The Power of Ideas: Five People Who Changed the Urban Landscape
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The Power of Ideas: Five People Who Changed the Urban Landscape
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780874202083 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Urban Land Institute |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 121 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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The Power of Ideas
Five People Who Changed the Urban Landscape
By Terry J. Lassar, Douglas R. Porter
Urban Land Institute
Copyright © 2004 ULI-the Urban Land InstituteAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87420-930-3
CHAPTER 1
JOSEPH P. RILEY, JR.
CARING FOR CITIES
A CITY SHOULD BE A PLACE WITH SUCH BEAUTY AND ORDER THAT IT IS INSPIRATIONAL.
JOSEPH P. RILEY, JR.
Joseph P. Riley, Jr., has devoted his life to caring for cities. The city he has cared for the longest is Charleston, South Carolina, where he was elected mayor in 1975 and has served ever since. He has no formal training in architecture or urban design, but he is known as the master designer of his city and has won many of the most prestigious design awards in the country. Mayor Riley learned by walking, observing, and reading. He also learned from the many talented designers he has worked with over the years. But the best teacher, according to Riley, is the city.
Riley believes that cities are "the lasting mark of a civilization." And although Americans, until recently, have been fleeing them by the millions, he says we need our cities more than ever. What goes on in the center is what "sparks and shapes life for the entire region around it," he notes. "Cities give us memories. Every time we can keep a piece of historic texture and scale, we are giving something to future generations that they will revere, a sense of place."
Many people have seen the mayor's legendary slide show that tells the story of the revival of Charleston's central city. One of the last images shows a workman holding a blowtorch as he bevels the edges of a large bluestone paver that will form part of a sidewalk in the city's downtown. The workman is kneeling on his hands and knees, attending to a fine detail. "This," says Riley, "is the way we must care for our cities, like treasures."
GREAT CITIES HAVE THE GUTS TO GIVE THE FINEST PARTS OF THEIR CITY TO THE PUBLIC REALM. JOSEPH P. RILEY, JR.
MAKING THE TABLE BIGGER
Civil rights, to a great extent, got Joe Riley started in politics. Soon after graduating from the University of South Carolina School of Law, he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1968, where he served for six years. A member of the "Young Turks," a group of young legislators of the progressive wing of the Democratic party, Riley had developed a reputation as a reformer, especially on civil rights and social justice issues.
In 1975, Charleston's black leaders and the city's mainly white business community asked the 32-year-old Riley to run for mayor. The city was experiencing severe racial tensions. Civic leaders wanted to avoid the strife of the previous mayoral race that had divided the city along racial lines. Based on his progressive track record in the legislature, Joe Riley, it was felt, could bridge the divide. "Had it not been for that need," says Riley, "I would never have run for mayor."
Joe Riley offered a new image of moving the city forward. He ran on a platform of downtown revitalization, reducing crime, increasing low-income housing, and improving public transit. This Charleston native, who had grown up in the staid "South of Broad" neighborhood — the wealthiest section of town — would bring about three decades of sweeping reforms that would forever change his city.
First, he worked to heal racial tensions. The number of blacks on the city council was increased by 50 percent. He opened the government to African Americans, to give them "complete citizenship," he said. African Americans, who currently make up 34 percent of Charleston's population of some 100,000, hold major posts in the city. But Riley is quick to point out, "We didn't run anyone away from the table; we just made the table bigger."
"One of the nicest compliments I've ever received," relates Riley, was from an African American man who came to him six months after he took office. "He said, 'Joe, I think you're moving too fast, doing too much in the black community and it's hurting you politically.' Behind my back, some people called me LBJ, for Little Black Joe. But you don't hear that anymore."
Riley knew it was important to break down the deep distrust of the police department in the black community. When his police chief died, he appointed Reuben Greenberg in 1982, the city's first black police chief. Greenberg, a pioneer in community-oriented policing, took officers out of their cars and sent them out into the neighborhoods on foot and bicycle. Crime declined sharply. Charleston's police department is regarded as one of the country's best trained and most successful. Mirroring the mayor's own hands-on leadership style, Greenberg is known to set out on rollerblades, or be found on a street corner directing traffic. The multitalented Greenberg, in addition to his training in law enforcement and administration, also earned a master's degree in city planning. His book, Let's Take Back Our Streets, was published in 1989.
BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC HOUSING
When Riley was elected mayor, many sections of Charleston were in a sorry state of decay. The city was pockmarked with abandoned buildings and vacant lots. He first concentrated redevelopment efforts in the poorest parts of the city, mostly in African American neighborhoods. Like most other cities, Charleston had its share of public housing projects built during the 1940s and 1950s. Soon after Riley took office, the city's housing authority was about to build another low-income housing tower. But the young mayor said no. "That would ignore the collective experience of Western civilization about building human-scale neighborhoods, with thousands of strings of affection and respect to tie together residents of all income levels," he said. Instead of segregating public housing, Riley wanted the subsidized homes to be scattered throughout the city.
WE MUST FEEL THAT WE ARE HOLDING THEM [CITIES] TEMPORARILY IN OUR HANDS, AS WE WOULD A FINE FAMILY HEIRLOOM. AND WE ARE TO PASS THEM ON TO FUTURE GENERATIONS IN JUST AS BEAUTIFUL CONDITION — IF NOT MORE BEAUTIFUL — AS THE WAY WE FOUND THEM. JOSEPH P. RILEY, JR.
Before most cities were experimenting with new designs for low-income housing and long before the start of the federal government's HOPE VI program for mixing market-rate and subsidized housing, Charleston was building low-income housing that blended with the neighborhoods. "Every building constructed, every house rehabilitated — no matter how modest, is expected to be beautiful," asserts Riley. When an architect came in with ugly, barren designs for low-income houses, he remembers, "We sent him back to the drawing board. And when he persisted in designing institutional-style houses, we fired him."
Prince Charles visited Charleston in 1990 and specifically asked to see one of the newly created scattered-site public housing units. As a student of architecture, he felt that Charleston had an important lesson to teach about building better, beautiful housing for poor people. He visited the home of an elderly lady. "She was amazingly at ease when she met with him," recalls Riley. "She knew he was to be the next king of England, but she also knew that she lived in a handsome home — an apartment with a street number, not a unit in some monolith. She felt a sense of ownership and that made her proud."
Some of the city's scattered-site homes have spurred private redevelopment around them. President Reagan, in a ceremony at the White House in 1985, presented Mayor Riley with a Presidential Award for Design Excellence for public housing in Charleston. The city's designs for low-income housing have won other national design awards, including several from the American Institute of Architects.
POSITIVE STEPS
Mayor Riley says he never expected to be mayor for 29 years. In 1994, he ran for governor but lost the runoff for the Democratic party nomination by a slim margin. Four years later, he was asked to run again, but declined. In 2000, he entered the national political arena with his "Get in Step" march to remove the Confederate flag from atop the South Carolina State House.
"One day the mayor walked into the office, "says David Agnew, who was Mayor Riley's executive assistant for five years. "He said, 'Maybe I've had too much coffee this morning, but I want to walk to the state capital and send a message to everyone in the state that there are South Carolinians who want the flag to come down.'" For too long this incendiary symbol had sowed deep divisions among people of the state.
Riley organized the four-day march to Columbia, South Carolina. The 116-mile walk was a plea to the legislature to "get in step with the people of South Carolina." Riley invited a number of influential South Carolinians to join the march, including Hugh McColl, Jr., chief executive of Bank of America, and Darla Moore, an investor who had recently made a $25 million gift to the University of South Carolina. Press coverage was extensive, and the world took note. The march sent a clear message that citizens from all walks of life in South Carolina supported this protest. Mayor Riley knew he would be ridiculed and physically threatened, both of which occurred, says Agnew. But the rewards of bold action outweighed the risks. The flag came down, eventually.
REVISITING CHARLESTON'S PAINFUL PAST
Riley says that one of the achievements of which he is especially proud is the racial harmony that now prevails in his city. Racial inequality had always been deeply rooted in Charleston's past. For more than a century, the city was the principal port of entry for African slaves into British North America. But the sorrowful, painful subject of slavery had never been memorialized.
It was Riley's idea to build an International African American History Museum in Charleston. The first major institution of this kind, the museum will trace the slave trade history from Africa to America. Mayor Riley told New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, "The whole country has matured in terms of our willingness to confront slavery. We as a culture need to do this as part of our progress in coming together and healing." Riley envisions a national museum that will interest African Americans and everyone else, much the same way that the Holocaust Museum in Washington and museums about Native Americans interest all people.
Former president Bill Clinton accepted Riley's invitation to serve as honorary chairman of the museum's International Committee. James E. Clyburn, the first African American to represent South Carolina in the Congress since Reconstruction, chairs the Working Committee and provides active leadership for the museum. Plans are underway for raising some $60 million for the new building.
REVIVING THE CENTER
Mayor Riley has lived almost his entire life in Charleston, where he was born 61 years ago. This extraordinarily beautiful coastal city, founded in 1670, was left worn and poverty-stricken by the Civil War. Charleston's economic misfortune ultimately helped preserve its renowned architecture. Without the means to reconstruct and modernize, Charleston found itself in the early 20th century with a unique collection of buildings spanning 200 years of architectural styles, from Georgian to federal and Victorian. But the 1920s brought prosperity to Charleston and, with it, demolition. Concerned citizens founded a powerful preservation advocacy group, and soon afterward, Charleston passed the country's first zoning ordinance to protect historic structures. The city's reputation as a preservation pioneer continues today.
When Riley took office, the Charleston peninsula was losing population at the rate of nearly 13 percent a year. Some 27 percent of its 70,000 citizens lived below the poverty level. Once known as the "Convention City of the South," Charleston had lost seven hotels in the previous two decades With more than 1 million square feet of vacant commercial space on the city's main street, the central business core was ailing.
The new mayor worked closely with area businesspeople on a strategy for resuscitating the central business district. They decided on a plan to build a large luxury hotel with meeting rooms, retail shops, and a public parking garage in the heart of the business district. The development would fill a derelict block on King Street, the city's main retail artery, and would connect with another major shopping street to be a catalyst for reviving the downtown.
Mayor Riley had no inkling then that this project would be the toughest one of his career. Back then, he recalls, cities were in bad shape. Charleston was hurting. Downtown was dying. Riley viewed this project as a catalyst for growth and a way to revive the central business district for both residents and tourists. He never dreamed that the project would spark fierce opposition.
The opposition was led by one of the city's two powerful preservation groups, which worried that this "convention center" (as they called it) would overwhelm the historic downtown. They looked to New Orleans's commercialized French Quarter as an example of what they wanted to avoid. They also objected to the demolition of more than a dozen older buildings. They brought a series of legal actions that delayed Charleston Place, which took nine years to complete.
Meanwhile, the original developer ran into financial problems and eventually backed out of the deal. Riley brought in new development partners, who were much better attuned to the desires of the community, including the preservationists. Baltimore-based Cordish Embry & Associates teamed up with the seasoned shopping mall magnate A. Alfred Taubman to redesign the center. They removed four stories from the central hotel building, brought many of the retail shops out onto the street, and kept more of the older buildings. Riley recalls that the buildings on the site were in dismal shape: "A couple of strip joints, old turn-of-the century mercantile storefronts with ugly brick infill. But we knew that demolishing them would remove forever the memories of those buildings." So the city worked with the owners to renovate the old buildings, cut off the backs, and place parking behind.
"We knew we were putting Charleston Place in a sick part of town," says Riley, "but we also knew that if we got the right critical mass there, the area would come back to life." And it did. Now, even during the dog days of summer when the city's steamy weather might dampen tourist interest, Charleston Place, which opened in 1986, is booked solid. The $100 million development drew luxury local shops and branches of high-end national stores. The street-facing shops and eateries, thronged with visitors and residents, are busy year-round.
The immensely complicated financing arrangement for Charleston Place demonstrates the mayor's sixth sense for deal making. Charleston developer John Darby notes, "[Riley] is a master at mobilizing public/private partnerships. ... [he] knew how to get the biggest bang for the buck with federal grants, and knew how to leverage them to the fullest extent." Riley secured more than $18 million from the federal government, in addition to the funds he raised from city bonds and state highway funds.
GIFT TO THE FUTURE
The second toughest project of Riley's career was Waterfront Park. In the late 1970s, a developer approached the city with plans to build several mixed-use towers on a weedy shore where the Cooper River flows into Charleston Harbor. Many people said the proposal made good business sense. It would have cleaned up a blighted section of town and instantly added prime real estate to the tax rolls. But Riley said no. This land, he claimed, belonged to all of Charleston and shouldn't be limited to the enjoyment of only the wealthy. Riley envisioned a beautiful linear park, where all Charlestonians, as well as the city's many visitors, would be welcome to stroll along the riverside and enjoy the fresh breezes.
But Riley's idea was controversial. Parks cost a lot of money. They are difficult and expensive to maintain. People loiter in them. Undeterred, the mayor worked to sell his vision to the public and gain support from the city council. He arranged for a land swap, and secured the financing to purchase and develop the 13-acre site for Waterfront Park, which he called "a gift to the future."
Stuart Dawson, with the nationally known landscape architecture firm Sasaki, local landscape architect Ed Pinckney, and New York architect and urban designer Jaquelin Robertson, whose firm Cooper, Robertson & Partners had designed the famously successful Battery Park along the Hudson River at the base of Wall Street, were hired to design Waterfront Park. Built with a combination of public and private funds, it offers a series of quiet living room-like sitting areas — a grassy public green, a fountain for children to cool off in the summer, benches, and a magnificent pier.
The park's several garden "rooms," which are separated by small hedges, have benches for meditation, reading, or simply relaxing. It was Riley's idea to install adult-size bench swings in covered pavilions on the park's pier. He rejected a proposal to ban children from splashing in the park's Vendue Fountain and insisted that all areas remain open to the public.
Riley claims that it is just as important to design the use of a park as the physical plan. Other parks in the city have sports fields and venues for concerts. But Waterfront Park was planned as a place of peace and repose. A sign prominently displayed at the park forbids radios, mopeds, and skateboards.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Power of Ideas by Terry J. Lassar, Douglas R. Porter. Copyright © 2004 ULI-the Urban Land Institute. Excerpted by permission of Urban Land Institute.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword Paul Goldberger,Introduction,
Joseph P. Riley, Jr.: Caring for Cities,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Statesman of the Public Realm,
Gerald D. Hines: Developer Extraordinaire,
Vincent Scully: Visionary Teacher, Writer, Advocate,
Richard D. Baron: Doing Well at Doing Good,