Earlier this year, the first phase of The Underline opened up in Miami's Brickell neighborhood. Designed by James Corner Field Operations, The Underline is an eventual 10-mile linear park that will live underneath the city's elevated Metrorail and run from the Miami River all the way south to Dadeland South Station.
The first phase -- called Brickell Backyard -- is the shortest phase at only 0.5 miles. But it cuts through one of the densest parts of the city, if not the densest. Total construction costs for this phase came in at $16.524 million and here's where that funding came from (source is The Underline):
$7,688,760 Miami-Dade County
$1,944,000 FDOT TAP Grant
$2,000,000 State of Florida
$4,871,690 City of Miami
$19,808 FDOT
The Underline is clearly looking to the example of New York's High Line, which was also designed by Field Operations. And for good reason: The High Line is a shining example of placemaking as economic development engine.
The first two phases of The High Line cost around $153 million to construct. But as of 2014 (when I wrote about it here) it was already attracting some 5 million visitors a year and was believed to be responsible for about $2.2 billion in new economic activity. I'm sure the numbers are much higher today.
As city builders, we are always looking for ways to create value and spur economic development. But it's perhaps important to keep in mind that the underlying goal isn't all that complicated: Create cool places where people want to be.
Images: The Underline
Lincoln Road is one of my favorite parts of Miami Beach. Supposedly the pedestrian-only street attracts some 11 million visitors a year. But I have noticed that the street has lost some of its mainstays to areas such as Wynwood. This is probably why the city and local property/business owners struck a deal this past summer to makeover the street based on a design by Field Operations.
The deal works like this: The City of Miami Beach is going to pay for the entire US$67 million makeover. This money will come from city and county taxes, as well from bonds. In return, property owners in the Lincoln Road Business Improvement District (BID) have agreed to tax themselves an additional 25% in order to pay for promoting and programming the street.
Obviously everyone believes that they will come out ahead as a result of this makeover. An improved Lincoln Road means more foot traffic, more sales, and more tax revenue. There's also talk of expanding the boundaries of the BID, which would generate additional funds. Right now the district is bounded by Alton Road on the west and by Washington Avenue on the east.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Business Improvement Districts, they are essentially defined areas where additional taxes are levied in order to fund projects and improvements that help overall economic development within the district. It is a structure that is used all around the world and it is one that was actually pioneered here in Toronto.
Here we call them Business Improvement Areas, and the first ever was the Bloor West Village BIA, which was established in 1970. There are now 83 BIAs in the City of Toronto. The first BID in the United States was the Downtown Development District in New Orleans. It was established in 1974. There are now over 1,200 across the U.S.
If you'd like to learn more about the improvements planned for Lincoln Road, here's a copy of the master plan that was submitted to the City of Miami Beach's Historic Preservation Board. The link is from The Next Miami.
Rendering: Field Operations
Warning: This post turns into a bit of a rant near the end :)
Since 2009 (well, much earlier actually), Toronto has been trying to figure out what to do with the eastern portion of the elevated Gardiner Expressway (the portion from Jarvis Street to the Don Valley Parkway). The process used to help make this decision is called an Environmental Assessment (or EA) and that’s what is currently underway. But it’s a painstakingly slow process.
Recently though, a third public meeting was held in order to solicit feedback on the various design solutions and so there’s been a renewed interest in this city building issue. Since the beginning, my position has been that we should tear it down. And in this post I’m going to explain why I think that is exactly what the city should do.
But first, a bit of background.
The EA started by identifying four “Alternative Solutions” to the problem of the Gardiner East. And they are:
Maintain the elevated expressway (Basically do nothing)
Improve the urban fabric while maintaining the existing expressway
Replace with a new above or below grade expressway
Remove the elevated expressway and build a new boulevard
They then went out and assigned these solutions to a bunch of architects and designers—whom are some of the world’s best—and asked them to come up with specific design proposals. These proposals are available online and that’s part of what the public has been commenting on.
City Council seems to generally want the Gardiner down, but there are some naysayers.
Rob Ford doesn’t want it removed (option #1) because it’ll add to driver commute times (no surprise there) and Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong is worried that tearing it down will just lead to another wall—a wall of waterfront condos.
But I think these views are terribly shortsighted and I’ve made my position clear by submitting a formal response through the City’s public engagement portal. To explain my view here on Architect This City, I thought the best way would be to simply share my answers. So here they are.
What do you like?
[slideshare id=22945545&sc=no]
I can honestly say that I love my city. I was born in this city. And I was raised in this city. This city has given me so much, which is why I feel so compelled to try and give back to it. It’s also the reason why I’m first to defend it when people talk about how great this or that city’s waterfront is and how much ours sucks. I mean, I know ours sucks. But we’re fixing it.
We have a lot of great plans in the pipeline for our waterfront, but there’s a remaining obstacle: our elevated expressway. Boston buried theirs. And San Francisco transformed theirs into a magnificent public space. What are we going to do with ours? Now is the time to be bold and not settle for the status quo. That’s too easy. We need to remove the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway today and the design proposal by Field Operations offers a brilliant way to do it.
Not only is removing the Gardiner the most cost effective solution ($470M, versus $870M to maintain, $865M to improve and $1.4 billion to replace), but it’s also the most desirable from a city building standpoint.
The Gardiner is not the only barrier. We also have the rail lines. So while repurposing the Gardiner might be doable in isolation, we simply have too much friction standing between us and the lake. We need to remove the barriers that we can. It’s for this precise reason that Field Operations spent so much time worrying about the north-south connections. And I think their “architectural sleeves” are a really interesting way to solve this problem.
At the same time, timing is an important consideration. As the surrounding East Bayfront area develops, it’s only going to become more costly to remove this stretch of the Gardiner. If we’re going to do this, now is the time.
Finally, I think it’s important to note that Field Operations is the landscape architecture firm behind the wildly successful High Line in New York. So what we have is a firm that made a name for itself repurposing an old elevated rail line, telling us that our own elevated structure is worthless and uninspiring. Think about that for a minute. Should we really be spending more money to salvage the Gardiner East?
What concerns do you have?
That we’re getting hung up on commute times as one of the key decision making criteria. It’s a red herring. Let’s face it: irrespective of whether we tear down the eastern portion of the Gardiner or not, Toronto is fucked from a transportation and infrastructure standpoint. We’re sitting on decades of disinvestment and some of the longest commute times in North America.
Field Operations put it well when they said that the tearing down of the Gardiner East needs to be thought of as a paradigm shift. We have a 25-year transportation plan waiting to be funded. Let’s go out and do that instead of trying to sacrifice our waterfront so that suburban commuters can save a few minutes. Let’s give them a shiny new train instead. They’ll like that.
Either that or Torontonians need to stop talking about how great Chicago’s waterfront is, because we can do it too. Now is our chance.
What advice do you have for the Project Team as the study moves into the next phase?
Don’t listen to Rob Ford.