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Hundreds of visitors with blue tote bags and conference badges are walking between downtown events this week, often taking time for snapshots or closer looks at Detroit's architecture, amenities and street life.
Those topics are part of the focus at the 24th annual Congress for the New Urbanism, a four-day gathering that explores best practices to make cities more accessible, appealing, green and growing smartly. It's like "band camp for urbanists," design firm principal Mike Lydon of Brooklyn tweets.
The 1,500 participants include designers, builders, planners, development boosters, environmentalists and engineers. They sling phrases such as lean urbanism, walkability, infill projects, placemaking and human-scale design. They tag tweets with #TacticalUrbanism, #OpenStreets and #CompleteStreets.
Between presentations and workshops, these visionaries explore the host city by foot, bike and bus tours. A Thursday afternoon option, for instance, is a two-hour hard-hat tour of the Wurlitzer Building, a previously abandoned 14-story property erected in 1926 on Broadway. It's being restored and repurposed into a 106-room boutique hotel.
The conference began Wednesday, and Detroit already earns thumb-ups on social media and in posted essays as guests admire restored landmarks, murals, RiverWalk, Belle Isle, the Dequindre Cut, The Belt alley (right) and more. "Seattle needs an urban beach," Grace Kimarch says with a photo of our landlocked version at Campus Martius.
These seven characteristics are saluted as examples of New Urbanism at its finest:
1.) Preservation: Downtown's mix of graceful landmarks and sleek towers shows Detroit respects its heritage and uses existing assets well. "The greenest building is the one that is already built," notes Mark Nickita, a Detroit architect and co-chair of the host committee.
Will Novak of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council posts four Instagram photos of the 1929 Guardian Building, which he describes as "beautiful to the point of bring spiritually moving. Absolutely breathtaking." An Indiana guest from Hoch Associates, a Fort Wayne architectural and engineering firm, shows the vintage ceiling at the Roasting Plant coffeeshop and posts on Instagram: "We LOVE the architecture in Detroit and especially how they tried to save some of this beautiful First National Building."
2.) Recreation-housing synergy: People like the convenience of playing where they live, so New Urbanism embraces recreation paths such as the Dequindre Cut and RiverWalk as a development incubator with environmental benefits as a bonus. There's even a wonky phrase and abbreviation, naturally:
The new TOD: Trail-Oriented Development @DetroitGreenway @DetroitRvrfrnt #CNU24 pic.twitter.com/1nChkpFkBH
— Mike Lydon (@MikeLydon) June 8, 2016
3.) Public spaces: "The majority of the [downtown] growth has been in refurbished old buildings, while the public spaces have been spiffed up and reactivated. So downtown now combines people on the street, attractive plazas and parks, restaurants and businesses, and the cultural infrastructure and architecture of a great older city," writes Robert Steuteville of Ithaca, N.Y., an online journal editor for the host organization.
4.) Food trucks and picnics: The impact of improved gathering spots is evident in social comments and photos showing lunchtime liveliness at Cadillac Square and Campus Martius, even on a partly cloudy Wednesday with a noon temperature below 60 degrees.
5.) Downtown stadium: This fits the "walkable cities" core value of New Urbanism, as a conferee tweets:
Proper place for BB stadium is in Urban core. Detroit doing lots right these days. #CNU24 pic.twitter.com/a8f67B9Ycp
— MATX (@muelleratx) June 8, 2016
6.) Urban agriculture: Repurposing vacant land is a sign of resilience, as conferees can see Friday during a three-hour tour of community gardens, farm plots, orchards and a cut-flower farm in three neighborhoods. "The sheer size of the city—its available land, circulatory network and structures—have many times resulted in opportunities that many other urban environments could not offer," Nickita writes in a CNU journal post last week titled "Existing assets boost Detroit revival."
7.) Lean regulation: Under new leadership and with forced austerity, post-bankruptcy Detroit has a smoother path for project approvals, business permits and construction. "Regulatory systems are in flux as part of the evolving City of Detroit," Nickita notes in last week's Public Square journal article. "The oversight and thorough review by the officials has been somewhat diminished.
"This limited oversight is often significant to a project’s success, especially when entrepreneurs are working with minimal budgets. Because of these conditions, new start-ups—high-tech companies, stores and residents, all using the available infrastructure—have been able to move in and fully occupy numerous existing buildings. Lean regulation, when achieved, takes advantage of systems and circumstances. Detroit has many distinct examples of this."
Detroit also has underdog appeal for the city cheerleaders meeting here through Saturday. "Everybody loves a city that will not stay down," explains Steuteville, editor of "Public Square: A CNU Journal."
Other conference coverage:
- Mark Nickita: Urban Designers to See a City 'Clearly on the Way Toward a Reinvention,' June 7
- The Lessons of Detroit: Urban Visionaries Come to See 'The Transforming City,' June 6
