As cars and trucks droned by outside, citizens streamed into a former auto parts store at the corner of DeRenne Avenue and Montgomery Street. The purpose of the gathering tonight was the launch of a week-long design charrette focused on the DeRenne Avenue corridor, arguably one of the most important yet troubled streets in the city. Factor in its use by commuters from outlying areas and its importance and troubles become regional in scope and severity.

Facilitators from Kimley-Horn and Associates described the work they had done in Phase One of the project and outlined the goals for Phase Two and, in particular, the schedule for the charrette. Before the presentations and during breaks, participants browsed maps and visual representations of the streets, buildings and other components of the DeRenne Avenue corridor.

In his remarks, KHA’s Stephen Stansbery repeated a mantra that came from the project advisory committee: “Doing nothing,” about the current state of DeRenne Avenue, “is just not acceptable.” Further, he suggested the widening of DeRenne, which has been floated as a cure for traffic congestion, is not the easy solution some imagine it to be. “Adding lanes,” he said. “is rarely the solution in an urban context.” Still, the audience was cautioned, moving automobile traffic must be a central part of the final product.

But what is to be done about DeRenne? Stansbery issued a challenge of sorts, referencing Savannah’s world famous streets, which attract millions of visitors from around the globe. “Why can’t we build a street today that’s great today and will be great 100 years from now?” He said doing so would take courage and vision.

As part of that vision, charrette attendees were given small sheets of paper and asked to complete two phrases:

Right now I think DeRenne Avenue is …

and

In the future, I visualize DeRenne Avenue as…

How would you answer each question? Respond in the comments section.

For more information and a complete schedule of the week’s events, visit the Project DeRenne Web site.

Landers expresses concern about the walkability of her Parkside neighborhood, writing, “I can and do walk the area for exercise, but there aren’t many walkable destinations as far as shops and restaurants.” She’ll be happy to know there’s an affordable and widely available device that will effectively double or triple any neighborhood’s Walk Score. In fact, I’m pretty sure Landers owns one. I’ve seen her with it. It’s called a bicycle.

Residents of Parkside may be surprised to learn they can use their bicycles to visit shops and restaurants that are just to the east of them, not far as the crow flies, but often deemed unreachable because of the concrete curtain that is the Truman Parkway. I’ll admit it, traveling on Victory Drive under the parkway overpass is not a pleasant experience on a bicycle. However, with a little practice and confidence it becomes less scary.

Still, “World Famous Victory Drive” isn’t the sort of place most people would choose to ride a bike. That’s because it has ceased to be a public space and is now mostly a pipe for moving cars. And in that way it is a lot like the rest of the country.

For the past 70 years, American cities have been designed to continuously accommodate ever increasing volumes of traffic. Through our work in over 2000 communities around the country, we have found that when cities are designed around cars and traffic, they fill with more cars and traffic—whereas if we begin to plan cities for people and places, we will get more people and places.

That’s something I found on the Project for Public Spaces Web site. Here’s a little more:

Starting in the 1970s, when PPS President Fred Kent began working on William H. Whyte’s “Street Life Project,” PPS has continued to be involved in research, training, and project work related to transportation issues. We have trained transportation professionals across the states of New Jersey, New Hampshire and New York in Context Sensitive Design; we designed and manage the FHWA Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) website, and are in the process of developing a major campaign geared towards achieving fundamental transportation reform in the United States.

It is clear from all of our work that the public spaces of cities, towns and villages—our streets and roads, parks and plazas, waterfronts and commercial districts—represent this country’s greatest potential to create livable, walkable, healthy and sustainable communities, as well as its greatest challenge.

The Fred Kent mentioned above will be in Savannah early next year. From the MPC Web site: “Fred Kent, founder of the Project for Public Spaces, will lead a community forum at the Coastal Georgia Center on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009 beginning at 7 p.m. This forum will focus on creating vibrant community places and offer strategies so that we can incorporate the concept of placemaking into our public destinations.”

I’m hoping Kent will help Savannah realize that streets are public places and destinations unto themselves. The MPC invites citizens to download a brochure here and take a survey here.

For those of you who couldn’t make it, I’ll briefly summarize. Landry defines creative cities as those in which ordinary people (along with their local bureaucracies) solve problems (or rather, create opportunities) in imaginative ways.

I really appreciated his notion that creative cities strive not to be the best in the world, but the best for the world.

Creative cities are made deliberately; they require inclusion, collaboration, motivation, public places, respect of history & culture, openness (open to difference, change, ideas, emotions), holistic thinking, ownership (as in, this is my town and I’m responsible for what goes on in it), bravery, values and imagination. Imagination is key.  I wonder if Charles Landry likes Spongebob as much as I do.

“I-ma-gin-aaaaaaaaaaa-tion!”

What did ya’ll think?

The project, Green Bridge Farm, is one I have mentioned here before, and it’s been covered in local news.

Initial resistance from the county stemmed from Maddox’s request for a variance to have the community road paved with recycled concrete rather than asphalt. The variance was hard won and took many months to secure as an act of conservation. But it was worth, it, Maddox says: “This will pave the way for the future … for subdivisions [that are environmentally concerned].”

As a resident of a Wilmington Island neighborhood that was, 10 years ago, a big beautiful chunk of woods, I appreciate Maddox’s commitment to respect his property by limiting tree clearance and creating other eco-friendly covenants for home builders. The other new homes are nice, but they are haunted by the trees.

Another highlight of the project is that Maddox’s own organic garden and orchard will anchor the community of nine residential lots. Residents will be encouraged to participate in a community garden maintained by the association, offering a unique opportunity for people to grow their own food.

This is a little green gem worth checking out. Located not far from the rapidly developing areas of Pooler, Bloomingdale and Guyton, it seems a safe haven. Hopefully, it will get noticed and become a good example for communities to come.

Photo courtesy Conlawprof via flickr.com

Two comments in the Savannah Morning News’ Vox Populi section caught my eye this morning. The emphasis in each is mine.

“Close off the streets for the kids to play basketball? My neighborhood looks like a dump after these kids play. Their language from the youngest to the oldest comes from the dump as well. Streets were made for automobiles.”

And…

“Streets are for driving not playing basketball. If you want to play ball go to a playground or gym. It would be different if the kids would act like people did a few years ago and move out of the middle of the street, but they don’t, and mama and daddy won’t tell them to.”

Does this mean Gen. James Oglethorpe was thinking about cars when he designed a distinctive pattern of streets for Savannah in 1730? The man was a regular Nostradamus!

Having grown up in a football town, I have very little interest in basketball (Nor foul-mouthed kids, for that matter). However, I spent plenty of time in the street tossing Nerfs and Frisbees, riding bikes, constructing ramps to make said bikes airborne, launching model rockets and staging horrific accidents involving toy Jeeps filled with G.I. Joes. I suspect that plenty of Savannahians of a certain age have fond memories of using their city’s streets to play a unique game that many argue was invented here.

The fact is kids have been playing in the street since long before the first car was invented. As a result, many of Savannah’s streets were not “made for cars,” but for a full range of activities that enriched the community.

There are Savannah streets that have been given over entirely to cars and they have become, in almost every case, places that are embarrassments to the community. For a tour of one, click here.

Photo source: Street Play

But even new construction in historic neighborhoods can yield dramatic sustainability benefits. First, existing neighborhoods do not require the deployment of new utilities, streets, parks and other civic amenities. Second, neighborhoods created prior to the WWII often feature the kind of density that provides traction to sustainable transportation solutions like bicycle commuting and transit oriented development. In a very real sense, Infill is the opposite of sprawl. Maybe even antidote to it. The trick, of course, is to make all this happen without gentrifying neighborhoods.

On Dec. 1, from 8:30 a.m. until noon, the Metropolitan Community Organization is sponsoring a seminar on investment opportunities in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard/Montgomery Street corridor, south of Gwinnett Street. Participants are invited to:

“Come and learn from experts how to invest, develop and identify commercial and/or residential properties on this historic corridor. Hear successful developers talk about how they did it! Learn about the three historic neighborhoods in the corridor, the unique characteristics of the neighborhoods and crime prevention strategies.”

Representatives from the Savannah Development and Renewal Authority, Historic Savannah Foundation, Community Housing Association, Small Business Assistance Corporation, the Entrepreneurial Center, realtors and lenders will be on hand. The $25 fee is tax deductible.For more information, call (912) 447-5590. Seating is limited.

In particular, the HSF is concerned about:

1. Incompatible large scale development in downtown Savannah
2. Better enforcement of historic board of review decisions
3. Converting East Broad and Price street to two-way streets (this would increase livability along Price and East Broad by slowing traffic and encouraging a more pedestrian friendly environment)

More information on the meeting can be found on the City of Savannah Web site. If you can’t make the meeting, you could try making your views known via the “Talk Back Savannah” feature.

Remembering what’s been lost is instructive today as the threat to city’s sense of place is perhaps greater now than at any time since the birth of Savannah’s preservation movement. The importance of historic structures and public spaces is amplified when we consider what’s already been sacrificed in the name of progress. How much more disruption of the urban fabric are we willing to accept in order to accommodate automobile storage, luxury condominiums and national chain hotels, especially when we seemed poised to enter an age of energy scarcity? We may look back to National Preservation Month 2007 as a critical moment in the struggle to protect Savannah’s historic resources and ensure its sustainability in the future.

Postcard image: Savannah’s Union Station was demolished in the early 1960s.