David Brussat, Dr. Downtown: Detroit’s Lesson for Rhode Island
Monday, February 16, 2015
What would happen if Rhode Island and its capital city Providence got rid of their entire planning bureaucracies? Would economic growth stop? Would buildings cease to be built? Would jobs evaporate? There was a time before the planning bureaucracy, and maybe there will be a time after the planning bureaucracy.
Not long ago I urged Rhode Island’s leaders to join me in a thought experiment. “Imagine there’s no regulators! It’s easy if you try!”
Well, Detroit has been there, done that - forced into it by bankruptcy. Recently, Andres Duany, the Miami planner whose firm, DPZ, did the zoning overlay for downtown Providence in the 1990s, spoke to a group in New Orleans about what he had learned in Detroit.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAndres Duany learns from Detroit
Here is a portion of Duany’s presentation:
“Every planner has to go to Detroit because that is where the pornography industry of disaster is. It's called ruin porn. You get the thrill of seeing the decline of civilization. They have great Beaux Arts buildings abandoned and so forth. You can still find that in Havana. I had to speak [in Detroit] and had my morning free and this young person came up to me, about 30, 35, and said ‘Can I give you a tour of Detroit?’ and I said, ‘Well, I've had a tour of Detroit.’
“You know I've had it several times. I've had five tours of Detroit. And a tour of Detroit looks like this. You've got a guy about your age and you say ‘Give me a tour.’ So you go to an empty site. ‘This is where I lived.’ You go to another empty site. ‘This is where I grew up.’ You go to another empty site. ‘This is where I used to shop.’ You go to a boarded-up high school. ‘This is where I went to school.’ Of course they’re not living in Detroit anymore and they say why should I live in Detroit? This is a disaster. They give you their lives destroyed.”
Duany sees a new kind of Detroit porn
“That's always been the tour of Detroit you get. So I go back and this kid gives me this tour that in this ocean of disaster is this archipelago of the most exciting stuff you've ever seen. Fantastic cool renovations, green office buildings, incubators everywhere, artists doing whatever they want inside, outside and across the street, you know, people doing restaurants.
“What had happened in Detroit is that the government not only could not afford policemen, they could not afford regulators. Oh, nobody ever said that. There are no cops! There are no cops! There are no firemen! There's also no regulators. So what happened was all the kids who couldn't stand living in a closet in Brooklyn, the word spreads like that [snaps his fingers], and they were starting to do stuff all over Detroit without permits.
“And actually with perfect self-interest. They were not killing themselves, they were not harming themselves, there was zero incidence of injury and death, I ate in restaurants that don't have grease traps and don't have, you know, $70,000 exhaust fans. The food was delicious and I survived. More than survived.”
Do we really need regulators?
“And I realized, oh my God! The [limited] regulatory environment in which I grew up was extraordinary. You gotta think - I was almost 30, their age, I designed Seaside, broke all the rules, and we were ready to take the plans in. There was no regulator to accept the plan for Walton County. [Seaside developer] Robert Davis had to hire someone to pretend to be in government to give us a stamp so that the banker could give him a loan.
“And now it takes a million dollars in consultants to build the next one [new town] down [the Florida panhandle]. And everything's a fight. …”
Duany, who basically founded the New Urbanist movement with Seaside in the 1990s, goes on to describe a new movement he’s pushing called Lean Urbanism. It is dedicated to helping young people who feel frozen out by “gold-plated” development get things done in cities by getting around or eliminating unnecessary levels of regulation.
Civil disobedience at the Arcade
This could play a role in Providence - for example, at the Arcade. Its developer must be happy that the retail shops on the ground floor and all the micro lofts on the upper floors are filled. But he must be dismayed that the place always has a look of vacancy. You peer in from the street and it looks as if nothing’s happening. That is because the fire code bars shopkeepers from putting tables in the corridor, as they used to, or loft dwellers from using the balcony-like areas in front of their units to put out a chair and sit down to watch life flow by. Both would add to the feeling of community at the Arcade, and do a lot to assure its success.
How about a little civil disobedience there
Related Slideshow: David Brussat, Dr. Downtown’s Roses and Raspberries of 2014
Here are Dr. Downtown's roses and raspberries of 2014.
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