Ahh, the urbanist’s dreaded big box. No one wants the thing in their neighborhood, but oh do we love having Trader Joes and Whole Foods nearby. Never mind that the Trader Joes moved into the old Wal-Mart space and the Whole Foods was built next door to a massive Petsmart, Babies R’ Us, and Target.

We need to be careful when we condemn the big box. You can keep talking if you are living completely off the land: making your own food, sewing your own clothes, even educating your children on site.How are these box stores any different from department stores, which have been around since the 1800s. Shopping plazas have been around for far longer than that and did not originate in the United States .Yet, why is it when it’s Wal-Mart or Costco and not Target or Barnes and Noble do we have the problems? Maybe it is because these stores were built and are continuing to be built to be car dependent? The stores take up too much room in the ‘burbs, therefore they must eat up the whole urban landscape? Also, there’s always the air of cheap or over-sized products. Also, there are the employee treatment issues and the “people” that shop there. However, we need to get over all these issues.

Having the boxes around has also allowed  us to possess more than we ever thought. Thanks to the supermarket, we can now have eggs or beer at any time of night in any metro(unless you are dry on Sunday mornings like we were even in NC metros for years). We don’t have to make our clothes, we can get all of them already made and cheap at Target.

I don’t mean for this post to be a slander or witch-hunt, however, I do want all of us to think about we manage our commerce. What stores could we really live without? Are there ways to make these stores better, such as pushing for them paying living wages and being taller and having less land mass around their stores?

Here’s what I think it will take for all box stores to succeed in the urban fabric:

Be Green: Seriously, have a LEED certification or some sort of historic redevelopment certification on the building. Consider having a green roof instead of a parking roof. Use natural light. Suburban Wal-Marts built in recent years have done a great job incorporating skylights. In an urban setting, the windows of the stores would be preserved and used as forms of light into upper floors. Use compact florescent if you must light the store via electronic means. Continue the work with suppliers to bring in local produce and reduce package sizes.

Reconfigure the store: All big box stores should take the IKEA approach to selling their goods. Items that are difficult to carry down stairs or even on a Vermaport SC (a cart escalator commonly seen in urban stores), should be displayed in a special showroom area which can utilize higher floors and then be picked up at a special merchandise pick up area that is car friendly. Grocery should always be bottom floor, as it’s the most routine need in my opinion. Clothing, small appliances, electronics, music and books in their tangible forms and other objects that are not conventionally sold at grocery stores could occupy higher levels.

Free Delivery and A Prominent Package Pick-Up area: Stores would not need parking if they offered these two options efficiently and carefully. The package pick-up area would be directly connected to a much smaller parking lot that also housed delivery trucks. Delivery trucks would have a bay and there would also be a lane for private vehicles.Sears does great with providing package pick-up areas. Many other stores have ship to store or ship home options now that are free or minimal cost.

Pay a Living Wage to Workers: Wal-Mart was the main offender of this rule, but has taken steps to rectify issues with compensating and rewarding employees. With the revenue streams these stores produce being public, upping wages of employees is a goodwill measure to the public, as well as a stabilizer of the economy.

Be a good neighbor: Be willing to be the only anchor or locate yourself a few blocks away from the competition. Provide seed money to smaller businesses, that although are direct competitors in your category, offer a slightly different in-store experience that customers can alternate between. Be known for being the clean, but low price point and buy off the shelf store. Let the small store host the events, display the products and order the out of print or custom made products. Through it’s subsidiary Sam’s Club’s  small business loans, Wal-Mart could be financing lots of potential small-scale competitors. The loans will be targeted to firms led by women and minority groups, increasing the diversity of these ventures.Also, efforts to help schools, hospitals and other mission driven organizations and businesses to fund their causes and provide volunteers for their projects should continue.

These measures are not easy, nor cheap. A downtown Target store cost the chain 16 million to build. However, Chicago, New York, DC, Baltimore and countless other municipalities are figuring out ways to build big boxes in a urbanist manner.

So what did I miss? What else can we do to reconcile the price point and convenience of box stores with the need to maintain the traditional Main Streets and vibrant dense urban downtowns?

In November 2008, I was considering moving into the neighborhood in Raleigh I’d been working and playing in, North Hills (Midtown) Raleigh. North Hills is one of the many examples of successful classical new urbanism in North Carolina. It took a shopping mall that was emptying due to competition from nearby Crabtree Valley Mall and flipped it into something short of paradise, at least for me. All but one of my favorite stores, my office at the time, the best hairstylist I’d ever had and practically all my favorite restaurants were within walking distance. I only needed to spend gas money on getting back and forth from my apartment 25 minutes away. Even better if I could negate that 25 minutes and move closer. I was interviewing for a different job outside of the complex, but only five minutes away. I would have a nice entry-level professional salary. However, $900 in rent to live in something that was smaller than my $750 place out in the burbs just to say I was green and walkable wasn’t going to cut it for my pocketbook or common sense.

And here we have part one of what I call the walkability paradox. Part two was highlighted by Kristen Carney on Plannovation. She pulls Census and Walk Score data together to determine that first most Blacks and Hispanics don’t live in what are now considered “walkable” communities (i.e. clones of North Hills). Yet, I drive through my old majority-minority neighborhood and see lots of walking, albeit to the suburban style strip center on the corner, but still, walking none the less. Along with another study she was able to do showing higher vacancies in 18 of 20 cities’ “walkable” communities than the city as a whole, there’s evidence that there are issues with selling our classical new urbanist(and some old urbanist) communities not just to Blacks and Hispanics, but maybe the population as a whole.
Not only do these numbers provide evidence of the paradox, there are other things I think make “walkable” communities undesirable still for many:

Price Points Too High

As stated before, we are expected to pay a premium to stay in some walkable neighborhoods. I was hoping to save the money I was not spending at the gas tank, not turn it over into my rent check. With my Honda Accord, I was spending about $40 a week in gas. With those high  prices back now, there’s no real cost savings, only a green living benefit. For people with gas guzzlers, they may see about a $20-$40 discount, but certainly not the $150-$200 I expected to see. At the end of the day, people are going for the cheapest items. Some people do it for bragging rights, others do for survival. Plus, it’s way cheaper in some cases to put in sidewalks in areas that have grids, but missing one side of the street. People are walking, but infrastructure in all but the new urbanist areas is not reflective of actual travel patterns.

Poor Floor Plans
Unfortunately, many of these neighborhoods are built to maximize profits instead of provide adequate space and appealing layouts. The proximity to the Chic-fil-A and the Target doesn’t make up for the fact that I can barely turn around in the bathroom, my dining room table is thisclose to my stove, and in a case I saw here in Greensboro, there’s no need to have a bathtub, just a shower. Apparently, this is both what builders and designers think young professionals will settle for or they are just making something up to try and sell. Also, I’ve never understood the three-story townhome either. I like the idea of exercise, but some of those staircases look steeper than DC Metro escalators. Granted, it’s a waste of time I’m sure to get feedback from people who may only live in a place three months. Still, I’m not one hundred percent  sure that people are renting because they love the interior or the exterior outweighs all. If I’m going to pay a premium, at least let there be enough space and reasonable features to justify the expense.

Lack of Grass and Separate Walls
There are people who will always want a separate wall and a bit of grass. Count my mom as one of them. These people also  include DJ’s, musicians and dog owners who don’t want to always have to take Fluffy outside themselves or get yelled at by the neighbors for noise.  Thankfully, some of the new urbanist developments have began to incorporate a bit more privacy and a bit more green space, in the style of the bungalow neighborhoods of the early 20th Century. This allows sidewalks, bike lanes, and the location of neighborhood scale retail, all while allowing some room to breathe. In my childhood neighborhood, the homes are close by, but I still had ample room to run and proximity to the corner store.

Buildings are Too Tall
Research and practice are beginning to rally around mid-rise development. Many other sites and studies have shown just small amounts of density can improve walkability and repair sprawl. As much as I like dense areas, I also like to see the sun rise and set and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Plus, so many of these glass box condos were built, yet no one is living in them. So much for developer profits. One local developer ended up buying back his whole building and looking into other options to fill up the condos.

Amenities are Too Upscale
North Hills does has a good balance of amenities. There’s a Target and JCPenney, along with upscale boutiques. I can eat at Chick-fil-A one day and Ruth’s Chris if I really had the means to eat a nice meal. The stylist I mentioned was at the JCPenney, but there were more expensive places for that too. Harris Teeter does have a decent private label brand. Yet, some new urbanist communities fail to have anything besides pricey bars and spas to entice people to come downstairs. You still have to drive to Wal-Mart or even the green grocer co-op. What about working and professional class folks who need more than a liquor store or a fancy steakhouse downstairs? As much as people hate them, I like the urban big-boxes. People are going to these stores anyway, let’s make them bow down to our design sensibilities.

Some Places Make it Unbelievably Hard to Not Have a Car

With the advent of the suburban office park, the 3-5 year job placement, poor bus infrastructure and lack of bike lanes, car dependent areas are almost avoidable. As we continue to advocate and see results reversing these trends, we still need to understand that many people will not come over the bridge until there are bike lanes.

The biggest solution for the paradox? Ask people what they really want.  Don’t settle for who comes to the design charette or model home. Don’t stick to the marketing research you bought from the PR firm. Second solution, flip all these problems over. Lower prices and price points in your residential and retail offerings. Complete the streets. Provide more privacy barriers. Help ease people into a more ambulatory lifestyle.

So folks, what else should we do to get people walking again?

The local Facebook and Twitter and Blogosphere are heating up with a controversial article on Greensboro, NC written by CNN. Much like the one they wrote about Charlotte earlier, it spares no bones in highlighting and illuminating some of the more negative aspects of the city.

What I want to ask though, is what do we have that’s positive and unique? Are any of those things newsworthy?

How about Center City Park? On a summer afternoon and even a chillier fall or winter one, you can come, sit on a bench, play on your laptop, cuddle with your lover and let your kids run around right in the middle of downtown. Then you can walk down and enjoy a number of quality restaurants and bars. Sadly though, we are not unique in this, even small towns are revitalizing their downtowns and adding parks and restaurants.

Well, maybe we could highlight our wonderful multi-modal transportation center. It’s a great example of historic preservation, services the Greensboro Transit Authority buses and also Amtrak. But still, the buses and the train are sometimes late. Other towns and cities have this too. Yet, it’s still the largest historical depot in the state of North Carolina.

Even though jobs have been moving away, we still have one good home grown corporation. It’s called RF Micro Devices and it makes semiconductor chips. Wait, you thought all of the technology companies were in Raleigh? Think again. The company made just over 1 billion dollars and its revenue is expected to rise. They are also adding a new business unit.

Still, big companies aren’t always the greatest or most unique either. How about Elsewhere Artists Collaborative? How many places have an old thrift store, with items from the 1930’s through the 1990’s artfully arranged? How many of these thrift stores hosts artists from around the country who use said found objects to create new works of art? Oh and they have a nice grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Unfortunately, it’s the negative that sells papers and dominates airwaves these days. Not the nice walkable Southside and other near downtown neighborhoods. Not the public school system that offers many educational choices to students and has raised its graduation rates among minority students. These young students  bear the brunt of the acts of racism the original article profiled that were committed and still continue on.

Yet, a new generation of leaders rises in Greensboro. Ones that can see past the wounds of our past. Ones that have solutions to bring to the council chambers. Ones who have found better ways to worship. And others who just love their city, warts and all.

That generation will hopefully usher in an era that result in the first municipality of its size to reject traditional landfill practices and push for the conversion of waste to fuel instead. A generation that will see public transit and bicycling running side-by-side and throughout the Downtown Greenway. Streets without homeless, because we succeeded in our goal of eradicating the homeless population in our county in ten years. New nanotechnology discovered on the once “bad” side of town.

And then maybe one day CNN can come back and report on that. After all, all those things make us unique too. But in a good way.

On April 18th  I happened upon this post-on popular urbanist blog Greater Greater Washington. The author in my opinion just wanted to get people talking about solutions to the problems DC residents are facing with the loss of the Chocolate City identity. It made me think back to when I published my article in Grist in December. In the editing stages, I was alerted to the fact that the urbanism I was presenting was not necessarily “textbook” urbanism. However, as many of us have learned, outside of some math theories and problems and a few truly accepted scientific laws (note I said laws, not theories), there is not much that people can agree on as absolute truth in the public sphere. Yet, until we can come to a consensus on what urbanism and associated terms such as new urbanism, smart growth, transit oriented development and even sprawl are, then we are in trouble.

This June at the Congress of New Urbanism 19 Next Gen Day 9, I’m gathering together a set of folks who are committed to incorporating the cultures of their birth into the way buildings are planned. We all recognize that urbanism is more than pretty building and pretty trains. Urbanism is also the fact that some strip centers are at 100% density, but with stores run by immigrants selling objects from the old world and some from the new in a way that relates to people. It’s also recognizing how all income levels and cultural backgrounds can benefit from things like bike trails, clean sidewalks and easier walkability.

Instead of name-calling, let’s all dig deeper into our psyche. Realize that some people are trying to make it from sunrise to sunset without losing a job, losing a child or losing a life, especially if they are suffering from chronic illness. Some people would like not to drive and others can’t wait for a car, because that’s been touted as what the successful people do. Because our discourse has been defined by what mainstream(read mostly “white” and rich) people think are best (and has been horribly wrong), then many cultures will never accept what an  or anyone in authority says, despite the fact it may truly be the best solution this time. We need to get to a point where we take all the best of our cultures and let the best idea dominate the conversation, not the channel where it comes from. We can respect our elders, without necessarily following their entire lead.

Our presentation and panel is on June 1st, 9AM. The entire NextGen day is no charge. I’ll be in town all week so be sure to find me to connect.

For many of you, your neighborhood Borders is just another part of the sprawburbia that has eaten our landscape alive in the past few years. However, for my neighborhood and I, Borders is more than a crappy overpriced bookstore and wannabe music store, it’s a gathering place, our true third space.

Just like our shopping mall down the street that’s undergoing a transformation into a mall for working and middle class people of color (well, the stores appear to make it look that way), the Borders in our neighborhood did the same. It stocked a high number of African-American literature. It provided the coffee shop experience in a neighborhood of chicken joints, bar-grills and fast food fantasies.

More importantly for me, it was the place where my love for reading and writing was born. In 1995, when our Borders was built, my parents were separating and I was adjusting to spending every other evening and weekend with one parent or the other. While my mom went off to her new part-time job at the fabric store, my dad and I went to the McDonalds across the street(or the Wendys or Burger King, only because they were cheap), then after bonding over a McFish Sandwich or McNuggets(even at 10, I couldn’t stand the burgers), we’d walk across the parking lot to Borders.

Walking in the store was something like I’d never seen before. I liked the library ok, but all the books were older. I liked the mall bookstore ok too, but they didn’t have comfy chairs and a mini amphitheater that I could just lay back on and read the latest Babysitter’s Club adventure, simultaneously forgetting about the sadness of having divorced parents, going to a new afterschool program and school where I was teased and living in a new apartment where I couldn’t go outside and play because of the mean kids downstairs.

Fast-forward to today. The shopping strip where Borders sits is going to be 75% empty when it’s gone.  There are a few more big-box suburban stores that signal affluence, but in reality, we are in the middle of a suburban blight.

I walked into the store, trying not to cry. So many dreams and stories laid in it’s rafters. Already the store felt empty; the coffee shop had already been shut down. Yet, as I thumbed through books, none compelled me to walk up to the register and take them home. Instead I started a list called “Things to Put on My Kindle.” I considered buying a booklight, but realized I could order it cheaper on Amazon. However, I was determined to buy something in Borders one last time, so after checking out Rusell Brand’s Booky Wook 2 for kicks, I decided on a notebook with flower detailing and a folding clasp. I told myself “Maybe it’s time to write a new story, a new book, tell the story of your neighborhood and spread out to the world.”

With that mindset, I walked to the register, paid for my book and walked out for the last time.

RIP Greensboro Borders. You’ll be missed.

The last two posts explored what urban development has meant to the black community in honor of Black History Month. This time I’m sharing what I think the future needs to be to strengthen and honor black neighborhoods and communities, while including them in the sustainable community movement.

• Education systems that offer students more options and are more accountable. We need our public schools to begin to function more like some of our charter and private schools, offering students more opportunities to learn and more accountability at an early age. Not through test scores that are inflated, but through actual learning measures and workplace interests. This article in the New York Times presents a good start. Our colleges and universities need to ensure that students are connected to employers or seed funders to find a place in the global economy. They also need to ensure more traditional age students graduate within a decent time frame and without heavy loads of debt.
• A return to farming. While this may conjure up images of plantations and sharecropping, worldwide there are shortages of land for farming due to over-industrialization and USDA policies favoring large scale agricultural operations. Even if it’s just something simple as community gardens, or what Detroit is doing, we can all try to contribute something back to the land.
• Neighborhood watches, community associations and other groups that are committed to preserving communities. Not only do these groups allow neighbors to get to know and trust each other, they are great lobbying groups when initiatives go to city councils that may affect neighborhoods fairly or unfairly.
• Political and organizational leaders who actually care. Doing the same old-same old, trying to profit off of other people’s backs and voting down initiatives because they endanger the profitability of themselves should not be tolerated with black leaders, much like we don’t tolerate them out of leaders of other backgrounds. While wise old leaders who care about people should stay, others should step out of the way for the youth to come in and work to improve their communities.

Now I ask everyone else, what can black communities do to make sure they are a part of the sustainable growth movement this time and not sitting on the sidelines?

Last post we explored how movements in history relate to the black experience and what we define as smart growth policies today. Here are how some sustainable community/smart growth policies are affecting the black community today.

Harlem Children’s Zone

Since 1997, Geoffrey Canada has been helping children and families in Harlem by concentrating all social services within a few blocks of each other. The program started in 1970 as Rheedlen, a truancy prevention program. Over the years, as the crack epidemic swept through Harlem, the organization shifted and grew to help maintain stability in the neighborhood. In the early 1990’s, they began tracking and evaluating their programs to make sure they were working, something that was innovative for non-profits at the time. The zone concept began with 24 blocks in 1997, and has now expanded to 100 blocks. Support is provided for parents from before birth until graduation from college.

Greening the Ghetto

Marjora Carter and her movement to re-green the Bronx added another black voice to the sustainable community movement and the green movement. Carter came up with her vision after not being able to find a job after college. She was walking her dog and she walked up on the Bronx riverfront and started envisioning a riverfront park with pedestrian and bike paths. That park opened in 2001 and in 2003 she started Sustainable South Bronx to build the green movement in the Bronx has been instrumental in creating green jobs, building rooftop gardens, planting trees and other efforts to bring progressive green and sustainable policies to the Bronx. Recently moving on from Sustainable South Bronx, she has established the Majora Carter Group which is sought after nationwide for advice on sustainable development issues.

Willow Oaks

Hope VI has been used in varying degrees to help clean up shady housing projects. However, it often fails in its promise to bring mixed incomes and instead results in pushing out residents. Right in my city of Greensboro, the community of Willow Oaks is a small example of what can happen when residents have a part in cleaning up their neighborhood. The neighborhood began its years as Lincoln Grove, a working-class area. However, with the arrival of the Morningside Homes federal housing project in the 1950’s, the area began a downward spiral. Crime rates rose, culminating in the 1980 Klan-Nazi shooting which would reverberate throughout the entire city of Greensboro and beyond. In addition, the units resembled military barracks more than homes and spent many years in disrepair. However, in 1996, Morningside residents, along with 50 other organizations including the City of Greensboro, new urbanist land developers and NC A&T State University began creating an urban village they renamed Willow Oaks.  Today there are waiting lists for the senior citizens home and the townhome village. Single family homes have been built, many occupied by professors at NC A&T. Low-income housing is scattered throughout the neighborhood and looks no different than the market-rate dwellings. Construction is under way on a community/child development center and retail in walking distance of the homes.

Community Gardens in Detroit

Since the 1980’s Detroit has been predominately black. In addition, with the shift in the auto industry in the last 30 years, it’s also been predominately empty. Lots of community leaders have worked to start filling some of those empty lots with community gardens. Over 1000 community gardens exist in the Detroit metro area. So far they have provided work for unemployed Detroit residents and fresh food options in a city which only has 7 full service supermarkets. While many gardens are held by community and school groups, the wide amounts of available land have began to attract private investors, notably John Hantz and his Hantz Farm project. He hopes to pioneer modern organic farming techniques and rebuild property values by buying up over 5,000 acres, creating a scarcity situation. In an area where home prices average at $15,000, property value growth will actually rebuild communities, instead of push out homeowners as is the case in most gentrifying and redeveloping neighborhoods. I’ve personally witnessed how much this movement has grown in the area, as my aunt, a Detroit-area elementary school principal, has sponsored a plot of land at a nearby community farm for her students, along with keeping a rain garden on her campus.

These are only a few of the many projects undertaken in and  by traditionally Black communities and leaders of color to rebuild once blighted communities and also incorporate modern urban planning and architectural elements. Next post will discuss what I believe it will take to continue these efforts and birth new ones.