A Look Back from 30: Why City Planning

August 30, 2022

I’m hitting a milestone this year - 30 years old - and it seems like the right time to reflect on what brought me to this moment. One of my favorite podcasts, Talking Headways, asks each of their guests “What got you interested in cities?” For those of us in the planning profession, I think this is an excellent question for us to reflect on from time to time. What made us decide that we wanted to dedicate our professional lives to improving the communities we live in? Well, as I look at 30, I think this is the perfect time to reflect on the inspirations that brought me into city planning and maybe encourage others to jump in too. If not professionally, all of us should be looking at the places we live and working to improve it little by little - your home, your street, your neighborhood, your city.

New Yankee Stadium

Old Yankee Stadium

Coors Field

Wrigley Field

Baseball

Syracuse, being a small- to medium-sized, was still big enough to get a kid interested in cities with all of its historic buildings, easy to walk to parks, and an ever diversifying population. But the real spark of interest came with traveling to much larger cities to catch a baseball game or two - Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toronto, New York. As anyone who reads this blog has figured out by now, baseball is a truly urban sport, and these yearly trips to great urban ballparks inspired an exploration into cities and their histories. The sights and sounds surrounding the excitement of the games were more interesting to me than the games themselves. Our trips may have been built around baseball games, but they were excuses to experience much, much more. Museums, shows, music - the things that make cities cultural hubs, no matter the size.

On top of that, they were the first experiences using robust transit networks. Riding the subway for the first time was much more exciting than my trips on OnTrack. When the 4 train first comes above ground to reveal Yankee Stadium, the old Yankee Stadium, is one hell of an entrance. OnTrack’s Game Day Express could have had similar vibes, but the low frequency and slow pace made it much more of a novelty than a true transportation option. Even so, I continue to think of ways that OnTrack could be revived into a fully functional system.

But beyond the culture and the transit experiences, it was architecture that first pulled me in.

Architecture

“Nothing is higher than an architect,” according to George Costanza, even if I would later realize that episode was the first time I ever heard of a city planner as a career. At the moment I agreed with him, but there was a lot more to learn. Architecture is what helps shape a place and informs how we can use it. Skyscrapers quickly became an obsession for me, even if Syracuse’s tallest building is only around 330ft tall. The quest to rebuild the World Trade Center site took this interest in skyscrapers even further as I followed all of the design submissions closely. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Bukowski made sure to share with me any newspaper or magazine articles she found about the project. The sheer size of the site and the meaning of the structures was like building a mini city within a city. The whole project was an introduction into modern architecture and city building as a whole. The history of the original towers, how the city grid was disrupted to accommodate the mall, and how the City looked to stitch itself back together after a tragedy.

All of this pushed my interest in cities further, to the point where I decided to build a miniature city of my own. Not quite as detailed as a model train set, but I slowly bought up dollar store model churches and homes, along with miniature models of famous skyscrapers, before building my own creations out of whatever I could find at home. In some ways, the result is similar to the community planning approach laid out in Dream, Play, Build by James Rojas and John Kamp, using whatever I could find to help create my ideal city. Looking back, I had already started to look beyond Costanza’s obsession with architecture and started to focus on how buildings worked together to form spaces and create distinct neighborhoods. Just if I knew city planning was a career.

But maybe that interest in how the built environment influenced us really came from the shows we saw on TV growing up.

Childhood Shows

I won’t get too deep into how the shows of my childhood shaped my thinking about cities, mostly because I’ve already done that. But I can’t skip over just how important the representation presented to kids in the 1990s was. After decades of shows focusing on the suburban experience, suddenly urban settings became popular again. Already Sesame Street was proving that relating to kids living in the city was important and ripe for storytelling. Mr. Rogers, while less urban than Sesame Street, pulled directly from his experiences in Pittsburgh, right down to the trolley reflecting the city’s famous inclines.

Hey Arnold took urban childhood shows to a new level, telling stories that really can’t be replicated in more suburban environments. Still, people think fondly of that fictional city and its distinct neighborhoods. But the urban influences went beyond shows aimed at kids. Seinfeld, Friends, the Cosby Show, Frasier, even Boy Meets World (the college seasons closer to downtown Philly especially) focused on characters in urban environments. We grew up with stories set in cities, so is it really any wonder that our generation has been (somewhat) slower to move to the suburbs than others?

This interest in storytelling did change my initial plans to pursue architecture, instead pursuing film and television production, but in some ways it ended up giving me a wider perspective that would eventually lead me into planning.

Media Production

I ended up pursuing an undergraduate degree in film and animation at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which grew into an interest in eventually working on Sesame Street. One of the side effects of this decision was the opportunity to travel to cities across the country and in Europe. I experienced living and working in DC, New York, and Los Angeles, as well as across Upstate New York. The over reliance of driving in the outer DC suburbs was an eye opening experience for me, and I grew to love riding the metro as a way to avoid it. I did my best to live in LA without a car, opting to ride transit or bike wherever I could. I still believe LA’s metro system is underrated, even if there is definitely room for improvement.

NYC showed me just how freeing it could be living without a car, even if the trains didn’t always sync up with an overnight work schedule. But on my days off, the train gave me a chance to explore almost anywhere in the City for just $2.75. And I made sure to see as much as I could (mostly whatever free events I could find).

But it was my time spent in Albany that started to remind myself why I was interested in cities in the first place. I worked at a 24 hour news station that covered news across the state. Similar stories continually crept up during my time there - dangerous streets leading to crashes that impacted innocent people walking, cities looking for new ways to improve their downtown cores to attract new investments, and a continued focus on preserving the industrial past that once made the cities growing and prosperous.

At the same time, Albany was the first place I lived after the Bronx, which was a giant change. I had gotten used to moving about without a car and walking everywhere. While Albany, and the surrounding Capital Region, had plenty of great urban neighborhoods, the connectivity had been broken up decades ago, much like cities across the country. It led me to wonder why I felt this disconnect. Luckily, Market Block Books in historic downtown Troy had a section of books dedicated to urban planning. The first two books I picked up, that remain two of the most important books I have ever read, include Street Fight by Janette Sadik-Khan and Walkable City by Jeff Speck. It was the first time someone really explained why certain areas, usually the more historic neighborhoods, invited you to spend time while others felt sterile and removed.

Over the next two years, and moves back to Syracuse and then out to LA, I found myself reading any book I could find on the subject. I ended up producing short videos for a city council candidate in Syracuse focused on urban planning issues and ideas. Eventually, while living in LA, I decided that media production wasn’t where my passion was, but instead I wanted to head back east and dive into planning.Within months I was back in NYC studying urban planning at CUNY Hunter College.

Hindsight really is 20-20 sometimes. Looking back, it’s easy to see that urban planning was always going to be my passion. My films and scripts at RIT focused on city environments. An interview at NBC Universal had me continually bringing up impacting communities and being good stewards (probably worked against me when they were looking for creative ways to make money). But I’m happy with the path I took at the same time because it gave me different ways to look at the issues.

So I apologize if this ends up being a long story with an obvious ending, but I hope it gives you a chance to reflect on your own experiences with cities and your city in particular. And if you have an interest to keep reading and exploring, I want to end this post with some recommendations of my favorite books, podcasts, and YouTube channels that have truly helped shape my thinking on the subject. I hope they can inspire and inform you the way they have done so for me.

Book Recommendations

These recommendations will be broken down into a couple different categories . To keep the lists short, I will only be noting my three top choices in each category.

Podcast Recommendations

While there are dozens of podcasts I listen to that touch on urban planning subjects, I wanted to give my top five (okay six) that are the most accessible and interesting to a casual listener.

YouTube Recommendations

Similar to podcasts, many YouTube channels focus on urban planning and architecture issues, but here are my top five that will make you want to watch even more.

As a bonus, not just because it had a crossover episode with Not Just Bike but because its one of the most excellent channels on YouTube: Climate Town.

Let's Talk About Intersections, Part Two

July 31, 2022

In Part One we looked at intersections as the key to making our streets safer. For Part Two, we will take a closer look at some specific intersections within the City of Syracuse. Now there are hundreds of intersections that could use safety upgrades, but within this post I will be looking only at three. These are not deep dive planning or engineering studies, but instead ideas based on my lived experiences using these intersections and I feel they could be improved. I will also note that there is a geographic bias to these selections, with two being on Grant Boulevard on the Northside of the City. Having grown up just off Grant Boulevard (and having written three blog posts about it - Part I, Part II, Part III), its a good stand in for many of the neighborhood main streets across the City. The third intersection sits right outside of City Hall, which should be used as a model intersection for the rest of the City to follow.

Grant Boulevard / Kirkpatrick Street

Just west of Butternut Circle (which is currently being re-built as a more traditional intersection) sits Grant Middle School, home to around 1,000 students in grades 6-8, on the corner of Grant Boulevard and Kirkpatrick Street. The intersection is controlled by a 4-way stop and sees fairly light traffic. Across the street, the old St. Francis / Gingerbread House campus sits empty, but ready for redevelopment. This intersection is representative of intersections of many around schools within the City and could set a good example for how to increase safety for kids walking to and from school.

A first option, which would be cheap and easy to install, would be a painted bump out with vertical delineators at each corner. This technique has been used in cities across the country, including extensively in New York City and Hoboken, NJ. Bump outs would help define the corners and ensure people looking to cross are not obstructed by cars parked too close to the intersection. This would also narrow the visual roadway which has been shown to prompt drivers to slow down.The painted bump outs could eventually be improved to be fully curbed and including green space, similar to what can be seen along Water Street as mentioned in the previous blog post.

Grant - Kirkpatrick - RAISED INTERSECTION.png

A second, more ambitious option, would be the installation of a raised intersection. The raised intersection slows traffic, similar to a speed bump/table, while also elevating people on foot so they are more visible. The crossing would be further enhanced by utilizing stamped brick pavers to mark the intersection, which acts as an additional traffic calming measure.

Both of these improvements should be explored for intersections around all schools in the City. While many of these schools are set within residential areas with fairly light traffic, they are magnets for kids and families whether school is in session or not. By emphasizing pedestrian movements in this way, the schools and the public park space that surrounds them become even safer destinations for parents to let their kids venture to on their own.

Washington Street / Montgomery Street

Washington Street reaches a width of 56 feet as it passes in front of City Hall. For a street that only carries around 4,500 vehicles per day, this is absurdly wide. To understand why Washington Street is so wide, you need to know that trains used to run straight down the center of it until the 1930s. When the train tracks were finally relocated to where I-690 presently runs, the City maintained the street at this same width, as many cities have been reluctant to reduce already built rights-of-way. And so here we are with a lightly used street in front of arguably the most important building in the City that creates uncomfortable crossing conditions for people looking to enter its doors. The City is already working to improve this entrance through blocking off a small pull-off area and painting it to create a small, welcoming plaza. But there’s still work to be done when it comes to getting people to its doors.

Washington St - Montgomery St - BUMP OUTS ONLY.png

Similar to the first recommendation for Grant / Kirkpatrick, the addition of bump outs, whether painted or curbed, is vital. Currently, people waiting to cross struggle to see cars coming from the west due to the awkward angle the curb line takes. Often, its made even more difficult due to cars parked close to the crosswalks. Extending the curb out will help define where cars are allowed to park, shorten the distance people need to cross, as well as increase the visibility for everyone. This is something easy to do and would help create a more inviting approach.

Washington St - Montgomery St - BIKE LANES.png

Getting more ambitious, we should go beyond just the intersection and rethink the streets that connect into it. Washington Street could easily be reduced in size for most of its length through Downtown Syracuse. Keeping the street to a single lane in each direction would allow for the addition of a parking protected bike lane along each curb. While there are bike lanes on Water Street and Fayette Street, neither of those streets offer a protected route through Downtown, and do not have the space available for protection to be added, making this an important addition to the network. At the same time, Montgomery Street, south of City Hall, is a three-lane one-way street that sees less than 3,000 vehicles per day. Along the side of City Hall, Montgomery Street is already a single lane one-way street. Keeping the street to those same dimensions would provide space for additional bike lane connections from the Empire State Trail on Water Street into the heart of Downtown. With the addition of these bike lanes, this intersection becomes a prime candidate for the City’s first protected intersection.

Grant Boulevard / Teall Avenue

In the 2021 City of Syracuse Safety Assessment, SMTC identified the Grant Boulevard / Teall Avenue intersection as a priority intersection due to its crash history. Drivers often speed to get through the light, cars move through the slip lanes quickly without looking for people on foot or bike, and the signal timings do not favor easy pedestrian crossings.

With this in mind, this could be a prime candidate for a roundabout. While the roundabout may require some minor eminent domain to fit, it would allow traffic to move freely at lower speeds and improve pedestrian access. People on foot will be able to cross shorter distances and only need to look in one direction at a time while their visibility to drivers will be increased. Cyclists, meanwhile, will be able to use roundabout in traffic with greater ease as the speeds will be much easier to manage. As part of this change, the Mobil gas station will be required to close two of its driveways, forcing drivers to use the entrances further from the intersection. This, again, will improve safety as drivers will not be competing with intersection movements and have more time to react. While the slip lanes will continue to exist, the pedestrian islands will be enlarged and the lanes will be narrowed. Sidewalks, or potentially a shared use path, should also be added along Woodlawn Cemetery’s property to increase accessibility through the area.

Beyond the intersection, the structures of the streets connecting through the intersection warrant significant changes.Teall Avenue north of the intersection is a four lane roadway with a speed limit of 35 mph. This roadway only sees a little over 5,000 cars per day, a number easily handled by one lane in each direction. Retrofitting this corridor with a road diet (one lane in each directions separated by a turning lane) would handle the traffic levels with ease and would make turning into and out of the businesses along the roadway easier. It would also provide space needed for bike lanes, but the addition of bike lanes would be better paired with a reduction curb cuts that would need more consideration.

These are just three examples of changes, both big and small, that could help improve safety and accessibility in Syracuse. Some can be applied to similar locations across the City, while others are a little more specific to the issues of that location. But the main takeaway should be that we have tools to improve how we move through our city and we should be encouraging each other to think outside the box on how to use them. Brainstorm your own ideas and share them to help start a conversation.

An extra wide Clinton Street allows for cars to travel faster than needed, often resulting in cars coming to a stop on top of the crosswalk.

Let's Talk About Intersections, Part One

June 30, 2022

If you’re like me, seeing a truly well designed intersection is exciting. More than likely you’re not as nerdy as I am and you’ve got other things that keep your attention, only noticing an intersection when there’s an issue. But intersections are the most important thing for a city to get right if they want to keep people safe. This goes for people in cars, on bikes, or simply walking across the street. And for most intersections, we have a lot of room for improvement.

We could look across the Atlantic for inspiration, and some of that will come in later in this piece, but I think it’s more instructive to look at positive examples right here in America.Towards the end of June 2022, articles began to appear celebrating Hoboken, NJ for reaching four years of zero traffic deaths. For comparison, Syracuse, NY, whose population of 148,000 is just under 3x Hoboken’s 54,000, experienced over 40 traffic fatalities in the same timespan.

So what is Hoboken doing right?

When it comes to intersections, the City has focused on ensuring that everyone has the ability to see everyone else. This may seem like a simple concept, yet you can walk out to most intersections and find barriers. Signs clutter the corners, cars are parked far too close to the intersection, curb radii are too large forcing pedestrians to cross long distances where they may not be seen by oncoming vehicles, etc. A key way to improve this issue is through “daylighting.”

Daylighting is the process of moving obstructions away from the intersection. You’ll often see signs that state “No Stopping Here to Corner.” These signs are an attempt at daylighting, but with very little influence on driver behavior. Walk in a busy neighborhood and you’ll often see a car parked exactly where it’s told not to. Hoboken has taken the task of daylighting more seriously through their extensive use of curb extensions. This might be paint paired with flex posts to define the space, or, better yet, concrete extensions of the sidewalk. Curb extensions not only enhance visibility of pedestrians and cars, they also slow vehicles down as they enter a tighter space. As humans, we naturally slow down in confined spaces being extra cautious not to hit the sides built up around us. This is why highway lanes are wider than local streets, or at least should be.

Bike racks and corrals have also been used to daylight intersections, clearing sitelines for drivers and pedestrians while creating a convenient space for cyclists to park.

Water Street Bump Out

Water Street Pinch Point

Syracuse has some great examples of curb extensions too, they’re just few and far between. But where they are placed, they make a significant difference. A prime example is right outside City Hall on Water Street; concrete curb extensions paired with a planted furnishing zone to provide shade and extra definition to the space.

Just down the road, Syracuse has made use of another traffic calming technique, the pinch point. While this isn’t at an intersection, its worth noting how the same principles of a curb extension can be applied mid-block where people have a reason to cross, such as getting to a museum or their office.

Raised Intersection

Raised Crosswalk

Going back to Hoboken, and several other communities across the country including Philadelphia, there have been intersections that have been taken up a notch, literally. Raised intersections, as seen in the above photo found on Streetsblog, bring cars up to the height of the sidewalk, similar to a speed bump. These intersections enhance visibility for people on foot while slowing drivers down. A narrower version of this approach is the raised crosswalk, which keeps people on foot at the higher level of a sidewalk while drivers are forced to slow down to go over the sidewalk. This can be seen in the photo from Cincinnati above.

In the Netherlands, specifically Amsterdam, combinations of raised intersections and crosswalks are seen throughout, typically forcing drivers on the main street to slow down as they turn onto residential side streets.

Now that we’ve made the jump to some international examples, let’s take a look at probably the best design for intersections for all users; the Dutch intersection. A more universal name for it is the protected intersection, as it creates barriers that protect both cyclists and pedestrians as they use the intersection.

Syracuse Bike Intersection

Dutch Intersection

Let’s take a look at the two photos above. The one of the left is from Syracuse where two bike lanes meet in Downtown. This is typically how American cities handle this type of intersection, with both lanes starting and ending at the intersection with no real separation between cars and bikes. Now when you look at the graphic on the right, you’ll see an extra level of separation. Not only is the bike lane protected, but a concrete island stretches between the two crosswalks forcing drivers to take wider, safer turns. At the same time, cyclists and pedestrians are moved up further in front of drivers before they cross. This gives them a chance to begin crossing before cars get into the intersection. Ottawa, Canada has been at the forefront of this style of intersection in North America, with some even appearing before bike lanes are installed.

One thing these intersections require is the removal of curbside parking, either by eliminating parking all together or creating floating parking lanes, which Syracuse has struggled to embrace in the past. But things are changing and the City is putting forth a true effort to create safer bike infrastructure.

While you may not find intersections as interesting as I do, it's important to recognize when they’re done well and what benefits they bring. Create spaces where people of all ages and abilities feel safe to move around the city. Quiet your streets by slowing down cars and encouraging other modes of travel. Embrace an all around healthier city and self by creating safe spaces. We may not officially have a Vision Zero policy in Syracuse, but advocating for and implementing these improvements can get us on our way there.

In Part Two, I’ll take a look at some specific intersections to explore what we might be able to do to improve them for everyone.

The intersection of Washington and Montgomery in Downtown Syracuse was originally due to train tracks that ran down the center of the street. Now pedestrians are pushed off to the side as the prepare to cross, out of sight of cars and obstructed by trees, lamps, and signage.

Tom’s Restaurant which was featured as the ultimate third place for the cast of *Seinfeld* functions as a true third place for residents and visitors alike.

Third Places: Where Everyone Might Know Your Name

May 31, 2022

Think back to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, or even through that first year or so before most of us were able to get vaccinated. Many of us tried to minimize the amount of time we spent in public beyond what we were required to do. Our social functions were canceled or moved online. We saw only a small group of people who we were close to, looking to minimize our exposure to a new virus. Obviously many people were still going into work because their jobs were essential, but we were unable to go anywhere to decompress and enjoy a social gathering like we had become used to. We lost access to people.

This isn’t anything new. In many ways we’ve been slowly increasing our social isolation for decades. We use drive-thrus instead of walking into a burger joint or coffee shop. We order our packages online instead of going out to shop. Many live in the suburbs and drive to work every day, never interacting with another person unless they choose to. I’m guilty of this as well. Ordering a bagel online and spending less than five seconds in the actual shop has become a habit for me. These aren’t all bad things, and some even have some significant positive effects, but they do keep us from people outside our own circles and we lose out from many rich interactions as a result. In some cases, they have exasperated what many have been calling the epidemic of loneliness as we leave those without a social circle to fend for themselves.

A common thread through most of my blog has been the importance of creating spaces where people are encouraged to interact with friends and strangers. This might be through encouraging people to get out of their cars and walk or ride a bike through the city; closing streets to encourage outdoor dining or games; or creating shared experiences like a sporting event or festival. Each of these look for opportunities for people to mix with others they may not engage with otherwise. That, in essence, is what a “third place” provides.

Ray Oldenburh, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, describes third places as separate from home (the “first” place) and work (the “second” place) where people go seeking leisure with friends and strangers. They are the places where there is little to no cost to enter and you’re invited to connect with others outside of your immediate circles; churches, parks, coffee shops, salons, diners, gyms, bars or even your local corner store.

Our TV shows are filled with third places. Tom’s Diner in Seinfeld, Central Perk in Friends, McLaren’s Pub in How I Met Your Mother, and Cheers. While these are fictional places, many of us have found similar places of our own where we can walk in and expect to see friends or at least familiar faces.

In many ways, third places are what make cities the amazing and vibrant places that they are. They are vital components to the “sidewalk ballet” as Jane Jacobs writes, where people’s movements and interactions reflect one another. You can see it in some of our older neighborhoods where the business cores still exist. The businesses may have changed hands or redeveloped entirely, but their function as a gathering place still remains.

It might be a gym where you run into neighbors and friends, or see specific members every morning and know their general routine. It might be a cafe where your barista knows your order right when they see you, or a bar that ensures the game you care about is playing on the TV. There’s a familiarity but also a chance to encounter others you may not have expected. It becomes a part of who you are, and you become part of a small community.

Diners, more than almost anywhere else, have served as true third places for generations. Cheap comfort food. Small, intimate settings often with staff who have been there for years. Customers who come in weekly, or even daily, to get the same thing over and over, which is a goal of mine as I get older. Every city I travel to I try to find a small neighborhood diner to hit up, knowing that I’ll get to see a different side of the community. Its easy to walk into a conversation and learn something new.

Yet, many of our third places are being lost. Rents have become burdensome to many. Large chains have begun to dominate suburban areas, which may be even more true after the pandemic as many smaller businesses struggled to stay afloat. Our towns have emphasized the development of large shopping centers with big box stores that require a car to visit instead of encouraging smaller, more niche buildings in walkable areas.

Diners and neighborhood bars have struggled in recent years, unless they have leaned into becoming Instagramable set pieces. This isn’t to say these newer spaces don’t offer up good food and atmospheres, but they do become difficult to get into or come with a price barrier some can’t meet. Some places are working to reinvent themselves, like bars that encourage game nights with or without drinks, or adding outdoor dining spaces wherever possible to increase customer comfort during the Covid era.

We need to protect and encourage the development of these third places. There’s no magic way to conger these spaces up, but instead it requires a holistic approach to cities.

We can lay out a solid foundation through public policies including: zoning that allows neighborhood businesses within every residential neighborhood; affordable small business loans; affordable housing and commercial space requirements; and streamlined permitting and approval processes.

We can also encourage more community activity through the design of our public areas through: wide, accessible sidewalks that allow people of all abilities to get around outside of a car; bike lanes and bike parking to encourage a more social form of transportation that also keeps streets quiet and pleasant for people to talk and engage; and the preservation of greenery through street trees and public parks.

These are all common themes through urban planning, but often these policies are thought of in silos. Business development is often removed from active transportation policies and the parks department, even though many of these businesses offer up a public service of their own. Third places are a utility to the communities they are in and we should expand how we incorporate them into our planning discussions.

Next time you’re in a third place, think about what that place may mean to you beyond just the food or service they specialize in. Think about the community you interact with and how that might shape the way you think and behave just because this space is part of your normal routine.

A small outdoor space behind a local bodega in the Bronx becomes an impromptu community space after NYCFC games at Yankee Stadium nearby.

New York Islanders playing at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Major League City: Balancing Civic Pride and Public Financing

April 30, 2022

At the beginning of April 2022, New York State approved a budget that included $600 million for a new football stadium in Orchard Park for the Buffalo Bills.This sparked criticisms and celebrations, with both sides arguing what value should be put on keeping a professional franchise in a particular city. Why should the public be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize a billionaire owner and one of the wealthiest leagues in the world? Why would we risk losing a franchise that is seen as a fundamental part of our community? Is there a better balance that we can strike?

I’ve written about how stadiums relate to the cities they’re in before on this blog, primarily focusing on baseball stadiums (surprisingly the sport with the most urban beginning). But I want to take a larger view of the discussion and how we might find a better way to keep our teams in the cities they have come to be synonymous with.

No one can question that being considered a “major league city” has a certain impact on the pride of a community. Having your skyline broadcast across the country and hearing your city’s name discussed alongside other cities who may be much larger or more prominent than your own helps boost a sense of pride among citizens, even those who are not fans. As Dan Moore put it in an article for the Ringer, “They remain perhaps the last public-private institution capable of transcending partisan divides at scale, and they inspire a kind of devotion that few enterprises can match.” And that is a powerful force. Providing a common theme to unite around and hold up as a symbol of your community is an intangible benefit that is hard to put a price on. While this discussion is primarily on professional sports, college sports can have the same (if not even a more robust) effect on the communities they reside in.

These teams come with many side benefits as well, including team sponsored foundations that support education, health, and athletic programs, often in disenfranchised communities. Just one of many examples is NYCFC building over 50 mini soccer pitches across New York City to help provide open space and athletic opportunities to kids in each of these neighborhoods. Teams can also attract other quality of life amenities such as musical performances, museums, and art shows as the City now has a raised profile across the country. These artistic scenes can, and do, thrive without a major league franchise, but there is a long history of athletes connecting with and promoting artists in their cities, giving them a reach they may not have been able to achieve on their own.

But these cultural benefits can also provide a team, and specifically their owner, with an incredible amount of power.

It is true that it’s tough to imagine Buffalo without the Bills, but at one point it was impossible to imagine Brooklyn without the Dodgers too. There are dozens of examples of teams leaving cities to seek out a higher profile or a better financial deal, and for the cities they leave behind it can be a true blow to civic pride and engagement. As Aaron Cowan wrote when discussing the major shifts in baseball during the urban renewal period of the ‘50s and ‘60s, the “…loss of a professional sports franchise amounted to a tacit admission that a city was dying.”

This mentality still rings true today. To lose one of your greatest promotional tools is a blow to a region, and the owners know it. Since the 1950s, teams have been using this power to their advantage in acquiring funding for new and improved stadiums, or extended tax breaks for renovations, all while gaining incredible wealth off of the talent of their players. They have continually threatened to leave cities if they weren’t given sweetheart deals on land to develop or, in what is increasingly the case, provided extreme amounts of public funding to support their for-profit businesses. And this is on top of evidence that these investments do not financially pay off in the long run, especially football stadiums.

New Yankee Stadium was developed with public assistance through the transfer of park land.

The New York Yankees were given park land for free to develop their new stadium and large tax deductions in tow, with the only requirement that they convert the old field to a park when it was torn down.Las Vegas put up $750 million to construct a $2 billion stadium for the Raiders, which was a prerequisite for attracting them to the city, slashing the area’s education budget to chip in. The Buffalo Bills stadium will receive a total of $850 million in taxpayer funds to build a $1.4 billion stadium across the street from the old one. While a Downtown Buffalo stadium was explored, the extra cost was deemed too steep, even if that location would provide additional development/economic opportunities and be far more accessible to all residents as it would be located near several bus lines and the light rail line.

While I won’t say the public should not invest to some degree in these facilities, as there truly are benefits to having a major league team, what has now become expected of cities (funding huge portions of these projects with little benefit beyond keeping the team in town) is unacceptable. If a team receives public investments in their projects, they should be expected to do more with that money than simply line their pockets.

Using NYCFC again as an example, the team’s current search for a suitable location for a soccer specific stadium includes the goal of providing hundreds of units of affordable housing in an adjacent development, along with retail and office space, helping to create a dense, mixed-use neighborhood. Housing affordability is a long-term crisis for New York City, so to have an MLS team include hundreds of units within their development plans only makes sense. Other cities should consider this requirement as part of stadium developments as well, but this brings up the discussion of where these developments should take place.

PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, sits across the river from Downtown Pittsburgh and is surrounded by restaurants, bars, and park land.

While we want to make sure any sort of stadium development does not displace residents or businesses as much as possible, we should be asking that these developments occur close to the urban center. By locating near the urban center, and reducing the size of the typically massive parking lots, you increase the accessibility of the stadium by non-car transportation modes, which is beneficial from an environmental stand point but also increases the ability of households without personal vehicles to attend games and events. The central location also benefits any affordable housing or commercial development associated with the stadium. Residents would enjoy access to public transit and shorter trips to work/shopping while businesses would benefit from an accessible location and association with their city’s team. You also benefit the businesses already in the neighborhood by bringing in additional customers during game days. Suburban stadiums are often surrounded by seas of parking lots with nothing around them, while urban stadiums encourage visits to nearby bars, restaurants, and retail locations.

Even if we do work out deals where team owners develop their stadiums in easily accessible urban locations and provide affordable housing/commercial development spaces alongside them, we still should not have public entities picking up the majority of the bill. Owners are billionaires with plenty of money to play with. If they require the public to put up substantial sums to subsidize their own wealth, cities/counties/states should be able to take partial ownership of these teams as they have invested in the teams as much, if not more, than the owners have. The development of a true public ownership model (most likely through a public-private partnership that leaves the team out of the day-to-day concerns of our elected officials) is beyond what I will discuss here, but its something that should be explored more if the public is continually asked to foot the bill for these large construction projects.

Hosting a major league team, or a high profile college team, does come with some powerful benefits; raised profile, increased civic pride, economic development opportunities, etc. But we cannot allow their owners to strong arm our cities and regions into subsidizing their profits. We need to ensure these stadium deals provide real benefits to their communities and give the public more of a say in what they entail. Teams are a quasi-public entity and we should try to make them more of a public benefit.