Business Plan

The recovery of places from serious disinvestment must first of all be a business plan, not just an urban plan. This principle must underlie everything else that follows. This is common to all types of place recovery, but is most important in places that have been seriously disinvested for a long time because the people likely have been so beaten down by their everyday conditions that a poisonous culture of hopelessness likely pervades the place.

Preserve the Good

"Good," in the context of a place that has suffered from decades of decline, means "good bones," not "good conditions." Everything will be somewhere between run-down and falling down in such a place. And there may be little funding for big projects, so work that can be undertaken by small groups at very small scale is more likely to get implemented in the early days.

Buildings

The doors and windows in this building aren't actually doors and windows; they're sheets of plywood painted as doors and windows in a Tactical Urbanism intervention that brings hope, and gets people thinking what this building might be if they adopted it as their own.

Streets

Start with street improvements just one block at a time. Focus first on safety, with Tactical tools like repainting crosswalks, installing traffic calming measures, and adding bike lanes, because there are many people living in disinvested places who can't afford a car, but can afford a bike. After safety measures, move on to things like street furniture so it's not just a place for cars. Do a few pilot Gifts to the Street,

Civic Spaces

There are several types of civic spaces, including parks, greens, squares, and plazas. Depending on the time at which the place was begun, there may be an existing civic place or two, but if developed after World War II, it likely followed the single-use patterns of sprawl which typically contain no civic space. If the former, then the first task is likely cleanup, which probably involves removing overgrown plant material. Tactical tools should follow immeditely, inviting people to inhabit the spaces again. If postwar, then look for a few vacant lots in a good location for a neighborhood square. Single vacant lots are candidates for pocket parks and playgrounds, depending on location.

Get Colorful

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Bring the Director

This role would be similar in many ways to the New Urbanist Town Founder, but in one aspect it is likely to be very different: whereas the Town Founder is the originator of the town or neighborhood, the Director is a century too late to have founded the seriously disinvested place, and may in fact be an outsider.

Step 1: Civic Space

Civic space must be the established in the beginning for two reasons: The economic engines will grow in the beginning from civic spaces, so it is essential to know where they are. Also, when the neighborhood is thriving again, large land purchases are more difficult. Start by looking for vacant lots which could become the neighborhood square; it can be smaller than you think, maybe as little as 75 to 100 feet wide.

Principles

A neighborhood is a place inhabited by neighbors who know each other. The post-WWII practice of dividing up all the land for private lots leaves no commons where people can meet. This is essential to restore where it does not exist, or enhance where it exists already.

Patterns

A neighborhood is a place inhabited by neighbors who know each other. The post-WWII practice of dividing up all the land for private lots leaves no commons where people can meet. This is essential to restore where it does not exist, or enhance where it exists already.

Products

Civic Space Strategies will be a white paper outlining the methods of creating each type of civic space. It, like every other product that follows, will be written in a plain-spoken, common-sense way, and meant to be understood by everyone. It is essential to avoid jargon and other technocrat-speak; these are documents for the people.

Step 2: Long House

The Long House is the first new civic building built in a recovering neighborhood; it is built on the neighborhood square. At the beginning, it is little more than an open hall with seating, tables, and restrooms.

Principles

Outdoor civic spaces are essential for more informal gatherings that help transform strangers into neighbors, but the more serious business of neighborhoods is best conducted indoors, and possibly at night after work. The Long House meets this need.

Patterns

The Long House can serve many purposes, including the following: meeting hall, after-school daycare, craft and trade classes, incubator maker space, and many others.

Products

The Long House Manual will lay out the needs and also the many uses of a Long House. It will be a pamphlet of probably not more than 20 pages.

Step 3: Single-Crew Workplaces

Nothing gets the economic lifeblood of a neighborhood flowing faster than single-crew workplaces. A single-crew workplace is a business that can be run by a single crew. A single-crew restaurant is one cook and one waiter; a single-crew beauty shop is one stylist, etc.

Principles

Single-crew workplaces invigorate the neighborhood from both the supply and the demand side. From the supply side, they allow countless people who are disadvantaged, immigrant, or young to start their own businesses; this would be utterly impossible for most of them using normal retail standards. From the demand side, single-crew workplaces serve places that have long been food deserts and deserted by many other services as well.

Patterns

Single-crew restaurant: 1 cook/waiter (food cart) or 1 cook & 1 waiter (bricks & mortar)

Single-crew coffee shop: 1 barista

Single-crew grocery: 1 grocer

Single-crew Third Place: 1 barista in the morning & 1 bartender in the evening

Single-crew inn: 1 host/cook/housekeeper for 4 rooms, 1 host/cook & 1 housekeeper for 8 rooms

Products

I plan to produce the Starting Impossibly Small Handbook to assist in this step. It will contain a 2-page spread for each business type, and will eventually contain dozens of types. It will include both a prototypical design for each type, and also a pro forma. Its intent is to give people hope of launching out on their own. It will be a living document, with new types added as we develop them. It should have an online home designed to be mobile-friendly so people can access it on their phones.

Step 4: Tactical Thoroughfares

Thoroughfare improvements are usually essential to the recovery, but when the place is disinvested it can be useful to begin tactically if the municipality in which it is located is financially strapped.

Principles

Thoroughfare design since WWII has been based on the patterns of sprawl, and largely prevents vibrant connected places. Tactical Urbanism has pioneered many techniques for recovering thoroughfares for the humans in the past decade. In the beginning, tactical interventions were illegal, and perpetrators were often punished. In recent years, many municipalities have realized that tactical techniques are the fastest and least expensive ways of achieving positive change, and now foster tactical interventions. New Urbanist colleague Mike Lydon literally wrote the books on Tactical Urbanism, and Janette Sadik-Khan’s tactical work as NYC’s Planning Director broke many dams of opposition around the country.

Patterns

Slow Streets: Slowing traffic is a huge public safety issue. At 40 mph, someone struck by a car has a 90% chance of dying. At 20 mph, they have a 90% chance of living. Children and the elderly are most vulnerable; impoverished people are almost as vulnerable, as they are more likely to be walking if they cannot afford a car.

Rear Lanes: Wanda and I are developing strategies for inserting rear lanes in places that do not have them because they are so important to the character of the street. A rear lane (“alley,” in the most urban places) is the utility entrance to a home or other structure, allowing the street to be more appealing.

Walk Appeal: There is no more important factor to the economic health, environmental health, and public heath of a neighborhood than Walk Appeal. And Walk Appeal is achieved primarily in the frontages, which is the smallest part of the urbanism: from the back of curb to the front of the building. Some Walk Appeal techniques can be achieved at very low cost as a weekend project.

There are many more patterns of tactical thoroughfare recovery that are beyond the scope of this document to describe

Products

Wanda and I are now working on Walk Appeal, which will be both a digital and printed book.

Step 5: Additional Dwellings

The economic recovery of a place tends to be more robust if there are more neighbors nearby to support neighborhood businesses. There are many ways of inviting more people to join the neighborhood.

Principles

Most recovering places have been desiccated by suburban zoning codes, removing many residents in the rush to create all-single-family districts. This doesn’t just make the place more bland, but reduces the chances of success of neighborhood businesses because there are fewer potential customers nearby.

Patterns

Accessory Dwelling Units: rear lane cottages, carriage houses, in-house apartments, mews courts.

Cottage Courts: replace two or four house lots with six to sixteen cottages organized around courts so they blend easily into the neighborhood because the broad side of the cottages adjacent to the sidewalk are similar in length to the fronts of neighboring houses.

Missing Middle Housing: duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, courtyard apartments, mansion condos (several units designed to look like a single-family mansion). See the Missing Middle Housing website.

Products

The Neighborhood Dwelling Guide will be organized similar to the Starting Impossibly Small Handbook.

Step 6: Agrarian Urbanism

Many places suffering from long decline are food deserts. The first order of business might seem to be bringing a market to the neighborhood. While that's good, a neighborhood market is just a place to spend money. A more robust economic step to take would be bringing food production to the neighborhood as well.

Principles

Urban agriculture brings food production into the neighborhood. Agrarian urbanism goes a step further, making food part of the culture of the place. Benefits abound. There is no fresher food than that grown nearby, and it doesn’t have to be genetically engineered to be tough enough to endure three weeks in the back of a refrigerated truck. Raising your own food can save a lot of money. Why should your yard lay fallow while you spend more of your money at the grocery store? And creating a foodie culture in a place draws people in from other places to eat at local establishments. While it might seem far-fetched to anticipate a foodie culture springing up in disinvested neighborhoods, there are strong precedents. Creole and Cajun cuisine, for example, is based on simple vernacular fare, yet people travel from great distances to enjoy the food in New Orleans and Acadiana.

Patterns

Scales of agriculture: employing farm (just outside the neighborhood), family farm (at the neighborhood edge), community garden, edge yard garden, courtyard garden, roof garden, arbor garden, wall garden, balcony garden, and window garden, with the last seven occurring on individual lots.

Business types supported, in approximate chronological order (see Places to Eat below for more detail): food carts, light-fare/sandwich shops, restaurants, and cottage-industry food processing businesses to create local specialties, culinary school. Specialties in the Louisiana example above would be items such as pralines, andouille sausage, etc. The culinary school might seem far-fetched as well, but consider the model of the Clara White Mission in Jacksonville, Florida. This century-old institution feeds around 500 homeless people every day. They also started a culinary school in 2003 where they train the homeless to cook and house them as well. Since the program began, they have placed over a thousand graduates in employment in food service and hospitality in the region, and that employment almost always is the first step out of homelessness.

Products

Wanda and I are close to completion on Outdoor Room Design, which is an e-book which lays out the principles of outdoor rooms, which are the settings of most private-yard edible landscapes.

The Agrarian Neighborhood Manual will be a pamphlet laying out basic considerations and rules of thumb for all elements that involve more than just a single house lot.

Lovable Edible Gardens will be a booklet focused on eliminating a problem with vegetable gardening that gets it banned in many places today: because it’s thought of as a utility function, it can be very unsightly. As a result, there are regularly stories of people being fined or even arrested because of vegetable gardens in their front yards. This document will lay out a number of techniques for making edible gardens with visual appeal.

Step 7: Places to Eat

Principles

Food and drink establishments are likely to be the first businesses to come into a neighborhood for two reasons: Many of them are risk-oblivious, and actually benefit from a somewhat edgy location. They also can be started unusually small, and food carts are widely accepted and cool today. There can and should be a strong synergy with local farmers and food specialty producers.

Patterns

Establishment types, in order of scale of investment: food carts, food shacks, food cottages, Third Places, and restaurants. Third Places may be either bars or coffee shops, or possibly establishments like The Tipping Point in Montgomery, Alabama which is a coffee shop in the morning and a bar at night. In any case, the First Place is home, the Second Place is work, and the Third Place is one where you can order something and hang around half a day if you like. The old Cheers tagline describes a Third Place well: it’s “where everybody knows your name.”

Products

The smallest establishment types will be included in the Starting Impossibly Small Handbook described above.

Step 8: Bed & Breakfast

Principles

Homes described in 5: Additional Dwellings can be smaller if they are not burdened with the need for a guest room. Smaller dwellings mean that more people can live in the neighborhood, increasing the number of customers for neighborhood businesses.

Patterns

Tiny Inn: Four guest rooms staffed by one person who serves as host, cook, and housekeeper.

Small Inn: Eight guest rooms staffed by one person who serves as host and cook, and another who is the full-time housekeeper.

Large Inn: Sixteen guest rooms staffed by a host, a cook, and two housekeepers.

Products

Bed & Breakfast Guidelines will be a short pamphlet laying out the basic considerations of starting an inn for those who have no previous experience.

Step 9: Live/Work Units

Principles

America was built by people living over the shop; live/work units were only banned after World War II, when planners decided to segregate homes not only from factories, but from everything else as well. The ability to make a living where you’re living should be a basic human right, as it was for almost all of human history.

Patterns

Types: Work Within (home office/workshop), Live-Above (the classic Main Street type), Live Within (apartment in larger workplace), Work Behind (workshop in the back yard/on the rear lane), Live Beside, Live Nearby.

Products

There are a few excellent books on Live/Work units, but there is a need for a more streamlined booklet that can be much less expensive or maybe free. Live/Work Guidelines will be this document.

Step 10: Neighborhood Market

Depending on the scale of the market, it may arrive as early as Step 3 or Step 6. The earlier, the better.

Principles

The neighborhood market marks the end of a food desert in most places. Built small enough, it can be a single-crew workplace with just one grocer, as noted above. Even if larger, it should be significantly smaller than most supermarkets today so that it can better serve the neighborhood. Supermarkets need to stock a huge number of SKUs in order to pull people in from greater distance to support their large size. Neighborhood markets, on the other hand, can focus on the preferences of the surrounding neighbors, who can walk to the grocery store.

Patterns

Tiny Grocery: A single-crew workplace operated by one grocer out of a store the size of a cottage. There can be more than one Tiny Grocery in a neighborhood in the beginning. Once one of them prospers enough to open a full neighborhood market, the others might choose to specialize in items not carried in the larger market, or more likely may convert into a combined grocery/deli that still sells a limited number of grocery items but also serves food as well. Cravings in Tuscaloosa is one such establishment.

Neighborhood Market: A grocery that also sells other items as well, such as the household goods and other utility items often found in a convenience store. But unlike the convenience store, which usually sells only processed foods, the neighborhood market would be encouraged to sell mainly fresh fruits and vegetables instead.

Products

The Tiny Grocery will be included in the Starting Impossibly Small Handbook.

Step 11: Dedicated Workshops, Offices & Retail

Principles

By the time the previous steps are well underway, the neighborhood recovery will become robust enough to support dedicated workshops, office and retail space beyond the scope of live/work units. These will be neighborhood-scale operations, ideally owned and staffed as much as possible by neighbors so that more people in West End can make a living where they’re living. The total cost of owning and operating a car in the US averages from $7,000 to $10,000 per year depending on location. For the economically disadvantaged, this creates a condition known as Automobile Poverty, and can actually lead to homelessness. Removing the need to own a car in order to be economically viable by creating a place that has a strong mix of uses is one of the most empowering things the recovery effort can produce.

Patterns

Dedicated workshops, office, and retail typically attract traffic from outside the neighborhood, so they are best located on major thoroughfares surrounding the neighborhood rather than at the neighborhood center so that neighborhood streets remain slow and quiet. One of the Director’s most important roles over time will be the cultivation of local businesses. The setting is very different, but the principle is the same: Seaside, Florida has incubated and cultivated over 200 businesses since 1980. Daryl Davis spearheaded this; she was always on the lookout for people who would be good at a business she had in mind. Sarah and Charles Modica, for example, had already retired, but Daryl persuaded them to come out of retirement and open Modica Market. With a Director dedicated to looking for skills in the neighborhood, a robust local economy can be built that can help transform many lives.

Products

The Town Center Toolkit is a book that we’ll publish digitally at first, and then probably in print. It is mostly complete now, and will guide the design of the buildings in this step.

Step 12: Civic Buildings

Principles

This is a step that starts at the very beginning with the Long House, and there are likely some existing civic buildings such as small church buildings and other types of civic buildings as well. But as the neighborhoods grow and prosper, others will be added.

Patterns

Civic building types include: church buildings, meeting halls (initially the Long House), schools (such as craft and trade schools, ideally with local heritage craft instructors), libraries (ideally with a collection of local heritage items you can’t Google), and other buildings where the public can gather.

Products

Public perception of civic buildings is often of large, ornate structures. Inaugural Neighborhood Buildings is a booklet which will lay out modest beginning points for civic institutions, much as the Starting Impossibly Small Handbook does for neighborhood businesses.