Sterilizing Development Arrives in Goshen

Goshen has seen a remarkable renaissance over the past 20 years, not just in its downtown, but also in the community as a whole. Art, entrepreneurship, food, entertainment, retail commerce, and recreation are blossoming in the city’s rich culture. As such, Goshen has become a model of success among northern Indiana municipalities and an increasingly vibrant destination. Much of this success is due to the vision and tireless efforts of individuals working to preserve and develop the downtown and the civic life that enriches it.

Image: 1917 Sanborn map compilation

It is important, however, to also recognize the importance of Goshen’s built environment. A glance at the 1917 Sanborn fire insurance map of Goshen will reveal how few buildings have been torn down in the past one hundred years. Most of the loss of significant downtown buildings has occurred on the block north of the courthouse which, as a result, continues to suffer from blight. This is in direct contrast to many surrounding cities such as Elkhart and South Bend where mid-century urban renewal projects based in modernist function-based zoning resulted in the demolition of many buildings and an ensuing urban blight that has plagued their downtowns.

The architectural and urban language of Goshen is typical of midwestern towns. Traditionally proportioned brick buildings with aesthetically pleasing window treatments, ornamental cornices, and readily recognizable entrances at the human scale unify the downtown and create a sense of urban enclosure. In addition to this, the individual care and detail given to each building enlivens the street and provides a physical demonstration of the respect their builders had for the city and their rôle not only in its built environment, but in its civic life.

Image: Looking north on Main Street in 1915. Courtesy Goshen Historical Society

Like other traditional cities, the footprint of each building is derived from the lot layout of the city, with each lot and its associated façade sharing space on the busy street it serves. The closer to the main commercial or matrix route (Main Street in Goshen) the more valuable, and therefore smaller, the lot size. More significant buildings, such as the theatre may take up more frontage, but they relay their civic importance through their detailing and scale. Few but the most civically significant buildings rise above two stories.

Image: Wallingford. Figure-ground from “The Changing Morphology of Suburban Neighborhoods” by Anne Vernez Moudon

The two story height, lot-scaled façade widths, and detailed cornices paired with the width of the street all combine to create a time-tested set of urban proportions that promote human security, commercial success, and pedestrian traffic. The varying cornices provide uniform urban enclosures, just like the rooms in a house, neither too tall nor too wide, but simultaneously providing variation and interest at the scale of each lot. City, street, block, lot, and building function at a human scale that is understandable and welcoming.

If there is one quality that unifies these various characteristics, (and the traits of any successful traditional urbanism) it could perhaps best be described as neighborliness. Every building is engaged with those around it in a lively conversation that is neither overbearing or unwelcoming.

Initial design for development by Ins!te Developments, LLC. This design has been revised to be less jail-like at the request of Mayor Stutsman, but this rendering is still on the Redevelopment Commission webpage as of 6/18/2019.*

Over the past year, the Redevelopment Commission has approved proposals by Ins!te Development, LLC a Mishawaka-based development company headed by international real estate investors for projects all located near the millrace and historic historic Hawks factory building. Most significant of these projects is the development known as the River Arts Building. The project proposes a block-sized, 4-story structure with an interior courtyard. The building will be clad in a patchwork of cheap materials including concrete panels, corrugated steel, and what looks like concrete block or perhaps brick veneer, with occasional windows, balconies, and overhangs either protruding or receding from the otherwise monolithic block. In addition to the unprecedented hight of the building, its sheer size presents an unreconcilable rift with its surrounding buildings and the rest of downtown. It is a 4-story block-sized monolith which, in the developer's own words, directs itself towards its residents and not the surrounding city. The proposal appears (in the most recent rendering) to be very similar to what has been built in Mishawaka and uses materials, façade proportions, brutal window treatments, and a complete lack of human scale. No attempt has been made to integrate building scale, materials, or historic urban building patterns.




Views of the more recently updated design showing the building footprint and attempts to conceal the 4th floor. These images speak for themselves.

This exact project type is well known in cities around the country and is rapidly becoming a major threat to historic urban areas. One such area (among many) is Charlotte, North Carolina where more than 20,000 units are either complete or under construction. These buildings are out of character with their surroundings in scale, materials, and proportion. Their designers attempt to mitigate their massiveness by applying a variety of exterior finishes in a seemingly patternless collage, often mixing brick, cement board, and corrugated metal. In my hometown of Richmond, Virginia one prominent traditional architect has named this kind of form "RPQ, the Random Patchwork Quilt Style.” As with the current “River Arts” proposal, the incongruity of these developments is a telltale symptom of their greater threat.

Practitioners and citizens in cities that have been effected by these projects have identified the the core issues with this type of development based on the damage that has been done in their neighborhoods and in other cities. Chief among these issues is the fact that projects like this are motivated by short-sighted commercial interests on the part of the developer (and often on the part of city officials), but do so to the long-term detriment of the city.


In Charlotte, a group called Civic By Design has effectively defined the dense, cheap apartment blocks appearing in American cities as "sterilizing development.” To quote their definition: "Sterilizing development can be defined as new development that is too dense, too tall, too quick and diluting the funky character that makes our historic neighborhoods special. These new designs are completely different in character and feel, quality, and style of bland, boring, beige, behemoth boxes all with the same look, the same standards, same floor plans. This coarse grain approach is wiping out affordable housing and hole-in-the-wall neighborhood hang-outs, forcing people out and changing both the character and the social structure. Developments with weak design and poor construction will not age well and quickly become passé, leaving neighborhoods to deal with the negative consequences in their wake.”

In addition to this, these types of development are the antithesis of the small-scale, incremental, lot-sized development that has historically provided a diverse and varied opportunity for residents and retailers to live, grow, and do business. Take a typical block of downtown Goshen: each building is of a similar height and width, has similar window treatments, a cornice, shop windows, etc. Variation and diversity are the rule, not the exception, but as a whole they present a unified streetscape that has been shown over the last millenia to provide the best environment for sustainable growth and financial resilience. Some are slightly taller than others, some are better maintained than others, some have lower rent than others, some have small spaces available for first time businesses or single residents. Some can be purchased and maintained by regular citizens with regular incomes.
An exhibit by Tom Low of Civic By Design showing alternative fine-grain development (incorporating existing historic structures) compared to the coarse-grain current developer model

This is important because a large, block-sized development represents a huge investment ($22 million combined in the case of this development) and a correspondingly large maintenance budget. Only a development company with significant resources can pool that much funding, which in turn provides them with unassailable bargaining powers with the city.

This may work well if, as a developer, you can afford the staggering cost of entry. Everything will be shiny and new, maintenance costs will be low, franchises are happy to move into commercial space, and rents can be kept high. But what happens over time? What happens if the neighborhood takes a downturn, or if the developer goes bankrupt, or if the management loses interest or doesn’t maintain the property? It is easy to realize the loss of sustainability with such a lack of diversity. Because the scale of the project is so large, the scale of the resulting blight will be just as large. This becomes more concerning when we realize that the typical large developer or management company has little to no stake in the local community and the long-term success of the project.

Small-scale, incremental development, by contrast, provides a built in defense against this risk by breaking up the block or developed area into economically discrete, self-dependent units which can be purchased, maintained, and improved with a much smaller budget by local private citizens. It has also been successfully demonstrated that, even if poorly maintained, this type of development can yield higher tax revenue, (which should inform the use of TIF funding) as well as the added benefit of supporting a lower barrier to entry for private development.

As Goshen continues to grow and thrive, we need to consider what kind of city we are and what that city will look like in another 20 years. Increasing residential density in downtown Goshen is not only a good idea, it is the future. It will be happening more and more in the coming years whether we like it or not. If it where not for the foresight of the property owners and developers who saw a promise in Goshen’s downtown 20 years ago, the city would not be what it is today. Let us continue that tradition of thoughtfulness and forward thinking. Much of what I have written here is said much better by the Congress for the New Urbanism and Strong Towns. I urge anyone interested in learning more about these topics to pursue them in more detail through the many books, conferences, websites, and other resources available.

For a much more in-depth understanding of these concepts, here is a link to an essay from a blog I co-founded in 2009 that addresses the issues through the lens of my hometown of Richmond, Virginia: http://urbanscalerichmondvirginia.blogspot.com/2010/05/unchanging-in-architecture.html

Three articles that are especially relevant:
*Update: the city has added the new renderings of the project to the Redevelopment Commission webpage as of 6/19/2019.

Update 2/24/21: for a recent look at this type of development, check out Well There's Your Problem's video on "five-over-ones": 



New Model of Design for a Proposed Orthodox Temple

My friend and iconographer, Brian Whirledge, recently built a model of my proposed temple design as we begin to plan the iconographic program for the interior. It is exciting to see the two dimensional drawings and watercolor renderings take three-dimensional shape.

The foam-core model constructed from plan and elevation drawings
The same view as a watercolor rendering
Views of the interior showing Indiana "plain" ionic columns constructed of 8X8 posts and wrought iron
The central nave with scale figures
The West façade with small porch
Details of the octagonal dome
The hand drafted and watercolored renderings completed last fall.



The Status Quo of Electric Cars: Better Batteries, Same Range





"The 2010 Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV have exactly the same range as the 1908 Fritchle Model A Victoria: 100 miles (160 kilometres) on a single charge."

A very interesting article from Low Tech Magazine: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-electric-cars-better-batteries-same-range.html

Classicism and Orthodox Christianity


Classical architecture describes a tradition of design and building that looks to the greatest examples of architecture as a means of accessing an intrinsic, transcendent truth. Over time, a long sequence of unique buildings and their designers were able to apply the concept of an ideal to particular and often wildly different places and circumstances around the globe and over thousands of years. The shared general qualities of the classical tradition work together to provide us with the mysterious understanding of an intrinsic and transcendent content that is more powerful and beautiful than the form of any one building. In this sense, classical architecture has no style. It is rather an accidental and particular representation of the universal and transcendent here on earth.

The architecture of early Christian churches was typically on a very small scale and took place in simple domestic buildings which allowed for discrete worship. However, as Christianity gained acceptance following Emperor Constantine’s conversion and proclamation of religious tolerance in the early 4th century, more expansive building programs became necessary. This new program in turn required a new architectural building type that could house a new liturgy and embody the authority of Christianity. The dominant religious building of the time, the pagan temple, was designed for ceremonies and sacrifices to take place outside on the portico. In contrast to this, the Church has from its earliest moments seen itself as an internal building with a door through which we enter at baptism. Thus, instead of looking to the pagan temple, the early Church, under the leadership of Constantine, took as its model another building type: the basilica. The basilica was developed by the Romans as a public courthouse and indoor place of business. Basilicas had a large central nave, often flanked by aisles, and were terminated in an apse were the magistrate or judge sat on a raised dais.

Domed basilica plan for a proposed Orthodox temple in Indiana


Here again, the liturgy and theology of Christianity dictated a new architectural language. In contrast to the highly ornamented exteriors of pagan temples, the exteriors of the first Christian basilicas were usually left quite plain in favor of highly ornamented and rich interior treatments. Expensive marbles, precious metals, and mosaics caught the downward rays of light from the clerestory windows located high above rows of columns and provided a radical shift from the mundane life outside to a highly concentrated realm of spiritual splendor and meaning. Eventually, the combination of the early Christian basilica and martyrium building types resulted in a completely new and uniquely Christian building type, the domed basilica, which reorients the building in a highly developed program of iconographic, liturgical, and chronological axes.

To build a new Orthodox temple is to invite God and the saints to dwell among us in single great icon. As Orthodox Christians we should be aware that, though classicism has existed prior to the founding of the Church and has been expressed in many forms, it has provided the vocabulary for the development of a truly Christian architecture capable of translating the transcendent glory of Heaven to our particular everyday life.

Milan Trip

Roof of the Duomo


Palazzo dell'Arengario begun in 1936 under Mussolini

One of the oldest portions of the Duomo dating to the 1380s

Inner courtyard of the Sforza Castle

The apse of Santa Maria delle Grazie

Interior of Santa Maria delle Grazie

Cloister of Santa Maria delle Grazie

Courtyard of Sant'Ambrogio

Choir of Sant'Ambrogio
Teatro alla Scala

La Cenerentola at La Scala

Bocadasse, Genoa

The Duomo, Milan


Santa Maria presso San Satiro, unfortunately closed the day we visited.

San Lorenzo



Sant'Eustorgio

Sant'Eustorgio interior

Portinari Chapel

Portinari Chapel

Piazza in Como

Time and Tide Wait For No Man


I have been thinking of two poems on this first day of the year 2019. I started by thinking of an old Thomas More College classic, The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy, but for some reason my mind ran to some lines Richard Wilbur uses to describe what he calls "pilgrims of defeat". In his poem for the newly built Statione Termini, he laughingly rebukes them with almost exultant lines. Whether they are historians, archeologists, or more likely, nostalgic traditionalists, "who with short shadows | Poked through the stubbled forum pondering on decline | And would not take the sun standing at noon | For a good sign", he wants to dig them all up. It is a fitting thing to remember on a new day of a new year, especially if you have a tendency toward nostalgia... So when I read this beautiful poem for the opening of a new bridge, it strikes a similar note. A praise for the way things have been and are, for the tradition that makes a place a place and makes all those "lost centuries of local lives that rose | And flowered to fall short where they began" worth having happened. And just as Wilbur's poem has a call, so too does this one. Get up! it calls us. Get up and keep on doing what is worth doing! Time and tide wait for no man.

Bridge for the Living
Philip Larkin

(The words of a cantata composed by Anthony Hedges to celebrate the opening of Humber Bridge, first performed at the City Hall in Hull on 11 April 1981)

Isolate city spread alongside water,
Posted with white towers, she keeps her face
Half-turned to Europe, lonely northern daughter,
Holding through centuries her separate place.

Behind her domes and cranes enormous skies
Of gold and shadows build; a filigree
Of wharves and wires, ricks and refineries,
Her working skyline wanders to the sea.

In her remote three-cornered hinterland
Long white-flowered lanes follow the riverside.
The hills bend slowly seaward, plain gulls stand,
Sharp fox and brilliant pheasant walk, and wide

Wind-muscled wheatfields wash round villages,
Their churches half-submerged in leaf. They lie
Drowned in high summer, cartways and cottages,
The soft huge haze of ash-blue sea close by.

Snow-thickened winter days are yet more still:
Farms fold in fields, their single lamps come on
Tall church-towers parley, airily audible,
Howden and Beverly, Hedon and Patrington,

While scattered on steep seas, ice-crusted ships
Like errant birds carry her loneliness,
A lighted memory no miles eclipse,
A harbour for the heart against distress.

*
And now this stride in our solitude,
A swallow-fall and rise of one plain line,
A giant step for ever to include
All our dear landscape in a new design.

The winds play on it like a harp; the song,
Sharp from the east, sun-throated from the west,
Will never to one separate shire belong,
But north and south make union manifest.

Lost centuries of local lives that rose
And flowered to fall short where they began
Seem now to reassemble and unclose,
All resurrected in this single span,

Reaching for the world, as our lives do,
As all lives do, reaching that we may give
The best of what we are and hold as true:
Always it is by bridges that we live.

Wikipedia: “The Humber Bridge, near Kingston upon Hull, England, is a 2,220-metre (7,280 ft) single-span suspension bridge, which opened to traffic on 24 June 1981. It was the longest of its type in the world when opened, and is now the eighth-longest. It spans the Humber (the estuary formed by the rivers Trent and Ouse) between Barton-upon-Humber on the south bank and Hessle on the north bank, connecting the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. When it opened in 1981 both sides of the bridge were in the non-metropolitan county of Humberside until its dissolution in 1996. The bridge itself can be seen for miles around and as far as Patrington in the East Riding of Yorkshire. As of 2006, the bridge carried an average of 120,000 vehicles per week.”


Special thanks to Adam Cooper for this one of several Larkin poems.


For the New Railway Station in Rome
Richard Wilbur

Those who said God is praised
By hurt pillars, who loved to see our brazen lust
Lie down in rubble, and our vaulting arches
Conduce to dust;

Those who with short shadows
Poked through the stubbled forum pondering on decline
And would not take the sun standing at noon
For a good sign;

Those pilgrims of defeat
Who brought their injured wills to a soldier’s home;
Dig them all up now, tell them there’s something new
To see in Rome.

See, from the travertine
Face of the office block, the roof of the booking-hall
Sails out into the air beside the ruined
Servian wall,

Echoing in its light
And cantilevered swoop of reinforced concrete
The broken profile of these stones, defeating
That defeat

And straying the strummed mind,
By such a sudden chord as raised the town of Troy
To where the least shard of the world sings out
In stubborn joy,

“What city is eternal
But that which prints itself within the groping head
Out of the blue unbroken reveries
Of the building dead?

“What is our praise or pride
But to imagine excellence, and try to make it?
What does it say over the door of Heaven
But homo fecit?”