Snobbery isn’t a trait I find very attractive in many people, especially when it’s directed at superficial things like cars, house’s, school districts, and clothes. And yet, I can’t help but take full ownership of my own snobbery regarding urban forms and how easy I believe it is to implement them properly. It may be the snob in me, but I honestly believe developing and maintaining good urban forms is really a simple concept:
- Step One – Open your eyes
- Step Two – Take note of the streets, neighborhoods, and cities that attract investment, have strong sense of place characteristics, and are aesthetically pleasing
- Step Three – Emulate them
- Step Four – Done!
And yet, my recent move to the Northern Liberties neighborhood in Philadelphia has brought me back to reality and made me realize that maybe this isn’t such a simple concept and maybe my snobbery has clouded better judgment. Essentially, my first impression is that the neighborhood has been inundated with urban infill that diminishes the great forms that already exist and therefore threaten the very reason the area has attracted so much investment to begin with.
To understand why this is happening in a place like Northern Liberties takes a bit of storytelling. A long time ago, in the 1990’s, Philadelphia’s Center City started becoming extensively gentrified, modernized and no longer affordable to the masses. As real estate prices increased, this effect began spilling out into surrounding neighborhoods, eventually landing in Northern Liberties just north of Old City. Since the 1950’s, the neighborhood has seen its fair share of demolitions and neglect, leaving large swaths of land ripe for large-scale redevelopment. This fact coupled with gentrification pressures moving into the neighborhood bore the fruit of large-scale urban infill development throughout Northern Liberties.
This is where the spotty infill comes into the story, a phenomenon that seemed to happen for three reasons:
- There wasn’t enough regulation or strong enough a Neighborhood Plan to enforce better infill standards from the onset
- The developer’s are likely not attuned to what types of forms make a great neighborhood
- The individual developer is more concerned with their bottom line than creating a cohesive neighborhood and thus uses ‘edgy’ materials and irregular building placements as a marketing tool to stand out in the crowd rather than fit in.
While I am sure individual developers have had immense profits from their developments throughout Northern Liberties, the collective neighborhood has been left with a number of issues, outlined in the series of images below:
Garage doors abound on ground floor residential streets, with no entrance articulation
Buildings are positioned at odd angles and do not provide cohesive urban building walls
Buildings ignore street corners
Cheap materials
Buildings don’t address public parks (this sits across the street from Northern Liberties premiere park)
Creates monotonous walls that don’t activate the ROW
Poor parking design
All of these examples, while individually annoying, collectively make for a bigger problem and create an urban realm that seems more like an odd patchwork collection of buildings than a unified district. I am not calling for building or material monotony; I am simply stating the need for a more cohesive product that achieves a sustainable neighborhood worth caring about long-term. My fear is that because a unified district is not being recreated in many Northern Liberties streets, overall sense of place will suffer and in 30 years the area will once again fall into neglect and disrepair.
All is not lost though as the neighborhood still has many opportunities to fill in the fabric gaps that still exist. But post-recession, investment seems to be picking up steam again and new infill projects are constantly rising from the ground. Therefore, the neighborhood needs to develop even better standards for urban infill projects; ones that compliment the very reason infill is happening to begin with: the existing historic fabric already in place. My hope is that this can happen and Northern Liberties can maintain and build upon its current upswing for many years to come.
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