Building and Sustaining Great American Cities
Print written by Nichole L. Reber on Tuesday, January 13, 12:20PM
With Radiohead playing a little too loudly at the Intelligentsia on Randolph St. near Millennium Park and the Chicago Cultural Center, I edge my pseudo-aluminum chair to hear what Carol Coletta's saying. With her blonde, stylishly disheveled coif and subtle makeup seemingly perfect, you'd never guess she'd awoken at 430 a.m. in Memphis to catch her plane to Chicago. Having homes in both places, she's a frequent traveler, and in her gently Memphis dialect she also discusses her trips to Australia, South Africa and China. Coletta is president of CEOs for Cities and host/producer of the nationally syndicated public radio show, Smart City.
CEOs for Cities is a national network of urban leaders dedicated to building and sustaining the next generation of great American cities.
The conversation was extensive, though certainly I would have loved to talk to her all day. I didn't get to ask her about the likelihood of cohousing and cooperative communities making it into the mainstream as an indirect result of this tired economy. I didn't get to Rorschach quiz her on homeowners associations. Nor was I able to ask about her initial thoughts on NIMBYism. And while I didn't get to ask her about what books or resources she'd recommend for space design aficionados or experts — she did slip some into our easily flowing and jam-packed conversation; you can find them in part two of the interview, coming tomorrow.
Do you lean toward Thomas Friedman's theory that information technology erases distance and therefore enhances anyone's creativity and productivity tools anywhere, or toward Richard Florida, who says there's something uniquely, intellectually, creatively inspiring about metropolitan areas?
"Tom Friedman is correct in that tech makes us more productive and lets us work from anywhere. Richard Florida is right because the chance meetings that cities enable makes us more productive. Bill Bishop has done wonderful work in that same area, making the same point of (Florida): the more educated you are, the more mobile you are. People from the age group of 25 to 34 years old are more mobile."
From 1990 to 2000 this demographic went to 16 of the top 50 metropolitan areas of the U.S. That means the other 34 major cities lost out in attracting this age group to their area.
How do we know New Urbanism isn't just another Radiant City or City Beautiful?
"New Urbanism has been phenomenal in terms of its packaging and marketing. They have succeeded in building much better suburbs and have been good advocates for better roadways, smaller roadways. Doug Farr wrote a book called Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature, which is a brilliant piece of work. He's on the board of the Congress for New Urbanism. LEED ND is trying to promote a different sort of planning. The two are very compatible in a lot of ways, certainly not incompatible. New Urbanism is better than traditional suburbs, what without their sense of place and location away from core area of cities."
How has New Urbanism helped or hindered the redevelopment of New Orleans?
While Coletta pointed out that GlobalGreen.org and Brad Pitt's sponsorships in a design competition to create sustainable development in New Orleans as a positive move in the right direction, she feels the city still has a long way to go.
"New Orleans is just as vulnerable to flooding again and the development hasn't taken that into consideration. The great miscalculation is that everyone would come back, but they haven't. It's become a shrinking city like Cleveland, Detroit, Youngstown and Buffalo."
In tomorrow's post I'll discuss shrinking cities, Obama's infrastructural plans, the economy's long-term effects on land planning and more.
View more blogs by Nichole Reber at Spacedesignjournal.com
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