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From boastful mayors to hype-happy chamber
of commerce chiefs, big cities have never been short on advocates.
The same is also true of the latest suburban development ring,
promoted aggressively by profit-hungry development interests.
But who speaks for America's first-tier
suburbs, places just outside a big city's borders? Once hot
growth spots, many now find themselves aging and declining,
threatened by the investment pull of newer suburbs even further
out.
The missing national spokesman seems finally
to have appeared in the person of William H. Hudnut III. Ironically,
Hudnut has a big city-background -- 16 years as mayor of Indianapolis,
where he formed partnerships that led an exemplary downtown
renewal. He was elected president of the National League of
Cities and received 12 honorary degrees. In 1988, City and
State magazine proclaimed him the "Nation's Best Mayor."
Now 70, Hudnut could easily rest on his
laurels. But no. Expending shoe leather like a cub reporter,
he traveled coast to coast to interview citizens and leaders
in literally dozens of suburbs. The result: Halfway to Everywhere,
a lively first-hand report on how America's first-tier suburbs
are doing, combined with a seasoned pro's assessment of their
21st century prospects. It's published by the Urban Land Institute
in Washington, where Hudnut's a senior fellow.
Hudnut confesses he started with "the
misconceived stereotype that America's first-tier suburbs
were all in trouble, full of ramshackle houses and broken-down
buildings, dead commercial strips and empty factories."
And indeed, woven into his narrative are many communities
-- poverty and scandal-afflicted Camden, N.J. and East St.
Louis, Ill., a string of tired industrial towns on Chicago's
southside, fiscally destitute Lincoln Heights, Ohio and others
-- where a first glance suggests a train wreck of the American
Dream.
Yet even in those most afflicted spots,
Hudnut turns up a surprising tapestry of determined civic
leaders, faith-based organizations, non-profit housing groups,
all resolutely determined to beat the odds.
The same can-do and must-do spirit, Hudnut
reports, is surfacing in post-World War II suburbs going through
difficult transitions.
A prime example: Roseville, just north of
Minneapolis-St. Paul, incorporated in 1948, filling fast with
a jumble of ranch houses, bungalows and 800-square-foot "Cape
Codders." Strip malls and the Twin Cities' first McDonald's
followed, plus trucking firms and corporate heavies including
Honeywell and Control Data.
Then, in 1970, growth stalled as still-newer
suburbs exerted a centrifugal pull on Roseville residents.
Corporations started to leave. The population started to age.
The town appeared ready to suffer the same disinvestment its
own growth, before, had exerted on the Twin Cities.
But it didn't happen: the town determined
to reinvent itself. Retailing and corporate jobs -- based
in part on the community's key location between the center
cities and outer suburbs -- started a comeback in the '90s.
Today, Hudnut reports, Roseville is working
to redesign and reinvigorate key intersections. A prime development
site is turning into the high-tech park that city fathers
had consistently backed -- not the big-box retail development
some business interests sought. And now a town that grew on
the automobile has purchased an old railroad right-of-way
and dreams of commuter light-rail line sometime in the future.
Successful redevelopment of first-tier suburbs,
Roseville development director Dennis Welsch told Hudnut,
will exert strong positive impact both inward, toward the
center city, and outward, to aging outer ring suburbs, helping
them learn how to avoid decay. The great hope: healthy metro
regions in this century.
Hudnut developed a list of "urban acupuncture"
tips in which some suburbs already excel-- and many more could.
Some examples from his book: "Rebuild
Main Street" -- a strategy that's already worked for
such towns as Bethesda, Md., Merchantville, N.J., Webster
Groves Mo. and Pasadena, Calif. "DeMall" failing
shopping centers for second-generation uses such as offices
(Whitehall, Ohio) -- or even demolish them for radically redesigned,
pedestrian-friendly, full service town centers (Park Forest,
Ill.).
Some other acapuncture items: "Ensure
Public Safety" by imaginative community policing (Richmond,
Calif.). "Don't Forget the Unum" (as in e pluribus
unum) -- embrace diversity, including a welcome mat for the
high numbers of new immigrants, from Asians to Latin Americans,
now flooding into older suburbs.'
One suggestion I found especially appealing:
"Public Space Equals Sense of Place." Hudnut relates
how Lansdowne, Pa., residents had long honored a 350-year
old sycamore tree, already growing in William Penn's day.
So when the land on which the tree stands came up for purchase
in the '90s, the town bought it and developed a park -- the
city council declaring the sycamore to be "pretty much
integral to who we see ourselves as being, as it represents
our history, our commitment to natural beauty, and our desire
to preserve for our children."
I'd translate that to say we need suburbs
that don't just make economic sense, but incorporate soul
and civics. Hudnut, earlier in his career, was an ordained
minister with a parish. The old fire still burns.
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