Press

November 2006  
Philadelphia Gears Up for an Election
Planning is playing a significant role this time around.
By Kevin Riordan
A welcome wave of development and redevelopment in Philadelphia — not just downtown but in the neighborhoods as well — has given planning a higher public profile than at any time in recent memory.

It's unlikely that questions about what and where to build and rebuild will determine who among the half-dozen likely candidates will be elected mayor in 2007. Still, increasing advocacy by civic, business, and professional organizations and rising media attention suggest that planning concerns may play a significant role in the mayoral race. (The candidates include two former city council members, a U.S. congressman, a state representative, a union business manager, and the CEO of United Healthcare. The primary is in May, the general election in November.)

Two-term Mayor John Street, who took office in 2000 and by law cannot run again, has presided over the commercial and residential renaissance of Center City, as Philadelphians call their leafy, lively downtown. The cornerstone of his administration is a $296 million project called the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. And while the jury is still out on its overall impact, the effort to reduce the city's crippling inventory of vacant buildings and to fill empty lots with new houses has had some noticeable effects.

Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania has announced plans for a new "East Campus" along the Schuylkill River across from Center City, the Schuylkill and Delaware River waterfronts have been rediscovered by developers, and the area around Independence Mall — the city's primary tourist draw — has several  new attractions, including the National Constitution Center and a revitalized Franklin Square. Two slots-only gaming casinos, at least one of which will be in Center City, are in the pipeline.

These are real steps forward, says Thomas Chapman, acting director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. On the whole, he adds, "the city is in a good place; we have new residential development of all different types in virtually every neighborhood." It's the development boom itself — which has led to the city's newfound status as a desirable place to live, shop, and be entertained — that has heightened public interest in planning, he says.

Direct action
But for some, planning progress is too slow, particularly when it comes to resolving battles between developers and residents. These critics argue that planners have had too low a profile. "Silence of the Planners" read a recent headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
"Our association has been very concerned about the lack of planning," says Judith Applebaum, president of the Washington Square West Civic Association, an influential downtown group. "It's not just a question about where we are going to put a building, or how tall it's going to be. It's a question of whether we have the infrastructure for development."

At least one group has taken matters into its own hands. Last year, the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association, which speaks for many in the eclectic area along the Delaware River just north of Center City, hired a local planning firm, the Interface Studio, to create a plan for the neighborhood. The document was released to the public last fall, and NLNA is now developing an addendum to address waterfront issues.

The once mixed industrial and residential Northern Liberties neighborhood is now increasingly residential, and proposals for skyscraping condominiums and other upscale housing have residents concerned about losing the neighborhood's affordability and character.

"We found ourselves faced with making decisions on multiple residential towers without any context," says board president Jennifer Lewis. "We did not feel that we could effectively review these projects in light of the existing development on the waterfront and potential for casinos."

Calls for updating
Lewis is particularly critical of the city's "antiquated" city zoning code and a permitting process that she says "can be complicated and unpredictable." The 624-page code, which was adopted in 1962, provides for 31 residential zoning districts and 15 overlay districts.

Critics charge that it is so frequently amended — 150 times last year alone — that it verges on unworkable.

Other documents guiding Philadelphia's future are also out of date, some charge. The city's most recent comprehensive plan dates from 1960, and the current plan for Center City, which was privately funded by the William Penn Foundation, was released in 1988.

Louis Coffey is a board member and past president of the Center City Residents Association, a 2,500-member organization founded in 1947 that is the dominant civic organization in the western half of downtown. The neighborhood encompasses the high-rise offices and new housing of Market Street West, as well as landmark areas such as Rittenhouse Square.

"Without regard to what the city may be doing, we feel it's important for our vision for our community to be out there," he says. That's why the Center City association also has signed up a team of local firms, including Kise Straw & Kolodner, Urban Partners, and Brown & Kenner Bressi, to create a master plan for the neighborhood.

City planning director Tom Chapman acknowledges the concerns expressed by Coffey and others. An attorney, he has worked for PCPC since 1978, primarily in the construction review and development planning divisions. He became acting director in 2005, replacing Richard Lombardo, who had served in the same post for several months following the resignation of Maxine Griffith, AICP, who was hired by Mayor Street in 2000. 

Chapman points out that plans for sections of both waterfronts were produced in the 1980s, followed by zoning amendments that facilitated redevelopment, and that plans are in place for the crucial downtown corridor of north and south Broad Street (winner of a 2005 APA national award). The Neighborhood Transformation Initiative alone "has had numerous successes," he notes, and work is still in progress.

"Some people would like us to have more power and responsibility than we actually have," Chapman continues. "They care more about design issues, but design review is not something the planning commission really has much control over."

As for the fact that the last citywide master plan was adopted when Eisenhower was president, Chapman notes that the size, scope, complexity, and cost of such an undertaking require major public and political support. "It can't be done by a bunch of guys in a smoke-filled room," he says.

It's the development boom itself that has caused some of the unhappiness, Chapman adds. The boom has given the city a new desirability. But it has also caused inevitable problems that have heightened public interest in planning generally, and in reforming the zoning code in particular, he says.

Time for change
Two recent efforts represent the most far-reaching calls for change.

Last April, the Design Advocacy Group, a four-year-old, 470-member organization of architects and related professionals, issued a
"Reform Agenda for Planning and Design Review in Philadelphia." A concise, cogently argued document, it calls for more transparency, coherence, and expertise in the municipal planning and design review process. Specifically, it asks for more attention to transportation, housing, design, and environmental sustainability.

There are recommendations for revamping the zoning code, updating the comprehensive plan, and formulating plans for every neighborhood. An overall recommendation is that design be a consideration "in every public decision."

DAG cofounder William Becker, a principal of a local construction consulting firm, says the time is right to push this agenda. "A lot of civic-minded organizations believe the kind of changes we're talking about need to be made, and the mayoral election will provide an opportunity for a broader discussion," he says. "We think next year's election is a critical time to get these ideas out in the public air."

The city is already doing its part. Several agencies have gotten together to reform the development review process. Its efforts began with a 2004 report issued by the government affairs committee of the Building Industry Association of Philadelphia. The report, prepared with the help of public policy consultant Karen Black and entitled "If We Fix It, They Will Come," offers a series of straightforward recommendations.

According to a recent update Black prepared for the BIA, the city is making significant progress in carrying out its ideas in such areas as creating a comprehensive electronic zoning map, adopting a team approach to development review, and increasing the 24/7 availability of information from the Department of Licenses and Inspections.

It remains to be seen whether another recommendation — "make the zoning code an issue in the 2007 mayoral and city council elections" — will be followed, although Black says the BIA and its allies intend "to gain the commitment of every mayoral candidate that planning and zoning is a priority."

Tradition
While the city charter makes the zoning board of adjustment far more powerful in practical terms than the planning commission, Philadelphia has a long planning tradition. The city's heart was laid out by William Penn, and it remains home to vibrant, mixed use neighborhoods and a wealth of noteworthy buildings by such architectural luminaries as Frank Furness in the 19th century and Louis Kahn and Robert Venturi in the 20th.

In the post-World War II era, the leadership of the nationally renowned city planner Edmund Bacon transformed several gritty swaths of Center City, including the famously rags-to-riches neighborhood of Society Hill.

"This is a city that was a leader in planning in the 1950s and 1960s, when there was a lot of federal funding for planning, and the focus was on deteriorating neighborhoods," says Paul Levy, executive director of the Center City District, a business improvement district that has installed new downtown streetlights and sidewalks and initiated litter control and promotional programs since 1991.

Funding suffered when federal dollars became progressively less available in the 1970s, he says. And since then, planning has tended to focus on responding to decline, with fewer resources devoted to the middle- and upper-income neighborhoods that make up almost half the city. To bolster his argument, Levy cites the mayor's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative and the Philadelphia Housing Authority's replacement of several large public housing complexes with mixed income communities.

Both have benefited from good planning, he says. But what about the rest of the city? "We've seen a tremendous amount of reinvestment in the last 10 to 15 years in downtown and in many neighborhoods, but we seem to have lost the habit of planning for a successful [real estate] market," he says.

"I don't think anyone wants to return to the days of top-down planning," Levy adds, "but there are concerns about whether there should be design controls, new policies about parking, and certain controls related to density and scale." 

To Levy, the current interest in planning is healthy for the city. "There's a lot of energy bubbling up. The next mayor needs to capture that energy and link it to an overarching vision," he says.

Taken by surprise
Inga Saffron is the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the city's largest and most influential newspaper. Her weekly "Changing Skyline" column and ongoing blog have often been critical of what she characterizes as a lack of initiative by a city government unaccustomed to development pressure.

"The current housing boom took the city so by surprise and came after such a long period of dormancy that the city had almost completely forgotten what it was like," Saffron says.

A recent development is sure to add to the pressure. Responding to a mandate from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the city created a special zoning classification for gambling casinos — one that adopts wholesale the recommendations of the casino industry. Recently, five competing proposals have been made public, calling for enormous, auto-dependent, big box complexes that meet the classification requirements but have likely host neighborhoods such as Northern Liberties up in arms. Two casinos will be built.

"There's a lot of anger," Saffron says. "People are wondering, 'Where is my city, and why isn't it protecting me?'"

Clearly, candidates in next year's election are going to have to be conversant with planning and development issues. The Washington Square West Civic Association, whose members live in the mostly residential southeastern quadrant of downtown, is working with two other grassroots groups to draft a questionnaire for mayoral hopefuls.

Planning also is among the issues included on "The Next Mayor," a website and blog jointly sponsored by the Philadelphia Daily News, the public television and radio station WHYY, and a citywide watchdog group called the Committee of Seventy. Still, says Thom Nickels, an architecture columnist for the weekly Philadelphia Metro newspaper, crime is a far bigger issue than zoning. "I don't see Mr. and Mrs. Philadelphia having much concern about planning," he says.

That may be true, says Saffron. "But when you suddenly find out that a 40-story tower is going up in your neighborhood, planning is not just seen as an issue for the elites anymore."

As Levy observes, "I don't think anyone is going to be elected to be the 'planning mayor.' But there is a range of issues — including the obsolete zoning code — that an entrepreneurial and creative mayor can link together."

Kevin Riordan is a columnist for the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Packed Program Promised for APA in Philadelphia
With 300 years of history and a venerable planning tradition, Philadelphia is a natural for a national planning conference. Almost 100 mobile workshops — a record number — and over 200 sessions are on the books for next year's event, which runs from April 14–18 in the Philadelphia Convention Center.

New at an APA conference are nine special tracks, covering national planning trends and innovations:
• Housing choice and affordability.
• The evolution of urban form.
• Megaregions, sustainability, and transportation.
• Community development and neighborhood planning.
• Economic regeneration (with an emphasis on older cities in the eastern U.S. and brownfield and grayfield redevelopment).
• Arts, culture, and preservation (sure to include a discussion of Philadelphia's famed mural program as well as the role of local foundations in the city's cultural life).
• Innovative comprehensive planning.
• Revitalizing small towns.
• Planning for people with disabilities.

Add to that list sessions on waterfront management, the status of Philadelphia's zoning code revision, the role of universities in neighborhood redevelopment (notably the University of Pennsylvania's West Philadelphia Revitalization Program), training workshops on GIS and mitigation of natural disasters, reclaiming abandoned neighborhoods, the reuse efforts under way at the Philadelphia Naval Yard, and a host of other topics. 

The conference's closing session will focus on  the legacy of the late Philadelphia planner Edmund Bacon (there will also be a mobile workshop to Penn Center, Society Hill, and other sites associated with Bacon). A special AICP symposium will examine the contributions of transportation planning giant Alan Voorhees.

Mobile workshops, led by local planners, will provide close-ups of city neighborhoods and outlying locales. Destinations will include Mayor Street's transformed neighborhoods, the redeveloping Philadelphia Navy Yard, the Reading Terminal Market (connected to the convention center), Independence Mall, and other national historic shrines, and further afield, both Atlantic City and Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of performance zoning. Among the novelties: a running tour of Center City squares and a visit to a South Philadelphia cheese steak vendor.

Look for the preliminary conference program in the mail in December. And watch for a special issue of Planning on Philadelphia and its environs in February.

Ruth Knack

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