Same street, new location. As of May 1, the Donjek offices will move 1/4 mile down the street, from the current location to 2288 University Avenue West, Suite 204. As I wrap up four years at this location, at a time when the street is evolving like the world around it, I move from a building built in 1915 to one built in 1914. Here’s what the structure I’m leaving looked like 90 years ago and today. Stay tuned for photos of the new space!
Note: This post was co-published at Strong Towns, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on improving U.S. land use patterns.
At Strong Towns, we’re part of a growing chorus, spanning across disciplines, bearing a message that communities making forward-thinking, high-return public investments will be positioned more strongly for the future. The mechanisms of growth we’ve outlined at Strong Towns are each unsustainable in the long run, as is much of the development they have enabled us to produce.
Form follows function.
While I am always reluctant to quote secondary online content, I would be remiss to skip the following Wikipedia commentary about the origins of this phrase, which architect Louis Sullivan (evidently) made famous:
Sullivan developed the shape of the tall steel skyscraper in late 19th Century Chicago at the very moment when technology, taste and economic forces converged violently and made it necessary to drop the established styles of the past. If the shape of the building wasn’t going to be chosen out of the old pattern book something had to determine form, and according to Sullivan it was going to be the purpose of the building. It was “form follows function,” as opposed to “form follows precedent.”
Sound familiar? We are together part of a dialogue about how to harness all the interrelated processes that cities accomplish, in ways that secure tandem environmental and fiscal sustainability. We don’t have a choice. Truly functional places in the future will house spaces that perform at much higher rates of return than what we currently have. They will produce energy as well and use less of it. They will perform more than one role at once. Our definition of function is shifting rapidly, hence will form.
On that much we all agree. The dialogue gets more colorful at finer grain, however. An aesthetic approach, for example, prioritizes fostering of attractive places that will draw talent (especially talented younger people), cultural vitality, private investment and job creation. An operating approach, for lack of a better term, establishes higher-amenity areas based on criteria ranging from proximity to transit, existing infrastructure, or job concentrations. More broadly, a regional approach emphasizes investment in connecting productive nodes (of employment, housing, et cetera) into a network. Urban/suburban rhetoric doesn’t fit in any of these approaches. They overlap. One size won’t fit all.
What is common among the successful cities of the future, and the neighborhoods and submarkets that bind them together, is functionality. Effective networks of people and institutions, vital job markets, courageous civic leadership are essential for transition to a new form. But each is undermined by the burdens of unproductive land use and infrastructure providing low return on investment.
The key function of modern cities is to harness the talents and skills of its people. The form that follows is a city of intentional and high-return infrastructure and design.
Much has been written about shifting preferences toward urban living. I admit to skepticism, despite my hopes as a city resident and redevelopment consultant, of convergent preferences among the Millennial and Baby Boom generations. Alas, it appears real – extensive survey data from the National Association of Realtors, amid other quantitative and anecdotal evidence, is unambiguous. These two demographic groups, which comprise half of the U.S. population, are reshaping the landscape by leaving a less urban land use pattern for a more urban one.
The transition is noticeable. Residential building permit data for Minneapolis illustrate the fundamental reversal from market emphasis on single-family unit construction (maroon) to multi-family unit construction (blue), starting in 1996. Denser living will never be for everyone, but it seems to be increasingly attractive to many.
Human networks are the premise of urban economies. By providing a physical format for exchange of ideas, development of trusting relationships, communication about reputation and quality of products and services, cities reduce the costs associated with trade (as well as training and education or cultural events, for example). As Bob Weissbourd presents in his collaborative “Dynamic Neighborhoods,” concentrations of people and investment follow the development of stable, vibrant networks.
The majority of population, intellectual assets and economic activity located in U.S. metro areas continues to grow. We have to wonder: How can cities’ physical form be encouraged to fill in, to maximize the product of this combination of ideas and relationships? Public and private actors share a compulsion to intensify what fruits emerge from urban economies.
Ed Glaeser has asserted that decisions falter when based on “the all-too-common error of confusing a city, which is really a mass of connected humanity, with its structures.” With increasing market demand for structures that increase human connectedness, Glaeser’s bifurcation loses some of its value. As the housing crash reminded us, the development pattern of core cities isn’t a mistake – it’s an eclectic but durable form that has withstood the stresses of growth and prosperity as well as economic crash. Cities, and the neighborhoods that comprise them, are strongest when most flexible. Denser land use makes more efficient use of infrastructure for transport, housing, training and education, leaving more public resources to invest in people, who are the most essential asset in any city.
In Glaeser’s words, a city is a mass of connected humanity. True. But the degree to which that humanity is connected in a city is influenced by how the city’s structures allow people to interact. The growing momentum of higher-density building will provide basis for experimentation, and for us to better understand the relationship of structures, land use, innovation and productivity.
I love the last week of the year. It reminds me of evenings looking at maps on canoeing and hiking trips, reviewing the day’s travel and preparing for what is to come. On a broader scale, I enjoy the retrospectives of the year that become available mid-December. This year, I recommend you check out The Atlantic Cities’ Year in Review page, featuring the year in ideas, the best city reads, and the “best of ‘best ofs’ of 2011.”
For Donjek, it’s been a vivid and productive road in 2011. I hope you’ll indulge my short list of key developments.
In February, after an intense competition against three other teams, Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition judges awarded victory to the Donjek team, led by Kennedy Violich Architecture and the Tom Leader Studio. My role on the team focused on developing a narrative for the future of the Mississippi River as connector of North and Northeast Minneapolis, on the future of industrial uses currently on the river, and historical research of land uses dating to 1860. Read my February post, and visit what has now become the Minneapolis Riverfront Design Initiative.
Following an application and interview process, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton appointed me in March to represent Saint Paul on the Metropolitan Council. The Council operates the region’s expanding transit system (mainly bus, light rail and commuter rail) and its wastewater treatment system. The Council also provides affordable housing, guides local planning with an overarching regional framework, and funds priorities like brownfield remediation, transit oriented development, and affordable housing. Its regional scale allows the Council to undertake these core services in a cost-effective and aligned way, and I am invested in advancing its work.
In April, Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak presented the Minneapolis Saint Paul Metropolitan Business Plan to an audience of policy makers and thinkers at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. As project manager, lead researcher and writer of the plan, I was gratified by their charismatic joint presentation of a document that links together a panoply of interrelated efforts currently underway in the region. See the final business plan and executive summary, or see the mayors’ comments and other content at the Brookings web page.
In September, I completed work on an extensive reuse study of the historic Hudson Manufacturing Building in Hastings, Minnesota, along with team lead Stark Preservation and collaborators Claybaugh Preservation Architecture and Peter Musty LLC. The project represented a demonstration of how the value of land can evolve. The Mississippi River-front location was attractive for the manufacturer for one set of reasons in 1870; today, the location and historic portions of the building derive value in a very different marketplace, driven by demand for access to a rehabilitated river and its views. Read my earlier post with more detail about the reuse study.
Toward the end of the year, I presented findings of a Donjek economic impact study of a prospective linear park in downtown Minneapolis, linking the downtown employment base, light rail and bus transit, the Minneapolis Central Library, and the Mississippi River, via underutilized spaces ripe for redevelopment with both open space and structures. Stay tuned for more detail about the study and its findings; in the meantime, take a look at the 34-story Nicollet Residence development now approved to proceed at the southern boundary of this space.
It’s December 30, and time to unfold the map leading into 2012. I wish you good luck and look forward to working together.
Over the last few months, I’ve been partnering with a client to examine potential redevelopment sites along a planned rail transit corridor. As I described in this previous post, some property owners and users are in search of sites that are not only near station areas and other nearby assets, but clearly and conveniently connected.
In my home market in the Minneapolis Saint Paul region, the same impulse can be observed. Take, for example, the 34-story residential redevelopment recently approved by the Minneapolis Planning Commission, which is adjacent to a light rail transit platform at the Nicollet Mall station, next to the prospective Gateway Park, and reachable (both by pedestrian and transit mall and skyway) from all work, civic and entertainment locations in the central business district.
The Minneapolis example, however, made for easy site selection – its value is obvious. As customer preferences shift and transportation (both in mode and in cost) evolves, new opportunities will arise to identify and redevelop less evident, but very high-potential sites. Welcome to the future.
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