Rebuilding the American City by David Gamble & Patty Heyda

Author:David Gamble & Patty Heyda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

The sectional (below grade) urban River Walk in downtown San Antonio (left) and its more spacious uptown Museum Reach extension as it approaches the Pearl (in distance) (right).

As a result of this complete ownership, the project incorporates the highest-quality urban design features. Curb-less streets facilitate flexibility of uses across the entire right-of-way. The shared surface functions as a farmer’s market, promenade and celebration space. Lush, native plantings define the sidewalks and plazas. Center-hanging urban streetlights create intimately scaled intersections, imbuing the area with a domestic ambience. Such elegant features are seldom included in the limited catalogue of fixtures from which public works officials can choose, since non-standard public fixtures affect maintenance regimes and other costs, and can require long approvals and protocols to specify for city-owned property. Granted, a private district also raises questions of public access. Can we legitimately call this urban public space? The streets can be closed and controlled, and other decision-making protocols may not need to be as strictly followed as with public sector projects. And yet, the comprehensive design palette provides an entirely new pedestrian-oriented zone in an area that didn’t coalesce as a neighborhood before.

If Pearl is ultimately private, it leads with civic-minded ambitions, promoting exemplary environmental stewardship well beyond public sector capacity. Public spaces double as water retention and filtration systems, while developer-leveraged underground channels divert big rain events to prevent flooding both on-site, and off-site, serving nearby Broadway Avenue’s drainage area as well. Silver Ventures paid for and implemented the channels up front, to efficiently manage the project from both a cost and time perspective. This saved waiting for the city to usher the project through public approvals and bidding, had they managed and built the infrastructure project (Byrd, 2014). Then, over time, the developers were reimbursed for the costs by the city.1

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