In the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Steve Berg wonders:
Minneapolis and St. Paul are failing to grow, despite their thriving suburbs, while competitor towns like Seattle and Denver are booming along with their metro areas. Why? …
The 2000-2010 results show the Twin Cities metro area continuing to grow (up 12 percent to 3.3 million) while its central cities tread water (down 0.3 percent to 668,000).
The numbers left both mayors talking with a hint of desperation about the need to add substantial population, something neither city has been able to do for six decades. Without growth and the tax base it brings, they said, neither city will be able to afford the services and amenities that successful places enjoy.
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak told the City Council last year: “If we want to live in the kind of neighborhoods we want, if we want Minneapolis to be the kind of city that we know it can be, there is one more thing we have to do: We have to grow.”
To be blunt, both mayors are talking about — neighbors, please cover your ears — density. Only density can bring the efficiency and vitality that the central cities need.
Part of the answer is that these cities built such successful suburban neighbourhoods in the 20th century – still great places to live close in to downtown – and they are very protective of their status:
That’s an enormous challenge, given this metro region’s strong preference for suburban living and many urban neighborhoods’ stiff resistance to greater density.
Especially in the most attractive areas, city residents cling to their relatively tranquil lifestyles and their almost phobic disdain for additional height and mass, even though those are essential elements for any landlocked city hoping to add population and ease tax burdens.
The other issues concern “large and persistent concentrations of poverty” and, on the other hand, a penchant to facilitate sprawl.
Berg suggests six strategies for growing the population and tax base St. Paul and Minneapolis:
• Establish population goals and explain why density is important. Take an inventory of potential infill sites.
• Adopt form-based zoning codes that give developers clear options on height and mass. The larger the building, the more amenities a developer must supply to the neighborhood. Neighbors can influence design but cannot prevent minimal infill.
• Simplify bureaucracy. At every step, make it cheaper, easier and faster to develop the city that you want, and costlier, harder and slower to develop the city you don’t want.
• Expand transit. Aside from the regional bus/light rail network, explore streetcars as a way to stimulate density in central districts.
• Stabilize poor neighborhoods not only for ethical and economic reasons but to stem population loss.
• Find a meaningful brand that will attract young professionals. Denver, Portland and Seattle, for example, emphasize nature and the outdoors mixed with cool urban lifestyles.
In the meantime, over in Cleveland: “… inner city is growing faster than its suburbs as young adults flock downtown”
