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The big thing that will make most downtowns the places they were in the 20s, IMO, is a robust system of mass transit.
Cities that already have this, like NYC, Chicago, DC, Boston, Philly, San Fran, still have neighborhoods downtown, or pretty close to downtown, that are vibrant and dense, with housing, retail, schools, entertainment, and offices all in close proximity to each other. And mass transit doesn't have to be heavy rail systems either. Light rail systems, trolleys, or busses that are safe and move people regularly at all hours would work too. (Taxis/Uber/Lyft can fill out the gaps.) But since WW II and suburbanization, I don't think the U.S. is heading this way. For now, the car still rules.
The other thing that's needed is a lots of well-designed multi-family housing. Conventional wisdom is the most Americans with families don't want to live in apartments, and barely want to live in row houses. But look at the places where that housing is being built. In suburban-type areas far from the city center. Many cities have made it VERY difficult to build such housing close to where people might actually want to be. Of course the more housing is built, the greater demand for services and amenities near by, and then the NIMBY crowd stupidly rebels, not realizing that their properties become more, not less valuable, the greater the number of (middle-class) people live there. Zoning has been relaxed in some places, but like cars, for now the ideal of the single-family home still rules.
Here's a scene from the Manhattan Garment District that shows what looks like a 1 to 1 car to person ratio. This location is literally surrounded by available subway stations:
I will say Downtown LA could be that better version. In the future. It is so much better than 10 years ago with 10s of billions in investments in residential, hotels, commercial, shopping, restaurants, public transportation, parks bike and bus lanes. streetscapes.
The biggest deterrent keeping it from moving faster is the homeless issue. The rising cost of housing and rents is creating more homeless metrowide. Cities like LA compared to the 200 suburbs are building new housing with affordable units and also homeless units and shelters. But the visible tent cities don't seem to decrease because I think any new affordable housing and shelters is taken up by newly homeless that still have a job, with kids, not mental illness or drug addiction. Skid row lies in the middle of growing trendy areas like the arts district, little Tokyo, historic core, fashion district. Skid row disconnects Downtown from growing into each other's district. But there is a push to clean up the Downtown homeless by the 2028 Olympics. Hopefully it works out.
But Downtown LA has its own challenges especially work from home which killed the life around the financial district especially the shops restaurants bars that mainly catered to them. Several large projects that were under construction have stalled for years like oceanside across LA live, the years delayed regional connector, parks like Pershing Square revamp, and grand park dirt lot.
Despite all that. New hotels are opening or opened like the 5 star conrad hotel across Disney concert hall or moxy ac hotel across convention center. Several residential towers are near done with more being built. New development are happening in South Park, arts district, Chinatown bringing new residential units with retail below or new offices, restaurants. Downtown has plans to add 200,000 more residents from current 75,000 as it replacing surface lots and 1 story warehouse to 7 to 50+ floor mixed used.
When it comes to families, THE usual places attract families with kidslike Chinatown, little Tokyo, la live, grand park, Olvera street, Santee alley. There are many parks with playground but not many families live in Downtown. Hardly any Schools they are mostly in the immigrants inner city neighborhoods that surround Downtown boundaries.
Dallas and Atlanta have the best chance to revitalize their downtowns. They're perceived as sunbelt sprawl cities. However they have been increasing development in their downtown communities and are still growing.
I think an important thing to recognize with the American psyche is that density is viscerally rejected by the vast majority of Americans as their living space.
Ever since the nation was founded, the there has been a rugged individualistic desire to "spread out" into the frontier, which of course led to a de-densifying effect on so many American urban cores.
Outside of a relatively small cadre of urbanites in the US, that psyche is still alive and well in the American consciousness, arguably more than ever before.
Aside from this, we face a very different demographic reality today than in 1920: much more affluence, fewer children and smaller households overall. We'll never "pack people in" like we used to because, given a choice, people generally like to live in larger spaces, even taking smaller family sizes into consideration.
Lower density "cul-de-sac living," where single family homes, a yard, and 2 or 3 cars in the driveway rule. A shopping strip mall is closeby, with a grocery store, a few fast food or fast casual restaurants, and churches and schools not far away.
A trip into the "big city" happens only with sporting events, friends in town, or looking for that specialty food or item that can't be found in the suburbs.
That's why the highways in most metro areas are bumper to bumper and the rails/public transit sit mostly empty. Downtowns are ghost towns except for a few "main strips," and the primary city in a metro area is losing population.
There are some outliers to this--of course. But overall, that's the snapshot of most folks in the US today.
Cities losing population? All the data from 2022 has shown that trend has reversed and cities are booming again. The 2022 census numbers will show explosive growth as most cities have now filled back up which has lead to crazy rent growth and occupancy levels.
As for future density, how do you explain New York City streets? I think the vision people are missing here is the ability to build new housing and convert enough office to housing to create extreme levels of density. If you can build blocks and blocks of density at the 100k-200k people per sq. mile range, the streets will stay busy in the downtown neighborhoods. You don’t agree? Cities have to be intentional in building it.
This may mean upzoning neighborhoods in the downtown and surrounding area so residential high-rises can be build everywhere. If you build nothing but residential highrises with first floor retail over a long distance, what do you think the streets will be like?
Last edited by MDAllstar; 10-01-2022 at 11:38 AM..
Most downtowns around America were mixed-use vibrant bustling neighborhoods in the 1920s. Photos of their streets showed bustling street scenes with a mixture of office, retail, and housing. Many people have predicted the downfall of downtown's because of WFH, but I think that prediction lacks vision. If office buildings in downtowns around America convert to residential space, downtowns will become neighborhoods again and come alive especially at night and weekends when most people experience them anyway. The highest density mixed-use neighborhoods in America are the most vibrant so adding tens of thousands of new residents to downtowns will create a great mix of office workers, residents, and tourists' day and night.
Which downtowns are already similar to their 1910-1930 version of themselves, and which downtowns could turn back into that version of themselves in the future?
I have added street scenes from cities all over America below:
I realize your thread is on street-level vibrancy. It reasons outside of a key view in Manhattan. Few will show the same vibrancy. The level of residents who shopped at least in cores, never will return. Retail survives differently and shopping long from being more so core-centric.
Also street-views tend to be early morning views. Not... all but most I find. Even for Manhattan you can tell many are with its ugly shuttered stores of painted pull-down garage-like doors showing closed as proof of early timeframes.
Still I felt some cities have more of their old buildings intact to show from the old photo examples and links you posted. I used the best angles of street-views more current I could find in a street-view of today. I am sure many are early views and not their most vibrant times today. None may/will ever match stampedes of pedestrians of their past. NYC and Manhattan just has the most live-in densities. That for some is too much to live in for their preferred like-style. Not like as many outside of Manhattan in NYC go there shopping. A visit and hopefully not too gritty, grimmy and debris ladden including workers and tourist. Live-in populations key. Many cities are adding more live-in populations that will help.
Taking some of your example street-scenes and using google street-view for the current views. Some I chose pre-covid if the angle was best. I went in reverse by city in your post. Most of the old photos were from above street-levels also vs current street-views.
Current State Street and Madison has the first 2 buildings on the right still there 3rd gone and next street Macy's (former Marshall Field's) building there and further down the Chicago Theater markee seen as that was brand new when the picture was taken .
Todays scene street-view ground-level shows building on the left intact and on the right. Good many still here this 2019 view as the angle was best to get all the buildings in.
Seems it is pretty much with the buildings intact.... just not fully restored and hopfully getting there as it is a gorgeous building surviving quakes and declines.
Was the "adult" population density really that much higher than what we can achieve today? Children don't create downtown vibrancy, so they are irrelevant to this discussion. I don't know if there were really more adults living in cities in the 1910-1930s than we can achieve today. What makes you say that?
You can make an argument that we won't return to that level of vibrancy because shopping isn't done downtown, but the vibrancy isn't really what I am focused on with this thread. I am talking about downtown's becoming neighborhoods where tons of people live and play. That shift could be coming I think with a much higher density than anywhere else in cities which hasn't been the case for most cities because of the prevalence of office space.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Losfrisco
Here's a scene from the Manhattan Garment District that shows what looks like a 1 to 1 car to person ratio. This location is literally surrounded by available subway stations:
That's just one street but I don't think the cities you listed lost out to suburbs any less than the others.
IMO that Street View from last summer along West 34th Street backs up the argument that we will never see the level of pedestrian activity we saw in the 1920s in most American downtowns.
After All, Midtown Manhattan didn't lose its shopping — Gimbels went under, but as the Street View shows, other stores took its place, and Macy's remains an anchor. The number of office workers nearby fell with the onset of COVID, but the area still has lots of people living around it. Yet the streets aren't packed with throngs of people, though you do see more of them than you do in most American CBDs at midday.
As for downtowns becoming neighborhoods again: I'm fortunate to live in one of those older cities whose downtown never ceased to be one. Market Street today sure doesn't look like that now, and the office canyon west of City Hall has less foot traffic now than it did pre-COVID — though some residential buildings (both new and converted) have kept it from falling off a cliff. But most of the streets of Center City Philadelphia have about the same level of activity that view of 34th Street shows. And that may be the best we might expect going forward in the cities that are already multifunction neighborhoods.
The places to watch are places like my native Kansas City, where the residential population in both the downtown core and the adjacent former warehouse and light industrial district to its immediate south rose something like tenfold from 2000 to 2010 and residential construction continues. When I was a kid, the downtown died at 5. The city may have paid a dear price for achieving this, but it no longer does. If, as MDAllstar posits, the shift from office-dominated to more mixed produces more all-day activity, then we might hold out some hope that at least most of our larger downtowns will come back from the undead.
The big thing that will make most downtowns the places they were in the 20s, IMO, is a robust system of mass transit.
It's going to take A LOT more than robust mass transit to make a difference.
There are some cities that even if a rail stop was on every block downtown people would still prefer the burbs.
What makes you think that people that have been using personal cars all their lives all of a sudden are going to start using transit just because it is there?
1. Perception of inner cities has to change.
2. Inner city crime or the perception of it has to change.
3. Quality inner city schools
4. Subsidized housing
5. Incentives to build affordable housing (90% of sunbelt builds are luxury apartments).
6. Restrictive land expansion
7. Less funding of highway expansion
Also there are the double edge sword factors.
1. Increasing land values would be an incentive to build more densely, but that would result in affordability issues and make the burbs more attractive.
2. Penalizing driving and parking may increase transit use but may also turn off investment in these areas resulting in people seeking other areas.
So on its own, developing a robust public transit system doesn't do much.
Traditional downtown shopping districts might never beat the 1920s. BUT:
Many downtowns used to be small, with low-density peripheries--and many of those peripheries are busy areas now. The top intersections of 1920 might be far less busy, but a great many intersections might have several times what they used to.
Further, tourist districts are a much bigger thing now. In Seattle, the Pike Place Market of 2022 rivals the main retail district of 1922 in terms of pedestrian density.
I think a big change the supermarket. Like you don’t have to visit 6 different shops. You make 1 trip for your cleaning needs, meats, liquor, produce, bread, etc. you make 1 trip now. Maybe two if you want something special.
Same thing you have big department stores vs a dress store, shoe store, furniture store etc. now you have places that sell everything.
You can buy tomatoes, lightbulbs, flowers, bleach, beef and socks at a city target. That’s one trip in 1923 that’s 5 separate stores. So that’s more people on the street for the same set of chores
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