CITY OF SOUTH BURLINGTON
South Burlington Designated City Center Area
Literature Search
The importance of
public buildings in maintaining or generating vitality in downtowns.
The impact of public buildings on a community’s economic and cultural vitality varies dramatically with each set of circumstances. Programmatic, urban planning and building design decisions can either minimize or magnify a public building’s impact. The most successful community development efforts have recently included public private-partnerships which resulted in greatly expanded approaches to civic centers and included specific amenities and improvements: a lake in Tigard Oregon; an urban square in Escondido, California; a baseball stadium, city park, county government center, and medical clinic in Viera, Florida; an e-village in Blacksburg. Virginia. Similar public initiatives include:
· Pubic open spaces
· Community information and service resources
· Entertainment and recreation venues
· Vehicle and pedestrian infrastructure
· Information technology infrastructure
It has become increasingly difficult for private development to be the primary catalyst for economic and cultural vitality. With public initiative in the mix, new opportunities can emerge that are not open to strictly private development. The public sector brings new sources of funding, larger development capacity, more marketing power, and support for non-revenue generating functions. It can introduce initiatives that provide new infrastructure stimulating the vitality from which private development can benefit.
Expanded economic base. South Burlington is an affluent bedroom community primarily focused on recreation and education. Its origins are rooted in providing residences and retail services to Burlington. But recently, South Burlington’s economic base has begun to change. It is home to Vermont’s major airport, busiest freeway interchange, and three major hotel chains. Large corporations and successful startup companies have made South Burlington home. A new city hall represents an opportunity to consolidate these new activities and provide an infrastructure that will maximize their growth. Including a library, education and conference center, and office space represents an opportunity to further developing the city’s activity and economic base.
The rapidly growing importance and proliferation of information technology represents a number of opportunities for building community cultural and economic vitality. As information technology and e-business grows in importance, so does economical access to information and transmission, i.e. “bandwidth”. Governments, corporations, institutions, small businesses and individuals are all facing access limits that are related to cost and location. Establishing a high capacity location on the telecommunications network will be the 21st century equivalent to a great harbor on a navigable waterway. In Blacksburg Virginia, the City of Blacksburg, Virginia Tech. and Bell South (now Verizon) have established “Blacksburg Electronic Village, addressing information technology and its impact on Blacksburg’s economic and cultural vitality.
The economic advantages of public/private partnership
translate directly into higher density development if the advantages are
carefully managed. As land values
increase, higher density development provides greater economic leverage. If increased land value is augmented by
publicly supported structured parking, the likelihood of higher density
development is magnified.
Enhanced community identity. Creating a public building within a community raises important questions about a community’s sense of identity. South Burlington stands to gain by examining these questions. Unlike nearly every other city or town in Vermont, South Burlington’s identity is subdued. It has no inventory of historic 19th century architecture. It is diffuse and automobile oriented, a broad L-shaped landmass, cut by streets and roads emanating radially from Burlington. For its individual citizens and families, however, it is a great place to live with good schools and valued recreational resources. It is a community that is actively engaged in shaping its future and has high expectations of its public political structure.
A new city hall is an opportunity to assert a more
independent identity and think of the building as the city’s soul. A new
cityscape can emerge where public functions bring people together and balance
the individuality that pervades our culture. Including public functions such as city offices, a city service
center, library, or post office increase importance and visibility, bring
day-time population and generally support private commercial development. Other functions such as structured parking,
parks, outdoor performance venues, education and conferencing facilities, and
communications infrastructure can provide economic support for private
development. Information technology can
make government resources and government itself more accessible. Citizens can interact with government
through on-site computer information labs, “smart” City Council Chambers which
use distance learning and teleconferencing techniques, and local area network
(LAN) technology to create an e-city with citizen access directly from home computers. At a much larger scale, infrastructure
investment can make the Civic Center a hub in the global electronic
communications network.
In general, including public buildings in the development of a city represents a multi-fold opportunity. A new cityscape is possible with public buildings and open space housing functions that support higher density, mixed use private development. More urban solutions to parking can be implemented without penalty to private development economic models. New ground can be broken to expand the city’s economic base and business activity by forming partnerships that will provide information and communications infrastructure. Public building development represents an opportunity to augment current development patterns with new resources that expand and build a community’s economic and cultural base.
Fundamentally, the question is with whom does leadership lie. Where the public sector assumes leadership and includes components beyond the reach of independently acting private development, community economic and cultural vitality is most enhanced. Public leadership creates a new community identity with the ring of truth and the sense that each citizen of the community has a stake in the new vitality and growth. Such an identity will be a source of community pride and result in economic as well as cultural benefit.
LITERATURE SEARCH
South Burlington City Center
The impact of civic buildings in maintaining or generating economic and cultural vitality in existing or new downtowns.
Urban Land Institute: www.uli-la.org
Orton Family Foundation: www.orton.org
American Planning Association: Planners Advisory Service
US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
Congress for New Urbanism
Vermont Forum on Sprawl
Rocky Mountain Institute
A Study of Sprawl in Eight Vermont Communities, Prepared for the Vermont Forum on Sprawl, December 14 1998, Karen Yacos
Town Center Master Plan, Prepared for Town of Essex, 1991; Humstone Squires Associates, Ertel Associates, Lamoureux & Stone, Peter Marshall Owens
Suburban Nation, Duany and Plater-Zyberg
Edge City, Joel Garreau
Jane Jacobs
Kevin Lynch
Aldo Rossi
City of Bits, William Mitchell
E-topia, William Mitchell
Community Networks: Lessons from Blacksburg, Virginia (expanded and revised 2nd edition released in January 2000)
Generational Sustainability: Pathways to the future. Cohill, Andrew, and Joseph Kruth, editors (1999) Ebook published on the Web
The Virtual Community - Howard Rheingold
New Community Networks, Wired for Change - Douglas Schuler
Common Places: Cultural Identity and the Urban Environment (Katrineholm, Sweden; Cambrai, France; Erfut, Germany; Thessaloniki, Greece; by Mikael Levin; Storefront for Art and Architecture, 97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY 10012
Steamboat Springs Colorado City Hall; “Centenial Hall”
City Hall of the 21st Century
A project being pursued by the Orton Family Foundation as a template for small town city halls: Contact Townsend Anderson (970-879-2126);
e-village:
Blacksburg Electronic Village
BEV Community Network Briefing Book
Building eCommunities: Getting everyone connected (PDF file; 32K). Remarks to the Governor's Commission on Information Technology. Ecommunities in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the needs of Virginia citizens and communities trying to participate in the Information Economy.
Telecommunications for neighborhoods and communities: four key areas of investment (PDF file; 32K). This paper discusses the key structural impediments to an open telecommunications marketplace in communities and neighborhoods, reviews some of the history of community infrastructure investment, and offers some steps that communities can take to begin to create a level playing field for open, private sector investment in telecommunications
Community-based Broadband Telecommunications Infrastructure (PDF file; 87K) A short report on the key elements of a community-based infrastructure, including fiber and much information on the BEV's innovative MSAP (Multimedia Services Access Point), the next generation Internet exchange for local communities.
21st Century Communities: A Short Introduction (PDF file; 64K) provides an overview of the "smart" community--its features and characteristics, an introduction to the characteristics and roles of a community network, the kinds of services community networks should offer, and key success factors and staffing roles for a community network.
These two one page handouts provide an illustrated overview of:
· Community networks (PDF file; 16K), what they offer, and how a community benefits from having one. This handout summarizes a talk delivered at HUD's Closing the Economic Gap: Investing in America's Communities conference in June, 2000.
· Telecommunications infrastructure (PDF file; 18K) issues for communities, four important areas of investment, and key ideas related to getting communities ready for the 21st century Information Economy.
The Virtual Reality Cave.
http://www.anl.gov/OPA/frontiers96/cave.html
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory
http://www.evl.uic.edu/EVL/EVLLAB/
Internet 2: High capacity web for dedicated use