A Quick Hit of Urbanism

We live on the edge of the suburbs, but for me there has always been a deep draw and appreciation of the concept of the city center. I think it goes back to my childhood when we lived within walking distance of a vibrant downtown. I remember with great fondness the busy Spartanburg sidewalks, the businesses, and the neighborhoods nearby. There was no doubt in the early 60s where the center of Spartanburg was. Everything circulated around Prices, Greenwalds, and Belks, all on Morgan Square.

I was too young to know it, but the city center was already a concept under siege by the social and economic forces of contemporary life. I remember a strange moment in the mid-60s when a friend of my mothers drove us up Cumming Street at night and stopped the car at the top of the hill and showed my mama and me the newly developed Pinewood Shopping Centers field of lights blinking on below us. Spartanburg had a new sprawling parking lot with a strip of stores on one side and it was beautiful to him.

Though he didnt say, I think my mothers friend wanted us to see the future. Roses Discount Store and others would soon replace the downtown businesses and Pinewoods movie theater would begin draining business away from the State, the Palmetto, and the Carolina. Roads and big parking lots would replace sidewalks.

I spent last week at Atlantas Emory University in a writing workshop. I stayed on campus and for four days and I didnt move my truck out of the parking garage. I decided Id like to see what it felt like to go carless within the Atlanta urban vortex.

Emorys campus is about the size of a small city like Spartanburg. Its is one of the institutions of higher education I admire a great deal. They hitched their star early on to the sustainability movement. Living green is institutionalized there in a way that is just now reaching Wofford College. Recycling is not an afterthought. Theyve even created a campus environmental officer to review ways in which the community can continue to decrease impact on the world around it. Their new construction and renovations (and a there is a great deal of it) are always LEED (Leaders in Energy and Environmental Design) certified.

Native plants are used extensively in landscaping (I think the oak leaf hydrangea is Emorys official shrub), and they even have preserved a deep wild creek ravine full of 100-year-old hardwoods jutting like a finger into the central campus.

What I really liked about Emory though is how they have so obviously worked in their campus planning to create a walkable university, a sort of college version of new urbanism. The sidewalks are wide and there are clearly defined routes from one zone of activity to another. Cars are kept to a minimum on the central campus, but if you need to get from one side of sprawling educational and medical complex, you can do it on a fleet of buses powered by natural gas.

In an environment so clearly privileging pedestrians over cars it became second nature to walk wherever I was going. Its hard to describe such a mind shift unless you experience it for a week. For me it was like stepping back in time to 1963 in downtown Spartanburg.

The first morning I was at Emory I walked from the dorm where I was staying down to the Emory Village for coffee. There I met an Emory faculty member in Environmental Studies and I asked how it happened that the university became so conscious. Three or four passionate people, an eye and ear for the trends, he said. And of course it helps to have a $4.5 billion university endowment.

So how do we continue to work toward instilling these values in Spartanburg? How do we make our downtown walkable and livable in a way it has not been since the 1960s? All the infill thats happening now is a step in the right direction. At Emory I was impressed with how they fit all the buildings together into a dense urban jigsaw.

But at Emory they also paid close attention to the lay of the land. Spartanburg shares with Emory the advantage of being founded on a ridge top. Emory has accentuated the ways in which piedmont creeks naturally cut deep incisions into piedmont ridge tops. Emorys used these ravines as accents to break into the built environment, as passive green spaces with big trees and native plants and free-running small creeks.

So far weve shown less vision for this way of looking at landscape in Spartanburg. The development along St. John including the Chapman Arts Center has yet to show any sign of acknowledging its dramatic topography and ties to the Chinquapin and Lawsons Fork creeks.

Im hopeful though. I like to travel and see whats possible in the world. Emory has been able to do itinstill sustainable living into their community. Were on the way. Prices still flourishes downtown. QS1 built with LEED certification. Mary Black Foundation insisted on it too with their East Main Street renovation.

Maybe the city will even take a lead from Emory and preserve a finger of wildness pointing into the heart of the city and extend it up next to the arts center. It would take the planners looking at the downtown in a different manner and seeing the lay of the land. The next time you drive past the new Chapman Arts Center imagine the Palmetto Trail continuing its course through Spartanburg in a restored meandering woodlands ravine edging up onto St. John Street.