Today's cities are primarily constructed by those of the present but of the past. Current developers are forced to develop around what has already been set. But what happens when cities or metropolitan areas are designed poorly? Well, many things happen. Cities over time will begin to show these problems. When these problems are left alone, they become an eyesore and will sometimes contribute to long-term problems. In some cases, these can lead to a crisis, which happens due to a lack of inaction or ineffective city planning. Yes, cities can design and develop their way out of a problem.
This is much easier said than done, and the longer inaction takes place within cities, the more difficult it will become. Not saying Rome is facing a crisis, but there was no planning for streets in its origins. Modern-day Rome is built around a random collection of roads with no grid or plan. This makes it even harder for modern developers to work with. Problems such as the planning of streets can have significant impacts if left unchecked. To redesign and redevelop a city will require many things. To summarize, you need to get rid of the old and new. Essentially it would help to get rid of older areas that are the root causes of the city's problems.
Before I discuss how past city planning and devolvement affect future ones. The discussion of how past choices affect current ones needs to be more understood. When it comes to decision-making, we rely heavily upon prior decisions. Our present and future choices we make can be pointed to a direct reflection of ones we had made prior. Whether these choices are good or bad, we still choose to emulate our prior decisions. All options, whether big or small, feel, we feel their impacts.
When it comes to city planning and development, history is so important. When it comes to city creation, it is such an important topic, but the choices we make are just like the ones we have already made. We use them as a basis for what the future should entail. In many cases, this isn't good or and sometimes it can be beneficial. Regardless, we in the present and the future must deal with the consequences of the past. For example, if a significant development was made years prior, it becomes hard to get rid of it and replace it with something new. These events take massive amounts of time and money. Also, we must consider prior zoning laws that have been created for specific areas. Past zoning laws that are outdated for modern cities are much too common across the United States. In instances where zoning laws are not adaptive, they hinder present and future developments because they solely dictate what can be built and how it can be built.
Before I dive into the deep end on the subjects, I want to provide real-life examples of how prior choices by city developers and planners can either affect our cities in good or bad ways. Today's cities are primarily constructed by those of the present but of the past. Current developers are forced to develop around what has already been created. But what happens when cities or metropolitan areas are designed poorly? Well, many things happen. Cities, over time, will begin to show these problems. When these problems are left alone, they become an eyesore and sometimes contribute to long-term problems. In some cases, these can lead to a crisis. This happens due to a lack of inaction or ineffective city planning. Once a problem arises, it becomes much harder to deal with than if it was sold before its occurrence. Yes, cities can design and develop their way out of a crisis. But now, we in the present and the future are forced to bear the weight of the problems from prior city planners.
For example, the city of Detroit is faced with a massive issue of blight within its municipality. Detroit’s blight comes from the downfall of its era as the industrial mecca of the United States. It was a city so focused on manufacturing, and once this declined and there was less need for the worker, more and more people left. This caused many businesses to leave because of an inverse of the multiplier effect. As jobs decreased in those sectors, local businesses suffered as a whole. After time blight occurred as people moved out and companies went under. Once this happens, it makes a living in Detroit less appealing, and land value drops. This is the crisis they are facing as of now. They must remove blight and make Detroit more attractive to people. This is something that will take years, maybe even decades, to accomplish. Not only does it take time but innovative and practical ideas. Cities can pull themselves out of a crisis with development and design, but it takes time and creative thinking. Sadly, the issues that have come before making it harder for current and city planners to design Detroit and its communities for a better future. They are at no fault for these problems because they have been forced to build within them for decades because of how large these issues have become.
Detroit was never designed to be an actual city. During the high of the United States manufacturing glory days, they viewed Detroit only as a hub. This hub was solely dedicated to the manufacturing economy. Hindsight is always 20/20, but the developers of Detroit build a city to support these manufacturing factories rather than an economy to support the city as you would hopefully expect a city planner to do. Detroit was built for a short-term boom rather than a long-term project. Past planners never created green spaces for locals to congregate and give the city life and a character. This is still a problem faced in Detroit but not because of a lack of inaction but because the town is riddled with abandoned homes and factories that stem from the horrible and short-sighted decisions from prior planners. But the lack of a creation of a city has left Detroit very much a ghost town that lacks identity and a personality. You see year after year a population decline and more and more abandoned buildings popping up. This is all stems from how Detroit was developed and planned initially. Development is much more than building a city, and it affects all aspects of life. Detroit is not unique to a past that hurts the future. Many cities across the United States face this issue. But as we go into the future, we must look at these failures such as Detroit and look within and become innovative and break tradition when we see the past has failed us. But decades of poor choices have made those in the present and the future incredibly hard to fix the wounds that Detroit faces.
I used Detroit as an example of a large metropolitan area that faces a crisis. But now, let’s shift our attention to Los Angeles. It is a well-known fact that Los Angeles is facing a widespread problem. This crisis is the area's housing crisis. Two factors have helped lead us to this. There is a lack of supply but a high demand for affordable housing and the costs to live in Los Angeles. The county experiences one of the most considerable housing costs to wage disparities across the United States. After doing research, I stumbled across the mayor’s official website, and there was a section dedicated to the problems of housing. The use a statement from the California Housing Partnership that says to escape this crisis, we need to build a little over 568,000 affordable homes. The city's combination of past decisions has resulted in such a deficit that will be incredibly hard to overcome. They have made a dent but not a sizable fix. Simply the current city planners and developers have dealt the worst hand you can be, and they are now forced to deal with the problems and adverse effects of the hand they were sold. But, as we mention, these past choices affect our current ones; modern solutions are the only way to tackle these decade-old problems.
Los Angeles and Detroit are both cities plagued by massive issues that came to fruition because of their past decisions on city planning and development. But they are taking the necessary steps to right the wrongs they previously had done. They are breaking away from their history of development. California and especially Los Angeles are historically known for their cities being massive sprawled out. As time has passed, modern city planners have come to agree that these past choices for these problems are something that has, in return, significantly harmed our cities. Now we see developers and planners wanting to break off from the traditional urban sprawl model and go vertical. When they mean, they want to go vertical rather than horizontal, and they want to increase how dense our cities are rather than sprawled out. This time of thinking is brand new and honestly refreshing to see. Decade after decade, Los Angeles city planners made the same choice after the same choice, and they all had a net negative result as the city of Los Angeles is reaching a tipping point in its housing market. Current developers are the ones that are tasked to tackle this problem that has been left behind by those that proceeded with them. We handle the present issue will determine how the future will either suffer from our choices or benefit. This is a never-ending cycle of events that stem from one another.
Giving developers incentives is not the only way to aid the Los Angeles housing crisis. One solution that might seem obvious but gets overlooked is designing housing. Currently, Los Angeles does not develop housing for overall efficiency. Innovation in technology and design overall decreases production costs and overall production time. This is the case with Low-rise housing. They have variety and are cheap and easy to make. The only problem, though, is that current laws prevent this. Several years ago, they attempted to change this through SB 50, but outside forces prevented it because wealthier single-unit housing areas do not enjoy the idea of affordable housing near them. Low-rise is a more visionary approach to design because it creates multifamily developments areas. It is a more innovative approach to high-density housing that Los Angeles already contains.
Above I discussed two different cities, Detroit, and Los Angeles, that currently face problems that have come from decades of poor choices and lack of progressive thought. But not every city faces these problems. One of the most famous cities globally, Paris, has experienced the opposite of Detroit and Los Angeles. Paris is much older than both cities, but the problems it faces are nothing like Detroit in Los Angeles in its current state. One might ask, how is this possible? Well, just like the other two cities, it comes down to the decisions that city planners made in Paris hundreds of years ago. The goal for Paris was to create a beautiful city and make those who live in it a part of the city's personality. They also decided that Paris would not be spread out but a relatively compact city that features some of the densest populations in the world. This centuries-old decision has proven to be shown a fantastic one. As the original model for Paris was to have a dense population, they use land more efficiently because they are using less of it to house a more significant population. Paris also has one of the best roads systems of a large city globally. It makes it easier to drive around the city and makes all parts of the city walkable. Also, they do not suffer from a homeless population, and it only seems that as more and more time passes, the city itself shows signs of improvement.
This is only done because those who designed it laid the framework of success for its future planners and developers rather than the Los Angeles model that encouraged the opposite, just as those previous today’s planners must solve the problems to help those in future combat problems will arise.
Another city that has also benefited from its past planner in Philadelphia. When I say this, I mean the framework of the town's construction. Not the current state of it. Its original designer William Penn had revolutionary ideas for a city that had not been used anywhere across the United States at this time. Penn settled in an area situated between two major rivers that would allow easy transportation and trade in the region. Not only did he situate the city in a great location the way he planned it out, but it also made it so impactful. He planned the town out on a grid between the rivers, the grid planning of cities was nonexistent. This and the smart zoning that he had, pushing manufacturing to the rivers and housing to the center, caused the well-developed city that Philadelphia is today.
As developers and city planners, we will always be forced to look at the past to determine our courses of action in the present and future. We will have to work around problems created by those before or take advantage of a well-constructed framework built for us. This was shown in cities like Detroit and Los Angeles that are currently reaping the costs of poor decisions. The past of how cities are developed and planned will always affect how they are scheduled in the present and the future.
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