Excerpted from:
Turning Around Downtown: Twelve Steps to Revitalization
By Christopher B. Leinberger

 

Since the rise of cities 8,000 years ago, humans have only wanted to walk about 1500 feet until they begin looking for an alternative means of transport: a horse, a trolley, a bicycle, or a car. This distance translates into about 160 acres—about the size of a super regional mall, including its parking lot. It is also about the size, plus or minus 25 percent, of Lower Manhattan, downtown Albuquerque, the Rittenhouse Square section of Philadelphia, the financial district of San Francisco, downtown Atlanta, and most other major downtowns in the country.

 

But the willingness to walk isn’t just about the distance. Certainly no one is inspired to stroll from one end of a super regional mall parking lot to the other. People will walk 1500 feet or more only if they have an interesting and safe streetscape and people to watch along the way—a mix of sights and sounds that can make a pedestrian forget that he is unintentionally getting enjoyable exercise. Depending on the time of day, the day of the week, or the season of the year, the experience of walking downtown will be entirely different, even if you are traveling along a well trod path. A new experience can be had, in fact, nearly every time you take to the streets.

 

Fostering such walkable urbanism is the key to the revival of any struggling downtown. But doing so can be a challenging process, requiring the development of a complex mix of retail boutiques, hotels, grocery stores, housing, offices, artists’ studios, restaurants, and entertainment venues. A “critical mass” of these pedestrian-scale uses must be established as quickly as possible, before the initial revitalization efforts stall for lack of support. This means making certain that visitors can find enough to do for 4 to 6 hours; that residents daily needs can be comfortably met; and that rents and sales prices continue to justify new construction or renovation.

 

During our vacation, we walked. A lot. Yes, we had a car available, but it was used only to get us close to our destination. Once there, we walked. Sometimes for hours. In the various hamlets, villages, towns, and cities we visited there were streets lined with shops. Oftentimes above these shops were living quarters for the shop owners. And they were used. This includes bakeries, artist’s galleries, secondhand shops, and others. In densely developed areas, the height of the buildings rarely exceeded a handful of floors. And the sidewalks were full of people.

With regard to Urban Planning, our vacation pointed out one thing: We need to learn the lessons history can teach. Some areas are indeed best developed as what is sometimes described as “Sprawl”. In other cases, we should develop, and redevelop, according to a more human scale. Create spaces people want to visit, and once there, stay as long as they can because of the interesting things they can see and do.

In such a trip, it is difficult to pick out a most remarkable area. One of the highlights was to a medieval walled city, Carcassonne. While most of the city of Carcassonne is a modern industrial city, in the nineteenth century the walled medieval fortified town was restored. Since then it has become famous as the template for most any walled city pictured in movies, and in fact good portions of the Kevin Costner movie Robin Hood was filmed there.

All that aside, this area of Carcassonne is indeed a destination in and of itself. There are a myriad of shops, hotels, and restaurants. Admittedly we unintentionally visited on one of the busiest days the year for this area, but there were countless tourists, both native and foreign. While few cities are featured on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, and won’t have those kind of unique features that seem to draw people to them, it is possible to create a unique destination for people that will stand the test of time.

After all, people have been doing just that for over 8,000 years.