Downcity: The Plan that shaped Providence today

Вот отформатированный транскрипт вебинара: Rob: Uh, today we are going to talk about Down City, the plan that shaped, uh, Providence, Rhode Island today. With developer Buff Chase and Urban Designer Planner Andres Duany, and moderated by myself, Rob Studerville. So, share your thoughts on #OnTheParkBench, www.tinyurl.com/OTPBfeedback. And, uh, we just got back from Providence, uh, seeing CNU33, which was fabulously successful. Um, and, uh… but I just wanted to remind people that, um, uh, we're gonna have another one next year. CNU34 is going to be in northwest Arkansas in the late spring of 2026. This is the first time CNU will go to a region with smaller towns and cities, and no main central city. Uh, but I think it's gonna be great. Go to CNU.org/CNU34 to find out more. And, uh, today, we've got very interesting speakers. Buff Chase is the founder and managing partner of Cornish Associates. He is a real estate developer, preservationist, conservationist, and community activist whose vision helped to spur the Renaissance of downtown Providence over the last 30-some years. He is currently the developer and manager of 12 unique, treasured historic buildings that make up the Westminster Street Lofts in Providence. Buff is also a pioneer in suburban retrofit, with the Mashpee Commons on Cape Cod, uh, the Mashpee Commons project. And Buff is… Buff's longtime planning partner in these endeavors is, uh, Andres Duany of DPZ Co-Design, a leading firm of New Urbanism. Duany is one of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and so is his wife and design partner, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Duany is an internationally known and influential urban designer and author, and I don't need to say anything more about that. I'm Rob Studville, editor of CNU's Public Square, and so welcome, Buff and Andreas, to On the Park Bench today. Uh, first, I'm going to introduce the Down City Plan and have a discussion with Andreas and Buff. Then I'll open it up to the Q&A from the audience, so please use the Q&A function of Zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you. And now, we are going to try… well, actually, let me speak a little bit first. I wanted to say that I had friends in Providence in the 1980s. They lived in College Hill, the neighborhood to the east of downtown with Brown and RISD. And the architecture, I thought, was beautiful at the time, and we went downtown at night, and I just remember it being very gritty. But I have another memory from Providence in the early, uh, 1990s, probably 1993 or '94. I was working for a magazine and just passing through. And I walked through a few blocks of downtown in the early evening. The buildings looked intact and solid, made of brick and stone, but they were empty, and the streets were empty. I had never seen a city so empty and so intact, and I've never seen, uh, anything quite like that since. Um, it was like a city without people. Also, in the mid-'90s, I read Peter Katz's book, 'The New Urbanism,' and it featured the Down City Plan. I was impressed with the beautiful renderings by Charles Barrett and the plan by DPZ. And I became active in the New Urbanism, and came back to Providence for CNU14 in 2006. And by that time, lo and behold, Providence was coming back to life. Now the transformation is complete. We were just there, uh, last week, and the Down City, uh, plan won a Charter Award this year from CNU. And so, uh, we're gonna try to show a video, um, that kind of gives that history of the Down City Plan. Um, so… If, Noel, you could… Try showing that. Техническая пауза: It's in the middle of the image. Yeah, they're right, right there. I can see it, but it's not playing. Yeah, there you go. Спикер 1: Can you see it, Rob? Rob: It's no sound. Спикер 2: Volume? Спикер 3: No volume. Спикер 4: Are you on mute? Спикер 5: You're on mute. Спикер 6: You're on mute. Rob: Sorry, guys, let's start that one more time. Видео: Рассказчик 1: Providence in the mid-'80s just took the wind out of my sails. Empty streets. Empty buildings. Most of the buildings were boarded up. You would drive through in the day and think, 'Well, I don't want to go there.' Desolate. Nobody thought of it as a neighborhood that you would live in. Видео: Бафф Чейз: Saturday was my time to be with the kids. I had read in the newspaper that morning that the entire block was all coming up for auction. We came down and parked nearby the City Hall, and then I was looking up at the beautiful buildings. They were in poor shape, but you could tell how magnificent they had been. And my daughter said, 'Well, why don't you do something about it?' Видео: Рассказчик 2: And there's this guy that starts coming around named Buff Chase. Buff Chase brought Andres Duany into Providence, well-renowned architect and urban planner. Видео: Андрес Дуани: Our method, which is called a charrette, is to bring the office to the place, and to the presence of those who just saw it. Видео: Рассказчик 3: We invited the community in to give their thoughts about what to do with these buildings. Created this massive charrette that was really very inclusive. Designers or architects would sketch out the ideas that the individuals had. You were there. You were invited. 'Oh, well, that might work.' Then, one other designer comes over and says, 'Well, what about if you do it that way?' It was a very… active, participatory kind of exercise. Andres brought that spark. He reminded us how fantastic Providence is. Created buy-in from universities and colleges in the city. I think for the first time, the whole community began to think about what downtown could become. So we raised the enthusiasm and consciousness. And then a lot of people got to work. Видео: Рассказчик 4: The second year, it was in '94 that established housing as the primary use. We created the Down City Implementation Plan to establish the Rhode Island State Historic Tax Credit, rewrite the zoning. But again, state law changed for the artist tax credit. Видео: Спикер 4: The potential that creative motors have to change place is enormous. It's about creating rich, fertile, supportive environments. It's like, when you compost in the corner of a yard, and a tomato plant grows, and you didn't plant it. Видео: Бафф Чейз: Cornish has just done incredible signature projects on Westminster Street. I realized that we were going to kind of have to do it ourselves. Let's take one block of Westminster Street, taking all the old uses out of the interiors of the buildings, rebuilding them on the inside, dealing with a historic infrastructure on the facades. We have seen in this downtown an unparalleled amount of preservation and restoration. Just between you and me, we had no idea how to do it. We just had to try things. Видео: Спикер 5: The moment that I knew downtown was changing was when the strip clubs turned into a barbecue joint. This can be a neighborhood. People living and working. The coffee house going to the bar. It's a bookstore, it's a restaurant. Now we have a grocery store. Видео: Рассказчик 5: The thing about New Urbanism, it's not about the individual building, it's about the buildings together and the environment that's created. Buff Chase and Cornish believed in this downtown. This is the future of… urban living. Who are the next leaders? It's a movement that needs to continue. Rob: Thank you, Noel. Okay. Thank you very much, uh, Noel, and that was inspiring. Um, I thought it touching, Buff, that your daughter asked you to do something about the city like you were a superhero. Uh, how old was she at the time? Бафф Чейз: She was 7. Rob: And then you went ahead and did it. She was 7. Did she remember… did she remember that? And, uh, what does that mean to you? Бафф Чейз: Well, obviously, it touched a chord, it still does, when I recall that time. My aunt had been part of the, um, founding of the Preservation Society in the '50s, um, along the Benefit Street corridor that was going to be a part of an urban renewal project. So I had somehow, um, grown up with the idea that preserving the historic structures was an important part of the city. And, uh, she did that. She did 59 houses along Benefit Street with others, and started the Preservation Society. So, in some ways, it was in my gene pool. And, uh, when Sarah said, 'Well, why don't you do something about it, Dad?' I thought, 'Well, maybe… maybe I can.' Maybe I understand the impact of it well enough, because the Benefit Street neighborhood that had been, um, preserved by my aunt and others, uh, had become the poster of Providence. So when people saw Providence, they saw a shot of that street. And it must have made the connection about, you know, allowing for this next generation, the Westminster Street corridor. Or then I found out later, after she passed away, that she had said, 'Yes, Westminster Street is the next most important street in Providence.' So… it was just… that's the… that was the story… that's the story behind it. It was the old shopping street. It was the main center for not only Rhode Island, but also the surrounding Massachusetts areas. It was where the department stores, it was where the… it was where people came to. 'I'll meet you… meet you under the Shepherd's clock,' which is the clock outside of Shepherd's department store. But as you pointed out, Rob, it all had been depopulated by the suburban malls. But because of the strong Preservation Society, the buildings were more or less intact. And, uh, so that gave us the opportunity. Rob: Um, how was it that you teamed up with Andres on this? Бафф Чейз: Well, you mentioned earlier the work we had done on Mashpee Commons. Uh, I… because I was an only child, I became, uh, responsible for a… what was it? A strip shopping center on the Cape that was, like, a community center in the town of Mashpee, where my family had done a residential development. And… so, all of a sudden, I was a filmmaker at the time, and I had the responsibility of carrying on these efforts. And… but I was also very much anti-development, uh, on the Cape, because I thought, like, development in the '70s and '80s was changing the character of the place. And so I thought to myself, 'Well, why do people come to the Cape?' And they come because, obviously, the water, the beaches. Well, like, but they also come for the historic Cape Cod towns and the fabric of those towns. And so, I just happened to, um, pick up a copy of, I don't know if it was Architectural Digest or Progressive Architecture or something. And, uh, the article on the cover was Seaside in the Panhandle of Florida. And, um, Andres and his wife, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, had done the plan for Seaside. I read the article, I got a hold of their telephone number, I called them, and I went down. You know, they taught me what they had learned, and that we… we… in 1984 through '86 had done a plan for Mashpee Commons that showed a mixed… obviously, on a commercially zoned land, which is, you know, uh, to try and do a mixed-use town center that was, uh, you know, in the nature, in the… oh, excuse me, and, uh, with the same bloodlines as the historic Cape Town. And that's turned into a big success, although we're still having difficulty building housing as part of it. But, uh, anyway, so I met Andres and Liz, and did another project in Florida with Liz that was also turned on, um, because of this whole thing of mixture. Mixture of uses or small houses. That was antithetical to what people were doing then. Um, but anyway, that was the… that was just the fortuitous nature of this that I picked up this magazine on… there they were. So that was how we connected. Rob: Oh, no. No, you didn't. I don't know if I ever told you, but I was living in Mashpee at the time when you, uh, owned that shopping center. But, uh, yeah, sure, and Mashpee was beautiful, but it had no center. It had no… there, you know, really no, um, urban village. So, Andres, right. Tell me, like, what are your recollections of starting to work with Buff? Андрес Дуани: Well, um, he came to the office with Doug Soares, his, uh, his, uh, intellectual partner, who in fact, was a landscape architect, very skillful. And he must get some credit, because almost all the ideas, uh, were already beginning to ferment. We were just a little further ahead. You know, the… I think we have to remember that, um, the success of Seaside is because the world was ready for it. You know, it was just… it was just beginning to get sick and tired of suburban sprawl. And so, things were begun, and what we had was the credibility to move things forward. Um, yeah, not so much the technical knowledge, but the credibility. I was going to mention one thing about Buff, and Buff's… I'm so glad you mentioned, uh, he mentioned his art. But, um, the cities that have collapsed, the American cities that have collapsed, did not so much die as they were murdered. And I knew that. That's one thing that I could say. This is a… you know, this is a very viable genetic material, but it's been killed. And one of the things that killed it was not only that Robert Moses' highways that were being brought in to just, uh, ream some of the best neighborhoods in Providence, but there were also bad projects. We were not the first to attempt the revival. We weren't the first. But I think what's different about the New Urbanism is not that we're the first, we're just the first ones with *good* ideas. Because, for example, the Providence River was covered. It had been concreted over, which would seem incredible, to just put a parking lot over the river with just a little, a little gap in between both sides. And that had already been dug out. That horrible idea had been dug out already. There was an I.M. Pei plan that cut off all the streets on one end of the downtown and put a kind of platform, you know, taking the Catholic Cathedral, and basically pedestrianizing the whole area, which of course killed it instantly. Westminster Street itself was pedestrianized, which probably killed it instantly. Uh, and this is beyond, uh, the people moving to the suburbs. We give… we give a lot of blame to the… to the people moving out to the suburbs, the shopping centers, and the housing subdivisions. But I think we also have to give some, um, some blame to the, uh, to the really bad ideas. Oh, first generation of post-war, uh, suburban… I mean, urban, uh, urban revival. Um, we were different from them, and that made all the difference. So, there was already some velocity. You know, it was Buff, but already some terrible things had been removed, and some good ones were beginning. What I did call out to them is not that Providence doesn't do things. It does do things. In fact, almost every plan that we could find in the historical archives, believe it or not, had been implemented. These guys are implementers. But the plans were so ill-conceived that they just made the matters worse. And I think what we did is to say, remind the people in Providence that they were implementers, they had gotten things done. And this time, it was different. But of course, it was more difficult this time, because they had been burned before. You know, that's something we've all… we've all learned is that planners used to have a very bad reputation with their bad ideas. And that's exactly the historical moment that we entered, in which people were willing to try again. Buff's generation was willing to try again. Rob: Um, what were the elements that made the Down City Plan different from other plans that were being done at the time? Андрес Дуани: If I may answer that, move to another's, but there were… number… number one. You think? Is a role. That when you find it, it's necessary, and that's the role that Buff played. Role, uh, Buff was a developer, of course, and he invested heavily in it. But he was also the leader that brought together the 'make things happen.' The artists were heavily supported. Anybody who had a cool idea, you know, for a bar or a nightclub or anything, he would support that. And, uh, but… you have to have someone like Buff have come to realize. Because during the time since this director, there have been five mayors, and potentially 10, depending on how you count, there have been 10 city councils. And one of the problems we have is that there's no continuity in government. And so, I think a role has to be created and considered in the New Urbanism, which is someone that is played by… a role that's played by Buff. Or Boo Thomas, for example, in, um, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Somebody that sticks it out for 30 years, right across the political changes. If you hitch your… hitch your plan to a political… put to a political situation, it doesn't last very long, because it's continually a political football, mayors are in and out. And so that's one lesson that I've learned. We need someone, a kind of ombudsman, uh, that lasts for 20 or 30 years. Rob: Or maybe you can talk about that a little bit, Buff. I mean, you know, you were a champion of this project, and you also had the ability to get things done, but you've stuck with it for an entire generation. Бафф Чейз: Yeah. So, yeah, so I'll, um, I'll comment on the early days of it. It was, uh, we were working under the mayor, Buddy Cianci, who was a famous character and had been mayor for 20-some years. And, uh, he took a liking to Andres. And they would give each other, you know, kind of quips back and forth. Andres, and he was very fond of, as an Italian by his heritage, um, was very fond of Florence, Italy. And, uh, and so… and to the point where he made Florence a sister city, or they had a sister city arrangement with Providence. So, Andres' knowledge of classical urbanism and all that kind of stuff was really, really played well. He was impressed. And, um… but, uh… Андрес Дуани: Well, may I just mention the quotation that he loved that really turned him around? Yeah. I said, it was this, it says, 'Florence is not loved because she is beautiful. Florence is beautiful because she is loved.' Right. Do you see? And he just loved that. He kept repeating it, you know, and I know that he could… he loved Providence, and he, uh… he could see that he could be proactive, not just political. Бафф Чейз: That's a wonderful… thank you for remembering that, Andres. But anyway, what I was saying is that I was really not part of the business community, uh, in Providence at, uh… and, um, and actually had been… so… an anti-war person in the '60s and '70s, so I was… I was not part of the establishment by any means. But, um, uh… so… but what I did know, I knew enough people that were in that establishment, the corporate group. We had probably 10 or 12 corporate, uh, headquarters down here at that time. And then we're a university town as well as a state capital, so the heads of the universities played a role. And we started… we established a 501(c)(3) called Coalition for Community Development, which was selling Andres' ideas that, 'Hey, we can do this if we do it together, and not just rely on Buddy, the mayor, or whatever,' because it was the… to try and separate it from just a totally political game, where actually the… the big taxpayers, the influential business owners, uh… and that was very successful. They raised money for, um, a five-year study of it. They paid my firm, uh, to… to actually move the ideas forward. I mentioned earlier that, uh, one of the things we found we needed in terms of what's today called the capital stack, was, um, State Historic Tax Credit, and on top of the Federal Historic Tax Credit. And so it took a couple of years to go to the states that had, uh, had state historic tax credits and get their statutes, and then get it passed through the legislature. So there was a lot of kind of small steps like that that were required to make the numbers work. Um, and… you know, and then after five years, I… I… we hadn't made a lot of progress. And I said, 'Well, we're going to have to start… it's wonderful for you gentlemen, too, and ladies, too, have, um, to have supported this, but we're… we're really going to have to prove it, because the economic equation doesn't really still work to attract private capital. And we're gonna have… my suggestion is that we take one block, and, um, and just do it the way it could be, so to show, you know, how dynamic taking this historic urban fabric and re… and making it into being, uh, useful.' And, uh, but I couldn't get any takers on that. They didn't want to make that next commitment. And, um, and so I found a developer, co-developer in Boston who had done artist lofts in the downtown, and he joined me, a guy named Bob Keene. It was pivotal in terms of us teaching. We learned from him how he had taken commercial buildings in downtown Boston and switched them to lofts. Anyway, so we ended up doing that one block. And, um… and then we have attracted some other… oh, then the corporations, or during the, uh, the '90s and early 2000s, the corporations, many of them banks, were purchased by larger banks, and so the corporate offices were no longer in Providence. So, actually, one of the… so, I kept appealing to my family to be supportive of this. And have done that. We've attracted a couple of outside Providence developers to try it. But it's not a great… I mean, at least at this point, you have to look at it from a long-term perspective. There has to be more than just a financial return. And, um, so, one of the things now, of course, is I'm approaching the end of my career, uh, is to find, uh, high net worth individuals that could get this kind of double return, which is the civ… in addition to a financial return that could be modest, uh, is also the civic return. For doing something in the city that you live in, that your children go to school in, etc., that will make the place better. Um, and, uh… and so that's what we're trying to do. Discuss now a broad… the town and the idea that the CNU was just here, and then it was the second time that it… that they came back to Providence. All this was… giving people, um, you know, a lot of excitement about, 'Yeah, we really are worth saving.' Now we… now what I have to do is go out and try and put together some partnerships, along with not-for-profits, the Community Foundation, etc. These are my goals. I have not done that yet, but… it's like… and also, to find people beyond me, so that it's not reliant on me. Андрес Дуани: Buff, I was gonna say, you bring up something that's really important, and it struck me. I'm sorry. You know, most cities have, have, uh, small and medium buildings. You know, for example, the hill, you know, on the east side, are houses. They may be big houses, they may be townhouses, but it's actually a small increment of development. The problem with a core city, and Providence is a core, it's not just a city, it's a core. Every single building is large. And every single building is a major investment. That's why Buff has to, you know, keep saying that he needs, really, he's always looking for major players. Most cities that we work with, uh, in other places, you know, Naples and… and West Palm Beach, etc., the buildings are smaller. And you can… you can get a lot of small developers to be active. Providence is different, it's a big town with big, um, big, big, uh, department stores. It's got high-rises that have to be purchased as a whole, you know? And that's what has made it difficult. I think that if… if it were a less… a smaller-scale city, it would be finished and gentrifying, so that would be our next problem. But, uh, the problem is that the buildings are very large, right, Buff? You need, you know, the skyscrapers are the next buildings. It's a big place. Бафф Чейз: Yeah, I don't… yeah, like, in the… for those of you, I don't know, are we… is this just, uh… Um, can people see us as well as… hear us? Rob: Yeah, yes, um, everything. But you have to move your head, you have to move your head. Бафф Чейз: Okay. So, anyone that can see me, this is me. Uh, in the back of my window is a… is this… is the Superman Building. Um… and, uh, it's… it's called the Superman Building because it was, uh… looks like the Daily Planet building, uh, that is… when Clark Kent used to jump off… off a Superman. And there was, uh, actually, it's not where the film was done. That was the Los Angeles City Hall, but it's the same architect. And that was the Industrial Trust Building for many years, until about 10 years ago, when it was, uh, was no longer used. The bank that was in it, the Fleet Bank, was acquired by Bank of America, so it's remained vacant. And, uh, but the owner is trying to get 300 units of housing in there, which, you know, about 1.5, 1.7 people per unit of housing, would add another 500 people downtown, which would be significant in terms of assuring the next step, uh, for downtown. So you can see the other buildings there, um, uh, and, uh… yep. Андрес Дуани: Let me talk a little bit about Superman, okay, Buff? One of the things that is remarkable about, you know, Buff speaking of the difficulties he has. But it's also an extraordinary place. The first thing, I mean, and it's a lucky place. First of all, the downtown, the core, does not have a burnt-out ring before it gets to the East Side, which is very beautiful and high-end. You know, most cities have a pretty good core, but then there's a burnt-out series, there's a donut with burnt-out neighborhoods that you have to bridge. Providence isn't like that. That's incredible to find a place like that. Second, it has three universities right downtown. You know, RISD, Johnson & Wales, and, uh, and Brown. That is a great privilege. It also has a rail line that connects to the fast train from Boston to New York. And one of the things they did, and this is what I mean by Superman, they took the tracks out from the downtown and moved them away from the downtown to liberate a lot of real estate. They did exactly the same thing with a highway, an elevated highway to the south, and a power plant. They took down that highway, you know, I don't know, a six-laner elevated, took it down and moved it away from the downtown. There are many very large… they built a conference center. They built an excellent quality, um, shopping mall, which is two-sided. It faces the highway as a conventional mall, but it engages the street as a conventional one. And there's so much that is really lucky and really large that Providence has done. And I could mention over and over again. I was always shocked when I came about how much they got done, uh, in my 5-10 year absences, sometimes jumps. And they somehow hadn't noticed that they had gotten so much done. And they constantly… this is something we have to remember with cities. Cities need to be reminded that when, as they improve, that they have improved, because often, often the record, it's not like new towns, you know, in which everything is new, and everybody, everything's an achievement. People don't know how much has been done unless they're reminded. And that's a phenomenon that I learned in Providence. Buff did a couple of books, very good quality books. One is 'Portraits' of all the people who had helped over the last 25 years, you know, very nice, beautiful portraits of all the, all the people, big and small, that have worked. And also, another book on the projects, an album of the project, which is just astonishing. So, um, you know, including, by the way, a new airport, you know, all the… and with a rail line connecting it. I mean, these things that any other city would not stop bragging about. Not stop bragging, somehow Providence is very modest about. And I think more bragging would, uh, would… would be justified, both in terms of bringing… bringing developers. I wanted to, uh, just remember… I was just gonna… Rob, can I just mention one thing? Бафф Чейз: Andres was talking about the merchants. I can't remember, we have 52. First floor, uh, merchants are 50, something like that, about… And we made a decision after my experience at Mashpee Commons, uh, to just go with independent merchants on the first floor, so we have no national tenants. Um… and, um, and so the stores are… and we spend quite a lot of time curating those folks, uh, those… those restaurants and stores, etc. So, I think to differentiate that piece of the puzzle is important… is an important thing, uh, to the degree possible. Sorry, Rob. Rob: I wanted to remind people to use the Q&A function of Zoom to ask questions. We will get to those shortly, but I wanted to ask about collaboration and partnerships. One piece that I don't really understand is, you know, the Down City Plan was sponsored, I guess, by the city, and also Johnson & Wales University. Um, you know, you, Buff, you knew Andres and Liz, um, and that they were the right people to come in and bring in to plan, but how did you get all these other people on board as, um, you know, the sponsors and the leaders of this plan to bring them in? Бафф Чейз: I don't really remember, to be honest with you. I think just… Uh, one of the kind things that just happened to me in this last Congress was… I was presented with an award, uh, that was, uh, titled 'The Sisyphus Award.' Which, those of you that know Sisyphus, he was the guy that pulls the… pushes the boulder up the hill. And, um… and so, it was just… you know, I got the bug that this was a thing that was a good thing to do with my time and energy. And, uh, I… I just kept, uh, going. And then a lot of other people joined. A lot of people that, you know, that also lived here. You know, I was able to work with them to keep some forward momentum, even during the difficult times. My son… sorry. Андрес Дуани: Yeah. I want to… I would like to emphasize that if you spent the day with Buff, any one of the many times I visited him, and you set off for breakfast in the morning, and we're there till, you know, 10 o'clock at night, you would see the variety of things that an urban developer has to do. You know, from incredibly heavy-duty meetings with lawyers, to just being friendly with homeless people, to being with artists and cajoling them, you know, to come in and bring their friends. I mean, the variety of things that Buff did in the day, just moving that boulder upwards, is astonishing, okay? You can't do this with a spreadsheet, and you can't stay in your office. You know, it has to be… you have to be a sidewalk person constantly in motion every day. Um, and that's what I learned from Buff, is that developers, you know, from morning to night, have to be generalists about everything, and they have to work very hard all day. I find that that's not understood well enough now. I think that there are too many people that are just spreadsheet jockeys, and when you talk to them about going out and speaking to somebody, and convincing them, they think it's beneath them. You know, they stay at their desk with the spreadsheet. That just doesn't work. Doesn't work. It has to be a person that's engaged, you know, in life all day and all night. And that's what I… that's what I witnessed with Buff for three decades. Rob: Let me ask you something that really struck me about the Down City Plan, and I think it struck me right when I read about it in Peter Katz's book in 1994. And that is, like, the focus on the public realm, that everything was focused on creating a streetscape and public space in the downtown. And that seemed to me completely… much different, like a New Urbanist approach, but it seemed much different from any of the plans I'd ever seen. Андрес Дуани: One thing, Rob, to say one thing, if you look at the plan, I was looking at it today, when you were cycling through them. Second, through the images at the beginning, we focus… we, instead of fixing everything everywhere, that plan actually focused the activity to complete, like Buff said, first you complete a block. Actually, first to complete a block face, the two buildings facing each other. Then you extend it up the street, another block, then another block, then you pay attention to the next street over. You don't do everything everywhere. You know, what our plan did is it focused on the critical elements, right? Obviously, every plan does that, but we also… and Buff led us to this. This can be done first, this is what's available to do it next. So, for example, there was Westminster Street. But then there was also Johnson & Wales, who decided… this university decided… was about to move out of… off… out of the city to a suburban campus, and they remained behind, and made the investment downtown, and built an entire Georgian campus downtown, and they revived the next street over. You see what I'm saying? There's too much… I find more that the attempt to save everything simultaneously saves nothing, because you don't have that… you know, five-minute walk of continual urban public space that you mentioned. You know, the public spaces have to be in one place. They can't be scattered all over the city, because they don't… they don't coalesce. I'm going… that's in the… that's in the plan that you saw. You'll see that there are dark streets and light gray streets and white streets, you know. In the plan, the black streets have to go first, and then the gray streets may be next. And then forget about the white streets, they're hopeless. And you know, our theory has always been that actually in American cities, about a third of the streets have absolutely no future. You know, they're hopeless to begin with, they can't be restored to any level of excellence. But, so you begin with the best ones, the easier ones to make great. Rob: I'm gonna get to, uh, some questions from the, uh, attendees, uh… Um, were there, uh, conversations about gentrification in Providence, and how have those questions been addressed over the years? Бафф Чейз: Well, I think gentrification is a… difficult word. It's like 'affordable' these days. It means different things to different people. And, uh, you know. So, it's hard to get into. Of course, there was criticism that there was gentrification, uh, because buildings that were… had housed, uh, artist lofts, you know, and a few of their areas, were now converted to, you know, um, to modern standards and to… um, and to many more units of housing. Um, so the artists had to move. Fortunately, we had an artist community downtown that coalesced around an organization called AS220. In the… in the video that we looked at earlier, the founder of that, Bert Kranka, uh, and they started to build artist housing. They have 47 units of artist housing. And we're working with a not-for-profit developer now to develop another big chunk of artist housing. So… yes, gentrification means moving, uh, moving some people, uh, into other places because the bigger… the bigger need is there. Um, that's true, but if you… I think we want the artist community, we want the culture that they bring to be downtown. We've got a sales and use… sales tax exemption for the district for the sale of art, uh, to help, uh, encourage, uh, the sale of art down here. So… um, and right now, what we're experiencing is a different kind of gentrification in Providence, which I think many cities are, which is… because we're not building enough housing, there's a… there's an in-migration into Providence now. It's one of the top five in the country. Uh, and… and… and so it's making rents go up dramatically. And so the neighborhoods… we have 24 neighborhoods. Those… those rents in those neighborhoods are going up just by the crisis of… lack of housing. So that's a different form of gentrification, which is more, really, you know. I think we need to… the New Urbanists need to engage that. Андрес Дуани: Uh, some years ago, about 10 years ago in the CNU, there was this very, very important woman called Kaia Colletta. We gave a big lecture at the CNU, and she said something that was stunning to me. She says, '5% of the American cities have a gentrification problem. 95% need nothing more than gentrification.' Okay, when we began in Providence, the biggest population downtown, and the biggest… was a homeless shelter, a very large homeless shelter. So when you begin with homeless all over the street, you basically bring a kind of, you know, middle class first. And then it becomes viable for a for-profit development. Buff… Buff has just said, it's not profitable yet to develop in Providence. It's expensive to… to revitalize buildings to historic standards, these fine old buildings. And so, this idea that the New Urbanism is going to call out gentrification. Yes, do that in the cities that actually are gentrifying, but some cities are just trying to get a tax base, you know, well before they become gentrified. Okay, and most of the cities we work with are empty, and they need people to come in to pay the taxes. So, let's… let's be… let's think about the city that we're speaking of before we just pull out the gentrification problem. Rob: I assume in 1992, it maybe wasn't even on the horizon, the idea of gentrification. Is that correct, or were people already talking about it? Андрес Дуани: In '90… it wasn't on the horizon, yeah. But, you know, Rob, the first time I heard it, uh, which, I don't know, was in the mid-'90s. I had been spending my entire career for 15 years at the time, trying to bring the gentry into cities, just to get a tax base, to get somebody that could pay rent. You know, and then it emerged very slowly, and now it's the default critique of the New Urbanism: 'You guys gentrify everything.' But I think we need to be… we need to assess before we accuse anybody of gentrifying. We need to find out what state, you know, in the hockey puck… where in the hockey puck is that city before we accuse… we accuse it of gentrifying? Rob: Uh, somebody asked, and maybe a quick answer, but how did Providence manage to have a railway moved, which is really quite astonishing. Buff, do you know? Бафф Чейз: Good question. Good, good question. Um… we… I think Rhode Island benefits, uh, from, um, having two senators. And you might meet them on the street. Right, exactly. And so, from time to time, we, uh, box above our weight. And also the… the, um, highway that Andres talked about, we moved to the south. It was in bad shape, and it needed to be rebuilt. But rather than rebuild it in the place that it was, we were able to move it to the south. So the same thing happened with the railways. To the north, it'll allow the downtown to grow. Um, and, uh, so… over time, it'll be… it was the right move, yeah. Андрес Дуани: And, you know, Buff, also, you know, looking at it from the outside, the fact that it's the state capital. I've also worked in Baton Rouge. What it does is it keeps an airport operating, you know, which is very important for industry. Like, you know, Providence, which is a small city, nevertheless has an airport that, as they say, you know, it's above its weight. And so, state capitals are especially, right, a privilege, I think, in their prospects for big work like that. Rob: Um, we have a question about… sea level rise. And one of the big things in Providence history, uh, uh, living memory of some people, I suppose, is the, uh, the hurricane of, uh, 1938, was that correct? And the flooding of the downtown then. And, uh, so it's a reminder that Providence is a seaport city. We have a question: 'What have been the sea level rise mitigation efforts underway in Providence as growth and redevelopment expands downtown and other places around downtown?' Бафф Чейз: Um, well, let's… We started a 501(c)(3) called PRP, Providence Resilience Partners. Basically, with a similar idea as the original, um, Down City stuff, you know, 30 years later, or whatever it is, 40 years later, to deal with these, and to try and coordinate the defenses against sea level rise. Actually, it's not just sea level rise, it's climate change, too, because we also, uh, the whole river… riverine system that is in southeastern Mass and… and other places drain down through Providence. So we're probably more vulnerable to flooding from the rivers, uh, than the hurricane. After the hurricane in '54, which was actually just as bad, if not worse, than the '38, uh, we built a hurricane barrier, uh, so that the actual storm probably is, uh, we're protected by, uh, the city itself. Um… and that was done through a bond after the, uh… after the hurricane… Hurricane Carol in '54. But, obviously, it's a low-lying city. The riverine system is so… people are just working together, and the PRP is coordinating. They were part of the Congress, um, that we just had. Michelle Jalbert is leading it. And, uh, we're doing something called a Climate Vulnerability Analysis that we are receiving funding for from the federal government. We are holding our breath. Uh, but anyway, yeah, we're very aware of it. Good question. Rob: Um, you know, uh, here's a question that's sort of a perpetual question of New Urbanists. And when you brought in Andres and Liz, you had to deal with this because nobody had ever heard of New Urbanism. But how can emerging planners get others to buy into New Urbanist principles and best practices in less progressive environments? Андрес Дуани: Look, the New Urbanism… Chris Alexander told me three decades ago, he said, 'We all know what the appliance is. What we need to do is to design the plugs that connect it to the existing power grids in the popular.' The appliance, which is the New Urbanism, which is the walkable city with spatial definition, diverse in every way, etc. You know, um, that appliance is ancient, and we've actually developed the techniques. The problem we're having with the New Urbanism is that we keep circling around, will keep nudging the techniques and not working on the plugs that connect with the different… with the different power grids. If we realize, for example, that Trump is in charge for three years now, three and a half years, and he has a very clear power grid of where he's gonna spend the money, what he's going to do, right? I mean, we have three and a half years that I personally can't waste. My thought is not to alter what the New Urbanism does, but to design the power grids that connect to his ideology, or to his prospects. I have read some of the executive, um, executive, um, orders that he has given. You know, he is very pro-developer, and he is very, uh, he is very anti… um, anti-bureaucracy, right? You know, and whenever I say, 'We must ride this anti-bureaucracy ideology, it's good for us and the small developer city needs,' people in the New Urbanism turn around and say, 'How can you even talk to Trump?' You know, I said, 'I'm not altering, I'm not altering the technology and the ideals of the New Urbanism, I'm just plugging it to the president we happened to have for three and a half years.' You see what I'm saying? And I think we should be designing plugs that work wherever we are, you know, whether… because the red states will continue to exist beyond Trump, and so will the blue states. We still speak about the New Urbanism in all of them, but we speak differently. We don't trip up by saying we hate cars, or we hate single-family houses, where everybody has to be on transit. You don't do that in a red state, right? Just don't bring that up. Bring up a sense of community, various… bring up the small developer, right? The red states love the idea of the small developer empowering many small developers. They'll hook onto that. And I think we need to do a study of how do we… if the nation is going to be split in red and blue for the foreseeable future, we are much too blue in our presentations, and we need to develop some red presentations without tampering with the basic principle of the charter. Бафф Чейз: Yes, Rob. Um, I'm just seeing, I mean, you're the boss here, but I'm just seeing on the… on the chat here, people talking about, 'How do you attract funding for these redevelopment projects?' Uh, which is a… hugely good question. Um, so at some point, we should address that, I think. Rob: Well, why don't you address it now? Uh… Бафф Чейз: Well, I mean, I guess that's my question, too. I have the same question. I think we… you know, we're… we're… I don't want to characterize where we've been, uh, in terms of, um, finance bros, etc., um, and the focus on… on money and returns and stuff like that, uh… But I think this idea, which I haven't been able to result of people getting satisfaction from… from redeveloping the town that they live in, uh, and… and not requiring large returns in the early years, you know. Um, whether it's… whether it's a… instead of a five-year window, you're looking at a 10- to 20-year window. And not just requiring returns that a lot of the banks to be happy that the debt service is covered, and not looking for your own return. And how do you find people in your community that might be willing to put together a fund to do that, and could it be led or participated in by the local community foundation? I mean, I think these are… questions that we don't know the answer to yet, but I think that that's really the next step. Um, uh… and, uh, you know, every town is different, every region is different, where the capital may exist that needs to be approached and… and partnered with, um, to… to create these redevelopment opportunities. And of course, you know, there are parts of the country where there… there are… there are funding for housing. This comes from government and stuff, but I think we have to be… realize that we are not going to be able to rely on funding from government sources to be as evident as it has been. So… it's the big question, I think, because John Coker asked that question, and some other folks have as well. But something we should make a part of the New Urbanist dialogue. Rob: Well, there are funding… there's funding for the public realm, and there's funding for housing and buildings, and these are like two different things. Is Providence a model for any other cities around the country in terms of, uh, you know, financing and getting stuff built? Бафф Чейз: Well, I'm not sure… No, because it was mostly done by a handful of people, uh, a small handful. And, um, the… now… to the degree it's been a success, in theory, that could attract more people. But it's just not a habit. Uh, and you know, whereas you think about 19th century and various other… earlier times of the 20th century, that probably was. You know, now people are investing, I don't know what, in their university, or something like that, but it's got to sort of become… cool to invest in your town. Uh, and not… looking… I wouldn't put your money there that you're going to rely on for annual returns, but over time, a generation or something, it will make sense, and you just… we just need to… I think honor people that might consider doing that. Rob: Uh, Andreas, do you think that Providence is a model for other cities? You've worked in hundreds of cities. Андрес Дуани: No, I don't. No, I haven't worked in hundreds of cities. I've probably… I've probably worked in 10, uh, some successfully, some others. The problem is the, um… right now, my biggest problem is the short cycle of elections. Like, for example, I'm working in, uh, in Vero Beach, and they have elections for the City Council every two years. People are continually running for office. There's nobody that you convince that it's an office by the time a vote has to be taken. By the time the vote, you know, you present the plan. You speak to the elected officials during the charrette. And most of them are not there two years later. There has to be… this is my new thing. There has to be a longer political cycle. There has to be somebody like Buff, not necessarily as quite… quite as thoroughly as an investor. I'm not quite somebody who dedicates their life to it, but there needs to be somebody like Haussmann, you know, Baron Haussmann in Paris, who's in action for 25 years. And not just subject to whoever, you know, wherever the Paris Council gets elected in Iraq. He was… he was, uh, the emperor protected him from politics. He was the pure technician. You know, his only job was to avoid the next revolution. And that kind of thing, we need. We need that profession. And unfortunately, we suspect anybody with that kind of power, thanks to Robert Moses. But I think things are moving too quickly now for the Jane Jacobs, you know, small nudges of the world. And, uh, yes, that's what I've learned. You know, my… what I would say is try to set up a committee that is the permanent standing committee protected from the politics. And that will help quite a lot. Rob: Well, we are now, uh, just past the hour, and I will say that we will, uh, we will post this video on the CNU website, and people can go and watch it. Then, um… Uh, and I don't know if, uh, Buff, uh, you have any last, uh, thoughts on, on this? Uh, where's Providence heading? Бафф Чейз: Um, of course, I'm an optimist, or I wouldn't be doing this. Sisyphus Award or not. Um, but I think that, obviously, the next generation of people to take on these kinds of tasks is what I'm searching for. For, and giving them confidence that you actually can make change. Um, and, um… you know, we just have to redefine what success is and what returns are. Um, and how important our own communities are. And we'd have to kind of dig deep right after our family, our communities are the next most important thing. So, um, yeah, I… God bless everyone for trying to figure this out. I think this is really a dialogue that we'll be having over the next few years within the New Urbanism. Thanks, Rob, for organizing this. Rob: Well, thank you, uh, thank you, Buff, thank you, Andreas. Um, it's been a great, uh, conversation, and thanks for everybody who attended. Um, and I guess… I guess we'll, uh, sign off now. Андрес Дуани: Thanks, Rob. Great, great job. Rob: Okay.