Placemaking

I just returned from Denver, where I was invited by the Urban Land Institute to moderate a panel on "public-private partnerships" at their conference on "Placemaking." That's the term that's been coined to distinguish new development that seeks to live up to the classic standards of building great places instead of copying the generic crap that has characterized most real estate development during the last half century.

Considering the economic climate, the attendance at the conference was suprisingly strong -- more than 300 developers, architects, local officials and real estate professionals journeyed to the Mile High City. But there was a clear sense that the real estate meltdown (figures were released today that new home starts hit a 17 year low last month) may force a drastic rethinking of conventional suburban sprawl.

At the heart of the unfolding Wall Street crisis are speculative bets on housing that have turned out to be reckless at best, fraudulent at worst. Money was pumped into a "housing sector" without regard for the sustainability of the rising values -- particularly the underlying ability to support them.

That's causing more and more voices in the real estate industry to insist that "next time" more thought and planning needs to go into the location, type and mix of housing. In a word: "Placemaking."

That's the same aspiration that Ventura has been pursuing since adopting a new General Plan in 2005. The City Council adopted a complete new code for Downtown and later the Midtown Corridors. Staff is working to complete new codes for the Victoria Corridor and the Saticoy and Wells areas. The goal in each case is to establish "the highest standards of quality in architecture, landscaping and urban design," as outlined in the 2005 General Plan.

But the retooling needed in the real estate industry is as profound as the one facing Detroit automakers. Just as GM and Ford recklessly pushed gas guzzling vehicles, the big developers pushed a gas guzzling landscape of housing tracts, shopping centers and business parks. With higher gas prices, rising concern over climate change and new consumer attitudes toward conspicuous consumption, both industries are talking about "going green." Actually doing that will not only require rethinking, however. It will also involve new skills and hard work to figure out how to produce what America wants and needs.

An example of that challenge is the new "Belmar" development in suburban Lakewood that I toured as part of the Denver conference. That town of 146,000 grew up around a major regional mall instead of a downtown. But the mall didn't keep pace with the times. Civic leaders partnered with a far-sighted developer to raze the 100 acre site and build (from scratch) the downtown that the city never had.

Several hundred million in public and private investment has produced a working model, if not a fully realized vision. The ground floor space at the core is leased to major tenants, a Century Theater and Whole Foods are doing well and the office space went quickly. On weekends, the place draws a crowd and the wintertime ice rink is a big hit. But there are also empty parking lots where planned housing is stalled by the market.

The community of Lakewood is delighted by finally having at least the beginnings of a "downtown." But a project of this magnitude is far harder to plan, finance and build than a generic shopping strip or a tract housing project. The focus of the conference was on that challenge, including the pointed design issues of building more compact communities.

I was particularly struck by an element that others might not have focused on. One of the new parking structures is across the street from townhomes. The original low-cost, high efficiency design had parking on the ground floor. But before construction, the developer modified the design to replace the outermost row of parking on the frontage with a series of simple, glass-fronted "boxes." These have been leased to start-up art and artist studios and galleries. It is a far more compatible compliment to the residences across the street.

It is this kind of attention to "placemaking" that will determine the long-term value of what's built. It is precisely what has been overlooked in the myopic pursuit of short-term profit by most real estate developers -- and often their retail tenants.

That was the closing message from the conference, delivered by Christopher Leinberger, a renowned author and national real estate expert, who has been a developer himself. The market for what Leinberger calls "walkable urbanism" -- quality places built to human scale -- has huge potential, while the market for "drivable suburbanism" is tanking. Already, residences in walkable urban places command a 40% to 200% price premium on a price per square foot basis over nearby suburban housing. Demographics and economics will only increase that divergence, he argues.

That prediction has both optomistic and troubling aspects for Ventura. It bodes well for our Downtown, Midtown and Westside as well as infill development that incorporates more walkable, human scale design and a mix of adjacent uses to make great places. But it also poses long run concerns about the aging shopping centers and isolated housing tracts built during the 1960-90 suburban boom.

In today's volatile economy, predicting the future is risky business. But if the folks that gathered in Denver are right, this real estate market meltdown may have a silver lining -- forcing our entire country to think more about building places that are economically, environmentally and socially sustainable over time, instead of chasing bloated short-run quarterly profits. That's an imporant lesson -- and looking at the carnage on Wall Street, it's long overdue.