Afterword

Work remains to be done to define the nature of urban catalysts so they can become the powerful city-building tools we envision. For example, a more detailed investigation of the concept of controls is needed. Someone must explain the role of human agents in unleashing and sustaining the catalytic process. The matter of visual quality—the way good design can set a standard for subsequent design—needs more attention. In the preceding chapters we have been able only to outline the processes through which one building or complex can beneficially affect others to create good urban places.

We believe that many visions for a city can be valid, and European urban design theory vividly delineates some of the possibilities. But there may be others as well, and, more important, the point is not to embody an ideology in our cities but to identify visions appropriate to particular physical, political, and socio-economic contexts. Diagrammatically, we revise the configuration of stances we offered in chapter 1 to allow all of these visions—functionalist, humanist, systemic, and formalist—to play a part, but discreetly, not by edict. For any given development, appropriate elements are taken from the range of possibilities. And then the matter of process must be faced, a notable omission in European theories. How do we implement the appropriate visions?

Through architecture that is catalytic is our answer. For us, the overriding vision of urban development is that of incremental, coordinated, controlled, and directed actions and reactions, cities in controlled evolution. Without the sense of weaving and interdependence, individual efforts too readily fail. Detroit's Renaissance Center, for example, was called a catalyst, but it was conceived more like an implant, set off from its environment by an urban moat in the form of eight lanes of traffic. The shopping complex was walled off from its context and seemed labyrinthine. "It has been an island to itself. Its design did not encourage pedestrian spillover to downtown," laments the planner Roger Hamlin.^[1] It continues to falter economically, losing both money and retail tenants. Other development along the Detroit River is slowly emerging, and one day the ingredients of a revitalized Detroit center might come together. But the chemical reaction is fitful and slow. It need not have been if the formula—the ingredients, the architectural strategy, and the balance of pub-

138.
Revision of Figure 15. Instead of following one of the several
countervailing directions of European theory, urban design in
America should take an appropriate "bite" from the entire realm
of overlapping, reinforcing values. The values chosen are not
ends but qualifiers that condition the vital catalytic processes
that are the true goal of urban design in the American context.

lic and private involvement—had been right and if the "chemists" of the Renaissance Center had understood their context.

In our view, the chemists are central to the process. Ideally each participant in the building of a city understands the workings of urban catalysts. Each architect, planner, developer, banker, and politician understands how a well-conceived, well-designed project can influence subsequent events to the benefit of both the parts and the whole. Beyond this understanding, other institutional tools are called for. The most potent one of recent years is the partnership between public and private interests.

Quality downtown development will succeed when citizen suggestions and concerns exert a driving force rather than remaining in a reactive position: when corporations feel a personal stake in improving their working environment rather than hoping somebody else will take care of it. And when city governments act to protect their investments downtown so as not to lose business and residents to outlying areas. These actions can take place only if the actors work together in a truly collaborative process. This is what makes private/public partnerships different from past programs. Developers, public officials, business leaders and neighborhood leaders will be forced to work together in order for any major project to be built. The political and financial climate in each city indicates how far the partnership must be extended—from the negotiating positions between the redevelopment agency and developer in Bunker Hill to the more elaborate public meetings in Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco and the Whittier neighborhood in Minneapolis.^[2]

Some critics argue that the partnership of public power and private investment should be avoided, that it is wrong for private investors to

profit from the substantial public subsidies that typically are needed to achieve urban revitalization. But apart from the counter-argument that the checks and balances of public and private investment are beneficial, there is another compelling argument against the critics' position: center city redevelopment cannot happen in any other way in America now. Private initiative and investment are needed to create settings for office work, shopping, industrial production, servicing, entertainment, and habitation. Investors have, essentially, two options: to build in the center city by redeveloping it or to build on vacant suburban land. From a financial standpoint, the suburban setting is the rational choice unless public subsidies are offered for the redevelopment of center city sites because (1) assembling land in the city typically means negotiating with multiple land owners, whereas developers of suburban sites can typically negotiate with a single owner; (2) the historic preservation lobby is active and powerful in most cities, whereas there is little to save and less political organization in suburban areas; and (3) the politics of the center city are more complicated, and development there is more costly. Ethnic, class, and business interest groups compete for residual development benefits. Redevelopment in the center city often requires assurances of jobs for and equity participation by minorities. And land costs and taxes are higher.

Thus redevelopment can be economically and politically feasible in the center city only if public power works in concert with private development. In the case of San Diego, for example, private investment would not have occurred without public investment and commitments to smooth the way for redevelopment. Furthermore, the city's power to redevelop was severely limited; it needed private initiatives. As a result, several actors now work together: "Though the city, so far, has been a catalyst and contributor, real momentum toward rehabilitation is developing in the private sector."^[3]

The foregoing explanation for the difficulty of urban redevelopment is similar to the classic argument for government intervention in cities, the justification for the federal bulldozer. But now the problem is approached with more finesse and skill. The difference is like that between the crude amputative surgery of the nineteenth century and today's laser-assisted surgery. The new private redevelopment corporations, which are needed to mediate between public and private actions, are one reason for the change. In Milwaukee, the mediator was the Milwaukee Redevelopment Corporation; in Phoenix, the Phoenix Community Alliance; in San Diego, the Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC). Gerald M. Trimble, as executive director of the CCDC, called the organization a "broker." It finds areas of mutual interest between public and private sectors and provides impetus to move ahead and forge alliances. It sets up a positive climate in which the desired reactions take place. In addition to bringing actors together and initiating action, it can also have a moderating effect. In San Diego, for example, the CCDC engages in design review.^[4]

Although the development corporation is easily seen as a catalyst in

various cities, it is just as easily seen as the chemist who orchestrates the catalysis, arranging for the appropriate catalytic agent—the key architectural element—to be set in motion. Still, however useful a development corporation may be in the process, it is not necessarily the only chemist possible. We can imagine equally effective initiative and guidance from a consortium of owners, or a trust, or other groups, any of which could bring together actors, elements, and controls that will capitalize on the opportunities in a district or a downtown and, through architectural design, set in motion an appropriate catalytic reaction.

American cities are different from cities elsewhere in the world, and our theory of urban design must reflect the differences. Every designer of buildings or open spaces must become a student of the American city and the ingredients that make it unique. It may not be necessary to learn to love Las Vegas, but it is important to understand its similarities to, say, Cincinnati. A knowledge of our own urban heritage, a dash of healthy pragmatism, a sense of our European roots and the values embodied in European theory, and a desire to play the chemist can produce a truly catalytic architecture for a truly American urbanism.