When downtown becomes a place to live

In the initial stages of creating a downtown residential base, a city government has plenty of latitude. Because the number of people living downtown is low, the municipal administration can do things that residents wouldn't necessarily approve.

But once the number of downtown dwellers becomes substantial, City Hall discovers that the residents' opinions must be heeded.

That change seems to have registered recently on Washington, DC, a city whose downtown residential population grew from 4,900 in 2000 to 8,500 in 2010.

In her "Housing Complex" feature in Washington City Paper, Lydia DePillis recounts what happened when the District government agreed to let a company install nine large digital displays on the side of the Verizon Center. The displays would have advertised everything from iPods to insurance on the exterior of the entertainment center. The signs would have brought the District $8 million to $9 million in tax revenue over four years.

But that required a change in the city's special sign law. And some of DC's downtown residents "took issue," says DePillis, "with covering the arena with flashing lights." 

The owner of Verizon Center had won approval from the condo association nearest to the center. But residents from the surrounding blocks wouldn't allow that decision to stand. "I don't think any of the other residents who moved in here thought,' I want to see big billboards,'" DePillis quotes Nanette Paris, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, as saying. 

Thus, in the end, the digital sign idea was rejected. 

DePillis traces the efforts that have been made since the 1980s to get more people living downtown. 

The situation isn't perfect. There aren't quite enough residents to support retailers that cater strictly to downtown residents (as opposed to downtown workers and visitors). And reading between the lines of DePillis's article, a person can see that the vision of downtown is narrower in the nation's capital than it is in, say, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Vancouver's government planned parks, schools, and a mix of housing, so that the Canadian city's core would include families with children and people of modest income. Washington's downtown constituency is, by contrast, much less varied.

Nonetheless, Washington has come a long way in the past quarter-century, amassing a residential community that DePillis says is "finally grown up enough to ask for what it wants."

For more in-depth coverage on this topic: 

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• See the July-August 2011 issue of New Urban News. Downtown makeover, agrarian urbanism, bike sharing, bike-ped issues, TIGER III livability grants, unlocking remnant land value, selling the neighborhood, Landscape Urbanism vs. New Urbanism, new urban resort, granny flats, The Great Reset. 

• See the June 2011 issue of New Urban News. Mid-rise living, elevated walkways, Jane Jacobs and observational urbanism, affordable transit-oriented development, the coming housing calamity, rental and TOD to dominate market, New Town in bankruptcy, regional approach for high-speed rail, the civic costs of sprawl, redevelopment of mall. 

• See the April-May 2011 issue of New Urban News. Transit-oriented development, “cycle tracks,” gentrification versus revitalization, HUD grants, economic silver linings, light-rail development, pocket neighborhoods, close-in Maryland housing less expensive, transit outperforms green buildings, Charter Awards, shift to smaller stores.