After World War II, a push was made to redesign cities to allow for quick growth of the suburbs and moving people away from downtown. The model for planning followed suit with a single consideration: Build for cars, not for people. With this came a rush of new designs for skyways between buildings, widening streets to allow faster movement of automobiles, leveling communities for highways, and in Dallas, the development of an underground mall. By the 1990’s, this design had reached its zenith with life completely removed from downtown. Main Street stores were boarded up, classic structures were torn down for parking lots, and the CBD began to resemble a ghost town.

(From Good Magazine: A City Planned for Cars over People)

Several detractors of the car-first model began making headway in the 1980’s and decided to reverse the model for city planning by putting people before cars. These were the urban pioneers or “New Urbanists” who were often ostracized for attempting to resuscitate downtowns by removing parking lots, thinning streets, and converting brownspace to parks. The US cities that championed this model near the outset like Portland, Oregon, were mocked for creating “growth boundaries”, and for taking steps to remove highways from their inner cities. Even at the federal level, funds that were typically set aside for road planning were made difficult to access when being redirected to alternative transportation. Fortunately, these cities persevered and continued to build at their cores. The idea of returning to the “Third Place” was reinvented. This term was first coined by Ray Oldenburg when describing home (first place), work (second place), and a third that was simply a gathering point where we as a community would come together to play, seek out mates, or just relax. In Europe you see this in great plazas or gardens at their town centers. Historically in the US, we built a similar model using a structure like a city hall that had a plaza where markets would exist, and parks beyond that where old and young would sit and play chess or in fountains. Homes and businesses grew just beyond this, but all within walking or streetcar distance. We engineered exercise into our planning simply by building this way.

By the 1950’s, the Third Place was being dismantled by the trend of decentralizing communities and allowing for large belts of roadways to be built along a city’s perimeter. In Dallas, it started with Loop 12, grew to 635, Beltline, and now the George Bush Freeway. The decentralization required one thing to allow its super growth: cheap oil. As people abandoned the downtowns for larger homes, new communities were built from smaller towns, and highways were widened to accommodate the growth. The separation of home from work by long commutes made the Third Place disappear. Who had time to relax at a park, when it took an hour both ways to get to the office? Two sad trends increased at alarming rates with the disappearance of this social playground: obesity, and depression.

Originally shopping malls supplanted the town centers, but these were uninviting to people that simply wanted to sit and enjoy community and nature. By the 1990’s a return to a Third Place model began cropping up in the suburbs on its own with the mass development of a single business: Starbucks. People once again had a gathering place that accommodated leisure environments to hang out and enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of a community. CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, noted the playful and relaxing community built around cafes in Italy and felt it was something that could be replicated back in the states. From this initial awareness, similar businesses cropped up that embraced the idea of giving people a place to simply gather.

21st Century Planning

(From Good Magazine: A City Planned for People over Cars)

This greater awareness of natural social patterns, and building for people first not only helped rebuild city cores, but provided for a major increase in economic development. In Dallas, leaders would boast about the high standard of living based largely on lower prices of housing which were the outcrops of suburban sprawl. And though we had a high standard of living, we made up for this with a lower quality of life. Businesses picked up on this, and a major awakening at city hall occurred when Boeing passed on moving its headquarters to Dallas, over the much more expensive Chicago. Why? Quality of life. Even with cheaper housing, the company’s leaders saw the lack of life and amenities that one could enjoy in a city that began a push to people-first development. What we made up in savings by owning cheaper homes, we spent on transportation getting us to and from places.

Now, city planners have seen years of data being returned by the new designs for city development, and the data is showing a surprising trend: It pays to build for people over cars. Businesses in the Northwest that balked at losing parking spaces to wider sidewalks and bike lanes, have since come full circle after seeing the increase in foot traffic. We advocate here regularly for the inclusion of complete streets, which include development of bike lanes, streetcars, and more, but much of our rational is not just for increasing ridership, but for increasing community. Streetlife, Third Places, local businesses (or Small Marts), more eyes on the street (which lower crime), better health, and sustainability all grow when you follow this new model. The vehicular cyclist model for city streets continues to embrace cars…and why shouldn’t it? Every one of the contributors of the anti-bike lane VC group here live beyond Loop 12. For them, the idea of urbanism and density is foreign. Even with downtown Dallas growing from a population of 200 to 6,000 in less than 10 years, and trend projections showing over 10,000 by 2012, the idea that we could become a shining example of well planned urbanism seems inconceivable. If you drive around the city, and look for the construction cranes, you’ll find the bulk surrounding the new DART rail lines. Transit-oriented development is proving to be the new way to build a city. Bike lanes are piece of that puzzle that bring people out onto the streets and increase livability in an urban environment. Portland has seen ridership go from 1% to 8%, and streetcar ridership is at 12,000 riders a day. After meeting with their city planners, the one comment they hammered home to us was that if you build it, they will come.

They’ve built it, and the results are eye opening.