Downtown Faces Formidable Obstacles Experts Are Critical Of Past Choices

Blasting everything from Division Street to the skywalk system, experts on revitalizing urban life outlined obstacles facing Spokane on Friday.

But it’s not just Spokane, the speakers told 150 people at an Eastern Washington University symposium. The same troubling patterns are repeating themselves nationwide.

Among other things, the speakers lambasted mega malls, suburban subdivisions and Americans’ “love affair” with their cars for damaging vibrant city cores.

“We have parades for new Kmarts even when it puts all of our local businessmen out of business,” said James Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere, an analysis of how 20th century modernism has devastated city life. “Look at what we’ve done to our beautiful country.”

All three of the speakers said communities need to be created in the downtown cores, a principle espoused in a nationwide movement called “New Urbanism.” The ideal multiple-use communities would combine stores, entertainment, restaurants and housing, and would be accessible by foot or bicycle.

Kunstler called Division Street a “tragic, gruesome boulevard of commerce.” Long strips of stores keep people in their cars, he said, which hinders interaction within a community.

“We honor and respect the highway and the parking lot,” Kunstler said.

No downtown has been revitalized without the restoration of historic buildings, said Donovan Rypkema, a leader in the economics of historic preservation who also is involved with the Davenport Hotel renovation.

Rypkema said several areas of Spokane - including Peaceful Valley, the Garland district and Browne’s Addition - have captured the neighborhood feeling.

“Certainly downtown has that promise,” Rypkema said in an interview, but, “Nothing would help more than getting people living downtown.”

Another detriment to downtown revitalization, the panelists said, is the skywalk system, which removes pedestrian traffic from street level businesses and destroys personal interaction.

The third speaker said the Pace Report - commissioned by economic development groups to evaluate Spokane’s urban problems - was an optimistic “half-time pep talk by the coach of a team who is behind 35 to nothing.”

But, said Daniel Solomon, founder of a San Francisco urban design and architecture firm, “the coach gets behind because their strategic Xs and Os get put in the wrong place.”

The Pace Report, said Solomon, offered only a few solutions to Spokane’s problems, and some of those strategies are contradictory.

One of the strategies for restoring urban life - building business parks - is in conflict with two of the others - limiting dependence on cars and revitalizing downtown, Solomon said.

, DataTimes