How to solve the wrong problem

At Tuesday night's meeting of the Hudson Planning Board, Colarusso & Sons put forth a proposal to mitigate the visual intrusion of its gravel operations on the Hudson waterfront. Colarusso provided this existing view of the area; you are looking toward the river with the Basilica behind you:

Below is the same view, with Colarusso's proposed vegetative screening added:

At first, this looked to me like one of those "spot the differences" puzzles I hated as a kid. I would grow annoyed before finding the first one. But I have to admit that the truck at the right edge of the upper image is rather effectively screened from view by the proposed plantings.

So what's the problem? Well, when you take into account the path the trucks take between 40 and 280 times per day (according to a good source), the screening has little to no effect. Here is what one of these trips looks like from the same location, albeit with a shinier truck:

Here is the same view with the vegetative screening added:

Can you spot the difference? I didn't think so. As long as the truck path remains where it is, the real intrusion into the district will not be mitigated.

Move the crossing. Solve the real problem.

One way to stop the Stewart's expansion and six ways to make it better

The new Stewart's store will be sited almost exactly in the footprint of the yellow house on the far right.

Stewart's plan to expand at Green Street and Fairview Avenue has been moving forward. We will see the latest version at the next meeting of the Hudson Planning Board tomorrow at 6:00PM. Stewart's ambitions were greased last year by the enactment of Local Law No. 5. Prior to it, Stewart's, as a nonconforming use in a residential neighborhood, was forbidden to expand. But with the law at its back and now two adjacent residential properties in hand, it is poised to build a vastly enlarged gas station and convenience store on the site.

I've been looking for a hole in LL#5, as I believe that good urban planning should facilitate the development of locally-owned businesses, not externally-owned businesses that remove local money. Not to mention that this will be an unattractive, suburban project inserted into a semi-urban site. Several times I thought I had found a loophole, only to be disabused on my next reading. The only obstacle to Stewart's ambitions I see is for someone to sue the city for "spot zoning," the largely illegal practice of preferentially zoning a specific property. This case seems to tiptoe very close to, if not over, that line.

Until that happens, I am heeding the frequent exhortations of Walter Chatham, the Planning Board's head, to "not let perfect be the enemy of the good." This exhortation has been embraced by Stewart's own representative, who echoed Chatham's axiom to him in initially engaging the board.

Stewart's proposed site plan

In this spirit, I took on a brief study of the site. First, let's look at Stewart's current proposal (right). It is a little hard to read, given that the proposed scheme is overlaid on the existing conditions. But if you know the site you can discern the major pieces. The existing gas pumps and canopy are at the lower left corner, at a 45 degree angle. The existing building, to be demolished, is tucked partly under the proposed canopy. Once you spot the two existing structures, you will realize how much larger the new site will be—double the size of the existing one.

My proposal looks superficially similar, as I could not move the basic pieces very much. But some key tweaks will go a long way toward creating a project that will look like it belongs where it was built. Here is my proposed site plan:

My proposed site plan









The following explanations are keyed to the plan.

1. New landscaped traffic island. The existing intersection is big, open, and ugly, with lots of asphalt, and the new Stewart's will bring even more paved openness. I propose a traffic island between the existing thru-travel and dedicated right-turn lanes on Fairview to provide softening and better spatial definition. Ideally, the island would be larger than what I drew, with the lower left corner (as viewed on the drawing) squared off to create a more triangular shape. However, trucks turning left from Green onto Fairview need the radius shown.

2.  Revised curb radius at transition of Fairview to Green. This adjustment will narrow this portion of Green Street NW-bound from two lanes to one. The space gained will become a planting buffer that reduces the scale of the intersection and screens views of the gas pumps. Incidentally, there is an existing bus stop on Green Street at the proposed curb cut location. If this is or will be an active stop, it will need to be moved a little farther up the street (for either Stewart's or my scheme).

3. New pedestrian crosswalks, signals, and signage. I've gone back and forth on the best crosswalk locations. Pedestrians usually should cross at corners, but this would force two of the crossings to traverse the traffic island and right-turn lane, which seems awkward and would reduce planting space on the island. So I have shifted them away from the corner to allow pedestrians to cross the streets perpendicularly.

4. Geometry tweaks. It's hard to tell on the Stewart's plan above, but the proposed gas pump canopy is skewed a few degrees off the geometry of the houses on Green Street. I suspect the proposed building is similarly skewed. That this is hard to discern might make it seem it can be ignored, but this is precisely the kind of thing that causes a building to subliminally convey, in real life, that it is alien to its surroundings. So let me put a finer point on things:

a. Set the gas pump canopy and the Green Street facade of the new Stewart's building exactly parallel to the facades of the existing houses on Green Street. Ditto for all parking spaces, interior curb lines, etc.

b. Set the Fairview Avenue facade of the new Stewart's building exactly parallel to the facades of the existing houses on Fairview Avenue. I suspect that Fairview and Green aren't exactly perpendicular, in which case the Stewart's building would not be precisely square/orthogonal. C'est la vie.  

Top: Stewart's suburban prototype. Above: an "urban" Stewart's in Troy, NY.

5. A two-story, flat-roofed Stewart's building. Stewart's initially proposed its ubiquitous, low-slung, suburban-style prototype (top right). Negative reactions at an earlier planning board meeting led Stewart's to suggest a version of its flat-roofed Troy store (right bottom). This is indeed more urbanistically appealing, although the second floor isn't really a second floor and the entry facing the sidewalk isn't really an entry. In defense of the latter, two entries are a security nightmare for a business that has only one or two workers on the premises. If you're Stewart's, you're going to have only one operating entry and it's going to face the parking lot. But if you're an urbanist, you want the entry on the sidewalk. With this in mind, I propose the following adaptation of the Troy prototype.

My proposal, view from Fairview Avenue



The major change is a single corner entry in lieu of two separate entries or one entry facing the gas pumps. This would give the store a reasonably urban sidewalk presence while allowing it to conveniently serve customers approaching from the parking lot side. Stewart's already has corner-entry stores, including one a couple miles south of Hudson at Routes 9G and 23, so this is not at all a stretch.

Schuylerville shop, 1946

A modest stretch is a walk-up window for ice cream service. But ice cream is in Stewart's roots, and so is engaging communities in a personal way. A gesture like this will go a long way toward making this store look like it belongs where it is built, and will help turn the sidewalk into a truly friendly space.

A greater stretch, which in an ideal world would not take this project to the breaking point: how about a real second floor with an active dwelling unit or commercial space?

If I had time, I would study the Fairview Avenue setbacks a little more. On the one hand, I am inclined to match the setback of the main building and entry "porch" to the houses and porches a couple doors away on the same side of the street. However, siting the Stewart's slightly closer to Fairview than the existing houses helps block their view of the ugly gas pump canopy, and helps give Stewart's an adequate footprint to do business.

6. New, mature trees along Fairview Avenue and Green Street. I believe I have heard that Stewart's will be making a contribution to the city to maintain the Green/Fairview intersection. I suspect that any such monies will be meager, and will go into the city's general fund—i.e., they will disappear. Instead, there needs to be a substantial, dedicated, up-front payment by Stewart's to cover the complete planting and landscaping of the site and intersection (trees, traffic island, etc.) as well permanent annual funding for replanting and maintenance. All the better if these monies and responsibilities go to a neighborhood group that takes personal responsibility for it.

And there you have it. Not fully urban, but more urban than Stewart's proposal. Not threatening to perfect, but definitely "gooder." Which should satisfy all involved.

Radically rethinking the KAZ development model

After raising many important points about the development of the KAZ site at Tuesday's meeting of the Hudson Development Corporation, I was surprised to see them wholly overlooked in The Gossips of Rivertown's report of the meeting. Here is a summary of the points I made.

1. The development model presumed by the HDC board, and that shaped its previously issued Request for Proposals, is unwisely based on selling the site to a developer. For a purchase price of around $2M, the developer would own the site in perpetuity. Given that the developer almost certainly will reside outside Hudson, every rent check written by a residential or commercial tenant of the project will leave Hudson. Reasonable accounting projections suggest this could amount to over $200M over the first 30 years. By contrast, if the site were locally owned and developed, this same $200M would go to local property owners, and much of it would be circulated in the Hudson economy.

2. In the HDC’s presumptive development model, the developer would not pay property taxes, but would make an annual PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) to the city. This amount will be significantly less than ordinary property tax. Using typical PILOT deals as a guide, the city will receive millions of dollars less in tax revenue over the first 30 years than it would through an ordinary property tax.

3. The HDC needs to commission a formal urban design study of the development area. Its intention so far has been to assign urban design responsibility to the developer. This way of doing things will not produce a desirable urbanscape; developers do not know how to do urban design. It also is backwards: urban design is not something appended to a building project. A proper urban design plan comes first, because it studies a wide range of factors that lie beyond the developer's interests and expertise. It defines the framework within which a developer builds.

4. The project area is improperly defined; it should extend beyond the 4-acre KAZ site. The city owns a 2-acre parking lot immediately adjacent, which should be studied and planned at the same time—even if the two sites cannot be built on at the same time. A proper urban design study would look at this and study the relationship of the development site to areas beyond, such as the Basilica and waterfront.

5. The board is mistaken in its assertion that ownership of the CSX site is necessary to providing access to the KAZ site. The site is accessible from a number of points, including the 2-acre city site. That said, I think it is likely that the best plan for the area will require some control over the CSX site. But the buildout of a large development can take years and decades, which means that control of the CSX site may not be needed for a long time. I encouraged the board to learn more about this via a formal urban design study, and to look into more nuanced possibilities in the meantime. For example, if only part of the site is needed, ownership of the rest of it could perhaps remain with CSX. Or if CSX’s needs can be accommodated elsewhere in the development area, a land swap becomes a feasible alternative.

6. We must abandon the externalized, developer-centric model and pursue a model based on local ownership and many small projects. The essential steps are:
a. Create a system of streets and public spaces, sympathetic to and interconnected with the main Hudson street grid.
b. Divide the resulting buildable areas into many small parcels, perhaps about 24' wide, as are found in most of Hudson.
c. Sell the parcels to many local parties rather than one out-of-town party.

These steps will bake local, human-scaled DNA into the project from the outset. Local ownership will mean rents will be paid to local landlords rather than out-of-towners; much of this money will be recirculated locally. Many property owners will disperse wealth more equitably among more people than one property owner will. They will pay full property taxes, growing the city coffers. Local culture will blossom: the project will employ more Hudsonians, foster more communal familiarity, generate more street life, produce more authentic architecture, and result in more humane streetscapes than the developer-centric model will.

7. At the September meeting, HDC board member Mark Morgan-Perez rebutted several of the preceding points. I was not permitted to re-rebut them at the time. His major points of rebuttal were:
a. If my model is pursued, the city will not receive a single state dollar for affordable housing.
b. Hudson needs new ideas, so the project should have a developer from outside the community.
c. If my model is pursued, only rich people will be able to afford to live there.

In order, my re-rebuttals on Tuesday (Mr. Morgan-Perez was not in attendance) were:
a. My model will bring tens to hundreds of millions more dollars into Hudson. Mr. Morgan Perez’ argument is that these millions should be traded for a few hundred thousand dollars in state subsidies.
b. The localized model I have put forth is the new idea. The old idea is the course HDC has been on: hire an external developer, grant it tax breaks, and send local money away. (Also, to make the project look like it belongs, this model typically mandates a superficial pastiche of architectural features.) This made some sense for some cities to do decades ago, because it was the only way they could get the private sector to invest in blighted areas. This is not at all the situation in Hudson today.
c. I forgot to address Mr. Morgan-Perez's final point on Tuesday. A brief re-rebuttal here: there is no evidence that low-income citizens have more difficulty affording housing in the type of environment I am proposing than in developer-centric projects. In fact, the greatest concentration of low-income tenants in Hudson is currently found on and in the vicinity of Columbia and State Streets. These streets adhere to the small-parcel model.

This is not to ignore the need for affordable housing. This is a more complex and nuanced matter than I can expound on here; I will do so another time. For now, however, it must be noted that my model will vastly increase local wealth and distribute it more equitably. Ultimately, this means that fewer local citizens will need housing subsidy.

8. In Tuesday’s meeting, HDC board member Steve Dunn noted that there are geographic challenges to extending the street network, due to the considerable elevation of the main Hudson street grid above the KAZ site.

This is true, but it is a manageable problem—and even a positive opportunity. Years ago, Second Street (which now terminates at Allen Street above the KAZ area) ran down the hill to where the Wick Hotel now stands. It was very, very steep; today there is a only public stair in this location. I am not convinced a drivable street could or should be reestablished here. But there are other opportunities for making connections. Among them, Montgomery Street and/or Dear Alley, currently dead-ends accessed from 23B/9G/Third Street, could be extended into the KAZ district via existing city-owned rights-of-way. And in a presentation at the Hudson Library in May, I offered a rudimentary proposal for a "Spanish Stair" that would celebrate the connection between the upper and lower areas.

9. In Tuesday’s meeting, HDC board member Nick Haddad said that leasing, rather than selling the KAZ site remains an option.

Leasing would not sidestep the economic, financial, and cultural problems I have noted. A land lease typically lasts for at least 50 years, and perhaps most often for 99 years. But even a modest 30-year lease would cause massive economic and cultural harm, as noted above in my 30-year scenario. Further, a 30th birthday is the worst time to assume ownership of a building, for this is when many of the original building systems reach the end of their natural life.


Building lifecycle costs
from https://www.rdh.com/maintenance-and-planning/how-long-do-buildings-last/

10. Any proposal to develop the KAZ site, no matter how well conceived, may be trumped by rising waters. As is the case for any urban designer, I can't predict the likely outcome or prescribe the best course of action to take in response. Regardless, the HDC needs to figure out what it means to solicit investment in an area that may be subject to catastrophic environmental threat. I suggested, somewhat off-handedly but not insincerely, looking into the possibility of raising the land over the entire area one story, and placing parking underground in the flood zone.

My proposal is not without flaws. [Here, I am expanding somewhat beyond my Tuesday comments.] The long-term economic superiority of localized, small-scale development is undeniable, but it may be more onerous in the short run. For example, the city will get $2M in one shot by selling the parcel to a developer, money that will arrive well in advance of any construction activities. This will help fund many of the things the city needs to do to prepare for the project, such as hire administrators and build water and power infrastructure. By contrast, the localized, small-scale model gives a city no money up front.

This concern is not to be dismissed, but it also is misleading. Any monies HDC gets from a land sale will have to be put back into the project to cover administrative and infrastructure costs. So there is no real economic gain, just the initial appearance of one because of the opportunity to wave a $2M check in the air. Very soon after, the costs to HDC and the city will exceed this amount, and they will have to cover these costs from their own pockets.

Because a locally-based, small-scale model won't produce an initial $2M check, HDC and the city will be on the hook right away for funding new infrastructure. This is a problem for sure; on the other hand, the incremental pace of development that attends to the local/small-scale model means that infrastructure costs also tend to be incurred incrementally. The buildout of streets, curbs, water, sewer, and power can occur over a longer period of time, and can be funded through the ongoing sale of parcels. Again, I am broad-brushing; but given the egregious problems of the conventional model, HDC needs to find creative ways to fund the local/small-scale model and get it off the ground. The developer-centric model only looks like it produces $2M more dollars but it does not; ultimately it is an efficient way of sending money out of the community.

The overlooked truth of the mixed-use neighborhood

The electronic age has helped me manage the paper overload on my desk, but only a little. Yesterday, at the bottom of a long neglected stack of newspaper and magazine clippings, I came across an article in the Albany Times Union from a few years ago. Entitled "Long walk home," it cited a poll that found that 58 percent of Americans would like to live in neighborhoods with stores within walking distance. "So why haven't they been built?" asks the article by the always dependable Chris Churchill.

The question has become a well-worn one in urban planning circles. Ditto for the answers commonly proffered: zoning laws need to be more accommodating, planners and developers need to be more sensitive to the needs of citizens, and a number of others. The first answer is true enough: we're never going to attain walkability as long as zoning codes require segregated uses, large lots, and other pedestrian-hostile features.

Credit: Philip Kamrass, Times Union

But the second answer is mostly untrue, as unintentionally demonstrated by the photographs accompanying the article. They show an older mixed-use neighborhood in Schenectady that clearly didn't come about through a formal planning and development process. Rather, the mixed uses were birthed organically, through an ad hoc process initiated and controlled by neighborhood residents themselves. Note that the businesses pictured were created after the fact in buildings originally intended to be homes. The commercial uses were created as citizens actively made their neighborhood into what they thought it needed to be. They didn't wait for developers; they did it themselves.

A formalized planning and development process can give us mixed uses, but it can't give us the kind of neighborhoods we most need. It can give us contrived architecture, chain stores, and predictability, but it can't give us authenticity. Nor is it likely to impart local economic benefit. Formal development rarely generates wealth for the people already living in a neighborhood; instead, it tends to replace them with a different group of people who gained  their wealth elsewhere. The residents remaining from the old days of the neighborhood may appreciate the convenience of having a new chain store nearby, but that store sends wealth out of the community every day.

What will it take for more mixed-use, economically and culturally viable neighborhoods to be built? Less zoning, fewer developers, and more mom and pop.

Robinson Street, look out

Robinson Street in Hudson

"I think Hudson is turning a corner," a friend said at a party. "The people moving in here are really beginning to make a difference."

"I think Robinson is our next up and coming street," said an acquaintance at a community event. "It's the next street in Hudson to be discovered."

It's great to see houses and streets being improved, but statements such as these do not sit well with me. They are directed at the surface of things, and ignore the cultural realities taking place, or that could be taking place, beneath the surface renovation of bricks and mortar.

There are essentially two ways by which a depressed neighborhood may be physically improved. The first is the way to which we have become accustomed: people with wealth acquired elsewhere move into a neighborhood and fix it up. Stockbrokers and lawyers who make their living in Manhattan buy fixer-uppers in depressed areas of Brooklyn and Harlem. Wealthy high-tech workers from Google and Yahoo buy condos and buildings in overlooked neighborhoods of San Francisco, twenty-five miles north of their work, and motivate their improvement. State government workers in Albany purchase and renovate inexpensive housing in Hudson, while continuing to commute to work in the state capital. Or as has become perhaps more common in Hudson, wealthy Manhattanites purchase and renovate second homes here, and turn them into vacation outposts while conducting the bulk of their lives elsewhere.

The second way a neighborhood is improved is when the people already there experience improved financial fortune, and in turn fix up their homes and business establishments. Of the two models, I believe this is the more genuine one, even if its physical results are indistinguishable (by some) from the first. The first model, which I call an objective model of urban improvement, is directed at the physical repair of a place, while the second, subjective model seeks to motivate the physical repair of a place as a byproduct of cultural repair.

Hudsonians who are satisfied with the first model are being very short sighted about our city, about the urban problem generally, and about the causes of and cures for America's cultural ills. They don't understand that, comparatively speaking, one isn't repairing much of significance if all he repairs is a building. They don't understand that the embedded problems of a culture are not being addressed when struggling people are forced out of a neighborhood and out of a city just so its buildings can be renovated. All this does is put Hudson on the winning side of a zero-sum game. But so what? these folks seem to think; that is a problem for Troy or Albany or Schenectady to figure out.

But I will admit that my friends are right about one thing: the people moving into Hudson are making a difference. They indeed are. 

Sizing up the park

Curb enthusiasm

At the park's western corner, the boundaries between
pedestrian, car, and rail zones are poorly defined.

For a variety of reasons, most of them familiar to Hudsonians, it is difficult to agree on the boundaries of discussion regarding the Seventh Street Park. Hopefully, a discussion of the park's literal boundaries—its curbs—will prove less controversial.

The park's western corner is a good place to start. My informal but repeated observations indicate that this is the busiest corner of the park and the entry point for the majority of park users. Unfortunately, the rail line that infamously crosses the park slices through this corner, smearing the distinctions between the pedestrian, motor vehicle, and rail realms. The sidewalk and curb dissolve into asphalt which dissolves into the rail right-of-way which dissolves into active lanes of traffic; where is one to safely stand while waiting to cross the street? There are no barriers to guarantee refuge, and the physical and psychological assault comes from more directions than can be confidently monitored. The situation is only slightly better for those approaching the corner from the other side of the street, where the awkward boundaries combine with other poor physical cues to present a picture that on good days is ambiguous, and more often is repellent.

A simple curb bumpout at this corner would solve much of the problem by providing a larger, clearer pedestrian zone. Here are two existing bumpouts:

Left: a basic curb bumpout in Hoboken, New Jersey (photo from hoboken411.com). Right: a landscaped example in Seattle,
Washington (photo from myballard.com).

And here are views of 7th and Warren with and without a bumpout at the corner of the park:

From there, it is worth seeing if the rest of the park's perimeter would benefit from similar attention. The easier we can make it for people to cross the street to the park, the more users the park will have. And indeed, when deployed on both sides of an intersection, curb bumpouts can reduce pedestrian crossing distance by as much as fifty percent. They have many other advantages compared to straight-curbed intersections: they allow roadway signs to be placed closer to drivers' center of vision. When used as planting beds, they reduce surface water runoff into the roadway. And they have a generally positive effect on parking: they don't steal spaces because their locations already are no-parking zones, and they make it more difficult for scofflaws to park too close to an intersection. Perhaps most importantly, curb bumpouts alter the image of vehicle-heavy streets by advertising the right of pedestrians to inhabit intersections. Their one significant shortcoming is that they can complicate snow removal. This is less of a problem today than it was twenty years ago, however, as many municipalities now invest in smaller, more agile snow removal equipment.

As I looked into all of this, the question arose as to whether any of the streets bordering the park can be narrowed in their entirety. All the streets are now two-way; and I've never been convinced this is needed on Seventh Street and Park Place, which run along the long sides of the park. Whenever I drive on one of these streets, I find myself wondering if I should be driving on the other one.

GIF animation may not work in some mobile browsers.

The diagram at right shows a suggested pattern with one way traffic on the two long sides of the park. I don't make this suggestion lightly, as I usually am averse to converting two-way urban streets into one-way streets. Twentieth century planners frequently did this to expedite vehicle flow without regard for pedestrian experience. But on the two streets in question here, there is little chance of vehicles gaining prominence. We'd be creating narrower, one-lane, one-way streets that are quite short, and we'd grant any leftover real estate to pedestrians.

You might notice that I've continued the one-way traffic on Seventh Street into the next block heading southwest (lower left in diagram). At present, this block is ridiculously, if pleasantly, complex: the street is narrow, there's a train running down one side of it, there's pull-in parking on the other side, and there's two-way traffic. There might be a reason for this last aspect that I cannot surmise, but my working assumption is that a one-way accommodation will be adequate because Sixth Street already flows in the opposite direction. Ultimately, this is a question on which to consult the traffic engineers.

Putting all this together, I've suggested below some possible changes to the curb boundaries of the park. The sidewalks are wider and the crosswalks to the park are shorter than at present. Parking has been maintained around the entire perimeter. The biggest license I took was in showing pull-in angle parking on Park Place; I'm not sure there is enough space.

If the irregular curb geometries look odd to your eye, it likely is due to the abstract nature of the drawing. In the real world, you've almost certainly encountered similar curb shapes many times without such concerns arising.

For now, I've represented the park with an expanse of green. This does not indicate a design intent but the absence of one. I'll continue my sporadic investigations into what might happen inside the park's boundaries another time.

A crown for Warren Street

Above: Route 9 (solid line) currently jughandles through Hudson because a narrow,
two-block section of roadway prevents a simpler, straighter route (dashed line).
Below, the existing intersection of Warren Street with Worth and Prospect.

In a recent post, I looked into rerouting U.S. Route 9 as a way of reducing truck traffic within the Hudson street grid. I raised the possibility of simplifying the route by widening a narrow, two-block stretch of Prospect and Fairview Avenues, and as an additional option, merging Prospect and Fairview into a continuous street.

In this post I'll look at the intersection where my rerouting began, the meeting of Warren Street with Prospect Avenue and Worth Avenue. Some Hudsonians complain about this intersection because of the three-way stop signs. Personally, I find communal value in the eye contact and informal coordination they call for, but at rush hour, when I almost never drive, such charms are perhaps lost.

Whether or not the intersection is a failure from a traffic standpoint, it is most definitely a failure from a civic standpoint. This is an important intersection in Hudson. It marks the head of Warren Street, the cultural and commercial spine of the city, a street celebrated for its architecture, restaurants, and galleries. But while the bottom end of Warren Street is anchored by a promontory overlooking the Hudson River, here there is no indication of the street's significance. There is no major building or space to complete the street axis and pull walkers to its top end; the strongest architectural gestures are an auto repair garage and a marginally maintained, 1870-ish flop house. Besides presenting a significant aesthetic problem, this represents an economic and cultural problem, as properties at this end of Warren Street have tended to languish.

Warren Street is the commercial and cultural spine of Hudson. It is is received by a park at the Hudson River, but it lacks a
significant marker at its upper end.

Below I offer a suggestion for anchoring the top of Warren Street. I've realigned Prospect and Worth Avenues into a continuous street, and extended Warren to meet them in a T. I also rerouted the alley behind Worth Avenue to connect with Prison Alley. These changes would result in the loss of two houses (one architecturally undistinguished) and the auto repair garage. The gain is a clear beginning/end to Hudson's main street and a large, developable parcel to the southeast.

A street realignment and new building and plaza offer a civic gesture at the head of Warren Street.

Portland, Maine

On the new site I've suggested a large building and plaza to preside over Warren Street. The location lends itself to a public building such as county offices, a police station, or a library. Unfortunately, these functions are all in the process of being relocated to other sites in Hudson. A church, grand hotel, or apartment building might work, and the proximity of the hospital suggests an administration building. However, some of these uses might not lend the right civic note. But it's fun to imagine something new and impactful at this location. A good street should have a good beginning. And a good end.

Developing the Hudson hinterlandsPart 1: Put your money on sprawl

Last month, the Register-Star reported that the Hudson Common Council has been asked to explore the transfer of a 33-acre parcel from the school district to the city. The city would in turn sell the unused parcel, located behind Hudson High School, for private development. This would generate revenues for the city through the sale as well as through future tax revenues.

Fiscally speaking, this seems like an excellent idea. Unfortunately, it is an inducement to create sprawl. The site is located far from existing physical and social infrastructure, most notably the Hudson grid. Presumably it would receive residential development, but anything built on the site will be automobile dependent.

A 33-acre parcel behind Hudson High School may be made available for private development.

Not far away, in Hudson's North Bay, the Columbia Land Conservancy has been pursuing a plan to create a conservation area. It would touch the Hudson street grid on the south and connect to the existing Greenport Conservation Area on the north. Question 1: Is there any land that the Conservancy has included in its plan that is a.) adjacent to the street grid, and b.) buildable?

The answer would seem to be "mostly no," as much of the land in the vicinity is swampy, steeply sloped, toxic, and unstable. But to the extent the answer is "yes," I pose Question 2: Can we rethink things a bit, such that the school district parcel becomes part of the conservation area and any buildable land near the city grid gets built on instead?

In Part 2, I'll look at an ambitious possibility for growing Hudson on an urban, rather than suburban, model.

When urbanism went wrong

I wrote the following essay on Hudson for Architect magazine in September 2009. At the time, I didn't realize the extent to which those living on Hudson's economic fringes reside north of Warren Street. I also missed on my population estimate. The larger lesson of the essay holds. Also, space limitations prevented me from expounding on ways to close America's economic disparity. My approach to urban economic development is described in modest detail HERE.

Firefighters parade through Hudson, N.Y.
Macduff Everton/Corbis via Architect magazine

I love big cities, but I often find small cities more compelling. The dispiriting and encouraging aspects of urbanism are more immediately juxtaposed, often heart-rendingly so, but the disparity between them seems bridgeable. Surely, this place can be made to work, if only.

Hudson, N.Y., a settlement of 8,000 residents two hours north of Manhattan, is a two-square-mile snapshot of America’s urban disparity. Its main avenue, Warren Street, is a stunner; it looks as if eight very charming blocks of Brooklyn left the big city a century ago and moved to Columbia County. It has its rough spots, but Warren Street has been experiencing a revival, thanks to gentrification, historic preservation, an influx of antique dealers and tourists, and the helping hand of government.

In the blocks immediately to either side of Warren Street, one finds the other Hudson: comparatively poor, nonwhite, disconnected, and underemployed. The crime rate is higher, and the rough spots in the urban fabric are rougher. The industrial base is nearly gone, as are innumerable mom-and-pop shoe stores, food marts, and repair services that once made Hudson, Hudson.
 
What has happened in Hudson, as elsewhere, is that the middle has dropped out. But before blaming its vanishing middle class on the global economy, look closer to home. In fact, look in the home, for this is where American businesses—and American urbanism—used to get started. Before we became enamored of top-down urbanism—funded by government, propped up by feasibility studies, packaged by city hall, guarded by aesthetic review boards, and delivered by developers—urbanism arose through an organic process of small entrepreneurs opening home-based businesses to the sidewalk. Their one-of-a-kind shops and industries were the starting point for innumerable mixed-use streets, districts, and downtowns that we love today. Read more...

On gas stations, street walls, and beer gardens

The view from the park to the northeast/east is unwelcoming.

Urban spaces succeed through their relationship with their context. If a public space is of a type that is to be activated by workaday activities, it usually needs to be fronted by a well-defined street wall. Strong built edges generate life in a park, define it as a meaningful place, and provide a sense of "hereness."

Hudson's Seventh Street Park is defined reasonably well on most of its perimeter, where two and three story buildings directly front the sidewalk. But the northeastern/eastern side/corner is "spatially leaky." A homely, one-story Citgo station sits sixty or more feet from the public way. A train right-of-way immediately west of the Citgo station and some odd building and street geometries to the east contribute to additional spatial weakness. A park user walking toward this corner is presented with a destination that ranges from unclear to unpleasant.

Most of the park's perimeter has fairly well-defined street
walls, but on the northeast and east it is spatially leaky.

Of the several offenders, the Citgo station receives the most frequent criticism. I hear occasional, hopeful musings that economic pressures from increasing real estate values will cause it to eventually go away. I think this is unlikely. It is difficult to get rid of gas stations under almost any economic circumstance, because they earn more than almost any other use. If we are going to address the problems at this end of the park, I think it would be wiser to seek an urbanistically friendlier design for the gas station site that maintains Citgo as a tenant. If nothing else, the exercise is good practice, design-wise and emotion-wise, for learning to work with undesirable constraints.

At present, vehicles enter and exit the Citgo site on the same side, i.e., Columbia Street (below left). This design decision, made long ago, required that the building be sited on the back of the site. A more sympathetic building placement can be achieved by employing a drive-through circulation pattern, from Columbia Street to the alley (below right). 

Vehicles currently enter and exit the site via Columbia Street.

A through circulation pattern would permit a friendlier building placement.

This would allow the placement of a building on the Columbia Street edge, where a building stood years ago. Ideally, a new building here would be three stories high (the former building was two stories) and would house ground floor retail (including the gas station mini-mart) and other uses that would activate the sidewalk and park edge.

The Citgo site with a 3-story building fronting on Columbia Street

This would solve part of the problem, but the railroad right-of-way to the west (i.e., left) of the gas station would remain spatially leaky. At bottom, I've illustrated one way of strengthening the street wall here. I offer no warranties on the quality of any of the architecture represented, although I suspect some will find the beer garden compelling.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't need to concern ourselves with oddities such as a gas station and a railroad on our town square. If we were facing the decision today for the first time, would any of us, other than Citgo and ADM, choose to have them here? And yet many Hudsonians, even some staunch formalists, admit to liking the intrusion of the railroad. It is part of who we are, part of what the park is, part of what makes Hudson different from other places. Indeed, the things that by some measures don't belong in a city are the very things that make it authentic and interesting. Granted, it may be easier to romanticize a railroad line than a Citgo sign. But before declaring that a conclusion, we probably should check in on the question with the Red Sox fans among us...perhaps even some Yankees fans.

Some possibilities for strengthening the street wall at the northeastern side of Hudson's Seventh Street Park.

History is a guide, not a master

    Proposal by Cathryn Dwyre and Hudson Development Corp.

The proposal to revamp the Seventh Street Park has produced a predictable polarization in Hudson. On one side are those desiring a full, historically accurate restoration and on the other are the supporters of a more contemporary design—either the current proposal or some other.

Responsibility for this polarization lies at the feet of both camps. The contemporists have not done enough homework or engaged the design process publicly enough to justify the sweeping changes put forth by designer Cathryn Dwyre. And many preservationists have insisted on a full and literal restoration of the original park plan without considering the possibility that there might be a better way. I will focus in this post on one particular set of flaws in the original park layout; in the coming weeks I hope to explore other issues related to the past, current, and future design of the park.

View of original Seventh Street Park looking northeast.
The park was organized by two orthogonal pathways with
a fountain located symmetrically at their intersection.

At her recent public presentation, Ms. Dwyre described the original layout of the park as a "default" nineteenth century solution. While perhaps taken by preservationists as a backhanded slap, her statement is not inaccurate. The park's configuration of two orthogonal pathways with a fountain at their intersection has been used many times. It is not unpleasant, and has worked elsewhere. But it does appear it was employed here without consideration of local conditions. A brief analysis of the park's pathways suggests the design falls well short of deserving an ironclad endorsement from Hudson's preservationists.

Park pathways, properly understood, are continuations of larger systems of pedestrian movement. This is in large part because parks are activated as much or more by incidental or casual users as by deliberate users. In other words, a park's designer has a primary responsibility to encourage use by those who encounter it by chance as well as by those who make a conscious decision to go there. When incidental users are successfully engaged, a baseline of activity is assured, making the park safer and more enjoyable for all. 

Bird's eye view of the original park design. The park's internal
pathways do not relate to the natural pedestrian street crossing
locations, shown in white.

When a park is set into a street grid in the manner of the Seventh Street Park, the majority of users, incidental as well as deliberate, will arrive at a corner. From there, they will tend to move diagonally. This gives the deliberate user the most immediate route into the park and the casual user the most direct route through it. (In truth, designers visit "tricks" upon both groups to divert them from a perfectly efficient path; a discussion for another time.)

The historical park plan (above left) ignores these realities of human behavior and urban context. The entrance points are located at mid-block rather than at the corners, and the pathways run orthogonally rather than diagonally. The best-case outcome of this is undesirable wear patterns in the grass; the worst case is that pedestrians dangerously cross streets at mid-block when approaching and leaving the park. Somewhere in the middle of the best-worst scale, perhaps, is that the park simply isn't as good and inspiring a place as it could be.

The existing pathway that runs across the short dimension of the park does allow for some degree of natural pedestrian access, as it is an extension of Prison Alley. But this advertises a different problem: the Venus fountain lies on axis with a back alley instead of with a major street or important building. Those interested in the more essential values and goals of traditional city planning, and who do not insist on preservation for preservation's sake, would recognize this as a nineteenth century faux pas. 

Bird's eye view showing diagonal pathways, as a response to the
larger, natural patterns of pedestrian movement in the neighborhood.

At left I've shown the park with diagonal pathways. The result is much more accommodating of how most people will actually encounter and traverse the park. It doesn't solve the problem of the fountain lying on axis with the alley, but it does suggest the park layout can be changed and improved while still respecting the symmetry and formality presumably valued by Hudson's preservationists and traditionalists. (Although this is not to call this a solution; there are far more factors to investigate and synthesize than I can take on here.)

Of course, many in the preservation camp will poo-poo any proposed changes simply because they aren't "historic." This amounts to an argument that history is right simply because it got there first. Such history-centric individuals belong in the same category of non-thinkers as those who deem something of value simply because it's new and different. (Designers of the PARC Foundation Park in Hudson, take note.) A thinking person—someone open to the best of the past, present, and future—knows that history has gotten things right and wrong—not only in the usually cited arenas of politics, war, and civil rights, but also in architecture and city planning.