How To Create Smart Growth Business Cores

The issue of sprawl is not just about housing being built farther and farther from the urban core.

It's about the businesses that spring up to serve those residents, and how they, too, can be transformed from loosely linked, auto-dependent business districts to pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environments.

Such a transformation is the "next new thing" in urban revitalization efforts, according to Urban Land Institute, a non-profit education and research organization based in Washington.

There are more than 200 suburban business districts that can be developed into what ULI President Richard Rosan calls "safe, secure and attractive gathering places" -- the next logical step for smart growth.

"This is not suburban versus downtown," he said. "This is about a better way for urban America to grow, about turning place to avoid into places to enjoy."

Rosan said that the nation's metro areas are evolving into different regions with different centers of density.

"We need to change how we think of cities," he said. "The old model in which development spurts haphazardly from one downtown core, is becoming obsolete."

The key is "connectivity" -- using efficient, safe and reliable alternatives to car (light rail, for example) -- to connect downtowns to other "hubs of density."

Another key is regionalism.

ULI resident senior fellow Maureen McAvey said that reinventing suburban business districts will require cooperation that regionalism fosters, because the economic downturn, deepened by the events of Sept. 11, have shrunk the tax base of many areas.

"People want to live and work in places that are safe and vibrant, not just tolerable," she said. Transforming these business districts is a way to sustain existing economic development and create new ones.

John McIlwain, another ULI resident fellow, said that introducing residential units into the reinvention of the suburban business districts will be important to connect housing to jobs. He said the housing should be mixed income, including units that are affordable to moderate-income people who work in or near these centers of population density.

The shortage of affordable housing is a pressing need that can't be shelved, even in light of Sept. 11 and increased spending on the war against terrorism, McIlwain said. One way to solve it is to turn commercial districts filled with offices and stores into towns and villages.

What is the difference between a business district and town or village?

"People of all incomes living there 24/7," McIlwaine said. "Mixed housing is the key, along with good design, to making these areas places where people live, as well as work and shop."

Geoffrey Booth, the ULI's director of retail development, has authored a booklet on transforming suburban business district that was based on demographic changes and consumer demand for more choices and flexibility in living, working and shopping arrangements.

He said that social and market trends offered the potential to transform suburban business districts into vibrant, pedestrian-friendly places. To do so will mean an improved return from real estate assets.

James W. Todd is president of the Petersen Cos. of Fairfax, Va., which is involved in efforts to revitalize Silver Spring, Md., a Washington suburb. He said many of the same factors that influenced the resurgence of central business districts in the 1990s should be applied to the revival of suburban business districts.

These factors include development density, improvements in the use of spaces between buildings, pedestrian needs, the layout of streets and choices in transportation. Todd believes that these improvements will result in more "community assets, more tax revenue and improved real estate performance."

Booth's booklet, "Ten Principles for Reinventing America's Suburban Business Districts," is available from the ULI. The principles include:

Understand your position in the market.
Build community support for any changes you want to make in the suburban business district.
Develop a vision and plan for change and growth.
Since developers tend to see municipal zoning and planning rules as stumbling blocks to change, there should be an effort by government to stress results over regulations.
Optimize "connectivity," whether that means public transit or the link between housing and jobs.
Embrace mixed uses.
Create a place that is pedestrian friendly.
Think transit, think density.
Create a public/private partnership.
Share and manage parking.

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Written by Al Heavens