Finally, some planning in Center City
Though Center City is booming with new construction, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission has been unable to rouse itself to consider how the downtown is being reshaped. Fortunately, several neighborhood groups have taken up the task themselves. The Center City Residents Association gave its members a mid-term peak Thursday night at its privately-funded neighborhood plan.
The study, conducted by the Philadelphia firm Kise Straw and Kolodner, was impressive not just for its wealth of data, but for its progressive urbanist views and its strong support for pedestrian-friendly streets. Get this: They said it was time for Philadelphia to stop acting like a beggar that can't be choosy, and to start behaving like it belongs to the club of great walkable cities that includes San Francisco and Vancouver. With all the new condos in the pipeline, the southwest quadrant of Center City could add 10,000 new residents in a decade, an increase of 50 percent.
Unlike the city planning commission or the Zoning Board of Adjustment, the CCRA team spoke plainly about the design villains that are threatening to undermine Center City's virtues: condo towers built atop huge garage podiums, the immense maw of large loading docks, huge blank walls on the backs of tall towers, and rowhouses whose ground floors are dominated by garage doors. They suggested that the city needs to start thinking now about creating new parks in developing areas, funding sidewalk improvements, discouraging car ownership downtown, and improving pedestrian connections between neighborhoods.
The planners promised to return in three or four months with more specific recommendations.
The study, conducted by the Philadelphia firm Kise Straw and Kolodner, was impressive not just for its wealth of data, but for its progressive urbanist views and its strong support for pedestrian-friendly streets. Get this: They said it was time for Philadelphia to stop acting like a beggar that can't be choosy, and to start behaving like it belongs to the club of great walkable cities that includes San Francisco and Vancouver. With all the new condos in the pipeline, the southwest quadrant of Center City could add 10,000 new residents in a decade, an increase of 50 percent.
Unlike the city planning commission or the Zoning Board of Adjustment, the CCRA team spoke plainly about the design villains that are threatening to undermine Center City's virtues: condo towers built atop huge garage podiums, the immense maw of large loading docks, huge blank walls on the backs of tall towers, and rowhouses whose ground floors are dominated by garage doors. They suggested that the city needs to start thinking now about creating new parks in developing areas, funding sidewalk improvements, discouraging car ownership downtown, and improving pedestrian connections between neighborhoods.
The planners promised to return in three or four months with more specific recommendations.
posted by Inga Saffron at 2:17 PM
2 Comments:
Wally,
Good point. The city has assigned a staff person to serve as a liason with the Center City Residents Association. But for the CCRA plan to be meaningful, its recommendations will have to be turned into law, probably through changes in the zoning code. It's not unreasonable to expect that to happen. But it would be even better if the Planning Commission and Zoning Board of Adjustment actually bought into the planning values expressed in the CCRA study.
To Mike75 -
You need to think about the sidewalk issue in a different way. Philadelphia's sidewalks are narrow because this is a colonial city laid out nearly 300 years ago. If the city did require new buildings to set back, you'd just create a sawtooth effect and you'd spoil the uniform street wall that makes Philly's streets so successful.
Lots of cities have narrow sidewalks - think of Amsterdam, with cyclists, pedestrians and drivers all jockeying for their places. Rather than bemoan Philadelphia's narrow sidewalks, we should celebrate their contribution to the city's vibrancy.
As for those slow suburbanites - that's another issue.
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