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Tell me about the Lowell plan’s history.

The Lowell Plan was co-created by [the late Sen.] Paul Tsongas and then-city manager Joseph Tully many years ago to bring together the different sectors of the community into a single entity that could lead the city into its physical future. It includes members of government, the business community and nonprofits who all worked together to ask and answer, “What can we do to make Lowell better?” It was immediately clear to me that what the Lowell plan lacked was a plan. They were investing in the creation of individual pieces, like a stadium, and no one was thinking holistically about where to put these things, how they’re connected, how they might be mutually supportive.

With a community that has shown a tremendous history of self-improvement, it’s necessary to have a physical plan to guide future investment to make that investment worthwhile. In my [initial] presentation I showed them a whole bunch of ideas that had come to me during my month-long stay — many from the mouths of locals. I showed them some of the general opinions I had on the big questions. I showed them missed opportunities and some of the problems. They asked me to come back with a team and make a plan.

What are some of the plan’s particulars?

The plan holds certain lessons applicable to most American cities, especially midsized cities. Its timeframe begins immediately with changes that can be made today at negligible cost and continues well into the future, 20 years out. The plan began with single question: How can we make Lowell thrive? That led to the identification of problems and opportunities. The problems are more short-term fixes. One is Lowell’s convoluted one-way street system. It takes some very long paths to cover some very short distances, which is frustrating for locals. I have an exceptional sense of direction, and I spent 20 minutes lost just trying to find City Hall. That’s the experience of most people when they go to Lowell for the first time. This problem can be fixed quickly with paint and signals — you don’t have to rebuild.

Also, as in most American cities, the driving lanes are too wide, which means we can right-size them, and introduce a full bicycle network, which is completely missing. This is generally called a road diet. It doesn’t reduce capacity in any way; it simply brings cars to the right speed for urban life. The short-term fixes also deal with parking management. Right now it costs less to park on the street than in city garages. At 6 p.m. the garages are empty, but residents have filled all the spots in front of the many wonderful downtown restaurants. That’s an easy fix.

Longer-term there are tremendous opportunities. In the 1980s, Lowell transformed itself around a vision of making the most of its historic mills. It is now an urban national park; it has the mills and a great system of canals making it unique. But particularly at one place where the canals come together at Lowell Locks, it’s rural in its conception. It does not feel urban. If you look at successful waterfronts in Providence and San Antonio, these are urban places with lots of stone and steel. They don’t have much grass. So there is a very long-term, very expensive proposal for transforming the downtown into a truly urban riverfront at Lowell Locks. It’s not saying “build this now” — but when Lowell has the means to make its next public works investment, this is how it should be done.

Downtown can generate pedestrian culture, and therefore that’s where, if you’re making investments in walkability, they should be made first.”

Who are the local players in Lowell?

Politically, we’ve brought everyone together. Sometimes either government or a nonprofit or a business association will say, “We want to do a plan.” And I’ll say, “Who is ‘we’? Were you planning to involve the mayor? Were you planning to include nonprofits?” These unilaterally produced downtown plans rarely get built. It needs to be understood as a cosponsored effort. Once that sense of joint ownership is established, you can accomplish things quickly. The public realm doesn’t belong to one person, and no one segment of society can control its transformation.

What is the professional planner’s role?

I do believe that planners have to come from the outside to do a successful downtown plan. There is a wonderful quote from Andres Duany: “The local person is the expert in the art of the impossible.” This is because they are caught up in the day-to-day impediments of getting things done. They’ll say, “We can’t transform that building because the owner lives in Jamaica.” In a long-term plan, things like that don’t matter. Many of those temporary impediments that locals see as prohibitive will be gone in 20 years.

If you’re a planner and you’re coming from the outside, how can you learn what the locals know? The technique that I favor is what I’m calling the slow charrette. It’s a modification of the typical process, in which a firm sets up an office on site for a week or 10 days to have a public workshop, with the doors open. It’s a technique that I’m enthusiastic about, but the wonderful technique of the charrette is a far cry from living in a community. So I moved my pregnant wife and toddler to a converted loft in downtown Lowell for a full month. I walked my kid on the riverwalk to the daycare and was on the streets every day. Whenever I left the apartment I had to schedule an extra 15 minutes for my walk because people would stop me. I was a visible presence in the community for a real stretch of time. It meant having people over, going to people’s apartments, and having dozens and dozens of meetings.

Why do a downtown plan? What does it mean for the city at large?

Often when you’re doing a downtown plan people will come in from a peripheral neighborhood and say, “What about us? We need more help than downtown.” The main justification, both morally and practically, is that the downtown is the one part of the city that belongs to everyone. Another thing to think about is how your reputation is made, how you attract economic energy. When someone is thinking about moving their company to Minneapolis, they’re picturing the skyline, not one residential neighborhood or another.

If you’re a typical midsized city, only certain parts are going to be urban. So many cities throw away money investing in streetscapes in neighborhoods where people will never walk, which lack density. People think a streetscape causes walking, but it’s one of the lesser factors in what creates a walking community. Downtown can generate pedestrian culture, and therefore that’s where, if you’re making investments in walkability, they should be made first.

Our cities are being designed for us every day. In the absence of a plan they’re being designed, street by street, by a city engineer, who is charged with avoiding problems, and typically the biggest problem is congestion. City engineers widen lanes, eliminate parallel parking, take out trees, transform a city into place that’s great to drive through but not worth arriving at. This has been the tendency in American cities for four decades. One thing I tell mayors is: Stop letting your public works department design your city. The biggest American cities understand this. But most Americans live in midsized cities, and those typical cities — Lowell, Davenport, Columbia, Jackson — are effectively being designed by public works departments with the ultimate goal of moving traffic. The streets are the arteries of our city and the lifeblood does need to keep pumping, but at the right speed. We New Urbanists are not anti-cars. We’re anti-cars-moving-quickly.

This article appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!