New urbanist principles would have it that you can get everything you need within a five-minute walk. Most of Pittsburgh's city neighborhoods would not currently fall into this category. The exceptions of course are the city's most popular neighborhoods including Squirrel Hill and to a lesser extent Shadyside. Downtown seems to be quickly progressing to this level as well, however.


The developments on the North Shore, at least West of Federal Street are not shaping up this way. Many times housing has been mentioned as part of the mix, and all the proposed developments are certainly exciting, but housing hasn't played into the mix since the Heinz Lofts and Lincoln at the North Shore. That's unless you count Hotels as housing, which you really can't because the vacancy rates fluxuate with events limiting the extent to which we can achieve 24-hour neighborhoods.


Post-Gazette article on North Shore developments.

An engaging conversation can be found in the archives on the East Allegheny Yahoo group about zoning (and libertarianism). I'd like add at this point that that in some cities (San Francisco comes to mind) zoning is used (intently or indirectly) to make landowners rich by controlling and restricting development. This keeps prices high and favors those who got in early. It seriously restricts the market and hinders its functioning. The larger issue I have with zoning however is that it encourages a car-oriented society just as the construction of highways does.

James Howard Kunstler is a good resource on this and I'll summarize his points here (all quoted from article linked below):

• For the previous 300-odd years of American history we didn't have zoning laws.


• If you want to make your community better, begin at once by throwing out your zoning laws. Don't revise them -- get rid of them.


• Replace these things with a traditional town-planning ordinance that prescribes a more desirable everyday environment.


• After the Second World War zoning began to overshadow all the historic elements of civic art and civic life.


• Shopping was declared an obnoxious industrial activity around which people shouldn't be allowed to live. This tended to destroy age-old physical relationships between shopping and living, as embodied, say, in Main Street.


• What zoning produces is suburban sprawl.


• The model of the human habitat dictated by zoning is a formless, soul-less, centerless, demoralizing mess.
  
  Here's Kunstler's article

I recently wrote an article for the Northside Chronicle about pre-industrial Pittsburgh. In it I imagined that if our existing population lived in the physical pre-industrial Pittsburgh we might fit better. This was perhaps the second or third time I had thought about shrinking cities physically when the population shrinks.

Today I was alerted to a USA Today article from another web site. The article, published last December is titled (link) As older cities shrink, some reinvent themselves. Among the cities mentioned are Cleveland, Detroit and Richmond.

I have mixed feelings about the idea, which may be the subconscious reason why I hadn't more fully explored the idea when it sparked before. In the pre-industrial Pittsburgh article the notion was mostly romantic as I was imagining Neo-classical farm houses fronting green fields where decaying Victorian-era houses now stand.

To some degree these decaying, or at least in less than ideal condition homes, are a burden. To some degree they are an opportunity. Pittsburgh's population is older if not still aging. The youthful energy needed to rehabilitate these homes is just not there. The population to fill these homes might not be there anytime soon either. For sure it would seem there is a trend toward urban living, but the new urbanites populating our cities seem to want condos more than single-family homes.

Still, if one thing is certain it is change. When the condos are full, some of the condo owners will certainly yearn for a bit more space and these hillside homes, some with views, may call out. I've recently watched several neighborhoods be flushed of these ultra-cheap homes as they are repaired and lived in.

Higher gas prices and other factors may also serve to create new demand for these homes in the future. Plus, too many houses helps keep prices low, and opportunities such as these, perhaps coupled with incentives, are just what's needed to attract more youth and immigrant energy to our city. Bulldozing houses and replacing them with green space will raise the prices, lower density, decrease efficiency and create a "suburbanization" of urban America. Do we really want that? Is it good for our cities or their populations?

Of course, this may be a dumb way as opposed to a smart way. I'd like to hear details about a smart way that can preserve density, efficiency and affordability, but my guess is that's not easy if at all possible.

It's nice to think of the romantic side of a pre-industrial, smaller, simpler city, but then that wouldn't be as much of a city, would it?

Pittsburgh transit riders are upset. PAT, the agency that runs the bus and light-rail system, is out of money and proposes to cut almost half the routes. Some of these routes connect two of the three biggest trip generators in the state, downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland.

It was less than two years ago that Mayoral hopeful Bob O’Connor, unveiling his first major economic proposal, suggested building a new streetcar line connecting downtown and Oakland.

Today it’s a different world-view. The cuts proposed by PAT threaten to confuse if not strand riders who have few options to get to their destination, must add considerable time to their trips or face parking in places with limited parking and less than affordable parking rates.

Changing bus routes also impacts development and the viability of neighborhoods. The 500 for example provides direct access from North neighborhoods like Bellevue and Brighton Heights to Oakland and downtown. Those neighborhoods are not as attractive without that route.

This gets back to the basics of transit. Once the spine of American cities, our web of streetcar systems has been replaced over the past fifty years with a system of buses. These buses can easily be rerouted or cut entirely. They don’t require any capital investment other than the bus itself. Streetcar systems on the other hand require significant capital investment, but once in place they provide cost-savings, but more importantly transit that can not only be relied on by riders, but by developers, businesses and homeowners who can with much reassurance know that the transit line is likely to be there and running indefinitely into the future.

Mayor O’Connor was right. It’s time to look downtown again and time to look at streetcars again. It’s time to find dedicated funding for transit and time to make transit systems a permanent part of our cities, so cities can be built around them.
It’s also time for Pittsburghers to begin asking “Who can rely on the bus?”

The first time I saw a Katrina Cottage I thought "wow, that would look great on Spring Hill." Spring Hill is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh that has many "shotgun shack" type houses on the sides of the hill where mill workers and others once lived. These were built in the Victorian era and often had ornamentation not unlike the painted ladies in San Francisco.

I also can't help but think that the same folks who want small condos and apartments might be persuaded to have an apartment with a little lawn otherwise known as a Katrina Cottage.



An article from a Congress for a New Urbanism explains: "Quality small-scale housing represented by Katrina Cottages is a much-needed alternative in communities determined to address affordability issues without downgrading the architectural character of neighborhoods. Together, these cottages can work as clusters and bungalow courts that can enrich old and new neighborhoods and provide safe, affordable housing for people who might not qualify for quality architecture in larger scale. Yet conventional zoning often precludes this alternative because of setback, lot size, and other restrictions that force only larger homes on larger lots."

I still have images of little Victorians lining Pittsburgh stairways with landscaped edging that would make for a great place to live and walk and really help redefine Pittsburgh as a walking city. Its hard for a city with Pittsburgh's geography to be a walking city, but hey, how many people walk all over Telegraph Hill? Is Fineview or Spring Hill so different? Not at all. A few flowers and some Katrina Cottages and our stairways would be a better, even great place to walk.

Jerry Brown wanted to liven up the streets of Oakland and had to find a way to measure success. Brown, the former governor of California, was elected to the job of Mayor of Oakland (the city across the bay from San Francisco, not the place where you go on the 500 just in case there's confusion), came up with the "Starbucks Scale." At that point Oakland already had a Starbucks, a milepost in itself. The "Starbucks Scale" would use the number of hours that the coffee shop stayed open as a measure of the city's vitality. The longer Starbucks brewed, the better things would have gotten.

A few years back when Seattle's Best opened in PNC Park, I thought I would start to keep track. There wasn't much to track. If Seattle's Best was to be used as a measure of the North Shore's vitality, it soon added ice cream to become a confusing mix of hot and cold then joined the ranks of what used to be. Since then the North Shore has come along, and there may be a day on the horizon where there's brew available there to measure vitality, but for now, no java.

If coffee is a good measure, the area North of the expressway is actually ahead of the game. There's still no Starbucks (I just heard two locations were opening in Altoona soon and I never thought they'd have one first), but there are several coffee shops. The Vault (Brighton Heights) was first, followed by Charles Street Cafe, Beleza (War Streets) and most recently by Amani (East Allegheny). There are other places here to get coffee including the Priory Pastries, Cool Beans in Allegheny Center, the coffee cart in Allegheny General and in fairness to the North Shore, the Andy Warhol Museum Cafe. If hours are also a measure, Beleza has added more since opening this summer.

But what's so important about a coffee shop that it can be used as a measure of vitality anyway?

Coffee shops are something academics like to call "third places." The number three is attached as they follow the first place of home and the second place of work. Like cities, they are places where people go to interact and where ideas are likely to come together.

Sometimes those ideas focus on art, sometimes politics and sometimes business but in all cases they become a center for these areas. Writer Jack London lived in Oakland, CA and apparently liked coffee shops, but may not be so happy about Brown's use of the corporate green to measure his city's energy.

A socialist at the age of twenty, if London were alive today he might not be hanging out in his square. In fact, London ran unsuccessfully as the high-profile Socialist nominee for mayor of Oakland in 1901 (receiving 245 votes) and 1905 (improving to 981 votes), toured the country lecturing on socialism in 1906, and published collections of essays on socialism ( The War of the Classes, 1905; Revolution, and other Essays, 1910).

The first record of a public place serving coffee dates back to 1475 Constantinople. Apparently at that time it was legal in Turkey for a woman to divorce her husband if he could not supply her with enough coffee. Misbehaving in coffee shops was also punishable by death.

Chalk one up to Starbucks, politics aside, sometimes coffee is all about business. The Turks, filled with ideas, imported theirs to a few European countries including England where a small coffee shop run by Edward Lloyd in 1668 was such a business hub, it eventually became the still-operating Lloyd's of London insurance company.

In the American colonies the coffee house was also a hub for the business (and revolution). While we may have thrown the tea back to England, the coffee was here to stay. Business and coffee are so intertwined that the original location of the New York Stock exchange was the Tonine Coffee House. The earliest coffeehouses, in New Orleans were known as 'exchanges' where bankers and importers would meet to share information and ideas to further economic development. All this before anyone heard of Seattle of Starbucks.

Yet, the original "coffee houses" were similar to those today - a gathering place for conversation, entertainment and the exchange of ideas. Coffee houses may now prove of equal importance and purpose in North City neighborhoods, becoming gathering places for artists, business people and those with political ideas and ambitions. Since the opening of Amani I have met several neighbors I knew of only as names in email groups and met others to talk about business or ideas.

Many trace the start of change on the South Side to the opening of the Beehive Coffee House, which still retains its title as the city's best and most important social center. Once opened 24-hours any vitality meter would have gone off the scale. I can't help but think with the rise of North City coffee culture there's more brewing than beans. Here as elsewhere, coffee is bringing people and ideas together and that more often than not that results in art, politics and business.

To that point, Jerry brown is right, the longer the coffee brews, the better off we'll be.

this article previously appeared in the Northside Chronicle

The market in Pittsburgh is expected to increase 3.3 percent in 2007. This is assuring and predictible as Pittsburgh has long been known as a stable market more immune to dramatic shifts in price seen in Boston, San Jose and other markets. Fortune Maganize has some details on what cities are expected to gain and lose in 2007.