Scattered Work

Defining the Alamo

My most recent column in Plaza de Armas covers an ongoing debate about how to improve Alamo Plaza — and in the process how to understand its meaning to San Antonio visitors and residents. My characterization of the factions was informed to a large extent by a recent article in the Express-News. Today I received a thoughtful response from Gary L. Foreman (author of the Alamo Plaza Restoration Project) that I think is worth publishing in its entirety. I certainly hope his understanding of the planning process is more accurate than what came across in my column and in the Express-News piece, and there are reasons to think it is. The Alamo is a contentious place, which makes it fertile ground for a vital dialogue about history, culture, and place. My hope — and I think Gary’s and Phil’s — is that we can use this dialogue to build a stronger community.

Mr. Judson,
A brief introduction — I’m Gary Foreman, author of the Alamo Plaza Restoration Project. Phil Myrick of PPS drew my attention to your recent and timely column about the potential transformation for this historic space and I wanted to take a few moments to share some thoughts on the subject.

Although some people have anticipated this exercise as extremely politically sensitive, the public forums professionally conducted by the city and PPS are showing that perhaps a major tipping point has been reached in what people now expect of this Plaza environment. Will there be 100% agreement? Of course not, but now there is more to agree about than disagree. Part of that comes from a momentum that has been developing since the early 1980s as sincere philosophical exchanges about what the Plaza could be has resulted in a series of studies and debates that basically led us to where we are today. In your column you mentioned that there are three camps with three ideas. We think that the camps are blending quickly because the uniqueness of Alamo Plaza can no longer be denied. In other words, it’s the History that now drives the design and intention. Those of us in the ‘History Camp’ actually feel the proposal is typical of a world-class historical site, and not glitzy. The statement made by a single DRT official is not necessarily representative how a majority of ‘Daughters’ feel about that space. Many will tell you that all ‘shrines’ need education and interpretation about its evolution. Likewise, the ‘Placemaking Camp’ understands now that Alamo Plaza is unlike other urban spaces and that the passion for finally interpreting this rich history is paramount to typical considerations, something the locals do understand– as witnessed in the public discussions. They, like the visitors, want to feel the past and see it come alive in an appropriate setting.

Finally, we’ll be submitting the thousands of letters, petitions, and notes we have collected during the last decade from concerned Texans and Americans and delivering them to city and state officials. These statements fundamentally remind us why millions invest their time, money, and passion to visit this ‘Sacred Ground.’

We look forward to a personal meeting with you in the near future.
All the best,
Gary

Tags: Alamo Plaza, Alamo Plaza Restoration Project, Project for Public Spaces, public meetings

Better Block comes to San Antonio

Since the Better Block Project is coming to San Antonio on March 4, I thought I’d post a couple of videos about the project. My column in Plaza de Armas on Monday discusses the project in more detail.

This first video talks about the logic behind Complete Streets and what the Better Block Project is trying to accomplish:

This one shows what they actually did at the first Better Block in Oak Cliff, Dallas:

Tags: Build a Better Block, Complete Streets, Oak Cliff, pop-ups

Pocket neighborhoods in San Antonio

The Compound behind Sala Diaz. Photo by Thomas Cummins.

This article was originally published in Plaza de Armas.

On a recent drive through the Government Hill neighborhood, along the edge of Ft Sam Houston, urban developer Peter French noticed something curious: a cluster of eight small homes with a private parking court. The cottages debuted in April 1929 on a lot that stretches one block, from Grayson to Quitman, with a typical width of about 65 feet. All the homes face inward, and are connected by a walkway that bisects the lot.

A small but growing group of urbanists, French among them, see this design as a key to building healthier communities.

These “pocket neighborhoods” simply turn houses away from the street, toward a semi-public space, which often takes the form of a landscaped courtyard. Residents give up their private yards in exchange for a larger communal area where children can play safely and adults can forge stronger relationships as they garden, barbecue, or have a drink with their neighbors after work. Proponents of this style of development claim that it has far-reaching implications for safety and social well-being. Ross Chapin, author of Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small Scale Community in a Large Scale World, argues that this layer of small-scale shared space helps “mend [the] broken web of belonging, care and support” that is missing from many suburban communities.

I can’t speak for the relationships forged at the Whippoorwill Cottages (a name for this development that French’s research turned up; they were originally named Grayson Courts), but I do know quite a few people who have lived in a cluster of homes with a shared courtyard off St. Mary’s Street, just south-west of King William. Often referred to simply as “The Compound,” this group of homes was not originally designed as a courtyard neighborhood: all the houses face outward toward either St Mary’s or Stieren Street. Real-estate lawyer and art enthusiast Michael Casey was approached about buying a group of four adjacent duplexes on this corner around 1990. He decided to purchase a vacant house with a large, fenced-in back yard behind the duplexes at the same time.

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Tags: King William, New Urbanism, pocket neighborhoods, Sala Diaz

Placemaking in Texas

Discovery Green in Houston, TX

Project for Public Spaces has a new article up about the placemaking renaissance going on in Texas right now. Some may be surprised to learn that Houston (declared the “North America’s placemaking capital”) is the focus of the piece, and Austin isn’t mentioned once. Things are changing rapidly in Texas, and every city has plenty to learn from its neighbors.

Dallas is one of the few cities in the United States with a comprehensive light rail system, which runs all the way out to Fort Worth. It is also the home of a potentially game-changing DIY planning project called Build a Better Block. Houston opened Discovery Green a few years ago, which has already seen more than 2 million visitors. It has also seen unique projects like Baker-Ripley Neighborhood Center, a public-private partnership that mixes park and community center with commercial spaces.

San Antonio also gets a mention, near the end of the article. Project for Public Spaces is leading a placemaking process here to expand on the successes we have seen at the Pearl Brewery and in Main Plaza. You can contribute ideas at this website, and join the discussion on August 18.

As San Antonio moves forward with major redevelopment projects like HemisFair Park and Midtown Brakenridge, we should not overlook the planning successes and failures of Houston, Austin, and Dallas, as well as those closer to home. As city-dwellers, we are also city-makers, whether or not we intend to be. We should look closely at the paths other cities have taken, so that we can better understand our own opportunities.

Tags: Dallas, Houston, placemaking, Project for Public Spaces

Taking back the streets

Following up on my post about Brackenridge Park, I wrote my column for Plaza de Armas this week on the similarities — in terms of rethinking the street — between the HemisFair framework master plan, and the Midtown Brackenridge master plan. Here’s the core of the piece:

Another key recommendation of the framework plan is to make both South Alamo and Durango streets more pedestrian friendly, by narrowing them, expanding on-street parking, widening sidewalks, and bringing in landscaping. The team hopes that by making these thoroughfares less daunting to cross, and opening up more portals to the park along them, HemisFair will become a more cohesive part of the city.

The planners at Johnson Fain aren’t the only people hankering to reconfigure San Antonio’s streets. The Midtown Brackenridge Master Plan, released in February, also puts a strong focus on turning streets into usable public spaces. Although the Midtown Brackenridge plan looks only at the streets and neighborhoods around Brackenridge Park, while the HemisFair plan is mostly focused on the park site itself, the two projects have much in common. The former proposes to remake Broadway as “the ‘extended living room’ of the City,” using the same structural changes Johnson Fain recommends for Durango. It aims to make Avenue B (which runs parallel to Broadway) into a woonerf, a type of anarchic road found primarily in the Netherlands on which pedestrians, bikes, and cars all have an equal right to the street.

Underlying both these plans is the idea that streets are public spaces, not just big pipes for moving cars from one parking lot to another. Where streets have become barriers — as Broadway is between the Mahncke Park neighborhood and Brackenridge, or as Durango is between Lavaca and HemisFair — these proposals hope to heal the divisions the streets have created, and knit the city back together.

And more broadly, the Metropolitan Planning Organization has adopted a Complete Streets policy, which I hope to look into in more depth soon. As Mr Fain told me, San Antonio’s biggest asset from a planning perspective is its neighborhoods. But the roads, which should serve as a connective tissue, too often divide the neighborhoods from each other as well as from other cultural assets.

Tags: Brackenridge Park, Broadway, Complete Streets, Durango, HemisFair Park, South Alamo, William Fain

Bringing Brackenridge Park to the street

The Express-News reported back in February that the Midtown Brackenridge master plan had been completed, with funding from the San Antonio River Authority (SARA). The plan rezones Broadway and N St Mary’s around Brackenridge Park, and invests heavily in making Broadway a more pedestrian-scale street (see a photo of the plan here).

The piece opens with the planners’ vision of a stronger connection between the streets and the 340 acre park, including trees and fountains along Broadway. The arterial street would be reduced from six lanes to four, allowing for on-street parking, bike lanes, and wider sidewalks. Presumably, the planned streetcar system would be integrated at the same time. New zoning would encourage high density mixed-use development.

The city has already designated a tax increment reinvestment zone (TIRZ) in the area, and according to the E-N article, some of the funds have been used to encourage development, offering millions of dollars in tax breaks for apartments at the Pearl and commercial space in the old Butterkrust building.

E-N blogger Benjamin Olivo takes issue with the plan:

I’m wondering if Midtown Brackenridge (as the area’s been coined) needs massive infrastructure change to be successful. For me, it’s like domesticating a wild animal. They want to take a thoroughfare (anti-pedestrian in nature) and whip it into South Alamo Street in Southtown. It can be done, but how would it feel? Would it feel loose and carefree like Southtown? … If I were running the show, I’d put all of my energy into River North…. Forget Broadway north of The Pearl for a few years. Maybe then River North’s growth momentum will spill into neighboring Midtown Brackenridge. And maybe then the massive undertaking won’t be necessary and drivers will eventually pause for pedestrians because they want to, not because they’re being told to.

A commenter responds by comparing Broadway to South Congress in Austin. South Congress is also a major arterial, but feels much more pedestrian friendly, and has a lot more development.

Take a look at Broadway:

Broadway Street in San Antonio

… and South Congress:

South Congress in Austin

Both streets are arteries, and will never be as pedestrian-friendly as South Alamo, but reducing the street to four lanes, adding some on-street parking, and encouraging pedestrian-scale retail would make a world of difference. If Broadway additionally had a strong connection to Brackenridge Park — which is currently invisible from the street — I think there would be a fundamental shift in awareness and consequently in the use of the park, the waterway, and the street. Hence, SARA’s involvement.

Offering incentives for developments like Pearl — and for increasing its housing capacity — are, I think, good uses of tax money. But with Pearl and 1221 Broadway now anchoring Broadway on the south end of the park, it is time to bring the park to the street and make the street walkable. This area of Broadway has some well-established businesses and restaurants, but still feels lifeless. It is crying out for the infrastructure improvements that would allow it to really function as a useable street, rather than the highway that it currently is.

Another issue worth discussing is safety. A report on street safety just came out in the Journal of the American Planning Association, which used San Antonio to research street design and safety [free PDF download here] for motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians. Interestingly, the authors found that the streets that are most safe for motorists are also most safe for pedestrians and cyclists. Those streets are not big arterials like Broadway. They are the streets with lower speeds, more on-street parking, and street-oriented buildings that create a “sense of visual enclosure.”

The study shows why the idea that motorists will suddenly want to slow down for pedestrians on a huge, six lane highway because of the momentum of the Pearl development is just wishful thinking. It also shows why a cyclist quoted in the article, who fears that eliminating lanes and lowering the speed limit would make Broadway less safe for bikers, is wrong. Build a street like a highway, and people will drive it like a highway, thus reducing awareness of potential traffic conflicts, and also reducing ability to respond quickly to avert accidents.

A plan that would simultaneously forge a stronger connection between one of San Antonio’s great urban parks and the city around it, increase traffic safety, encourage development, and connect downtown more strongly to Alamo Heights seems like a win-win-win-win to me.

Tags: 1221 Broadway, Brackenridge Park, Broadway, Complete Streets, Pearl, SARA, street safety, TIRZ, zoning