One of the most vocal and well-respected spokespersons for downtowns in William Whyte. He has written many articles describing the vitality to be found only in downtowns.
A 1989 article in TIME magazine reiterates some of these points, and is titled, "Contrary to Previous Reports, Cities Are Not Dead."
The future, [Whyte] has been told, is elsewhere: in the suburbs, the country, anywhere but the city. Nonsense, says Whyte. 'The core of the city has held. It has not gone to hell.' What is more, he argues, 'the city remains a magnificent place to do business, and that is part of the rediscovery of the center. While we are losing a lot of functions that we used to enjoy, we are intensifying the most important function of all--a place for coming together.'
...In his latest book, City, Whyte continues to challenge orthodox urban planning. For one thing, he likes free-floating city congestion... He advocates narrower streets for cars and wider sidewalks for people... Cram as many stores as possible along the streets to bring them alive. Do away with skywalks, abolish sunken plazas and tear down walls in front of parks and playgrounds, because they all increase isolation from the city experience.
"Whyte puts his faith in something he calls 'the impulse of the center,' which animates his vision of the teeming urban core. 'You see it at cocktail parties,' he says, 'the phenomenon where people move toward the center. It is an instinct to be in a position of maximum choice.'
To Whyte, volume is life. That is why he is convinced that the street corner remains the best meeting place in the world: 'A downtown, if it is any damned good, ought to be able to put out on the street more than 1,000 people an hour. What you want to do is maximize street activity,' he continues. 'Your life is on the street. A lively street has many entrances and exits. It's like a stage set. This is one of the reasons why there shouldn't be blank walls. Stores need all the competition they can get. I don't know if that sounds funny, but one of the problems with some pedestrian malls is that they don't have enough people to really make the thing work.'
He is stunned by the attitudes of officials in cities like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where a skywalk system saps the foot traffic form the streets below, which are already threatened by nearby malls. 'When they tell me that they are really going to curb their pedestrian congestion, I can hardly believe my ears,' Whyte says. 'The thing to worry about is not enough people.'
Smaller cities in general, he argues, are more vulnerable than larger ones to competition from nearby shopping malls. 'I heard James Rouse, the urban developer, lecture in Dallas on this. He said, 'You are copying the physical form of my malls. You shouldn't be doing that because the malls are not for downtown. What you should be copying is my centralized management, my tenant selection, my outreach.'
Allis, Sam. "Contrary to Previous Reports, Cities Are Not Dead." TIME, August 7, 1989. pp. 9-10.
Whyte's belief in the importance of the downtown is amplified further in an article for The street--particularly in the center city--is among the greatest of our cultural legacies. It is the river of city life. It gives the city continuity and coherence. It defines its scale. But it is under attack.
The condition is not a novel one; the post World War II period also was a bad one for cities. In programs of urban renewal, whole neighborhoods were devastated along with many of their streets. About the same time, a massive highway program, too, got into gear. Then the federal subsidization of suburban development helped achieve the ruination of the countryside with a building pattern that used 10 acres to do the work of one. Even more devastating were the effects of these programs on the city. The freeways not only physically drew out people, business and shopping; they did more than urban renewal to destroy the fabric of the center city.
...In a trend that is gathering momentum, the street is being put almost anywhere except at street level. It is being buried in subterranean corridors; it is being elevated on platforms or put in glass tubes. Finally, it is being obliterated altogether, enveloped by megastructures hermetically sealed against the city. This movement is profoundly wrong. For everything that we are learning about what people seek in the city indicates that what they like best are the things that are basic to it.
My foundation-supported group, the Street Life Project, was set up to learn how city spaces are used... One of the first findings was that the 'overcrowded city' is a myth. Most of the spaces observed were not overused: They were underused. Conversely, the spaces that people most enjoyed and found most restful were the most intensely used. The street is a surprisingly sociable place, and high density is a condition of its vitality. A successful streeet has a critical mass of activity and of people. Pedestrian malls that have failed have done so in part because they diffused people and activities over too expansive a space.
...people tend to sit where there are places to sit. But what is just as important as a good place to sit is what you see from. The prime places are those with full views of the main show, the street.
Successful spaces are not cut off from the street; they are not elevated high above it, nor are they sunk down beneath it. Sunken plazas are usually empty.
The elements of a good city space, then, are basics, and it is interesting to note how many of them are natural--people to watch, sun to bask in, trees to sit under, water to splash in and listen to. Nowhere does nature seem so important to people as in the city, and enjoyment of the city outdoors is increasing.
Small, winding streets are a treasure. Among other things, they slow down cars enough to let pedestrians bully them to a dead stop. The grid system has advantages, too. In most cases, the blocks are small enough to establish a repetitive pattern of cross streets that interrupts what might otherwise be single projects of immense size. It is significant that the most successful large complex in the U.S. did not eliminate streets but acutally added some. This, of course, is Rockefeller Center.
...The city is losing the function for which it is no longer suited--manufacturing--but reaffirming its great and most basic function as a place for people to come together. This is the street: busy, noisy, crowded, tacky, but full of life and vitality. And full of continuity--the sense of where we are and where we've come from. There's our future.
Whyte, William H. "The Humble Street." Historic Preservation. January, 1980. pp. 34-41.
