LIVABLE WASHINGTON UPDATE

By now, you should have received your copy of Livable Washington Update. This document is part of a multi-year public policy initiative started in 2002 to:

• assess the progress of the GMA;
• develop an action agenda to further implementation of GMA;
• enhance the understanding and image of the GMA among the public and elected officials throughout the state; and
• assure that the Chapter would be recognized as a leading advocate for good planning in Washington.

PLANNING AND PRESERVATION

Washington State Preservation Conference
Spokane, Washington
14 October 2003
David J. Brown
Executive Vice President
National Trust for Historic Preservation
Printed with permission from David J. Brown

It is a real pleasure to be in Spokane and to have the opportunity to speak to this joint conference of the Washington State Chapter of the APA and the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation.  I want to thank Lisbeth Cort, the Executive Director of the Washington Trust and Michael Sullivan, the Trust President for the invitation to speak to you today.  The Washington Trust has been a long-time and valued partner of the National Trust.  I'm also pleased to recognize Mary Thompson, one of our National Trust Advisors from the State of Washington, the new chairman of the Trust Board of Advisors, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Trust, as well as Karen Gordon, Advisor Emeritus from Seattle.  Theresa Brum, the Historic Preservation Officer for Spokane, is one of the preservation stars in this region of the country and we're all pleased to count her as a colleague.  I'd like to recognize Susan Kempf, the Main Street Coordinator for the State of Washington.  Main Street is the program at the National Trust and the states that's done the most to make the connection between preservation and economic development.  Since 1980 that program has been in 1800 communities, seen more than 94,000 buildings rehabilitated, brought about the creation of more than 230,000 jobs, and had a private sector investment that exceeds $17 billion.  Allyson Brooks, your SHPO, is here with us today, and I want to thank her for her work as our public sector partner in preservation. Finally, I hope you all have had an opportunity to meet Mike Buehler with the Western Regional Office of the National Trust in San Francisco.

The conference theme, Planning and Preservation:  Essential Tools for Economic Development, is one that I've focused on since graduating from planning school in the early 1980s.  Planning and preservation are essential elements in the revitalization of historic communities and urban America today.  Anyone who wanted to write a history of American cities in the last half of the 20th century could summarize it in just two words: disinvestment and reinvention.  We're here at this conference to talk about one aspect of that disinvestment/reinvention process: economic competitiveness and the role planning and preservation play in building that competitiveness.

Our older and historic cities today compete in a competitive marketplace with the suburbs, other cities, and the forces of economic globalization.  The competitiveness of older and historic cities is often hurt by aging infrastructure; poor images arising from unsafe streets, bad schools, bad public services, and rundown housing; the ongoing hemorrhaging of jobs and people, which although it has slowed still continues; and the lack of strong, visionary leadership.

But preservationists - and an increasing number of planners - have been successful in demonstrating the natural advantages our historic communities bring to the competition.

There is the traditional role as a place where people come together face- to-face, where the central city is the place for news and gossip, for the creation of ideas, for hatching deals.  This human congress is the genius of the place.

In The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida notes that historic cities are places valued for the authenticity and uniqueness necessary to attract the creative individuals who help fuel economic growth in America today.  Florida says that "Authenticity comes from several aspects of a community - historic buildings, established neighborhoods, or special cultural attributes."  An authentic place is equated - in the minds of the creative class - as places with "real buildings, real people, real history."  And by Florida's estimation, more than one- third of working Americans are now engaged in the creative fields, including the technology sector that's been so important to the Pacific Northwest.

The nature of the "new economy" - the need for the quick and easy exchange of ideas and access to information and the need for a highly skilled labor force is a good "fit" with the characteristics that define a city such as walkable neighborhoods, face-to-face interaction, and easy access to work/home/shopping/and community events.

Preservationists have also increasingly demonstrated the advantages historic preservation brings as a force in economic development.  In a work written for the National Trust entitled The Economics of Historic Preservation, Donovan Rypkema reviewed scores of studies from around the country and found that "dollar-for-dollar, historic preservation is one of the highest job- generating economic development options available.  In Michigan, $1 million in building rehabilitation creates 12 more jobs than does manufacturing $1 million of cars.  In Oregon, $1 million in rehabilitation creates 22 more jobs than cutting $1 million of timber.  In California, $1 million in rehabilitation creates 5 more jobs than manufacturing $1 million in electronic equipment.

The Government Finance Officers Association found these jobs also had significant and ongoing impact beyond the project itself.  Their study of the impact of preservation on local economies found that "rehabilitation activities have substantial indirect and induced effects."  Rehabilitation has a multiplier effect on local spending and when comparing $1 million in rehabilitation and $1 million in new construction, we find that $120,000 more will initially stay in the community in a rehabilitation project.

Travel guru Arthur Frommer notes that "Cities that ignore their historic preservationists and do not pay attention to the revitalization and economic development that can follow from their efforts are almost certain to suffer a dollar loss."

As we look to the 21st century, let's look back four decades, when Jane Jacobs pointed out that "New Ideas require Old Buildings".  Cities need old buildings so badly," she stated, that "it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them."

But Jane Jacobs' cry for recognizing the uniqueness of cities has too often been ignored in cookie cutter approaches to revitalization.  There is no "silver bullet" solution.  Strategies for reinvention and more effective competitiveness will - and should - vary from city to city.  We do know that "Quick fixes" don't work as well as incremental, sustainable reinvention.

Reinvention doesn't mean starting from scratch. The key is making good use of the assets you already have, including older buildings and neighborhoods that give your city character.  You can't make your city more competitive without making it more livable.  As MIT economist Robert Solow says, "Livability is not some middle-class luxury. It is an economic imperative."

Cities have demonstrated again and again their unique ability to reinvent themselves, and there are encouraging signs that it's happening now in most major cities. But it doesn't just "happen" - it requires careful thought, planning, and tenacity on the part of lots of organizations, public agencies, and individuals.  Strong commitment and leadership by city government is essential.  The planning offices at the local and regional levels are key to this success.  Governments - to be successful partners in the revitalization of our cities - must take decisive action to forge regional alliances, revise policies and practices that encourage or mandate sprawl, and develop incentives to bring people back to the city or keep them there.  We're certainly seeing that here in Spokane.

Kennedy Smith is the Director of the Main Street Center at the National Trust, and is one of the most effective advocates for using preservation as a tool for economic revitalization.  Kennedy says that one of the biggest myths about downtown revitalization is that it takes place downtown. The truth is that the reclamation and reinvention of communities happens in the offices where planning and land-use laws, policies and practices are shaped. All of the rhetoric and slick visual presentations on the wisdom of sensitive infill won't have any serious lasting effect in a community whose planning and land-use laws don't encourage full utilization of existing urban centers before building new ones.

Also essential to the success of revitalization is a strong preservation/advocacy organization with a commitment to revitalization of both the downtown area and the surrounding residential neighborhoods.  As more and more preservation organizations realize that their responsibility doesn't stop at the city limits, preservationists have to think regionally.  Finally, these groups must have an ability to build partnerships with government, the business community, and other nonprofits.  Spokane Preservation Advocates - under the leadership of National Trust Advisor Joanne Moyer and others - has shown how effective even an all-volunteer organization can be in promoting preservation.

Many examples exist of such groups, but in my hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the Main Street office formed a partnership with the Industrial Bond Board to hire professional market and real estate analysts to prepare a market analysis and economic development strategy for the historic downtown.  A major local employer - Nissan Motor Company - gave Main Street the money it needed to produce a high-quality recruitment package that rivals the packages being used by suburban counties to attract new businesses.  Murfreesboro's historic downtown now boasts a diverse mix of specialty shops, professional and governmental offices, restaurants, and service providers.  The city of 50,000 has seen more than $30 million in investment, more than 50 new businesses, and more than 1,000 net new jobs as a result of this preservation activity.

But to give you a more detailed look at what is possible when the public and private sectors unite around a common vision of using our historic resources as a tool for economic development; let's look at Denver, Colorado, where the partnership efforts and a combination of carrots-and-sticks have brought about dramatic change.  Earlier this month, 2,000 preservationists traveled to Denver for the Trust's annual national preservation conference to see first-hand the lessons of using preservation as a tool for economic and community revitalization.

Like most American cities, Denver developed with little attention to the finer points of urban design. The construction of the Civic Center during the heyday of the City Beautiful movement was plagued by so many delays and cost overruns that a whole generation of city leaders lost confidence in large-scale public improvements. When Frank Lloyd Wright made a speech in Denver in 1948, he called the city a "pig pile" and urged "the obliteration of the great clusters of humanity we call cities." The city fathers apparently thought that was a good idea, because a few years later they drew up an urban renewal plan to demolish 30 blocks of dilapidated buildings in the oldest part of downtown Denver.

But a local businesswoman named Dana Crawford had a different idea. She saw enormous potential in the ornate 3- and 4-story Victorian buildings that lined a single block of Larimer Street on the edge of the urban renewal area. She formed a partnership with investors, got the support of the mayor and went to work - uncovering historic storefronts, tearing off oversize signs and undoing decades of inappropriate alterations. She got the city to narrow the street and widen the sidewalks. She put up period gaslights and planted street trees. To attract the first specialty retail tenants, she offered flexible rents based on a percentage of sales. And to attract crowds, she organized special events and threw street parties. The reborn Larimer Square was among the first urban marketplaces of its kind - one of the first places to remind people that downtowns could be safe and fun, and that historic buildings could be economic assets too valuable to throw away.

The success of Larimer Square soon focused attention on a nearby area called Lower Downtown. This 25-block district had been Denver's downtown in the age of rail, and the streets around Union Station were lined with handsome brick warehouses and commercial buildings. But when rail traffic dwindled and the business district shifted gradually uptown, the area became a faded urban backwater. The oil boom of the 1970s stimulated a wave of new construction in the central business district, and investors began buying property in Lower Downtown for the purpose of demolishing the old warehouses and replacing them with new buildings and surface parking lots. Preservationists began to worry about the possibility of losing the area altogether.

Then in the mid-1980s two things happened. The oil boom went bust, curbing speculation and giving downtown Denver the highest vacancy rate of any major U.S. city. And at almost the same time, a new city administration took office under Mayor Federico Pena, who led efforts to capitalize on historic preservation as an economic-development tool to help keep the city from imploding. After lengthy and often heated debate, the City designated Lower Downtown a historic district, imposed new zoning controls and demolition restrictions, created incentives for development and a business support office to help with business recruitment, and sat back to see what would happen.

What happened was a major reinvestment in the area. The recession encouraged property owners to undertake adaptive-use projects that were less expensive than demolition and new construction. In addition, small businesses and arts and entertainment ventures that were less dramatically impacted by the recession found the small-scale, relatively inexpensive, visually interesting buildings of Lower Downtown very attractive. Remember Jane Jacobs - "New Ideas Require Old Buildings."  People began to call the area "LoDo" - a sure indication that they recognized it as a special place worthy of special attention. Money from the City, downtown business interests, Historic Denver and the National Trust created a loan fund to help finance facade improvements and upgrades required by building codes. The availability of federal and state tax credits for rehabilitation and job-creation also helped.

Within two years of the passage of the zoning package, $30 million in private funds had been invested in Lower Downtown. Hundreds of housing units have been developed, with many more planned. The City reinforced its commitment to the area's revitalization by investing almost $2 million in streetscape and public improvements. Construction of Coors Field on the edge of LoDo brought new crowds of people to the area and stimulated additional redevelopment. A new district plan, drawn up with significant public input, sets guidelines for new construction and seeks to maintain a balance between entertainment and residential uses, helping to ensure that the area will continue as a bright glow on Denver's economic horizon.

When the Denver Urban Renewal Authority asked people what form that new development should take in the downtown, the preferred model was - you guessed it - Lower Downtown.

To be competitive, historic communities can't try to remake themselves in the suburban image.  The message from Denver - and so many other places around the country - is that cities must retain and strengthen the characteristics that make them unique.

During the 1950s and 60s, urban renewal was touted as the best hope for transforming American communities. Hundreds of viable older neighborhoods and thousands of historic buildings were bulldozed. Decades later, many places still show the scars - and still suffer from many of the problems that this policy was supposed to solve. Urban renewal transformed communities, all right, but it didn't renew them. It ruined them.

For a whole generation of preservationists, the fight against urban renewal was the crucible in which their theories and convictions were tested and refined. It was probably the major catalytic event in the growth of the preservation movement. In reflecting on the legacy of that time, it's worth recalling an extraordinary statement by John Kenneth Galbraith: "The preservation movement has one great curiosity. There is never retrospective controversy or regret. Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact."

Preservationists were right about urban renewal. And by speaking out against it, they ultimately helped change government policy, helped change the way Americans thought about our cities. You can see it in Denver, where a National Trust honor award winner was presented a few years ago to the Wynkoop Brewery.  The developer of the Wynkoop - John Hickenlooper - was just elected the mayor of Denver, in another public recognition of the strength a preservation vision can bring to a community.

Many government officials - and planners - look at our cities today and say that they are doomed because of the inevitability of sprawl.  Sprawl can suck the economic life out of our older communities without generating new benefits.  Just as the previous generation faced the challenge of urban renewal, we face a similar challenge in the fight against sprawl. Our efforts are supported by thousands of people who never thought the labels "preservationist" or "new urbanist" applied to them - people who merely want communities that are safe, attractive and livable.

Our historic resources can play a key role in the economic revitalization of our country's historic cities.  Working together, we can do what our predecessors did. We can make a difference. We can use preservation of our historic resources as an economic catalyst to make America's communities better.

Thank you.

AICP EXAM

THE CHOICE: MY EXPERIENCE TAKING THE AICP EXAM
Edited and reprinted with permission from the Planning and the Black Community Division (PBCD) Winter 2004 Newsletter
By Kenya Wheeler, AICP

About a year ago, I decided to take the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) exam. Before making the decision, I spoke with a number of colleagues and mentors whose opinions on the exam ranged as broadly as the field of planning. Some individuals felt that the exam did not provide a good assessment of the day to day knowledge that today's planners need to know. Others felt that the exam was not critical in their path to successfully climbing the career ladder. However, most of these individuals (especially those who were critical of the exam) had not taken the exam. Yet, despite these wisdom and warning, I still decided to take the exam. Why?

With support from AICP, the Local Host Committee for the 2003 PBCD Conference decided to put together an AICP preparation workshop open to all planners to provide an opportunity for conference attendees and other interested parties to become better informed about the AICP exam. Hazel Edwards, Ph.D., AICP, Professional Development Officer (PDO) for the Maryland Chapter of APA; Michael DeVone Jones, AICP Membership and Database Manager; and Veronica Tam, AICP, then VP for Professional Development for the California Chapter of APA conducted a pre-conference workshop on the AICP exam. The workshop provided an overview of the mechanics of the exam and insight on some of the upcoming changes to the exam. This workshop reinforced that not only did I posses the knowledge and skills necessary to be a certified planner, but the AICP certification also offered an opportunity to obtain a nationally recognized credential that illustrated my competency in my professional field. As a planner working in the private sector at a consulting firm, I would directly benefit from achieving the AICP credential since it is recognized as a mark of distinction when presenting qualifications to clients. Finally, I recognized that by passing the AICP exam, I could directly contribute to increasing the passing rate for African Americans and encourage others to take the exam.

Preparing for the exam

With this rationale I decided to take the exam in May 2004. APA still required a two-step application process, which I started in late January and dutifully began studying for the upcoming test. Having been out of school for some time, I became acquainted with the difficulty of working and studying, even when the topic is relevant to your work. I was fortunate that my employer was very supportive of taking the AICP exam and provided resources such as an e-mail list for staff who want to prepare for the exam.

I also received help from my colleagues and friends who had taken the exam, and had provided copies of their study notes and materials. As an additional preparation, I participated in a one-day course taught by David Storer, a planning consultant, former Assistant City Manager for Elk Grove, and author of the AICP study guide CA in Sacramento, California. He provided an insightful view on what the exam was about, strategies to pass the test, and even what to do if you did not pass the exam (David passed the exam on his second try). His suggestions included reviewing the 2nd and 3rd editions of the Practice of Local Government Planning (also known as the "Green Book") and several other key planning texts. He also suggested that forming a study group was key to passing.

However, I found that it was hard to get a study group together. Since May 2004 was the first administration of the exam on computer, many of those in attendance at the study class decided they would not take the exam but wait for the next administration of the exam in November 2004. Having taken the computer-based adaptive GRE during the first year of its administration, I did not have any fear of a computer based test. In fact, I relished the thought of using some of the computer skills that I have acquired from years of sitting at a computer composing papers and working as a spreadsheet jockey. To supplement my review of planning texts, I obtained the AICP Exam Prep CD- ROM Course and reviewed the electronic presentations and the practice computer test.

Last minute preparation

As to be expected, panic set in days before the exam and I became very worried that I would not be ready for the exam. I started to cram for the exam, pouring over note cards and retaking the practice tests on the Exam Prep CD-ROM. About two days before the exam, I realized that I had done all that I could. I relaxed, reviewed a few final notes and made sure to get a good rest on the night before the exam.

Advice to test takers

• Setup a study group — A Study group provides a great opportunity to share the experience of reviewing a large amount of information and offer a great way to meet other planners in your area. Even if you can't find anyone in your area who is taking the exam, utilize your Chapter P.D.O. officer or PBCD resources (such as the e-mail list serv) to find others who are taking the exam.
• APA's Study Resources — I found that the AICP Exam Prep CD-ROM Course published in 2002 was a great resource for studying for the exam. The course, which is scheduled to be updated in 2004 is a great resource if you are studying alone or to share with members of a study group.
• Visit the test site — If you have time, visit the test site and make sure you are familiar with how to get there, parking restrictions, abnormal traffic conditions, etc. You don't want to be late or stressed before the test.
• Don't panic — When you are taking the exam, be sure to take your time to review questions. The software will allow you to mark questions that you are unsure of so that you can go back and change your answers.
• Ethics — Be sure you are familiar with the AICP Code of Ethics and Advisory Rulings — every planner should, and these questions are "freebies" if you have this information down.
• Visualize success — I know this sounds like one of those "only in California" statements, but just as a football coach rallies his team with words of encouragement you should do the same for yourself. Imagine yourself taking the exam and being presented with a screen that you "passed the test" when you are finished.