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Downtown Redevelopment“Downtown” is full of special places with many land use pieces that need to fit together well. In an American context, the central business district (CBD) has lost most of its retail trade to suburban locations and the Internet. Downtowns typically are home to institutions of interest to the entire community and to those beyond the metropolitan borders. Many have symbolic as well as practical value – government and its many bureaus, courts, museums, cultural venues. Space: the limiting factorEach of these venues competes for space, and most of them need parking. They generate traffic – both for in-and-out movements and circulation within. Much movement is by “green” modes that don’t take up much space – walking, biking, and public transit. In most settings, management of traffic and supply of parking are major issues that can also generate revenues, such parking fees, road tolls, and congestion charges. Traffic management requires professional attention and public works resources on an on-going basis. You can’t have a healthy downtown without good access and circulation. |
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A large part of this mobility comes from your transit authority. In all but the largest cities, this means buses. Depending on available funds, the frequency of a bus route can be either generous or discouraging. This, of course, requires commitments of funding. For other transit issues, see Transit Shortfalls.
Even if we double or triple the number of people who decide to go downtown by public transport, in most cities the bulk of travel will still be by car, trucks, and all kinds of service vehicles. Coming years are likely to see cleaner vehicles running on batteries or synthetic fuels, adding energy-related special needs. They will still need ample supplies of parking, and a good downtown will have staff and policies to regulate parking. There should be a good master plan for the long term. This eases headaches and makes it easy for all to come downtown.
Master planning looks at all parking resources and tries to get the best use out of them. On-street metering is a start – it helps assure access for those whose time is limited or very valuable. This brings enforcement issues. Off-street lots are unusually unsightly unless funds are available to landscape and manicure them on an ongoing basis. Garage facilities are an expensive but land-saving option in large centers, and they create conflicts with pedestrians. There are advantages to locating them outside the true core, but there must be an easy way to get to one’s actual destination.
APMs can provide frequent, safe, and reliable circulation services far superior to even the best on-street shuttles. They can interconnect the various parking garages and parts of a downtown district, reaching out to nearby centers as well. The London Docklands is a successful model of an APM that makes sense for a downtown district. It helped expand London’s Financial District with office towers for thousands of knowledge workers. It has expanded in flexible stages as development occurred. The flexibility of PRT is even greater. Built and operated by a special redevelopment authority apart from the London Underground, today it carries nearly 200,000 passengers a day while an extension is to serve Olympic Games in 2012 using Bombardier hardware and Thales software.
In the U.S., three downtown projects opened in the 1980s, yielding mixed results in Detroit, Jacksonville and Miami. Insisting on “proven” technology of that era, Federal officials produced above-street demonstration projects that proved to be bulky and not well integrated with downtown buildings. They have drawn much lower ridership than was expected. Judged on cost per passenger, these DPMs are not efficient, discouraging most downtown planners from considering an APM option.
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In Europe, downtown densities are not typically spiked like American CBDs. APMs have been used in a few special places as mini-metros. While cities of under 500,000 are not usually metro candidates due to the large costs, APMs as driverless metros are filling the gap between on-street transit and metro. Lille, Rennes, Toulouse, Turin, and soon Lausanne and Brescia are all interesting examples. |
 Driverless metros such as this pair in Toulouse, France, work to revitalize downtown locations. |
