Center City Philadelphia

 

City Planning 642-001, Fall 2011 University of Pennsylvania Fridays, 9:00 am - 12 noon Graduate Education Building #007 37th & Walnut Streets

Paul R. Levy Center City District - centercityphila.org 660 Chestnut Street E-mail: plevy@centercityphila.org 215.440.5512

 

Downtown Revitalization and Management

REQUIRED READING:
• Elijah Anderson, The Cosmopolitan Canopy;
• Jan Gehl, Cities for People;
• Edward Glaeser, The Triumph of the City
(These books are in stock at the Penn Book Center on 34th Street.)
• Drexel Law Review, Symposium on Business Improvement Districts, Fall 2010
earlemacklaw.drexel.edu/lawreview/Articles/Archives/Fall-2010
(good reference on Phila. BIDs)

Readings noted as pdfs can be downloaded from this page.

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING:
Robert Fogelson, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall 1880-1950; Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier; Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities

(1) Course Introduction, Overview and Requirements (9/9/11)

(2) The city experienced through sidewalks and public places (9/16/11)
READING
• Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Introduction, Chapters 1-3
• Jan Gehl, Cities for People, Chapters 1-5, 7
• Anderson, Chapters 1-4, 7
• "Elements of Great Spaces" Project for Public Spaces evaluation form | PDF (158 KB)
• "Successful Public Spaces" | PDF (18 MB)
Cities for People, a short film by Jan Gehl that will be viewed in class.

(3) The State of Downtowns before the Great Recession; the persistence of poverty (9/23/11)
READING
• Glaeser, Chapters 1-6
• Robert Weissbourd & Christopher Berry, "The Changing Dynamics of Urban America"
CEOs for Cities, 2003 | PDF (1.7 MB)
• Allan Greenblatt, "Downtown Renaissance," Congressional Quarterly, June 23, 2006 | PDF (2.3 KB)
• Paul Levy, "Looking Backward, Looking Forward: The Future of Downtowns and Business
Districts" Making Business Districts Work | PDF (5.3 MB)
• Elijah Andersen, "Down Germantown Avenue" from Code of the Street | PDF (583 KB)

(4) Forming, Funding, Planning and Approving BIDs, How do special districts relate to
More traditional downtown organizations and to local government? (9/30/11)
READING
• "The Benefits of Business Improvement Districts: Evidence from New York City" Furman Real Estate Center, NYU, July 2008 | PDF (845 KB)
• "Starting a BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT a step-by-step guide" New York City Office of Small Business Services | home2.nyc.gov/html/sbs/downloads/pdf/bid_guide_complete.pdf
• "Why Downtown Pittsburgh Needs a BID" Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership | PDF (156 KB)
• "Downtown Norfolk Conditions Survey," The Atlantic Group | PDF (240 KB)
• Goktug Morcol, "Center City District: A Case of Comprehensive Downtown BIDs" | earlemacklaw.drexel.edu/lawreview/Articles/Archives/Fall-2010
• Carol Becker & Seth A. Grossman, "Business Improvement District Census Project" | PDF (1.6 MB)
• "BID Formation in NYC," New York City's Small Business Service | PDF (2.3 MB)
•"Definition of BIDs" | PDF (16 MB)

(5) BIDS on commercial corridors and abroad (10/7/11)
• Levy, "Business Improvement Districts in Philadelphia" Drexel Law Review Fall 2011 | earlemacklaw.drexel.edu/lawreview/Articles/Archives/Fall-2010
• Lorleen Hoyt, "The Business Improvement District: An Internationally Diffuse Approach to
Revitalization" June 2003, MIT | PDF (455 KB)
• Peter Williams, UK BIDS: "A Growing Force in Urban Management" Conference paper, International City and Town Centre Management conference, June 2006, Newcastle, Australia. | PDF (110 KB)
• For BIDS in the United Kingdom and Ireland, see: www.britishbids.info & www.dublincitybid.ie. Australian "special rates" Gosford, New South Wales | PDF (425 KB)
• Levy, "Consulting Report for Rio DeJaneiro" May 2008 | PDF (115 KB)
• Tom Coffey, "New Bill Paves the Way for BIDs" Dublin, Ireland | PDF (2 MB)
[Press stories on the launch of the Dublin BID | PDF (318 KB) ]
• "BIDs in Germany," BID News, Deutscher Indutrie und Handelskammertag, 6/15/2010 | PDF (7.6 MB)

(6) Clean and Safe: The Basics for BIDs in Large Cities (10/14/11)
READING
• Elizabeth Kneebone, Steven Raphael, City and Suburban Crime Trends in Metropolitan America, Brookings Institution, May 2011 | PDF (1.1 MB)
• Rob DeGraff, "Clean and Safe: Basic Requirements" Making Business Districts Work | PDF (752 KB)
• The Plan and Budget of the Center City District, 2008-2012 | PDF (705 KB)
• "The Power of Context" from Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point | PDF (996 KB)
• Elijah Andersen "Mobs Disrupt Urban Oasis" Philadelphia Inquirer, August 5, 2011 | PDF (107 KB)

Responding to Homelessness
• Jennifer R. Wolch, "Explaining Homelessness," APA Journal Autumn, 1988. | PDF (687 KB)
• "Why 'Housing First' Saves Homeless Lives and Public Money" Time, August 2011
time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,1011477093001_2085601,00.html
• Don Kligerman, Fairmount Ventures, "Evaluation of Pathways to Housing," Philadelphia, January 2011 | PDF (393 KB)
• Levy, "Finding Common Ground on Homelessness" Center City Digest summer 2011 | PDF (1.2 MB)

(7) Downtown Office Development: Business Retention and Attraction (10/21/11)
READING
• Glaeser, Chapters 7-9
• Charles Shorter, "Critical Factors in Location Decisions for Growth Businesses"
Ernst & Young, July 1999.| PDF (208 KB)
• Edward L. Glaeser, "Job Sprawl: Employment Location in U.S. Metropolitan Areas"
Brookings Institution, May 2001 | PDF (354 KB)
• Gary Ferguson, "Economic Development for BIDS" Making Business Districts Work | PDF (1.5 MB)
• Philadelphia’s Major Employment Nodes: Where City Residents Work, Center City District, September 2011 | PDF (880 KB)

(8) Downtown Living (10/28/11)
READING
• Cecil Baker & Associates, Turning on the Lights Upstairs, Center City District, 1996 | PDF (16.8 MB)
• Eugenie Birch, "Who Lives Downtown" Brookings Institution, November 2005 | PDF (485 KB)
• Alan Ehrenhalt, "Trading Places: Demographic Inversion of the American City" New Republic, 7/08 | PDF (142 KB)
• Eugenie Birch, Downtown in the "New American City" Annals of the American Academy, 11/09 | PDF (885 KB)
• Patrick C. Doherty and Christopher B. Leinberger, "The Next Real Estate Boom," Washington Monthly, November/December 2010 | PDF (253 KB)
• Survey of Recent College Graduates in Center City CCD, 2004 | PDF (479 KB)
• Residential Development: 2010; Diversification Pays Dividends, CCD November 2010 | PDF (676 KB)
• Leading the Way: Population Growth Downtown, CCD September 2011 | PDF (437 KB)

(9) Developing and Leasing Retail in the Downtown (11/4/11)
READING
• David Nasaw, "Introduction" to Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements, 1993 | PDF (372 KB)
• Stephen J. Moore, "Creating the Downtown Experience" Maureen Atkinson, "Marketing the Shopping Experience" Maureen Atkinson & John Archer, "Retail Revitalization and Recruitment" Making Business Districts Work | PDF (3.1 MB)
• The State of Center City Retail, 2010, Center City District, September 2010 | PDF (727 KB)
• PhiladelphiaRetail.com

(10) East Chestnut Street Case Study (11/11/11)
Guest Lecture: Craig Grossman, Managing Director, Goldman Properties, Philadelphia goldmanproperties.com

(11) Infrastructure Investment and Urban Sustainability (11/18/11)
READING
• A New Planning Mindset
• Jonathan Barnett, "The Way We Were, The Way We Are," Harvard Design Magazine, 2006 | PDF (118 KB)
• James Sanders, "Seeking a Grand Vision of Public Works" New York Times, September 1, 2002 | PDF (110 KB)
• Paul R. Levy, "Ed Bacon: An Appreciation" Philadelphia Inquirer | PDF (947 KB)

Transportation & Infrastructure Investment
• "America’s Transport Infrastructure: Life in the Slow Lane" The Economist, April 28, 2011 | PDF (519 KB)
• Neil Peirce "Spontaneous Metro Policy: Could This Be True?" August 2009 | PDF (119 KB)
• President Obama’s 2010 Labor Day Infrastructure Speech, September 6, 2010
whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/06/remarks-president-laborfest-milwaukee-wisconsin
• Michael R. Bloomberg, Edward G. Rendell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Building America’s Future: Falling Apart and Falling Behind, 2011 | PDF (6 MB)
• Bill Bradley, Tom Ridge, David Walker, Road to Recovery, Carnegie Endowment, August 2011 | PDF (30.5 MB)
AMTRAK, A Vision for High-Speed Rail in the Northeast Corridor September 2010 | PDF (5.7 MB)

Complete Streets
• "Managing Success in Center City: Reducing Congestion, Enhancing Public Spaces" | PDF (4.4 MB)
• Paul Levy, "Four Ways to Look at a Street" Center City Digest, September 2010 | PDF (297 KB)
Video in class: Contested Streets: Breaking New York City Gridlock