Maybe they could take a walking tour of Chicago some time. If they did, they would see- in areas where the built environment was rows of two and three stories with retail at street level and apartments above, like Andersonville or Wrigleyville (or Main Street in Ann Arbor)- loads of activity at all hours of the day and night. An “active and permeable membrane” addressing the street and sidewalk.

On the contrary, where the apartment buildings stretch up to 10-12 floors and more, there is very little activity on the street. Lots of cars going by, though. Up Sheridan and Lakeshore drive, and in the heart of the Loop. Loads of tall apartment buildings and office buildings but very little street activity in the off hours.

The apartment houses up Sheridan all have these sorts of plazas next to them or scattered amongst them and you never see any people in them. Lonely swingsets, benches unused, expanses of bare concrete. If there are no small businesses addressing them, why would people be there in the first place? Are people going to ride the elevator down from the 14th floor to sit on a concrete bench? They require glaring spotlights trained on them at night. You can imagine why- it’s not so people can see to read their books. They become places to avoid, especially at night.

I read (in one of these articles on this issue) that the master planning for downtown Ann Arbor included a “built floor space to lot size” ratio of 9:1.

Léon Krier, the architect and urban planner who designed Poundbury for Prince Charles:

[link]

writes in his “Architecture of Community” that the urban ideal “floor space to lot size” ratio is 2:1.

If you spend a lot of time in various cities (as I do), if you think about these ratios, you will notice this (2:1) being true. Main Street or Kerrytown in Ann Arbor vs. Grand Circus Park in Detroit; Dupont Circle, U Street Corridor, Adams Morgan vs. K Street in Wash, DC; North End of Boston vs. Financial District; Greenwich Village in NY vs. Wall Street; etc. The MOST active areas are where the streets are tight, the buildings are low and the business are many and diverse. Visit an area where the ratio is 9:1 at midnight and you will be lonely. Or at 3pm. Not so where the businesses are very diverse.

Big building construction comes with VERY high rents at the street level. This has a tendency to drive up surrounding rents, drive out small (but crucial) businesses and bring in the national chains if anything.

So if the challenge is to make some successful open space, Jane Jacobs says this requires being surrounded by diverse interests at all hours of the day and night providing “eyes on the street.” Right now, that is almost entirely lacking at that space.

The sorts of small, diverse businesses are being driven out of the downtown core even as they are most needed for this to work. So killing two birds with one stone (surround the plaza with rentable stalls for small, diverse biz) is what I would suggest if these people listened to anyone. Which they apparently do not. You can feel the scorn in the quotes from Susan Pollay for anything that is not mega-sized.

In my opinion…

Here’s a link to a .pdf version of that: [link]

Extracted .jpgs of just one project: [from 5th Avenue side] [from Division (Liberty Plaza Park) side)]

[link]

Jeff Speck’s “Walkable City”

And Dan Buettner’s “The Blue Zones“