Cities are fantastically dynamic places, and this is strikingly true of their successful parts, which offer a fertile ground for the plans of thousands of people….
The look of things and the way they work are inextricably bound together, and in no place more so than cities. But people who are interested only in how a city “ought” to look and uninterested in how it works will be disappointed…. It is futile to plan a city’s appearance, or speculate on how to endow it with a pleasing appearance of order, without knowing what sort of innate, functioning order it has. To seek for the look of things as a primary purpose or as the main drama is apt to make nothing but trouble. –The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961, Jane Jacobs

“Most city diversity, is the creation of incredible numbers of different people and different private organizations, with vastly differing ideas and purposes, planning and contriving outside the framework of public action. The main responsibility of city planning and design should be to develop (insofar as public policy and action can do so) cities that are congenial places for this great range of unofficial plans, ideas, and opportunities to flourish.”
– Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Royal Oak’s Downtown Development Authority will capture about $1.9 Million in tax revenue this year. At first glance this seems like a great success story but the city is facing a $912,000 budget shortfall. This disparity prompted a meeting between the DDA and City Commissioners last week.
Before the DDA, this $1.9 Million would go to public institutions like Oakland Community College and SMART, but now it’s captured for development in the Downtown District exclusively.

“The reason cities are taking aim at their DDAs is that the money they collect doesn’t go to the regular taxing authorities, including the city, county, community colleges, public transportation, parks and in some communities, libraries. With 342 DDAs operating statewide, millions of dollars are being funneled into brick pavers, flower planters and promotional materials.¹“

To control growth in Downtown Royal Oak, the DDA got into the land speculation business, but like other cities, ended up losing millions in grants and loans.

… after spending $17 million on properties at I-696 and Woodward Avenue, where hundreds of condos were built and the corner parcel is nothing but dirt decades later.
“The sale price ($4 million) didn’t approach the DDA investment,” Andrzejak said. “I’m very cautious about land speculation and redevelopment deals because we don’t have a good track record.²“

Exactly what impact do DDAs have on the areas outside their districts? It makes sense that areas outside the districts subsidize projects inside the DDA districts. Under state programs, millions of dollars are diverted from neighborhoods and schools.

“Royal Oak joins such cities as Warren and Walled Lake in asking whether they can continue losing money to their DDAs. The DDAs collect money that could go to the cities instead.³“

—
¹ Detroit Free Press 01/07/07: Strapped cities eye money of development authorities
² Daily Tribune 01/08/07: City has no plans to dissolve DDA
³ Detroit Free Press 01/07/07: Royal Oak revenue at stake

“There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.” – Jane Jacobs
The Toronto Star reports Jacobs died this morning at 89.

>> SFGate.com Editorial: High court ruling hits home

In most cases, a developer who has a “higher and better use” for your land should not have to employ the strong arm of government to persuade you to sell. He should be forced to get out his checkbook. If you resist, the price will rise, as it should. That’s how negotiations work. If you hold out too long, you risk losing a lucrative deal when he goes elsewhere.
It should be your choice, your right.

via David Sucher’s City Comforts Blog

>> from the book Abuse of Power: How the government misuses eminent domain – Steven Greenhut

Tax increments divert money from traditional public services, such as police, fire, schools, and courthouses. So, in addition to seeking new property-tax revenue by sparking the development of new retail centers, redevelopment agencies want to create new redevelopment areas to divert existing property-tax revenue from other government agencies.

>> from article The Blight of Eminent Domain – Steven Greenhut

Simply put, agencies can declare areas blighted, based on the broadest possible standards. Once an area is blighted, and the city goes through an official hearing process, every increase in property value-called tax increment-goes directly into the agency’s budget. Debt can be floated without a public vote. Tax dollars are used to subsidize developers, pay for consultants, and acquire land. Agencies gain eminent-domain powers to take property from one private owner and give it to another.

Steven Greenhut presented at the Amercian Dream Coalition’s conference in Bloomington, Minnesota last weekend.

Local zoning laws mandate parking spaces as if empty lots were a virtue. By Alan Ehrenhalt
Here’s a question for you: How many parking spaces should a convent be legally required to provide?
If you immediately answered “zero,” that’s probably because you have some common sense. Parking at a convent shouldn’t be a zoning question. The Mother Superior should be able to do whatever she wants. When there’s a problem, the nuns will tell her.
In fact, however, that’s not the way it works in most American cities. Convents usually have to have a minimum amount of parking to stay within the law. So do at least 265 other kinds of enterprises, including golf courses, zoos, sex shops, slaughterhouses, maternity hospitals and taxi stands. All of them are on a list compiled by Donald Shoup, an economics professor at UCLA, in a new book that is undoubtedly the most comprehensive study of parking ever undertaken in this country.
Shoup tells us, among other things, that the most common requirement for convents is one space for every 10 nuns in residence. That may seem a little arbitrary, but some of the others are worse. Taxi stands, for example. I’ve ever met anybody who drove to a taxi stand, parked, and then hailed a cab. The average cabbie doesn’t need parking either–he uses one vehicle, and it’s on the road during business hours. And yet most cities not only require parking spaces at cab stands but also require a fixed number: one space for each employee on the largest shift, plus one for each taxi. Some zoning laws demand extra spaces for “visitors”–whoever they might be.
Where do rules like this come from? In general, they come from a document called “Parking Generation,” which was first published decades ago by the Institute of Transportation Engineers and has been updated periodically since then. As Shoup puts it, local zoning officials who consult Parking Generation “act like frightened supplicants bowing before a powerful totem. ITE’s stamp of authority relieves planners from the obligation to think for themselves because simple answers are right there in the book.”

On Gratiot, around the corner from the Eastern Market, forgotten banners proclaim “A Detroit Jewel”. A couple feet below is a sign saying “Cool City Neighborhood In Progress”.
The remnants of urban renewal programs pile up like layers of old paint, each one discarded for the new. Why would “Cool Cities” be any different? It’s yet another incarnation of the failed Main Street Program.
The Eastern Market is doing fine, it was completely packed this Saturday. I fear the local Development Authority is going to screw it all up by trying to make the Market into a “neighborhood”. We even checked out a super-swanky loft open house while we were buying our vegetables. What’s that place like at night?

Andrew Blum excerpts on “lifestyle centers” and public space:

“Lifestyle centers are privately owned space, carefully insulated from the messiness of public life. Desert Ridge, for example, has a rigorous code of conduct, posted beneath its store directory. The list of forbidden activities includes “non-commercial expressive activity”—not to mention “excessive staring” and “taking photos, video or audio recording of any store, product, employee, customer or officer.” “Photos of shopping party with shopping center décor, as a backdrop,” however, are permitted.”
. . .
“There’s something a bit unhealthy about faux public places designed to attract rich people and make them feel comfortable. (At least the traditional mall didn’t try to hide the fact that it was a shopping center.) The lifestyle center is a bizarre outgrowth of the suburban mentality: People want public space, even if making that space private is the only way to get it.”

Read the entire article at slate.com.

1. Build to the sidewalk.
2. Make the building front “permeable”.
3. Prohibit parking lots in front of the building

Sucher doesn’t have all the answers but I think he’s on to something with his simplicity. The PDF is worth a read: David Sucher: City Comforts Chapter 3 (PDF)