DTP Forum 5/27/08 DENISE KOWAL SPEECH
“City Core and Surrounding City Neighborhoods; Can We Find Mutual Understanding?”
I moved from Cohasset, a beautiful town on the rocky shores of the Atlantic coast just south of Boston to Laurel Park in the early 1980’s. This is during a time when homes in Laurel Park could be purchased for $20,000 and that was a double lot. I cried many times my first year and half because downtown was so unappealing to me, then I discovered Siesta Key and moved to Midnight Pass. But in 1983 I cast my lot with downtown, and I made the decision that I was going to do what I could to help it become the best city it could be.
Over the past 60 years, as our addiction to the automobile has become epidemic, the evolution of our cities has taken a path unlike any other in our history. What happened? In a word, we sprawled. We didn't just move westward looking for new, self-sufficient farms and new cities, we moved away from the center of the cities but expected their urban amenities to remain available to us….. And why not? All we had to do was hop into our cars! …… Now, Is there anyone left in the room that hasn't caught on to climate change? & 4 dollar gasoline? - so I’ll move on.
Luckily for us, the City of Sarasota was born just prior to this type of thinking, and even though the industrial revolution was underway at that time, widespread ownership of cars had not happened. Our founders created a city using traditional Urbanist principles, with diverse, compact neighborhoods surrounding a city core. A city in which Sarasota’s population lived in cozy proximity to each other, near everyone's daily needs and entertainment venues. Downtown belonged to everyone, because everyone supported it, and it supported them. Everything important happened downtown.
But the Old Urbanism, which our founders relied upon in designing our city, was systematically shattered, as our society sprawled, and decade-by-decade, we destroyed the downtown community. We no longer took ownership of our downtown, and we started to look outward for our daily needs. We sprawled, we sprawled our living spaces, we sprawled our businesses, we sprawled our entertainment - we sprawled and we are still sprawling today. And as we sprawled, we drove. We drove until "a chicken in every pot" became "Two SUV's in every driveway".
It is through this neglect by sprawling that, we, the citizens of Sarasota, over time lost ownership of downtown. And because so many lost interest and looked outside the city to meet their needs, our city spiraled downward and became blighted. Our economic engine was dying. Downtown no longer belonged to everyone.
As in many beautiful cities, there were people downtown who continued to struggle to put our city back on track, visionaries, and by the turn of the 21st century our city commission did the right thing, and took ownership that in fact our downtown had failed. Both Mayor Palmer and Commissioner Atkins were part of that turnaround, and I am proud to say, “I was too”… and as I look around the room, I see many of you who can say, “so was I”.
That process began by speaking to the responsible part of us, the part that enjoys being grown up and socially responsible locally.
It was at this time, our commission made history by adopting some highly important documents, the Downtown Master Plan 2020 and the related SmartCode. Those documents intended the city I envision, giving stability, predictability and a vision so that people such as I, who invest our lives in this city, can plan our futures accordingly. I say I support the intent, as opposed to the eventual content, because Sarasota politics took the calibration of those documents away from the professional planners where it belongs, and thrust it into the political arena. This has created instability and un-predictably with an inconsistent vision, reducing those of us who invest in this city to gamblers. From visionaries to gamblers in less than ten years.
Now is the time for us to work together and embrace our Founders' vision while also protecting the intent of our New Urbanist Master Plan by helping our city and downtown reach their full potential. Marrying the Old Urbanism of no cars, with our New Urbanist principles of cars in appropriate amounts and places, and getting a grasp on our human footprint is something we can all support for our downtown. It is something that makes sense.
I say, that if our community chooses to allow... select neighborhood leaders to dictate... a future that is against increased density and growth within our city, then at least lets face those decisions honestly.
Let’s acknowledge that to allow our city neighborhoods the luxury of not increasing their density or even... the density of their neighbors, we are accepting a future that brings a larger impact on our natural resources, produces more pollution and does not support a sustainable future. By doing this, we are accepting all the mistakes we have made over the past 60 years of sprawl. This choice of course will put more of the burden on the city core and suburban areas, because people will go somewhere. That is a decision we can make. However, it is not a decision without consequences.
I just say, do not ask our downtown to follow that same path. Do not impose these so-called "neighborhood values" on our downtown because our downtown, our city core is the only area that can support the big picture changes needed for decreasing our human footprint, protecting our physical commons and moving towards a truly sustainable community. A properly functioning city is more protective of our natural resources than any other human habitat.
We live in an interconnected world in which even one seemingly small change ultimately impacts everything else for years to come.
Under the circumstances, is it okay for us to demand that all change be gradual because change makes us uncomfortable? When more than a hundred species go extinct every day because continued encroachment of sprawl upon natural habitat? I truly hope not.
Therefore I ask of you …..what kind of future do you want? And how do you think we will get there from here? And will we be driving…or walking?
Thank you.
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