Lansing´s urban landscape is afflicted with the disease of urban sprawl, and it has been creeping up around it for the last 50 years.
There was a time in Lansing’s history, somewhere around 75 years ago, where our streets were shared between cars, trolley lines, bicyclists and pedestrians. Buildings contained apartments and retail space, and neighborhoods were stocked with amenities, like grocery stores, which were easily accessible by residents.
But, a strange thing happened to all of that around the end of World War I. A system of zoning laws was created that made it impossible to build traditional neighborhoods. Most every municipality in the country, including Lansing and every other community in Michigan, adopted the zoning laws, which separated uses with the intent of improving citizens’ quality of life. Separate uses meant that in many places, it would become illegal to construct a building that contained housing and retail all in one.
Coinciding with these zoning laws were several other factors that created the sprawl we live with today. After World War II, the federal government began dealing cheap mortgages — reportedly cheaper than paying rent — to returning veterans, which fostered the creation of conventional suburban subdivisions of residential single-family homes and nothing else. Levittown in New York’s Long Island, begun in 1947, was the first cookiecutter suburb and considered the grandfather of the suburban subdivision. (Our favorite local suburban subdivision — known more succinctly as a “pod” — is the oxymoronically named Canyon Hills off of Willow Street. Developers often name their pods after that which they destroyed; for example, a subdivision called Eagle Creek may have destroyed an eagle habitat and a creek.)
The federal government was also busy at that time building the nation’s freeway system. The freeways allowed quick access to suburbs, and were cut into cities, destroying neighborhoods and interrupting the urban fabric. Car companies, realizing the potential to sell their product to all Americans, began buying and destroying the trolley systems that existed in practically every urban center in the country.
Soon, the car became king, and development was centered on vehicles. Communities in America continued to be built around and for the car, and cities began to empty as people flocked to suburbs for an allegedly better way of life.
In the wake of single-use zoning, we have built office parks, corrugated civic buildings, sidewalks that are merely ornamental, cul de sacs, drive-thru deep fryers, monolithic billboards, and big box garbage clusters all inaccessible without a car.
Single-use zoning gave way to the disease of sprawl, which, in the age of global warming, is becoming more unsustainable and environmentally unfriendly (both for the Earth, and for our mental health) each day.
The most obvious example of sprawl is in the housing pods, apartment farms, and big box plazas that line streets like Saginaw Highway and Grand River Avenue in Meridian Township, and major corridors in Lansing like Cedar Street and Marin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
These areas, primarily, daunt the average pedestrian, and contain sidewalks that are barely used. They contain miles and miles of parking lots that at night are dark and vacant.
For now, we are stuck with this environment. Single zone development is misguided, though popular, and needs to be replaced immediately with a return to traditional neighborhoods where one can live, work and shop all within a five-minute walk.
Lansing is in an excellent position to cast off the separate-use mentality of the last half-century. The city has piqued the interest of developers — some of whom helped build sprawl — to start looking at the city as a place to build up rather than abandon. Lansing is embarking on its first meaningful master plan revision since 1958 (coincidentally, around the time that cities started to be destroyed). And the City Council, spurred by a large group of committed citizens, recently passed a "complete streets" ordinance, which could help calm some of our more dangerous thoroughfares for walkers and bikers (and save room for the precious cars).
Simply put, sprawl, car overuse, big box stores, fast food, and all the other villains of our landscape are unsustainable. Indeed, these creatures of sprawl will one day become vast, abandoned wastelands when gasoline becomes scarce and people begin to return to cities. The development practices that have gutted our cities are destined to fail, so we must act now to ensure that future development is sustainable and healthy for our mental and physical environment.
The illness
It should be noted that Lansing’s “sprawlitis” is bad, but not as bad as some greenfield (a community built on virgin land) communities. Sprawl has crawled up Lansing’s corridors and has even found its way into neighborhoods. Anywhere you see a parking lot in front of a building, the area is infected. It is particularly bad in south Lansing and along Saginaw Street and Oakland Avenue.
A good example of unsustainable sprawl is Cedar Street. The biggest problem with sprawl is its ability to make walking or biking a challenging, unpleasant and potentially dangerous activity. For example, there are large apartment complexes on the north side of Edgewood Boulevard near the corner of Cedar Street. The area around the apartments is ripe with amenities, including dining, a movie theater and several big box grocery stores. The problem is, for the residents of this apartment complex, you would probably have to get in your car just to cross Cedar Street to get to the Meijer. Any crosswalk that spans Cedar Street from Edgewood Boulevard — which are far and few between — is rendered unsafe by the speed and voracity of motorists in the area. Further, Edgewood Boulevard is designed only for cars — there is a sidewalk on only the north side of the street — and is cut down the middle by a grassy strip. There are plenty of crossing points for cars along Edgewood, but virtually none for pedestrians.
Ideally, you should be within a five-minute walk from your house to basic services: grocery stores, entertainment, and even work. This kind of situation exists almost nowhere in Lansing.
Dewayne Carver, a form-based code expert, says that the top 10 factors that make a community walkable, in descending order, are: street trees, low traffic volumes, sidewalks, narrow streets, interconnected streets, onstreet parking, lower traffic speeds, mixed land-use, buildings fronted to the street, and small block size.
“Transportation design must be subordinate to urban design in walkable communities,” Carver says.
For example, there may be a sidewalk connecting a resident from his house to the Kroger supermarket on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, but the rest of those nine factors are missing.
“Just because a place has a sidewalk, it doesn´t make it walkable. People aren´t going to walk if it isn´t safe,” says Leslie Kettren, president of Michigan chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism and author of "Talking the Walk: Building Walkable Communities."
The revitalization of Lansing depends on safety and security. The design of streets and buildings should reinforce safe environments. Streets need to be designed so that you feel safe. This includes being safe from being hit by a speeding pick-up truck, or becoming the victim of a crime. Urbanologist Jane Jacobs observed that it´s important to have "eyes on the street," or to be surrounded by fellow citizens, which can make you feel safe from assault. At night, Lansing´s retail strips are dark, unguarded, unsafe asphalt wastelands.
Lansing’s urban core, especially around the Capitol Complex, along the southern part of Washington Square, and along Capitol Avenue, is not considered entirely walkable because large swaths have been sacrificed for surface parking. Lansing also contains leapfrog subdivisions on the west side along Willow Street and to the south along Waverly Road. Leap-frogging is a term used to describe housing developments that are serpentine and not connected to anything in particular. Leapfrogging subdivisions are bad because people who live in them are surrounded by nothing but homes built on large lots. To simply get a pat of butter, for example, a resident of a conventional suburban subdivision would have to get in his car and drive a long distance to a store; a better environment would be one where a store is located near your home. These subdivisions need to be reconfigured into traditional neighborhoods that allow residents to access goods and services within walking distance of their home.
Traditional walkable communities depend on density. Low-density subdivisions (think, predominately dead-end culde-sac arrangements) cannot support the amenities that a higher density traditional neighborhood can.
“Urban living is the most sustainable way to live,” architect Andres Duany says. “The lower density you live, the more you should be forced to compensate. The higher density you live, you should be rewarded by not having to compensate.”
The cure
We need to slow the movement of cars by reducing lanes of traffic along Lansing’s corridors and define their edges with effective architecture and landscaping.
The single-use zoning that has caused sprawl needs to be replaced with a form-based code that regulates development in accordance with urban form rather than use of the building, or the car. A form-based code is less focused on land use than single-use zoning.
Fortunately, such a system already exists in the SmartCode, which integrates land development ordinances comprising zoning, subdivision regulations, urban design, public works and basic architectural controls. The SmartCode enables a community to predictably develop a community.
The Miami-based planning and architecture firm Duany, Plater-Zyberk & Co. originally developed SmartCode. The first version of SmartCode was released in 2003. The SmartCode in use today is version nine. DPZ developed the SmartCode in response to issues such as sprawl and climate change. As opposed to more conventional zoning codes, which may allow blank frontages (surface parking lots or inappropriate landscaping), deep setbacks, sprawl and “formless open space,” the SmartCode emphasizes mixed-use neighborhoods, walkable streets, transportation options and formed civic spaces. SmartCode has been in used in Kansas City, Gulfport, Miss., and Montgomery, Ala. — to name a few — to great success.
SmartCode discourages sprawl. It supports walkable mixed-use neighborhoods and vibrant downtowns.
“The SmartCode does not produce a single outcome (like Euclidean zoning) but is outcome oriented,” says Duany, principal author of the SmartCode.
The SmartCode is a realistic option for Lansing. Fortunately, adoption of the SmartCode is possible due to low cost and a seeming willingness among Lansing’s political leadership. The SmartCode itself is free at www.SmartCentral.com. In addition, Michigan is fortunate to have passionate Congress for New Urbanism members, seven of whom have written a guidebook, "Form-Based Codes in 7-Steps: The Michigan Guidebook to Livability," to aid Michigan communities with form-based code adoption.
Lansing´s urban vision is bright if it adopts the following principles established by the Congress for New Urbanism: “Development patterns should not blur or eradicate the edges of the metropolis. Infill development within existing urban areas conserves environmental resources, economic investment, and social fabric, while reclaiming marginal and abandoned areas.”
The urban design of Lansing needs to begin with a design charrette, which is an intensive five-to-seven day collaborative process between design professionals and residents in which designers develop a solution to a design problem. They articulate a clear vision for the future of the community, and follow the charrette by the implementation of a form-based code that fosters future development in accordance with Lansing´s vision. Implementation of the code should occur first in a designated area of the community that is healthy and desirable.
In Lansing, a perfect place to begin a new age of smart, urban development would be in the Stadium District. Because Michigan Avenue is one of Lansing’s main streets, and it was recently approved for a Corridor Improvement Authority, our existing zoning laws should be tossed and replaced with a form-based code.
“Build on areas already fostering positive development first,” Kettren recommends. “A successful district brings pride to the community.”
Implementation of the code assures that development in the Stadium District would be compact, pedestrian friendly, and mixed use. Beyond the Stadium District, quality formbased development should proceed west and east along Michigan Avenue. Areas not in compliance with the form-based code need to be redeveloped and retrofitted. Successful redevelopment of commercial corridors in Lansing depends on eliminating one-way streets, reducing speed limits, and adding on-street parking. In particular, redevelopment in the blocks surrounding the Capitol should eliminate excessive surface parking and replace it with mixed-use residential, apartments and townhouses. Parking should be replaced with structured parking surrounded by commercial liner buildings. Infill (use of land within a built-up urban fabric) development in the blocks adjacent to government buildings would increase the downtown´s vibrant environment by increasing resident activity in the urban core.
“New structures in the urban core need to be of a high quality but also flexible to adapt to higher density in the future,” Kettren says.
Urban development should spread into the adjacent neighborhoods and along the commercial corridors. Neighborhoods should be a primary focus of Lansing´s infill development.
“Lansing needs to establish community centers or plazas in the neighborhoods; this can be a park, a farmers market, or anything to establish a place of activity for residents to meet,” Kettren says.
In addition to community centers, Lansing´s neighborhoods need to vary the style and cost of housing so that anyone of any income can interact with one another. Mixedincome neighborhoods are the most sustainable because they foster economic stability in a community. Due to the lack of mixed income neighborhoods, another awful outgrowth of sprawlitis, are single income neighborhoods that exclude lower income residents. And sprawl greatly aided white flight, which gutted many cities in the 1960s.
Along the commercial corridors of south Lansing — Pennsylvania Avenue, Cedar Street and Jolly Road, to name a few — redevelopment should occur where areas are not in compliance with form-based codes.
Planting the seeds of quality design right now gives the city the option to make correct development choices and fix the poor development of the past. Just as it took over 30 years for south Lansing to develop into an urban design mess, it will take a similar amount of time to redevelop it in accordance with a form-based code. We don´t need an immediate economic recovery or $1 billion of stimulus money.
Good design is the pathway to Lansing´s becoming a model for urban design in the state. We have the opportunity, as a community to put an end to an urbanism that simply does not work and embrace the importance of form rather than use to achieve exceptional urban design.
(Architect Amanda Harrell-Seyburn contributes weekly to the "Eyesore" and "Eyecandy" features in City Pulse.)
