All Cities Are Beautiful

January 1, 2025

At the beginning of each new year many of us find ourselves making resolutions on how we’d like to change for the better. This could be going to the gym more, taking up journaling, traveling, or being more present with your friends and family. It's a time to reset, take stock of everything that came before, and decide how we’d like to begin anew. Many times to begin this process of change we must also change our mindsets. As 2025 begins, I’d like to take a moment to reset how we view our cities and remind us that all cities are beautiful. All cities are home to joy, sadness, excitement, the mundane, and the beautiful. Let’s remember to look for the beauty in all of those emotions and see how our environment shapes them.

When we travel, we often are open to seeing the beauty in the places we visit. We notice the vibrancy of a downtown district or the way an urban canyon forms as you look down a crowded street. We notice the unique restaurants, cafes, and bars that we visit while wandering around a new place. The cultural touchstones unique to each city. Even the everyday places (corner stores, gas stations, laundromats, etc.) spark interest and intrigue as we compare them to the ones we see in our neighborhoods.

Naples, ITA

North Berwick, UK

Florence, ITA

Kilkenny, IRE

Rome, ITA

Yet, when we’re home, in the city we are most familiar with, we continually overlook these same values and beauty. Our everyday experiences, from home to work and school, blind us from the beauty others may see when they experience it for the first time. So, in 2025, I challenge each of us to look for the beauty in our everyday lives, in the cities we call home.

This goes beyond the places we all know as beautiful - the cathedrals, historic buildings, stately homes, and park space - and ventures into the everyday beauty. How the street trees look in the fall. How the sunlight hits the houses in your neighborhood at the right time of day. The utilitarian structures that someone put a little more effort into to make them unique, even a parking garage.

Santa Monica, CA

Los Angeles, CA

New York, NY

Rochester, NY

Cincinnati, OH

This includes the events that gather our neighbors into common spaces to enjoy a shared experience. Festivals change how we experience our cities, pedestrianizing them, allowing us to experience new vantage points otherwise off limits or fleeting when you drive by in a car. Slowing us down and allowing us to look at the details on each and every building.

New York, NY

Syracuse, NY

New York, NY

Syracuse, NY

Pittsburgh, PA

But this doesn’t mean we should preserve our cities in amber. Our cities are beautiful because they change and grow. In Syracuse, so many of our historic buildings have been changed in recent years, bringing new life to them through conversions and rehabilitations. New buildings add to the fabric of our cities, demonstrating vibrancy through contrast.

We’ve expanded ways to see our cities. New shared use paths, bike lanes, and transit have given people new found access to their communities, at a pace and scale that connects us to our surroundings. We’ve preserved our waterfronts in ways to give everyone access because everyone deserves a chance to enjoy it.

New York, NY

Pittsburgh, PA

Denver, CO

Syracuse, NY

New York, NY

We’ve found opportunities to bring color into our streets. Murals, both on buildings and in the streets, have given people a chance to put their mark on their neighborhood. They’ve brought people together and showcased different cultures. While we often see graffiti as a nuisance, it can also be beautiful, defining a space and time.

Naples, ITA

Chicago, IL

Washington, DC

Rochester, NY

Minneapolis, MN

In 2025 we must take moments to appreciate this beauty and find ways to keep infusing life into our neighborhoods. We should be open to welcoming new neighbors and allowing them to add to the shared beauty of our cities. Always be looking around as if this is your first time seeing your city. See it through fresh eyes and look for your chance to make your mark. All cities are beautiful, if you look for it.

Growth in CNY: Culture & Amenities

December 31, 2022

I had planned to end 2022 with a blog post looking ahead to the future and ways that CNY, and more specifically Syracuse, can encourage growth in sustainable way, I have had conversations over the years saying that Syracuse would be a great city of 250,000 people, with just small tweaks and changes to our built environment. Now, at the beginning of October 2022, these conversations take on a new urgency, with the announcement of Micron investing up to $100 billion just north of the City and bringing 9,000 high paying jobs, with up to 40,000 additional jobs in related industries. So to finish up my 2022 blog series, I plan to address this growth in three parts: Housing, Mobility, and Culture & Amenities.

Syracuse and the surrounding region are blessed with beautiful parks, great traditional public spaces, and beloved cultural amenities. Many of these assets were founded and preserved during the first half of the 20th Century, when American cities were investing heavily in the public realm. Ever since, budgets have been cut, priorities have shifted, and the legacy institutions, parks, and amenities we still enjoy today were lucky to find continued funding and support. Growth in Central New York, if done in a sustainable fashion, should bring additional funding sources that can be used to help us grow these amenities to suit the needs of our community. While housing and our transportation network require a great deal of planning, the thoughtful growth that will hopefully occur will allow us to expand our public spaces and strengthen our cultural amenities. At the same time we must work towards improving access for all members of our community, and that includes finding new opportunities to bring us all together in common causes.

Unlike the last two posts, this will not primarily focus on planning principals, but instead will be more aspirational for where we should put our public and private funding. Supporting public spaces, cultural amenities, and encouraging our neighbors to mingle together are vital to a well functioning society.

Parks and Open Spaces

Public parks first appeared in American cities in the middle of the 19th Century, at a time when our urban spaces were growing rapidly and access to green space was slipping away. In Syracuse, many of the parks we cherish were founded in the early 1900s, with the formation of the City Parks Department in 1917. With over 170 parks and 1,000+ acres of land, the City of Syracuse has an extensive park network common among legacy industrial cities. According to the Trust for Public Land (TPL), 77 percent of Syracuse residents live within a 10 minute walk to a public park. 10 minutes is considered a reasonable distance for most individuals to walk to a destination, including park space, which is the basis for TPL’s 10-Minute Walk program. 10-Minute Walk encourages cities to expand park space to ensure every resident can reach a public open space within 10 minutes of their home, providing access to fresh air, greenery, and places to gather. Syracuse’s rate of 77 percent is far higher than the 55 percent national average, but that still leaves nearly a quarter of residents without easy access to greenery.

One way to help improve this access is the continued expansion of urban trails and greenways. The Onondaga Creekwalk is projected to expand to the southern city line by the end of the decade, which will immediately connect neighbors across the city and expand their access to greenery and our waterfront. The City and County should be looking for additional opportunities to provide linear park spaces that allow residents to explore their communities without needing to interact with cars. This includes bringing back a Covid era policy of banning vehicles from streets within parks to promote walking and biking in our greenest areas.

Outside of the City of Syracuse, access to park space decreases as many residents emphasize using their private backyards over public parks. This is a continued trend of the privatization of space that began with suburbanization. Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, both the book and its companion podcast, tells this story through the slow disappearance of public pools across the country once desegregation took hold. Specific corners of American society seemed to deem investments in public amenities like pools and parks as less desirable once all members of society were finally allowed to enjoy them. Soon private clubs, personal pools, and other private open spaces began to take over as public funding for similar spaces eroded. You see this trend continued in youth sports (which has many other negative consequences that are better explored at length in Linda Flanagan’s Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports - and Why it Matters) as private travel leagues take over spaces that used to be open to public leagues and pick up games.

As the County densifies, public open spaces and parks will become increasingly important and we should increase funding to reflect that fact. This includes funding youth programming, athletic leagues, and expanded park space where it is most needed.

Public Spaces

While you might think public spaces are the same as parks and open spaces, I want to separate this out as these are spaces that can be commercialized and encourage different types of activities. A prime example of existing public spaces within Syracuse is Hanover Square, a small public plaza that has shifted from a former roadway into a shared space that emphasizes pedestrian access and outdoor dining. Hanover Thursdays, this past summer, brought live music into the square and helped promote the local bars and restaurants that open out onto the plaza.

Hanover Thursdays

Weekends on Walton

A similar public space was temporarily instituted within Armory Square with the Weekends on Walton program during 2020 and 2021. As new businesses return to Armory Square, this program should be made permanent, with Walton received a similar treatment to Hanover Square. In 2019, the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council (SMTC) published the Armory Square Mobility Plan that laid out potential treatments to make this street into a more pedestrian friendly, if not pedestrian only, public space.

Similar programs should be explored in commercial areas around the City and County. All neighborhoods deserve public spaces that allow residents to gather away from cars and support local bars and restaurants. Programs can start as temporary block closures, creating small events to promote the concept. As the closures (or street openings if you’re like me an view streets without cars as truly open) gain support, municipalities should create guides for how to shift towards more permanent public spaces depending on the needs of each individual neighborhood.

Museums and Learning Opportunities

Syracuse has been a cultural center for Central New York for nearly 200 years and our museums help tell that story: The Everson, the Museum of Science and Technology (MoST), the Onondaga Historical Association (OHA), and the Erie Canal Museum help tell the story of our past, present and future through art, science, and artifacts. Micron has promised to fund programming at the MoST for years to come to help promote science and engineering education, but we shouldn’t stop there.

The OHA has continually expanded its reach through lending historical photos and artifacts to businesses across the region, including the CNY “Brewseum” that preserves the history of brewing in our region. As I-81 comes down, and the stories of the old 15th Ward are front and center, we should ensure that history, and the story of the current residents of Pioneer Homes, are preserved within that neighborhood. While the OHA is only minutes away from the neighborhood, a new historical outpost should be developed as part of the Blueprint15 project.

The Erie Canal Museum

The Everson

The Everson houses one of the finest ceramic collections in the world, and yet I sometimes believe we take this gem for granted. One reason may be its location. While it is located in Downtown Syracuse, it is surrounded by government offices, the county jail, and a sea of parking lots. While the museum is a work of art, its surroundings do not inspire visitors to linger and offer no other experiences. The City should promote the redevelopment of the nearby parking lots and garages as a way to create a Downtown arts district and tie the museum into the community.

Beyond museums, the Rosamond Gifford Zoo (Zoo) and the proposed Inner Harbor aquarium are some of the most important cultural attractions our region will be able to offer. These are spaces where families can gather and kids can learn through experiences. While the Zoo has seen tremendous improvements around the elephant exhibit and medical facilities, some of the other facilities around the park are in great need of improvement, including the expansion of exhibits and enhancements to viewing areas. This may require the acquisition of additional land, including clawing back some land from the recent Syracuse Developmental Center deal. Many families choose to visit the Wild Animal Park in Chittenango instead of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo due to the quality of exhibits, even if the Wild is not an accredited zoo. If the Zoo wants to recapture those guests and promote the mission of the accredited zoos, they need to compete with the quality of experiences private wildlife parks are providing. The Inner Harbor aquarium needs to be part of this effort, including providing lower cost entry fees for low-income families so education remains accessible to as many people as possible.

Live Experiences

Beyond our public spaces and institutions, we also need to focus on the events that bring us together; live sports, music, and theater. Our culture is built around shared experiences.

In April I discussed the desire to be considered a “major league city” and how that influences the conversation surrounding public financing for stadiums. Professional and high level college athletics bring together communities through competition. There is a shared public pride when teams do well, and a shared commiseration when teams disappoint. Regardless of the feeling, the City and region experience them together, creating a common thread between most neighbors. Syracuse is experiencing a rebirth in the facilities associated with our teams, with a major renovation of the JMA Wireless Dome (the Dome), home of the Syracuse Orange, and a recent $25 million renovation of NBT Bank Stadium, home of the Syracuse Mets. As I have mentioned before, and will continue to, the area surrounding NBT Bank Stadium is calling out for investment and should see its parking lot transformed into a neighborhood.

The Upstate Medical Arena at the Oncenter War Memorial (War Memorial), home of the Syracuse Crunch, has received some updates in recent years, but remains one of the smallest and oldest arenas in the AHL. It is also the only sports arena in Downtown Syracuse, creating a unique experience for fans. While the arena currently fits the needs of fans, a growth of the region will hopefully result in the growth of the fanbase for each of our teams. While NBT Bank Stadium has room for fan growth, the War Memorial already comes close to selling out many times a season, especially when the team is good. If the demand increases, it may be time to explore a new home for the Syracuse Crunch.

JMA Wireless Dome

War Memorial

This is where sports and music collide. Currently, Syracuse is home to a beautiful amphitheater on Onondaga Lake, which hosts high profile touring acts throughout the summer months. The Dome has also seen its use as a concert venue increase in recent years after the installation of air conditioning, hosting Paul McCartney and Elton John in 2022. But during the winter, many acts cannot find a concert venue of the right size in Syracuse. The Dome is too big for most acts and the Amphitheater cannot be used. The War Memorial, Oncenter, and Landmark Theatre are too small for many touring acts, forcing residents to travel to Buffalo or Albany to see shows.

Should the War Memorial ever become too small to house the Syracuse Crunch, a larger facility in Downtown Syracuse, potentially in one of the parking lots surrounding the Everson, should be built so that it can attract larger concerts all year round. Hosting such concerts draws attention to the City and provides a true amenity for residents, as the Amphitheater has proven.

The last piece of live entertainment is theater, something Syracuse has excelled at attracting in recent years. Not only does Syracuse enjoy the touring Broadway shows, but Syracuse Stage and the Red House continually produce excellent professional theatre. With the Red House now located a block away from the Landmark Theatre, S Salina St is slowly returning to its place as a theater district. Syracuse should embrace this trend and promote the use of underused spaces along the corridor for small scale theatrical productions, including avant garde shows and puppetry. Open Hand Theater, a puppet theater, has been without a permanent home since Shoppingtown Mall closed. Bringing the company to S Salina St could emphasize the corridor's place as the heart of live theater in Syracuse while diversifying its offerings to crowds.

As Syracuse looks towards growth, we cannot overlook our cultural institutions and amenities. Sustainable growth, including limiting suburban sprawl and promoting density, will increase the efficiency of our public infrastructure investments, freeing up additional funds and resources for our public institutions. We need to invest in our public realm if we want to see this growth positively impact all residents.

Color My World: Why Cities Should Embrace the Colorful

September 30, 2022

The City of Syracuse has been on a mural painting craze in 2022, with a City sponsored program (City as Canvas) funding murals in eight different neighborhoods and local businesses funding their own artworks. This continues a trend of murals popping up in cities across the country. As I’ve traveled through various Rust Belt cities over the past year, murals have been an increasingly popular way to liven up spaces around vacant lots or parking areas next to recently renovated buildings. They bring color and character to spaces that once sat empty for decades, and I am all about it. But, we shouldn’t just think of murals when we look for ways to brighten up our cities. We should be embracing color in everything we do - on our buildings, our roadways, our parks. Let’s take a look at different ways cities have embraced color and point out opportunities across Syracuse where color can be added to our everyday lives.

Murals

Murals have been part of the human experience for thousands of years. Nearly every great civilization has used murals to showcase different aspects of their culture - whether its the power of the gods, the value of the state, or key historical events.

Cities across the United States have embraced murals over the last several decades. Philadelphia, like many other older industrial cities, has seen murals as a form of reinvestment in each of its neighborhoods. Over the past 35 years, over 4,000 murals have been painted across the city, making it one of the largest collections of murals in the world. Closer to home, Buffalo, NY’s Albright Knox Art Gallery has been funding public murals across the Queen City since 2014. While some of the most powerful murals cover the entirety of a building’s facade, they can also be small, hidden gems meant to engage people as they walk around their neighborhood. This mixture is what makes murals so engaging. They surprise viewers and keep the urban environment exciting in a positive way.

Syracuse has plenty of examples of murals in all shapes and sizes. A massive mural depicting local basketball legends was just recently completed in Downtown Syracuse, created by a world famous muralist. At the same time, the City as Canvas program has looked to borrow a page out of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) by putting local artists to work on murals in each neighborhood. This is a model the City should continue to use beyond the initial eight murals. Partnering with local businesses and institutions, the City should create a fund to paint five to ten new murals each year, depending on the sizes proposed, and hire local artists to get the work done. A prime location for a series of murals would be the elevated train tracks that cut through the City, both through Armory Square and across the Southside. While coordinating with the railroad to get the effort kickstarted may be difficult, the color and life that the project would bring is worth the effort.

Community Garden Mural - NYC

Parking Lot Mural - NYC

Syracuse Elevated Freight Rail

The Atrium

A personal wish of mine is to see the Atrium, which sits on the south end of Clinton Square, covered in murals. It is currently the ugliest building in Downtown Syracuse, but covering it in murals would elevate it to become one of the jewels of our city. Its blank walls, flush windows, and fairly smooth brick exterior could provide an excellent canvas.

But we should remember that murals are not the only way to bring color to our buildings.

Colorful Buildings

Philadelphia Rowhouses

DC Rowhouses

One thing you’ll notice the more you watch HGTV is the feeling that every house ends up being one of three colors: white, grey, or tan. These are the same colors most homeowners associations (HOAs) will allow. There might be some color added on a door or a darker trim around the windows, but we are increasingly seeing a homogenous look to our neighborhoods.

Now having some homogeneity in our built environment can be a good thing. Row houses, brownstones, Victorian homes are all often found in duplicates or groups of similar structures. The repetition can be part of the charm of a neighborhood, such as Brownstone Brooklyn. But if we start to take a wider look around the world, we start to see color playing a much larger role in these structurally homogenous neighborhoods, making Brownstone Brooklyn’s brown variations an outlier. Cities across the world, including many older American cities, have embraced color in their neighborhoods, resulting in bright, friendly neighborhoods. Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., as seen above, both showcase homogenous neighborhoods that embrace bright colors to add character and warmth.

Sister Houses

The Hudson Building

Victorian on James St

Pond St Businesses

Syracuse has some examples of this, with the most prominent being the five Sister Houses in the Park Ave neighborhood. These beautiful old Victorian homes are identical except for their color palettes. Back in Downtown Syracuse, the Hudson Building has also worked to differentiate itself through color, bringing a bold, forest green to a streetwall filled with red brick. Color doesn’t always have to be bright, but going beyond the traditional color palettes help invigorate a space. We should encourage building developers to utilize materials that can be painted easily and updated to reflect the personalities of the tenants inside. Keep the designs simple and infuse them with life through paint.

Paint is not the only way to bring color to a building. Many taller buildings in downtown business districts have embraced light displays to enhance their skylines. These lights are often coordinated with one another to celebrate holidays, sporting events, or just bring awareness to different causes. While these light shows are beautiful to behold, we must get better about using the lights properly to not interfere with bird migrations and other natural occurrences.

Colorful Streets

We may not think of our streets as a place for any colors beyond black, yellow, and white, but they are public spaces and public spaces should embrace color wherever they can. Some may be more functional (bus and bike lanes) while others more decorative (street murals and painted plazas), but they all function to bring color and life to our cities.

When thinking of the more functional colorful elements, bus and bike lanes are often the first to come to mind. Often referred to as Elmo and Kermit due to their bright red and green colors, these lanes serve the important function of providing spaces for residents to get around outside of a private vehicle, giving them priority where possible. Also, as an avid Muppets / Sesame Street fan, I appreciate the references that bring a bit of childlike wonder to infrastructure. These are essential tools for every city, and they bring the added benefit of color with them. When you look at streets filled with bus and bike lanes, the visual appeal and interest of the space increases substantially.

Brick Patterned Crosswalks and Colorful Barriers

S Salina St Bike Lanes

Seattle Painted Curb Extensions

Rochester Piano Crosswalk

Other functional colorful elements tend to be focused around intersections. Using brick or stone pavers for complete intersections, or specifically in crosswalks. Painted crosswalks (which is still frowned upon by federal agencies and the MUTCD) have been embraced by cities across the country. Rochester, NY celebrated the Eastman School of Music by painting a piano style crosswalk just outside its doors.

Other cities have embraced paint as a way to extend the pedestrian realm, through painted plazas and curb extensions. Seattle, WA has an extensive network of painted curb extensions that embrace colorful designs to draw the attention of drivers. Syracuse will be embracing the idea of a painted plaza in the near future right in front of City Hall, after it awarded the design to another local artist.

This is not the first time Syracuse has painted its streets. In 2017, Syracuse hosted the World Canals Conference. It celebrated by painting a canal themed mural outside of the Erie Canal Museum, harkening back to the waterways that built the City. These murals were short lived due to the wear and tear of traffic, but we should look for streets to pedestrianize and fill with color that will last without cars driving over them.

Natural Colors

Burnet Park in Fall

Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Up until now the main focus has been on how to bring color to our man made structures, but we should never forget to embrace the color and life that nature can bring into a community.

At the moment, we’re entering into the heart of autumn, my personal favorite season. Oranges, reds, and yellows burst from the trees across the region, making for a beautiful sight. Different trees showcase different colors during this time and the mix of trees not only creates a more vibrant scene, but also a healthier one for the trees as they help reduce the spread of tree borne diseases.

Community gardens, such as the Syracuse Rose Garden, are another perfect example of natural colors bringing people together in a space of beauty. The groups that help upkeep these spaces help build community through the action of gardening and the result of a beautiful garden to be admired.

Many of these spaces take the addition of color to an extra level through the inclusion of art. The Lipe Art Park, while light on trees and flowers, embraces the use of art through a linear park. The Onondaga Creekwalk is beginning to explore similar opportunities, especially under the overpasses between Downtown and Franklin Square. Should a multi-use path eventually connect these two spaces, as is being explored in an ongoing study, the City of Syracuse will soon provide its residents with an active commuting corridor surrounded by art and color that would be a national example.

These are all just some examples of how we can embrace color and art in our urban spaces, but we need to provide opportunities for communities to use these tools to fit their own visions. Get rid of the HOAs and embrace colors that showcase the personality of your neighborhoods and your City as a whole.

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.