Choosing Chicago Part 6

Part 1 (Go the beginning of Choosing Chicago, if you missed the first part of the series. Otherwise, read on.)

Part 6

In Miami I had my moment of realization. I’m not sure why such an obvious fact had never occurred to me before. In thinking about the different cities we were visiting, the neighborhoods were shaped by their street grids. I began to realize that despite a city’s best intentions the basic grid can’t be changed. The streets just are where they are. Miami had installed a PeopleMover elevated tram to transverse an inaccessible downtown, but it didn’t fix the basic problem. A pedestrian can’t walk from downtown to the adjoining Omni neighborhood on most of the streets. The areas are only connected for vehicular traffic on roads.

Miami was spending boatloads of money to bring in fancy consultants to help them “reshape” their urban environment for cycling and walking. An honest assessment would be to tell them to pray for an enormous natural disaster—an earthquake or hurricane which levels part of the city. Something which would wipe their slate clean and allow them to start over from scratch.

A city can be designed for travel by foot or in cars, but not both. Parking completely changes the landscape. If the streets are laid out for walking around, then it will retain its basic pedestrian scale, like the grid of Manhattan. Suburbs designed for trolley cars, like those found in Brooklyn or many neighborhoods of Chicago, also maintain a pleasant atmosphere, particularly when fast transit links to downtowns are available. Neighborhoods built in the last seventy years are designed for cars.

Americans have a choice we don’t want to make. We want to believe there is a magical middle ground between facilitating walking and the use of cars. It doesn’t exist. High priced consultants are creating reams of reports on design tweaks to “retrofit” sprawling communities into old fashioned cities. The entire city of Miami cannot be retrofitted for pedestrians.

Sure, any city can make improvements to the urban environment. But I realized there are very few neighborhoods, anywhere in the country, which are both affordable and offer the amenities we wanted. The USA is, likely will be, and always has been a nation of single family homes on farms, in towns, and later in the suburbs. The best way to get around these places is in a car.

Suddenly our choices were narrowed. There are very few neighborhoods anywhere in the country like Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, Park Slope in Brooklyn, or Miami Beach, Florida. Given our budget constraints, our reasonable options were even less.

Part 7 (We decide on a city.)

Choosing Chicago Part 5

Part 1 (Go the beginning of Choosing Chicago, if you missed the first part of the series. Otherwise, read on.)

Part 5

We returned to Miami for a final night in downtown. It was the last stop on our itinerary.

We’d investigated trying to cross the Florida panhandle and travel the southern USA to return home by train. More than a decade ago Hurricane Katrina severely damaged sections of the track, particularly in Mississippi and Louisiana. Amtrak service has never been restored from Florida to New Orleans. Taking the train would have meant back tracking long distances we’d already covered previously. We flew home instead.

I was happy to be rid of the rental car, even if it meant circling downtown Miami’s one way streets several times to locate the car company. I then suggested we walk from downtown to our hotel in the adjacent Omni neighborhood. In Chicago, Boston, and Philly we had traveled on foot from train stations to our hotel accommodations. My daughter pointed out we didn’t know the area. We could already see some blocks looked dicey.

I was looking forward to riding the free downtown PeopleMover anyway. Based on a monorail and driverless track system developed for Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland in 1967, many cities studied installing them to revitalize their downtowns. Jacksonville and Detroit started, but only Miami would go on to complete theirs. Later designs would become ubiquitous around the nation’s airports, but the only downtown one is still Miami.

Despite the good press I’d been reading about Miami, we could observe from the elevated PeopleMover track that walking to the hotel would have been somewhat impossible, despite the relatively close proximity. Abandoned sidewalks didn’t link up. The river lacked a decent pedestrian crossing. The area was dotted with empty lots and abandoned warehouses. Clearly people didn’t stroll around except in parks and shopping malls. When we later walked a couple blocks to a diner, we were constantly badgered by cabs for pick up. It was assumed we weren’t planning to go anywhere without a vehicle.

Miami presents an impressive skyline. From a boat it appears equal to other cities, like Chicago. It is only up close and on the ground that the differences are striking. It was in Miami I had my “Aha” moment.

Part 6 (American have a choice we don't want to make.)

Choosing Chicago Part 4

Part 1 (Go the beginning of Choosing Chicago, if you missed the first part of the series. Otherwise, read on.)

Part 4

Reluctantly I left Philadelphia. Our next train stop was a layover in D.C. The station was easily the most magnificent of any train depot in the country, located as part of the Washington National Mall. We walked past Congress and various museums to visit the National Gallery of Art and Monuments.

D.C. has a lot to recommend it. Still, the day was unusually hot, I didn’t feel like walking around, and was generally grumpy.

Perhaps I was mourning the separation from my beloved Rittenhouse Square in Philly. D.C. never made my final list of favorite cities. While technically neutral on the North versus South question, I consider the city it firmly located in the Old South, due to the miserable summer weather, lack of real winter, and an overall reliance on driving.

We set off on the last leg of our train ride to arrive in Miami. I was excited to view for myself the redevelopment of their downtown I’d been reading about in urban planning articles. While many people consider Florida to be south of the “real” South, due to the influx of Northern retirees, the city architecture is firmly Modernist.

To say the Miami Amtrak station is a dump is an understatement. I’ve seen more inviting Greyhound bus depots. Located in a warehouse district, simply walking a few blocks to catch a bus seemed like a bad idea at dusk. In Miami’s defense, they understand the problem. By summer of 2016 they hope to have Amtrak relocated to an intermodal hub that will link directly with their subways, downtown People Mover, and commuter trains. The only other station equally uninviting on our trip was our own in Albuquerque, not coincidentally located in the South.

Miami is working to become a model for retrofitting twentieth century suburban-style car planning into twenty-first century urbanism. Shedding its image as a retirement village, Miami is a hot spot for young downtown professionals, particularly Latinos.

Since it was pouring rain when we arrived in Miami I relented on my insistence to use public transportation and called a cab to head to South Beach. I enjoyed the restored old Art Deco hotels. It’s the neighborhood I would pick to move to, if I were able to stand living among the constant throngs of tourists.

Could I deal with the rest of the city of Miami?

Leaving South Beach we rented a car to spend a week in Key West. I’d always heard it called the Santa Fe of the East. Not really. It’s more like an eternal spring break, complete with unbridled constant drinking, located in a picturesque town. We never considered the location as it’s too far from a major airport anyway. I suspect Earnest Hemmingway was the only inhabitant of Key West who was ever productive professionally.

Part 5 (Last stop is downtown Miami and thinking about what makes a city desirable.)