Planning is Communication: 2
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
Previously, I talked about how to illustrate the transition of an area in relation to building forms and mass. Displaying anticipated or proposed changes such as these to the public can be fraught with conflict, as citizens display community change adversity in the face of what feels deceptively like a cohesive civic juggernaut.
Another example of how a planner can go wrong with illustrating a concept is when they choose to utilize a real property as a site for a proposed change. For example, in many revitalization programs, a planner might choose a specific site in the community and then show what could be built on that site if a developer chose to build under some new or proposed scenario. In principle, this sounds alright, after all you’re showing how the proposed change will affect the real fabric of the community. In practice, however, it often tells the community and especially the property owner and tenants that a.) they are not wanted any more by the entity the planner works for, and b.) that the entity the planner works for is going to somehow make these changes to occur.
One way that a planner can avoid this pitfall is to use a typical illustration, rather than a specific one.
To examine the idea, we’ll use a real property, the northwest corner of N. Interstate Avenue and N. Skidmore Street in Portland, Oregon. Located along one of the newer extensions of the region’s light rail system, this area has been the subject of proposals by the City of Portland to “up zone” to higher densities and building heights. The corner in question currently is the location of a small auto parts retailer:
In the case of this property, it is a corner lot, with one street being a small neighborhood street, and the other being a main thoroughfare with high traffic and high capacity transit. It is bordered on one side by a narrow alley beyond which is a 2-story commercial building (in this case a motel) and on the other by a one story house on a slight rise. The lot is almost 100 by 100 feet.
What is a typical illustration? A typical illustration showcases principles and concepts, rather than specific property attributes. No specific site is identified. Instead, a fictional site is created that has characteristics that are typical of the community. Since the site we are looking at is already very typical of the area, we’ll use the same border parameters, but to make it “typical” we’ll eliminate any characteristic that uniquely identifies the site as any one specific place. The motel becomes a small retail building, something that is also typical of the area and of a similar building mass. The low ranch home on a rise becomes a bungalow, which is actually more typical rather than less. Finally, we can flip the site around to make it even more generic, in this case flipping it on it’s north-south axis to make it a northeast corner.
Actual dimensions of the community are uses, such as average street sections, common building types, and so forth. In this case, the model includes motels, gas stations, and traditional storefronts, all typical buildings for N. Interstate Avenue. On the next street and immediately behind this strip, single family homes from the 1920s through the 1960s are located. The model does not replicate any one real place along Interstate, and yet it has the look and feel of the area. This allows planners to play with built form — as with the three four-story structures included in this model — without implying that any one property is “targeted.”
Except when the use changes dramatically (as from industrial to residential, or general retail to dining,) do not indicate what business is occupying the buildings proposed. Specificity excludes and targets, generic approaches allow the most people to choose to see themselves in the envisioned plan. Also, try to avoid using well-known real buildings in the model, as they will elicit comparisons to those places. (The model I’ve shown violates this rule by including Kevin Cavenaguh’s Rocket Building amongst the employed models; if this were a real project such an inclusion should be avoided.)
By illustrating typical rather than specific properties, planners can avoid a whole host of conflict. Primarily this is by reducing the ability of citizens and stakeholders to identify unique properties in illustrations, and thus avoid false assumptions that they are being targeted or excluded from the future of their communities. It also reduces the likelihood that a given proposal will be shaped by the perceptions of citizens and stakeholders about other plans in other areas. Lastly, it opens the door for more people to envision themselves in the future being illustrated, as the models are dedicated to only the demonstration of concepts that are community wide, rather than the development opportunities of specific parcels.
