Alternative Other Cities: Portland, Maine; Good-Bad Urbanism

Yesterday, we stopped briefly in Portland, Maine on our way from Boston up to my grandfather's hometown of Bath, Maine. This little blog about Portland  is not at all scientific. It's a travel journal based on spending about an hour in the city, looking for a place to eat and park (and finally settling on Subway, by the way; a cop-out I know, but it was getting late and we had grumpy children and another hour of driving ahead of us).

What was interesting to me was how the city's downtown is such a salient example of what should be bad urbanism. It looks like everything that people were fleeing from when they fled to the suburbs. The sidewalks are narrow, the few street trees are skimpy (in a state with a lot of beautiful trees, like, everywhere), and there are a ton of one way streets. It breaks all the rules of New Urbanism. Portland is a classic Industrial Revolution city, designed without cars in mind. And this, actually, might be what makes it work. Now that the smoke and smog of the Industrial Revolution are gone, this old urban model is somehow really inviting.

Street trees are lacking in much of downtown because the sidewalks are so narrow. But these sidewalks are classically charming. They are paved with very old brick (as are some of the older streets), and they are faced by granite curbs. More importantly, the buildings are all (and I mean ALL) built to the sidewalks, so that the walks are lined with small boutique stores, pubs, and restaurants.  The sidewalks team with life. A very diverse crowd fills downtowns sidewalks: families walking to games at the city's minor league park, hipsters in their fitted pants and outsized glasses, old fashioned hippies with dreadlocks selling knitted bracelets, and primped old women looking at the shops.

And though there are a lot of one way streets in Portland, there is also plenty of curbside parking. If the city wanted to convert the one ways into two ways, it would have to either close on street parking or remove the granite curbs and brick sidewalks. But these two things seem to be much more important than two way streets. The sidewalks are responsible for the city's charm, and curbside parking is incredibly important for pedestrian safety and comfort. There is a hierarchy, it seems, of urban elements, and Portland has chosen these elements correctly.

Perhaps the most important thing about Portland is its incredible density. The city is small, at just over 66,000 residents. This makes it a lot smaller than the OKC suburb of Edmond (83K) and almost half the size of the college town of Normal (110K), but its downtown goes in all directions further than downtown Oklahoma City, albeit without the sky scrapers (those oh-so-overrated phallic monuments to capitalism). Its design is classically European: most of the buildings are four or five stories tall, and built to the sidewalk. All buildings have windows facing the street, including the parking garages which have shops on the first level, hiding the fact that they are garages. Plus, there are bike routes everywhere.

The impact is noticeable. There are people everywhere. It has the feel of, well, the other Portland. (My wife, joking about this connection, says "we're real hipsters because we were here first. We were Portland before it was cool.") It's a little hard, without having spent enough time in Portland, to put a finger on why it works so well. I suspect it's the romantic notion of a European style city here in the States that makes Portland so attractive. Maybe the fact that the city is really a compact small town that makes it work so well, despite all that is theoretically "wrong" with it. But something here is working.

The Importance of Districts

A couple days ago, Collected Thread in the plaza district tweeted a picture of the owner wearing one of DNA Galleries' "Support Local Art" shirts. This is hardly surprising to anyone who has spent any time hanging out on the Plaza; it's a pretty tight knit community (this is evident even to an outsider like me). It does, however, provide a salient example of why and how urban districts work, and why they are so important to a city's sense of community. I have no doubt that none of what follows will be news to anyone who knows anything about city planning or urbanism is general, but I'm a rhetorician and writing teacher, and not a city planner, so this is revelatory for me.

The term "district" as used in urban contexts can mean a number of things. I live in an Urban Conservation District, which simply means that I am supposed to abide by certain covenants in order to maintain the look of the neighborhood. All sorts if districts like this, which deal mainly with public policy, exist: urban redevelopment districts, TIF districts, etc. Of course, there are also districts that are primarily associated with specific minority groups, like the Asian District here in OKC, where specific nationalities have historically gathered in a city. These districts, like the famous Chinatowns of New York and San Francisco and the Italian North End in Boston, are very important in their own right. But my interest here is the kind of district where similar businesses have gathered in one spot, sometimes in haphazard, slapdash fashion, and sometimes very purposefully.

The most famous of this type of district is, no doubt, the Broadway Theatre District in New York. This very important district gives us an example of how/why such districts happen. This type of district invariably involves a particular niche. Most people don't go to the theatre, and even those who do don't go particularly regularly (I'm a former professional actor, but I've been to the theatre maybe a half dozen times since 2008, when I finished my Master's degree. . .in playwriting) . So to survive, theatres opened near each other. This allows a kind of one stop shopping for the kind of weirdos who go to the theatre. In this way, a theatre becomes visible to folks who've actually come to go to a different theatre.

This same dynamic exists on a smaller scale in our own districts, especially Paseo and the Plaza District. Any of the businesses on the Plaza, with their relatively small and firmly artisan inventory, would likely have a difficult time surviving in a suburban mall (which is, by the way, just a high overhead, indoor counterfeit district). But, perhaps counterintuitively, these "weird stores" (Gopnik) thrive when they open in a row--next to all their competition. This works because the fact that these stores exist in a district attracts the niche customers interested in these businesses. Beyond this, the highly walkable nature of these districts makes it inviting to hang out--to spend lots of time looking at and buying things.

Again, none of this is particularly ground breaking information. What's significant about it, however, is that it points to an economic model that is uniquely urban. In urban districts like these, survival and success comes not through competition, but cooperation. Most large businesses treat commerce as a zero-sum game. If Walmart is to succeed, K-Mart must fail (it did). But in the urban district, if DNA Galleries hopes to succeed, Collected Thread must attract people, and vise verse. Though these are very similar businesses (one is an art gallery that doubles as a boutique, the other is a boutique whose designers are artists in their own right), they realize that they don't benefit by "beating" the other. Instead, each of these businesses benefits when the other benefits. When one place thrives, the whole district thrives. When the district thrives, the individual stores thrive. But, this unique economic model doesn't quite explain why these districts are so appealing to those of us who hand out in them.

Perhaps more important than the economic model districts provide are the social benefits that come to a community built around these districts.  By serving, and thus attracting, a relatively specific particular crowd, these districts also provide a sense of community that becomes definitive. People who live, work, or spend a great deal of time in Paseo think of themselves as Paseo people (have they named themselves?). To an extent, this ultimately involves many of the social aspects that define communities such as shared community ethics, behavior systems, discourse conventions, and so on.  Though these districts may often start out as primarily commercial zones, they morph quickly and naturally into something much more meaningful as people who like to be in the district begin to move close to it. As people begin to work, live, and socialize in a district, it becomes a neighborhood. And neighborhoods are what cities are made of. These are what give big city life flair and personality. For this reason, the health of our clever local districts is, I think, far more important to the sustainability of our cities than are all the tourist amenities we can plan. Now, if you don't mind, it's a pleasant day; I think I may get on my bike and ride down to the Plaza.

Biking in OKC: First Impressions

I've been teaching James Howard Kuntsler, Jane Jacobs, Adam Gopnik, and Mike Davis for several years. In fact, it is, in part, these readings (which I use to teach argument to freshman writing students) that have led me to my interest in urbanism, placemaking, and the politics of space. I know about the importance of walkability when it comes to quality of life, public health, social cohesion, and so on. Ultimately, my reaction to all I've read to this point has been to wish I lived downtown. But that's really as far as I've gone.

I live in an Urban Conservation District several miles from downtown. It's a decent compromise for a parent who knows that the good public schools and sidewalks are out in the suburbs, but who refuses to live there. Where I live, I have the benefit of a big, nice yard but I'm close to most things I need and want. My neighborhood's Walk Score is 52. But, in Oklahoma City, where the car rules, I have no sidewalks and there is almost no pedestrian culture in the neighborhoods around mine (though my particular neighborhood is full of hip, young professionals, so we are systematically building a walking culture for our few square blocks). I even drive an SUV, sometimes alone (in my defense, it's a four cylinder).

The result of all of this is that, despite my wishes and intentions, I still require a car to do most things. At the very least I need to extend my range beyond a ten minute walk, and that has always meant driving. Listening to the speakers at OUIQC's Placemaking Conference, which featured a panel on biking, and reading Jeff Speck's Walkable City, I realized that I could extend my reach without resorting to driving if I had a bike. So, for the past couple of months, I've been planning to get myself a halfway decent bike and replacing my car for short trips whenever possible.

So, over the weekend, I bought myself a Schwinn Suburban bike. I've wanted a Schwinn since high school, when a classmate had a classic Schwinn so cool that he used to bring it into class rather than trust a bike rack to protect it.

In order to test out time/distance, and the overall bikeability of the city, I spent the day biking around many of the places I like to go that are within biking distance. I made it, ultimately all the way to Bricktown, stopping to eat lunch with a friend at Big Truck Tacos, to visit my mother at work, to shop for t-shirts, to drink a soda at Coffee Slingers, and just to look around. I went through the Paseo Arts District, Heritage Hills, Midtown, Downtown, Bricktown, the Plaza District, and the neighborhood we lived in when I was born. Here is what I learned:

Biker Safety: Roadways

Speck's book has an entire section on biking, so I went into my ride with a theoretical base with regard to what I expected on certain kinds of roads (I'm an academic; I can't do anything without a theoretical base). I know enough from living in OKC to know that main arterials would be a problem. These are pedestrian killers (literally and figuratively) because the wide roadways and high speed limits allow cars to drive very quickly, scaring away any would-be pedestrian or rider. This is true anywhere, but the problem is compounded in cities like our's, where there are no sidewalks (because the car has ruled for more than half of our city's history). Unfortunately, I live neatly nestled in the corner of N. May, a five lane monstrosity where traffic is so bad that I hate to leave on heavy shopping days, and I-44. This means that I have to carefully navigate my way out of my neighborhood through alternative routes, since there's no way I'm riding a bike on May. I don't intend to get smacked by an SUV being driven 50 MPH by some person on a cell phone, thank you very much.  Once I get out of my neighborhood, though, I have several different kinds of bike routes in my path. As I'm very familiar with the interior of the city, I knew where these were, so I was able to plan my route in advance.

Sharrows:
I spent most of my ride on a sharrow. This is a wide street where, on the right side, a bicycle placard has been painted on the road to alert drivers to the presence of bike riders.

In Oklahoma City, these are mostly roads that were wider than they needed to be. When the city decided that it wanted to invest in biking and walkability, it simply painted decals on the street, occasionally eliminating lanes where the streets were wider than they needed to be. This seems to have worked remarkably well. On all of these roads, passing cars were very respectful of the distance between their car and me, and they invariably slowed down to a speed comfortable for both of us. A few of the arterials have been turned into sharrows, but many of them are through quiet, and often lovely, historic neighborhoods.

Dedicated Lanes:
Closer to downtown, the city has painted bike lanes. I likes these okay, because they gave me a sense of legal standing. In the sharrows, I felt like I was in a place that was, ultimately, designed for cars. I was a trespasser, not necessarily welcome to people who had to slow down ten miles an hour for an entire block to deal with me. In the bike lanes, I had the empowering feeling that I didn't have to care if drivers found me inconvenient; I'm in my own lane. On the other hand, the closer to downtown I got, the less comfortable I felt. This is because, downtown, the bike lanes sit right against marked parking spaces for parallel and sometimes even angle parking. In these areas, I pathologically worried that a car would pull out without seeing me.

Shared Space:
In a perfect world, all roads would be shared roads. There would be an understanding that roads are public spaces to be shared equally by pedestrians, bikers, street cars, and automobiles. In fact, in Europe, Hans Monderman has made this a reality in many public squares (to the chagrin of some advocates for the blind).  And, in fact, most roads are shared space. Neighborhood streets, places not designed for bikes, and even some downtown streets where biking is encouraged are all shared space.

Once one follows the well delineated bike lanes into the financial district downtown, the lines disappeare into the shared space of the street. The "bike route" signage remains, but the separate lane is gone. Surprisingly, I felt very comfortable on shared streets downtown. When the bike lane disappeared (or turned back into parallel parking, to be exact), I simply merged into car traffic and became part of the traffic flow.  Though this may sound terrifying, I found that it was actually very pleasant. It was, in fact, one of my favorite moments on my day of riding. The blocks are small, so there are lots of lights stopping cars. Plus, there are pedestrians everywhere: professionals walking to their offices or to lunch, tourists walking to and from hotels, and construction workers tearing things up. All this meant that cars were going very slowly.

Some discomfort expected:
All in all, my trip was well planned (though I called a lot of audibles), and so I felt pretty comfortable biking most of the day. There were, unsurprisingly, some places where I did not feel comfortable riding.

When I wrote on facebook that I was testing the bikeability of the city, a police officer I know commented "is this based on the armed or the unarmed." Well, I went unarmed, as I usually do when I'm running around, and I never felt in danger because of the neighborhoods I was in or the people I ran into. Instead, requisite to the actual data on the subject, the real danger came, not from strangers looking to rob white hipsters, but from cars.

When I got west of Penn, the roads got wider, the speed limits got higher, and the drivers got more careless. This was not surprising. The area where I felt uncomfortable that did surprise me was in intensely urban Bricktown. This probably should not have surprised me. Though it's downtown, it;s full of people who are not from downtown, or from town at all. It's where suburbanites come to drink (which is why I intend not to talk about it much on this blog). So it's probably not surprising that the people here drive like suburbanites on wide arterials. What is surprising is how little the city has done to mitigate this.  Though, again here, there is signage indicating that these streets are bike routes, there is nothing done to slow cars. There are not placards painted on the pavement, the curbs are high (which means no escape for a biker), and the lanes are very wide. The only place I felt in more danger was crossing 23rd street at Villa (a two lane that everyone speeds on where I also felt out of place).

Legal Issues:

In Oklahoma City, riders of bikes are treated just like drivers of cars. A biker must follow all traffic laws and controls. This is not a problem with regard to speed, since the average speed of a biker is 12 MPH. But it also means that a rider must stop completely at all stop signs, maintain his lane, signal, stay on the right side of the road, and so on. This might seem reasonable, but perhaps my biggest lesson of the day is just how impractical this is. I found it very helpful to act like a car downtown. I stayed in the in the middle of the lane, used turn lanes where appropriate, and stopped at the lights along with all the cars. Following these ordinances was helpful downtown because the ordinances made me feel safe. I didn't cut between cars to advance on red lights, since, had someone opened a car door to spit or to get out of their car, I would have crashed into their door. Instead, I held my place in line, just like a car. Also, maintaining my lane let others know that I was there and was going to stay there, so I wouldn't be hit by a car coming around a corner unable to see me popping out from between cars. Here, traffic ordinance worked for me because I knew what to expect of the cars around me, and they knew what to expect of me.

But in neighborhoods, ordinances designed for cars are often impractical. I can only imagine how quickly I would have tired out had I actually stopped for every stop sign, having to pedal myself back to speed after each of them. Beyond that, some fluidity with regard to position in my lane allowed a lot more negotiation between me and other drivers. In order to maintain the flow of traffic and to keep myself safe, I often found it helpful to move out of lanes in intersections and stop on corners, allowing cars behind me to pass. I also found myself driving left of center to show that I was about to turn left, thus avoiding turning left across traffic from my usual place on the right side of the street, and I occasionally even rode on the sidewalk to escape fast moving cars on big, unfriendly roads.

Though I don't know any cops (and I know a lot of cops, obviously) who enforce traffic laws on bike riders, I do know that if something were to happen and I was injured in a crash, I would be considered at fault if I was breaking an ordinance meant to control cars. A more fluid system of traffic laws for bicycles would help protect riders in legal situations. As a city dedicated to becoming more bike friendly, our ordinances could stand some revision.

Overall impressions:
Overall, I felt very comfortable most of the time during my almost six hour ride. I can get to almost all the places I most like to hang out in a relatively short ride. Plus, it was enjoyable. The pace is slow enough to allow a rider to look around, checking out the houses and greeting the people he passes. But the speed is also high enough to extend reach outside of the neighborhood. Finally, my legs are on fire and, since I burned about a million calories, I'm having ice cream tonight without feeling badly about it.

Were it not for the fact that I'm attending a graduate school 25 miles away and that my children go to school in a neighboring city, I could envision selling a car and going about on bike or foot. Maybe in the future, this will be possible.