May 5, 2009 City Council packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

farther afield, have conspired to drive lower -income Americans away from these places over the past 3o years. This is profoundly unhealthy for our society. In his forthcoming book, The Wealth of Cities, my University of Toronto colleague "Iris Kennedy shows that only wholesale structural changes, from major upgrades in infrastructure to new housing patterns to big shifts in consumption, allow places to recover from severe economic crises and to resume rapid expansion. London laid the groundwork for its later commercial dominance by changing its building code and widening its streets after the catastrophic fire of 1666. The United States rose to economic preeminence by periodically developing entirely new systems of infrastructure —from canals and railroads to modern water -and -sewer systems to federal highways. Each played a major role in shaping and enabling whole eras of growth. The Obama administration has declared its intention to open the federal government's pocketbook wide to help us get through this recession, and infrastructure spending seems poised to play a key role. Done right, such spending could position the United States for the next round of growth. But that will entail more than patching up roads and bridges. If there is one constant in the history of capitalist development, it is the ever -more -intensive use of space. Today, we need to begin making smarter use of both our urban spaces and the suburban rings that surround them —packing in more people, more affordably, while at the same time improving their quality of life. That means liberal zoning and building codes within cities to allow more residential development, more mixed -use development in suburbs and cities alike, the in -filling of suburban cores near rail links, new investment in rail, and congestion pricing for travel on our roads. Not everyone wants to live in city centers, and the suburbs are not about to disappear. But we can do a much better job of connecting suburbs to cities and to each other, and allowing regions to grow bigger and denser without losing their velocity. Finally, we need to be clear that ultimately, we can't stop the decline of some places, and that we would be foolish to try. Places like Pitts burgh have shown that a city can stay vibrant as it shrinks, by redeveloping its core to attract young professionals and creative types, and by cultivating high -growth services and industries. And in limited ways, we can help faltering cities to manage their decline better, and to sustain better lives for the people who stay in them. WI