What's Up in Uptown Marion? (II)

1000 block of 7th Avenue, taken across City Square Park

 Five years ago this winter, Your Humble Blogger spent part of a day helling about downtown Marion, Iowa (officially branded and hereafter called "Uptown"). Having heard at this month's Corridor Urbanism meeting there were more exciting things going on there, I hurried back for an anniversary look-see. Despite damage from the August 10, 2020 derecho and the persistence of the coronavirus pandemic, things are definitely happening.

Center and path: City Square Park lost trees in the derecho

In our last exciting episode, it was noted that (1) Uptown Marion makes great use of its city square and historic commercial buildings, and was planning some interesting alley projects as well as a new library; (2) the urbanist part of town is really, really small, but seemingly growing and capable of serving nearby residential neighborhoods; (3) Uptown commerce has a high frou-frou-to-practical ratio, and only one coffeehouse; and (4) part of the plan was to divert through traffic from 7th Avenue to 6th Avenue.

(1) Thriving historic commercial district.

City Square Park: The historic depot got hit hard

11th Street: historic buildings, new buildings that blend in,
and east entrance to Art Alley

7th Avenue: south entrance to Art Allley

Art Alley: Back patios of Uptown Snug, Brick Alley Pub, and Short's
create charming synergy (when it's not January)

7th and 12th: What used to be Irwin's Clothing is now a dental office

1100 block of 6th Avenue: Construction of the new public library,
one block east of the current building

First United Methodist has moved, replaced by
Pentecostals of Greater Cedar Rapids.
Historic building suffered much storm damage.

Where the bus stop used to be: Leftover from Christmas?

(2) Expanding urbanism.

1200 block of 7th Avenue, north side:
urbanist foothold increases

1200 block of 7th Avenue, south side:
this strip mall will soon be replaced by a multi-story, mixed use project

800 block of 6th Avenue, south side: a new urbanist foothold,
with a diner and tiny shops including a gift shop, book store,
and jeweler

Longer view of the same space from 9th Street: Your development here?

(3) Drive-to urbanism. The Walkscore for this charming district is 72, but you'd still have to drive a ways for groceries and hardware, for example. Walgreen's at 1225 7th Avenue is both a positive and negative: a positive because you can get prescriptions and some groceries right downtown, a negative because it's a wealth-sucking chain big-box store with a huge footprint right downtown. This cannot possibly be the highest, best use of that land. More changes are coming with new developments on the site of Marion Square Mall and the current public library.

With regard to coffee, Uptown Snug (760 11th Street) has opened a coffee house in the front of the bar, which fills a definite hole because the only coffee last time was at Wit's End (630 10th Street) which has closed--temporarily?--due to storm damage. Kettel House Bakery (945 6th Avenue) and West End Diner (809 6th Avenue) also serve coffee, but are restaurants not coffee houses.

(4) Traffic diversion? As of the last traffic counts, in 2017, 7th Avenue continued to be the main thoroughfare in this area, drawing 12,800 cars per day compared with 6100-6200 on 8th Avenue and 2670-3370 on 6th. Twenty years ago, traffic on 7th was 18,500 per day, with the decrease probably due to the Marion Bypass (IA 100) south of town. The roundabout at 7th Street (pictured above in August 2016) was added in 2015,  intended to divert traffic onto 6th Avenue and make 7th Avenue more pedestrian-friendly (see Kasparie 2016). This morning traffic still seemed heavier on 7th Avenue, and the highway designation (BUS 151/IA 922) still attaches to 7th Avenue as well. It will be interesting to see the next round of average daily traffic counts, but that goes without saying, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, the Marion Fire Department is moving its headquarters from Uptown out to Tower Terrace Road, and the YMCA of the Cedar Rapids Metro Area has just opened a new facility out there. The Police Department's already at another edge of town. Marion's center of gravity clearly has been heading away from Uptown for a long time; the city's growth to an estimated 40,359 in 2019 from 20,479 in 1990 has largely been fueled by suburban expansion. 

 

So where does Uptown fit into Marion's future? Maybe a viable residential option for people who choose not to live in a 20th century auto paradise, and another hotspot of drive-to urbanism for the rest of us.

12th Street south of 7th Avenue: Someone needs to up(town) their snow removal game!

Review essay: Urbanism for all?

 

Alex Krieger, City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present (Belknap/Harvard, 2019).

Stacy Mitchell, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Beacon, 2006).

A few years ago, I began a talk on urbanism by reading from the excellent novel The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker (Harper, 2013). The author describes in detail the golem's first encounter of late 19th century New York City, full of energy and community and poverty and garbage. I told the group that urbanism was more or less an effort to recapture the energy and community Wecker describes without the yucky stuff.

It seems urbanism is not the first movement in American history to try to pull this off. Most of Alex Krieger's prodigious book is a chronicle of hope, as a succession of dreamers takes advantage of the vast American continent, as well as ever-improving technology, to leave whatever mess they were in to seek economic and social opportunity (chs 1, 9, 12, 16, 18), contact with nature (chs 2, 6, 7, 13), better communities (chs 4, 5, 14, 15), or just some fresh air. These (predominantly white) Americans had big ideas of how they could somewhere produce a mode of living that provided the best of both worlds--be those individualism/community, culture/nature, stimulation/security, e.g.--without the yucky parts of existing arrangements. Existing cities were typically perceived as anti-nature, rushed, stressful, crowded, dirty, noisy, corrupt, and full of disease and poverty and crime. Also difference (ch. 3). 

Las Vegas's wide streets are for people who are going places

So successive generations of dreamers struck out for a new start, either individually or in like-minded communities. Krieger covers a bunch of urban design trends over the centuries, as well as profiles of indicator cities like Washington (ch. 10), Chicago (ch. 11), and Las Vegas (ch.16). He is gentle and sympathetic in his portrayals, dismissing reflexive snobbery (of the "what they wanted was stupid" variety) and cynicism ("it was stupid to want/hope for that"). He pays some but not a whole lot of attention to the continental vastness being dependent on ignoring the presence of Native Americans, or to the nonwhite minorities and poor whites who suffered the impacts of whatever actions were taken towards the next utopia.

Eventually, Krieger's tone turns critical. Late in this exhaustive history of American approaches to place design comes this hint at the author's overall message: When Thomas More coined the term Utopia, the U came from the Greek words for "good" and "no" (p. 336). By chapter 18, on the back-to-the-city movement of "yuccies" and younger retired people in the early 21st century, he is scoring what the utopians have produced: swaths of environmental destruction, isolation or displacement of less powerful poor and nonwhite groups, and hoarding of goods and opportunities. He cities a number of critics of gentrification, including Joel Kotkin and Peter Moskowitz, contrasting their findings with a 1931 quote from James Truslow Adams, who defined the American Dream as a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position (The Epic of America, pp.214-215, quoted on p. 344). Boy, is this ever not happening. (See Piketty 2014, Reeves 2017).

Finally, in chapter 19 ("Postscript"), he turns cautiously hopeful again. We can and must do better, as we've already striven to do, though not by leaving places and people behind to build a new city on a new hill. Rather, we must our places and their people get better. Like Richard Florida in The New Urban Crisis (Basic, 2017), he has a to-do list: 

1. sharing access to the abundance of America
2. minimizing inequality, especially by careful public policy investment choices
3. stewardship of the environment, especially by curbing excessive consumption
4. responsibility to a broad idea of common purpose/good

Now, that's my kind of urban idealism! It stands in contrast to displacement-by-gentrification, or to urban renewal (ch. 14).

Stacy Mitchell's occasionally anachronistic but still powerful argument describes another American would-be utopia: the massive "big-box" stores operated across America by massive chains like Home Depot, Target, and the empire that is Wal-Mart. (Frequent mentions of Borders, Blockbuster, and K-Mart are jarring, but the arguments remain current in the age of Amazon.) The chains' promised paradise is one of large quantities of low-cost consumer goods, which would be nirvana to people who identify primarily as consumers. Local governments are attracted to the promise of single-shot job creation. In chapter 2, she tackles "the jobs mirage," including a study by Kenneth Stone of Iowa State University that found Wal-Mart's first ten years in Iowa (1983-1993, at the end of which there were 45 superstores) corresponded with statewide losses of "555 grocery stores, 591 hardware and building-supply dealers, 161 variety stores, 88 department stores, 291 apparel stores, 153 shoe stores, 116 drugstores, 111 jewelry stores, and 94 lawn and garden stores," and all their jobs with them. The low costs that attract consumers (ch. 5) are illusory, too, based on loss leaders and temporary cuts to drive out competition. These putative consumer paradises come at costs to local tax bases, domestic manufacturing, local and global wages, the landscape, the environment, and so on.

Mitchell is one of America's foremost advocates for locally-owned small businesses. Happily she concludes on hopeful notes: how communities have (sometimes) successfully fought back against chains, and how small businesses have banded together to make themselves stronger. Her evidence is thorough, yet her writing remains passionate, which is a difficult combination for any writer. Any observation of the American landscape, however, will show the lessons of all the research she details have been imperfectly learned.

 

Marion, IA, Black Friday 2019

 

We need to talk. About snow

 

1st Ave and 13trh St SE

Snow and ice can mess up any way of getting around, but in most northern cities the streets are cleared pretty quickly. Sidewalks are up to the property owner, but most eventually get done. A huge, persistent problem, however, is the snow that street plows pile up by the sidewalk.

1st Av and 13th St SE

I'm not here to narc on my neighbors, or to hate on my city, just to point out that there needs to be a way for people to cross the street. These pictures were taken more than 72 hours after the most recent snowfall, but some of this snow has been here since the end of December. (This far north, snow once on the ground stays on the ground until spring, because the air rarely gets warm enough to melt it.)

2nd Avenue and 13th Street SE

I didn't have to work to find these pictures. I just walked home from work. All of these intersections are within one mile of each other. It's not special in any way... just a typical mile in a typical northern city whose development is typically sprawled.

2nd Avenue and 14th Street SE

Some of these intersections are not difficult for an able-bodied person, but would be a challenge for someone who is at all physically impaired, or pushing a stroller, or a small child.

2nd Avenue and 14th Street SE

2nd Avenue and 15th Street SE

Some of these mountains are a challenge to anyone no matter how fit.

2nd Avenue and 15th Street SE

2nd Avenue and Park Court SE

2nd Avenue and 16th Street SE

2nd Avenue and 16th Street SE

3rd Avenue, 17th Street, and Blake Boulevard SE

3rd Avenue and 19th Street SE

3rd Avenue and Nassau Street SE

I don't have an solution, but there needs to be one--for equity, for all the reasons walkable cities are desirable.

We're expecting more snow tomorrow.

SEE ALSO: Minnesota Department of Transportation, "Sidewalk Snow Clearing Guide" (May 2018), especially page 14. They have three suggestions for "snow windrows" as depicted here. [Thanks to John F. Thomas for alerting me to this.]