Restore the canal without recreating its problems - More and more people are starting to talk about the benefits of rewatering the Erie Canal in Downtown Syracuse. Old photos of Syracuse are tantalizing. Clinton Square is full of people watching the canal, and the City looks like Venice or Amsterdam or Suzhou. Compared to the Erie Boulevard of today, it can seem like … Continue reading Restore the canal without recreating its problems →
Fixing the Creekwalk Downtown - The Creekwalk has a problem: its most interesting spots—the places where people stop and stare, where they can get close to the water, the places that make it unique—flood and have to get blocked off after heavy rains. Seen from the other side, the Creekwalk’s most reliably dry portions—the sidewalks Downtown—are its most boring. interesting … Continue reading Fixing the Creekwalk Downtown →
Scaling up Weekends on Walton - As the weather warms up and people start spending more time outside, it’s time to expand one of City Hall’s best pandemic-era pilot programs: Weekends on Walton. For the last two summers, Syracuse has created new outdoor public space in Armory Square by opening two blocks of Walton Street for people to walk, sit, eat, … Continue reading Scaling up Weekends on Walton →
ADUs in ReZone - City Hall wants to legalize Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs, or small 1-bedroom apartments built in extra space on a residential property). That’s good, but in order to secure all the benefits that this type of housing can offer, City Hall will have to do more than just list it as an ‘allowed use’ in the … Continue reading ADUs in ReZone →
Housing and highways in Onondaga County, 1940-2019 - Central New York’s highways remade the geography of where people live in Onondaga County. A new dataset makes it possible to track change in the number of housing units in each of the County’s census tracks from 1940-2019. These numbers show heavy housing losses in the few highway-adjacent neighborhoods that had lots of housing in … Continue reading Housing and highways in Onondaga County, 1940-2019 →
A New Vision for the Parkway - Our long experiment of running a freeway through Onondaga Lake Park has failed. The Parkway doesn’t even function properly as a high-speed arterial, and it blights the County’s premier public park. The I-81 project presents an opportunity to shift traffic to a safer corridor and restore public access to Onondaga Lake Park itself. Right now, … Continue reading A New Vision for the Parkway →
The Community Grid and Neighborhood Restoration - Before urban renewal, tight-knit neighborhoods right next to Downtown provided housing and opportunity for tens of thousands of people. Now, most of those neighborhoods are mostly parking lots and home to very few people. In order for the Community Grid to succeed, Syracuse must restore those neighborhoods. Urban renewal hit the 15th Ward/Near Eastside worse … Continue reading The Community Grid and Neighborhood Restoration →
Corning’s lesson for the Canal District - NYSDOT’s idea for a “canal-themed district”—a combination of fountains, public art, and parklets centered around the spot where Oswego and Erie Canals used to intersect—is a good one. It would create a new public space in the center of town, and it would restore the canal’s place in people’s lived experience of the City. However, … Continue reading Corning’s lesson for the Canal District →
How tearing down I-81 will reduce traffic - The I-81 Draft Environmental Impact Statement put a lot of effort into explaining exactly how many minutes it would take to drive a car between different points in the County depending on what NYSDOT ultimately decides to do with the I-81 viaduct. NYSDOT estimates, for instance, that in 2056 during the morning rush it’ll take … Continue reading How tearing down I-81 will reduce traffic →
Lay new sidewalks, keep old trees - This should have gone without saying, but the municipal sidewalk program should preserve as many existing street trees as possible. Tall trees with full foliage shade the sidewalk and make walking around the City more bearable in Syracuse’s steamy summers. A sidewalk—even a brand new perfectly level one—will not be a good place to walk … Continue reading Lay new sidewalks, keep old trees →
Sidewalk maintenance and street trees - Sidewalks and street trees both make it easier, safer, and more comfortable to get around town on foot, so Syracuse’s new municipal sidewalk program and Urban Forestry Master Plan should make life better for pedestrians. But these two programs might work against each other if they’re not coordinated. One side of the problem is that … Continue reading Sidewalk maintenance and street trees →
Plant more trees in Clinton Square - Clinton Square is Syracuse’s premier civic space. Bob Haley calls it “the center of the center of the center.” It’s the spot where the City of Syracuse started. It’s the site of our biggest city festivals. It’s where we gather as a community. City Hall has always taken special care of the space. It’s been … Continue reading Plant more trees in Clinton Square →
How cars killed Syracuse - 81’s construction was a cataclysmic event in Syracuse’s history. Building the highway—and 690 soon after—meant tearing down dozens of city blocks and demolishing hundreds of homes. But although that event stands out for the scale of its destruction, it was neither the beginning nor the end of Syracuse’s campaign to demolish itself. Aerial images from … Continue reading How cars killed Syracuse →
Food Deserts and Parking Lots - Too many people living in too many neighborhoods have too hard a time getting fresh food. In part, this problem has to do with the fact that grocery stores won’t open in poor neighborhoods—so-called ‘food deserts.’ But, because food deserts are only ‘deserts’ for people without cars, it also has to do with how accessible … Continue reading Food Deserts and Parking Lots →
The mechanics of exclusion - Syracuse’s zoning ordinance makes most buildings illegal. Before anyone can build almost any new building or put an old one to almost any new use, they have to get a special exemption from the zoning code in the form of a variance or permit. This seemingly bureaucratic process is actually intensely political—the zoning appeals board … Continue reading The mechanics of exclusion →
What to do with Shoppingtown - After losing out on millions of dollars in tax revenue and spending millions more in bankruptcy court, Onondaga County has gotten legal control of Shoppingtown Mall. Now the County’s just got to figure out what to do with that 70 acre property. Given the geographic location of the site and the demographic trends in the … Continue reading What to do with Shoppingtown →
A greenway for the Westside - Soon, the Eastside, Southside, and Northside will all have access to a cross-county network of greenways running through two of the three big valleys that intersect at Downtown Syracuse. That third valley—stretching from the City Center to Split Rock through Syracuse’s Westside—should have it’s own greenway too. Abandoned train bridges, a channelized creek, and public … Continue reading A greenway for the Westside →
Will the Inner Harbor become the new Central Business District? - White collar companies are building new office space at the Inner Harbor instead of Downtown. This could be the start of a tectonic shift that remakes the City’s economic and social geography. Equitable’s plan to move from its landmark office building on Madison to a brand new building on Clinton Street is just the most … Continue reading Will the Inner Harbor become the new Central Business District? →
Neighborhood-Scale Retail - When you’ve already started cooking dinner and realize that you’re out of eggs and that you absolutely have to have eggs for this meal to work, it’s a beautiful thing to be able to just run down the block to buy a dozen without even turning the stove off. When you don’t own a car … Continue reading Neighborhood-Scale Retail →
Multifamily Housing and Neighborhood Character - 331 Winton St is a 2-story, 3-unit apartment building on the Northside. Jefferson Tower is a 23-story, 295 unit Downtown high rise. ReZone can’t tell them apart—as far as City Hall’s new zoning ordinance is concerned, both are ‘multifamily’ housing, and both will be banned from most of Syracuse. That will cause 2 huge problems: … Continue reading Multifamily Housing and Neighborhood Character →