Earlier this summer I went on a vacation with my family to South Carolina and we passed through Charleston. This visit got me thinking about some of the lessons that I learned from author and urban activist Jane Jacobs’ seminal book, “The Life and Death of Great American Cities,” which I recently reviewed for Streets.mn.
Charleston is a port city in South Carolina and is known for its French Quarter neighborhood, where cobblestone and brick-laden streets interweave together. On these streets are well-kept Victorian houses side by side with old colonial-style houses. These are mixed in with Spanish architecturally designed churches and even some Art Deco buildings, all put together in a dense array of architecture.
King Street in Charleston, South Carolina.
This streetscape reminds me of Jane Jacobs’ lesson on the importance of neighborhoods having a diverse mix of buildings, with special attention to preserving old buildings. Many of Charleston’s diverse buildings vary in both age and architectural style, giving the city a lively and interesting streetscape. Walking is not only useful, given that the city is dense in the peninsula area with limited parking, but also entertaining. Every street presents new styles of buildings and homes to look at. This makes each newly encountered block exciting and different from the last.
Charleston has a wide variety of historic buildings, many built in the 1700s and 1800s, with others filled in later times. The vast majority of buildings that exist today are very well maintained. City leaders accomplished this in part by establishing the Board of Architectural Review in 1931, which according to Charleston.gov is responsible for “the preservation and protection of the old historic or architecturally worthy structures and quaint neighborhoods which impart a distinct aspect to the city and which serve as visible reminders of the historical and cultural heritage of the city, the state, and the nation.” It does this by monitoring and reviewing all demolitions and constructions within the historic district.
Outside of historic buildings making for an interesting view, this also provides for a variety of homes and places for businesses to exist. Along King Street is a mix of restaurants, high-end clothing stores, boutiques, art galleries and more. But only a block or two off King Street, you are met with densely packed Victorian homes.
In order to generate a lively city, there needs to be a variety of businesses, enterprises and people who inhabit it. This is enabled by having a wide variety of buildings that people can fit toward their needs. It helps if these buildings are constructed in a way that they can accommodate multiple uses, especially along commercial corridors. If one business closes, another is able to use the space without making major changes, helping to keep vacancy rates lower and giving the city more life.
Secondly, nearly all cities in the United States, the ones settled before the 1900’s, started out as dense, extremely walkable cities. Older buildings contribute to this feel as they are built toward a human scale and have a more personable feel. By preserving these older buildings, we are able to keep this feeling much better. Charleston, founded in 1670, was able to preserve its older buildings especially well, given that interstates do not disrupt the central area as much as many other cities, as well as avoiding some of the damages from catering their city toward cars. This has left it with narrow streets lined with buildings, and you would be hard pressed to find a parking lot; the city has a very dense, urban — and, yes, walkable — feel.
This is referring primarily to the peninsula area of Charleston, which benefits from all of the aforementioned as well as the Charleston Area Regional Transit System (CARTA), the area’s transit service. While I didn’t personally ride CARTA, from what I heard is that it works reasonable well for traveling within the peninsula and to major destinations, such as the airport. Much of the rest of the Charleston area metro area suffers from similar suburban style development that is found across America.
We can compare Charleston with Minneapolis to learn some vital lessons even though Minneapolis incorporated as a city more than two centuries later, in 1867, and has developed far differently due to geographic and economic reasons. Minneapolis has retained old buildings around the city, but has also redeveloped and remodeled large swaths of it. This has several effects:
- Many of the redeveloped areas can feel inhumane and unwelcoming, such as the area around the A, B, and C parking ramps in Downtown Minneapolis.
- It can also create zones with no good transition from the “mostly old” to the “mostly new.”
I notice this in the transition from the Elliot Park neighborhood into Downtown East. Elliot Park has several brownstones and row houses and other brick multi-level apartment buildings that are aged and have a charming character. Downtown Minneapolis, by contrast, boasts skyscrapers and large corporate offices. The transition area between downtown and Elliot Park consists of several surface parking lots, collision repair shops, an abandoned church and a parking garage. This effectively serves as a border between the two and makes it uncomfortable to walk from one to the other.
Minneapolis has several areas with historic architecture and mixed-use older buildings, such as North Loop or Main Street across the river from Downtown. Too often these areas are broken up by poor land use that hurts their charm, with surface parking and interstates cutting between some of our best areas instead of having a continuous stretch of attractive, aged architecture. This is too often due to tearing these buildings down to make use of cars.
Compare Minneapolis in 1930 to Minneapolis today, and you can see the number of classic old buildings that we lost. This is shown below as well as in Larry Millett’s book “Twin Cities Then and Now.” Some have been replaced by newer buildings, a necessary development, but many others were torn down for surface parking lots.
Minneapolis in 1930:
Minneapolis in 2024:
There are solutions to this issue, and again, my visit to Charleston provides insights.
- The first is to reduce the amount of space in our central districts devoted to interstates.
- The second is to continue to build in a manner that is timeless and adds to the charm of the area in which the new structure is being built.
The intersection of King and Market streets provides a great example. Located within the historical district of Charleston, surrounded by dense and interconnected blocks of mixed-use, lively older buildings, lies a new development. With its ground-floor stone and upper-level red brick, this new development fits perfectly with the character of the neighborhood. It is mixed use, adding to the vitality of the area, and its modern style still manages to complement the buildings around it. Arches and shutters on the windows also match the style of the neighborhood.
Minneapolis can do something similar. Many neighborhoods have areas that are prime for infill development or redevelopment. This could optimally be built in a timeless style, with brick lining on the edges and built to match the character of the neighborhood. And it has been done before, in, again, Elliot Park. Several new developments match the neighborhood’s character, and this could be continued to fill in several surface parking lots and vacant lots that leave the neighborhood feeling empty and a tad unsafe.
A neighborhood is defined by the style and feel of its streets and how the buildings present on them. Minneapolis — and Elliot Park, specifically — does this well for the most part, but some areas need to improve by densifying and removing all of the gaps in the street space. They also need to ensure that these new buildings add to the charm and character of the neighborhood, instead of looking like another average industrial 5-over-1 apartment building.
All photos by Seth Bose unless otherwise noted.