Detroit, for a good walkable downtown, sweat the fine details, not the big stuff

John Gallagher | Detroit Free Press

We're always being told to not sweat the small stuff, to focus on the biggest most important tasks.

But when it comes to creating a lively, walkable urban environment, it's often the smaller details that matter more.

I've been thinking about this in the wake of the recent announcement about the University of Michigan's new innovation center in Detroit. It's the kind of enormous project running into hundreds of millions of development dollars that always makes the biggest headlines.

But major projects often land like an alien spaceship in an urban setting, self-contained and remote from all around them. In the 1970s, that's how the Renaissance Center was built, a fortress on the waterfront. We generally agree today that the RenCen did little or nothing to revitalize downtown, at least until General Motors bought it in the 1990s and made major improvements.

Since then, Detroit and other cities have learned a lot of lessons about what makes for a welcoming, walkable environment. And while huge projects may generate jobs and tax base, often it's the more modest elements that create the sort of places that make us want to be there.

Here's some of what we've learned:

Mixed-use is better than single use

Giant office skyscrapers, exclusive residential towers, or hulking parking garages — like all single-use structures — tend to muscle their way into the streetscape without contributing much to pedestrian life.

But mixed-use buildings, with retail storefronts on the ground floor and offices or residences above, produce more foot traffic and more reasons for visitors to be there. Woodward Avenue downtown is more inviting today than in decades past because a lot of buildings from the early 20th century have been renovated with apartments above and retail storefronts below.

And the Capitol Park district downtown has gone from moribund to thriving as empty buildings surrounding the square were renovated and filled with shops below and apartments above.

This point has become so obvious that we're retrofitting a lot of mid- to late-20th century skyscrapers with new retail on the ground floor where before there was none.

Case in point: The skyscraper known as One Detroit Center opened in the early 1990s with a facade of somber granite that offered little of interest for passersby on the ground floor. Recently, the popular Townhouse restaurant grafted an outdoor glass-enclosed seating area onto the ground-floor side of the building — and generated more foot-traffic and more visual interest.

So, yes, it's great to land a big development. But it's better if that development offers a mix of uses rather than just one.

Programming matters more than design

When creating public spaces like Campus Martius Park, Detroit's experience shows that programming lots of activities will draw in more visitors than a fancy design will.

Campus Martius is not particularly interesting architecturally. But it packs in ice skating in the winter, music in the summer, a sit-down restaurant, a tiki bar, a giant sandy area for volleyball or for kids to play in, chess tables, vast amounts of seating and more.

It's that variety of activities that keeps people coming, from little kids playing in the sand to old men at the chess tables and skaters in the winter.

Contrast that with Hart Plaza on the river. Hart Plaza reflects a mid-century concept for major plazas — some fancy paving and sculpture but mostly big, windswept, and empty. It may fill up during special events but otherwise it's lonely almost all the time. The lack of programmed activities is painfully obvious — no food trucks, no basketball nets, no chess tables or tiki bars or music or skating.

Public spaces like Campus Martius, the RiverWalk, and Beacon Park are programming in as many activities as possible to draw in visitors. And it's working.

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Blurring the line between outside and inside

Consider the street furniture that we've added downtown in recent years. So much of it is movable rather that fixed — small folding chairs and tables that people can mix and match depending on the size of their group. That makes the seating that much more inviting and useful.

Or consider the type of glass in storefront windows. Clear glass works better than tinted glass to create a more inviting walkable retail district.

The Bedrock real estate firm is going even one better with the retail shops that will face the Farmer Street side of its Hudson's site project. Many of those storefronts will have garage door-type fronts that will roll up in good weather, blurring the line between outside and inside.

And in Detroit we see that a much imitated design element — wider sidewalks — contributes to a lively scene only when we fill them with good stuff like outdoor cafes and attractive landscaping. And there needs to be good retail storefronts facing them. too. Wider sidewalks do little by themselves but can contribute a lot if the other details are there, too.

Lessons learned

We're fortunate in Detroit that we've had 50 years of experience, here and elsewhere, in designing good urban environments.

We now know that the big sweeping projects of yesterday like the original RenCen often produced sterile landscapes. But the smaller, more human-scale nooks and crannies of our cities — places like Greektown or Capitol Park with lots of storefronts and places to sit — were the kind of places we value so highly today.

Lessons learned. And the good news is that we can apply those lessons today to make sure deals like the new UM innovation center sit amid a walkable urban landscape that makes it truly a part of the city and not remote from it.

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep. Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter.