s unique destiny to become a museum city, with architectural innovation frozen by every-expanding historic districts and large-scale growth impossible thanks to a lack of land and zoning restrictions.