ending the tampa bay creative diaspora (iii)
permalink | categories: arts, diversity, economy, marketing, quality of life, tourismby calebism @ 1:13 pm
“Do what they did, you’ll get what they got.”
I am not sure that Tampa Bay needs to reinvent the wheel on its way to urban viability, but…
Many of the cities that have truly come back from the edge and become centers of creative post-industrial life are very different from the Tampa/St Pete metro area. They had cores that were restorable, high-density housing stocks, transit systems, and a tradition, no matter how disrupted, of urbanity, with traditional neighborhoods and spaces. With some notable exceptions, the TB area has little of this. Remaking but a part the Tampa Bay metropolitan area will be a real bootstrap job, even if we find models to emulate.
So it may be vital to find post-war sunbelt cities to learn from, if only to avoid their costly mistakes. Which auto-centric cities have done the best job of coming back from placelessness?
It is tempting to think that isolated pockets of artists, galleries, music venues scattered across the Tampa Bay area could go a long way toward making the metro area more livable; it might even be true. But I think, for several reasons, this approach is flawed:
- Lack of tourism support. Tourists prefer magnet areas.
- Lack of drawing power for diversity– do you want to be the only black guy, lesbian, or sculptor in your little art colony?
- Lack of political/economic/marketing clout. The only power in numbers.
- Lack of visibility. This has to do with spatial presence, sheer square footage.
- And anyway, has any revitalization yet emerged from a bunch of micro-centers without strong civic leadership?
Can the Tampa Bay area, the 19th largest metro area in the US, but with disproportionately fewer cultural resources than other areas, afford to spread its creative community so thinly? As transportation costs increase and time becomes more precious for many of us, is a commuting scene viable? (Not if you’re planning on having a few drinks, I hope).
With the principles of urbanism in mind–
- Walkability
- Connectivity
- Mixed-Use & Diversity
- Mixed Housing
- Quality Architecture & Urban Design
- Traditional Neighborhood Structure
- Increased Density
- Smart Transportation
- Sustainability
- Quality of Life
– what part of the Tampa Bay area is best suited for a big vibrant arts community?
Tags: arts, creative class, new urbanism, St. Petersburg, tampa bay area, transit, walkability
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August 27th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
If “Smart Transportation” means “spend tens/hundreds of millions of dollars while reducing traffic throughput”, then it is a dreadful idea.
I envision a plan where more lanes of traffic in downtown Tampa are eliminated while empty trolleys toot-toot as they pass by the frustrated drivers.
Unlike Chicago, Manhattan, etc, you don’t NEED to be “downtown” to run a successful business, so don’t try to emulate them.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I can’t match your intellectualism on this subject, but you should come live in the Detroit area for a month and Tampa Bay will become a restored urban Mecca in your mind. Well, that is if you have a blind spot for track housing, red-necks, and Pinellas Park. Just concentrate on Downtown St. Pete and Hyde Park. That’s how I picture it when I look back.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I would say Downtown St. Petersburg and Dunedin are the two best locations that fit. If you had a scoring system both would rank high.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Well…. Bradenton already has its Village of the Arts, where you are *encouraged* to run an arts-oriented business out of your home. I live here. Very nice, convenient to downtown, buses to malls and Sarasota no more than two blocks away, reasonable (for here and now) rents and real estate prices. Diverse, too. Many races live here. AND we have our own roller derby team, the Mensa Misfits!
August 27th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I think the best fit is Seminole Heights…
Cappy’s ……nuff said
August 27th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
in addition - Nebraska, yes I said Nebraska, is looking really good lately.
August 27th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
4.Mixed Housing
This will never work. You won’t get any
“haves” (who have played right by the rulebook of life) that want to live amongst the “have nots” and their crime-ridden lives and lifestyles.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
It’s sad that we now automatically associate non-rich people with crime. I’ve spent more than half my life in modest circumstances, but that didn’t make me a criminal.
What ever happened to the old “poor but proud” idea?
I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the contents of their wallets but by the content of their character.
(Yes, that’s a paraphrase from the MLK “I Have a Dream” speech.)
August 28th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Downtown St. Pete
Hyde Park / SoHo
Ybor City
Dunedin
Armenia Avenue
Gulfport?
August 28th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Junebee, mixed housing does and will work. I could show you dozens of other cities where it’s doing just fine.
Rob’s also right - poor does not mean criminal. That sort of attitude is what made the urban flight so severe in the first place (that and having people move in who don’t look/live like the original occupants in the area).
August 28th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
It’s not the poor who cherish what they ahve and are proud of their neighborhoods that are the problem.
It;s the criminal element and the poor who don’ give a damn that cause those who can move out to do so.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Tampa is way different than most cities it is compared to, so it probably needs something new to get it going. Other cities’ ideas are a good start, but we need something different, and I’m not sure what it is.
Just my two cents.
August 29th, 2008 at 12:24 am
good point Aaron, thank you for making it. We should think of something unique for ourselves and not chase other ideas. Ideas from Tampa are as valuable as those from NYC or Atlanta.
August 29th, 2008 at 7:11 am
I think there’s more creativity — both artistic and technical — in the Tampa Bayarea than most people know, but it’s hard to see because it isn’t concentrated in any one geographical location. That’s why events like this — http://barcamptampabay.com/ — are important.
There’s also a fast-growing bloggers’ meetup group (I missed this month’s meeting due to overwork/fatigue) that draws an amazing number of talented people, including one of the “core” WordPress developers. And I ain’t exactly cheese, myself, being the boss editor for Linux.com and other SourceForge, Inc. Web sites. Plus, I’m also now part of the team working to turn http://TampaBay.tv into a serious media contender.
Forget about building a single downtown where all the assorted creative people live or at least come together to work. That isn’t going to happen here. Hell, it doesn’t even happen in San Francisco, where creative/tech jobs are spread out all the way down to San Jose. An awful lot of Americans, including me, aren’t interested in living a high-rise or dense-housing life. We’re not necessarily suburbanites who want to live in bland, racially and culturally uniform housing developments, but we like to have a little space (like a yard) to call our own, and not to share walls with neighbors.
Seminole Heights is wonderful and all that, but here in Bradenton I have a launch ramp for my little trailer sailboat less than 1.5 miles away, and plenty of beaches (with free parking) and other boat launch facilities within 10 miles. I’m in a racially and culturally diverse neighborhood (hint: anywhere my wife and I life is, by definition, a mixed-race neighborhood), full of interesting people. (Think Gulfport, but with less nightlife, more poetry, fewer hassles, and lots lower housing prices.) I am not going to give up what I have to move into Seminole Heights. But then, I don’t expect people whose economic lives (work) are tied to downtown Tampa to move here.
In this area, which is basically sprawly and is likely to stay that way, we need to think of “neighbors” as people with whom we share common interests rather than think in terms of physical proximity. We now have this “Internet” thingie that helps us meet and that can facilitate F2F events and meetings. For some, it might be a way to stay away from other people, but it can also be a mechanism for meeting people we might otherwise never encounter.
The Tampa Bay region, and other spread-out urban and semi-urban areas around the country, are naturals for Internet-based social interaction. The Internet allows us to have many of the benefits of a tight urban core without high, urban-core housing costs, Atlanta-level traffic or NYC-level hurry. We can live (if we choose) in low-density housing where we have space to contemplate life and… create… but we can still make contact with others whose company we might enjoy — and with whom we can form business/work relationships, too.
We may have to make a little more effort to get off our asses and go to meetings or other gatherings than people who live in places where they can rely on casual encounters to build their social (and work) lives due to high population density. But that’s okay. Let’s not forget that, despite the idealized view of NYC coffee shop society seen in the Seinfeld TV show, there are plenty of lonely people in big cities.
We need to learn to work *with* our geography instead of complaining about it or wishing it was different. Once we accept the place we are, and spend more time thinking about its positive points than dwelling on its negative ones, we can start building interlocking communities based on shared interests, not physical closeness.
That’s when we’ll start realizing this area’s potential as a creative…. hub isn’t the work…. call it “region”… without ruining the low-key lifestyle that is why so many of us are here in the first place.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I think the argument is flawed, good design and planning should be for everyone. Not just the few who can afford high design.
I think every neighborhood should have it’s own walkable, mixed-use neighborhood center and each center should be seperated by the adjoining center by a five minute walk. Of course this is exactly what Transect Planning recommends:
http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dtransect%2Bplanning%26fr%3Dyfp-t-305%26toggle%3D1%26cop%3Dmss%26ei%3DUTF-8&w=575&h=223&imgurl=www.pfweb.com%2Fpics%2Ftt%2Ftransect.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pfweb.com%2FCRTT%2F2-2-03.htm&size=15.9kB&name=transect.jpg&p=transect+planning&type=JPG&oid=bba595716bfe1874&no=1&tt=60&sigr=114h91t4d&sigi=112jc4o4e&sigb=137sjc2kv
This concept is contrary to the sprawl that we live in that has no centers and where all uses are seperated per our wonderful 1950s era code.
If we only concentrate on a few “precious places” regionally those with enough $ will get to walk to it, those without enough $ will drive to it or have their fill of sprawl.
The only way to actively combat our blanket of sprawl is for every neighborhood to develop their own centers with density based on where they are located in the planning trasect (mentioned earlier). And of course these centers should reflect the micro-local history, culture, climate, and public input.
And yes, the concept of many small, medium, and large centers supports mass tranist quite nicely.
Good planning and design is for everyone, even folks that live in placeless locales like Brandon and New Tampa.
August 31st, 2008 at 2:02 pm
A major impediment to local progressive and smart development, the symbiotic Hillsborough relationship between developer and politician:
“Developer’s political stock is rising high”
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/local/article791171.ece
The king is dead, long live the king.