Preserving the Urban Dynamic

New Rochelle may be a small city in just another rich New York City suburb, but with the recent defeat of a proposed Ikea superstore, it symbolizes a significant turning point in the struggle of communities against the intrusion of big-box retailers. A modest neighborhood of homes, small businesses and two churches would have been condemned and demolished by the city in order to turn over the land to a supposedly better use--a 325,000-square-foot store, parking for 2,200 cars and two new ramps off the New England Thruway. Westchester County residents foresaw traffic-clogged roads, displaced homeowners, exacerbated pollution and negative effects on an array of quality-of-life issues. Public resistance was fierce.

Tearing down residential areas for the benefit of a national corporation is a throwback to the long-discredited methods of urban renewal czar Robert Moses. Other big projects that similarly undermine authentic urban places are falling apart in the face of potent civic resistance. Such defeats signal a positive trend in the regeneration of downtowns. Collapsed projects in Pittsburgh, New Haven and Baltimore mark the possible end of decades of highly subsidized, developer-driven, national-chain-based projects replacing forlorn downtowns that are nonetheless rich in local history, character and small businesses.

In Pittsburgh, which had more of its traditional heart left for organic regeneration than most American cities, a plan for a five-acre mall died when, after prolonged community protest, the critical anchor, Nordstrom, pulled out, declining a $28 million subsidy from the city. Pittsburgh's 1950s-style urban renewal plan called for demolition of sixty-two buildings of varying age, size and architectural style, dislocation of 120 businesses, lost tax revenue on top of enormous city subsidies for the new mall, endless disruption and no assurance of what would be built. This was the classic formula for killing downtown in order to save it, a strategy that has erased rather than rebuilt so much of downtown America.

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