IS ROUSE OFFICIALLY DEAD?
A Commentary and Brief History of Columbia, MD
The Columbia Board of Residents is meeting to discuss yet again plans to introduce a ‘downtown’ feeling to the suburban planned city. If the board thinks they want to keep his vision alive, maybe they should go back and just see how dead Rouse’s vision actually is today.
Columbia wants to bring the downtown idea of the city to their mall centered suburban (city). Columbia wants it, needs it. That is what they say.
I am a firm believer in the adage from Karl DuPuy of knowing what you want, and then knowing how to get it. I think the primary question is often glanced over with little trepidation, as it is more excited to postulate, dream, and imagine a future space or scenario that is
favorable.
"Booming downtown with lights, shopping, residences, and great times."
Or more in their words from the article
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/howard/bal-columbia0515,0,2111083.story
"To me, it should be a city, but how big a city?" Citaramanis said. "I want it to be a city downtown, and the urban core of Howard County."
She and other citizens fear that too dense a downtown might produce unwelcome crowding and congestion that current residents might hate, while the plan's boosters see those objections as potential roadblocks to a bright fulfillment of founder James W. Rouse's original vision.
It is easy to make assumptions that there is truth to the classic line from field of dreams "If you build it, they will come." Usually they will come, and sometimes, come full force, but there is a difference between success of volume of population, and the success of the spaces themselves.
I was struggling for a few weeks to figure out why the idea of Columbia having lofty goals for a not so distant scheme in their future would be ironic. And it is because Columbia itself was that a mere 45 years ago when Rouse dreamt up his thesis in the rough of Howard County in the mid 60s. A city to revolutionize the idea of diversity, make great communities for all economic statuses and walks of life. To make a great suburban space that was more than just a Levittown, an exit off the expressway.
But when we look at the success of such a scheme, it is a mixed result. Columbia is afluent, many people live there. But how successful is it as a city. The car dependent citizens would argue that the connectivity and ability to use town centers and village centers has failed with impeccable precision. And the quality of those town centers themselves is highly suspect.
So when we have a board of people who think they know what they want and there for how to get it, I have a few recommendations in mind.
Columbia is a case study in the point I make with all New Urbanists I come across. NUs are great people, who know what a city needs, we may differ on what it takes to get there and the correct amount of policy intervention, but they are correct with data and sociology on there side -- for starting places from scratch.
I argue Columbia, like most sprawling conurbations and even locales in the boondocks, such as my last two houses, is an established place. People live there, and if that isn't enough, they live there in large numbers. So it is often a lot harder for a NU to make a claim that with New Urbanism, or as I prefer, good urbanism, we can transform space. Columbia is too big. And like many systems, like Baltimore and Baltimore's Metro area, the system is complex and depends on looking at the flux of the people who go in and out.
Columbia's major systemic flaw is that if you were to argue the village centers are successful in providing the needed ammenities to their residents, it is more difficult to lay claim to such for the Town Center. The vision, as I have read, was to have a place that anchors the city where people can gather. It has a central library, a location for meetings and concerts, a lakefront for public view, and of course, the mall.
I love Columbia on a cynical level not only because it is a city that has a mall as it's central core. It is because the road system, the artery that is to bring people in, Little Patuxent Parkway, loops around it, making the cities infrastructure itself based around the mall. The office buildings that form an electron shell around the vast deserts of asphalt and painted lines. To protect, the mall on the inside.
But I fear I am focusing much too much on the town center proper. The main vein of the ideas that lived on in Rouse’s vision have disappated. One can argue that diversity has preserved in Columbia, but then again, it has in many other cities that did not take such radical measures to ‘diversify’ in the first place. Another notable remark is the lack of a proper transit system, which of course Rouse fought for. Where are the committees requesting such a system be created to make a more efficient and equitable, if not just esuriently, means travel in the ‘city.’
Because of the car-oriented design, Columbia is such an ardent failure in achieving the goal of a downtown because of its complete disregard for the bipedal types, the ones on bikes and on their feet, given that from all sides, the mall requires a hike up a series of stairs and hills, through some garages, between the light posts, and finally, you come inside.
Just imagine if you would have exported the parking of the mall on LPPkwy from the get go. Take the Macy's, JCPenny, the bath and body and place it on the main avenue. Replace the center of the asphalt park with a real park. A park that unlike Centennial park, is in the real heard of town. You could take advantage of the hills, mix the pedestrians with the cars, bring in a natural element that is indeed surrounded by the active part of the city center.
But that isn't the case. The mall is so ingrained and so permanent. What downtown main street appeal would you place on LPPkwy? What gravitational pull could make people wish to walk along side such a unpedestrian friendly avenues that snakes around a bigger commercial center. After all, a sidewalk on the side of a fast paced thruway doesn't equal mainstreet appeal. And who wants to walk across the parking lot to the bistro of LPPkwy when you have an extensive food court already installed.
Lesson: Nothing is in a vacuum. You can't treat LPP like it is all alone without the gigantic monstrousity of the mall. The Mall (of Columbia) is so successful, itself presents the issue of the injected downtown. Which begs the question, what came first, the downtown, then
the city? Or the city, then the downtown? If you argue the mall is the downtown that lead to the city that lay today, I would agree with you. If you suggested that Columbia’s been somehow devoid of a downtown until these discussions, I’d be less inclined to see that.
All these factors need to be considered before the wild dreams of board members that want this new look to occur for their city. I am sad because most of the angst this is generating is not about my concerns, but because of the potential deforestation of a part of symphony woods. I have never been in there, aside for concerts. And now they are debating making the Columbia area more accessible from the South via 29. The car will dominate all the more. And downtown areas need to control the amount of cars. Look how many people love walking along side route one.
This is not to say there aren't ways to accomplish the goal. But the goal needs to be less dependent on the human condition and more realistic on the cause and the effect, which I fear, could be minimal.
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