Making Productive Places

Chuck Marohn is back writing after a holiday break and he is on a roll. In a post contemplating the nature of productivity he presents an argument for traditional development patterns based on productivity alone. I find these kind of analyses fascinating:

In order to provide an apples to apples analysis, I went to the adjoining city of Brainerd to make a comparison of the Mills site – the most productive site on this STROAD – to the productivity found in the traditional development pattern. The nine blocks of downtown Brainerd shown below create a site of slightly less size – 17.4 acres – but far greater value. The total value of these nine blocks is $18.9 million, a per acre productivity of $1.08 million, a 72% premium over the Mills STROAD site.

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The traditional development pattern of the downtown not only starts the productivity race 72% ahead of the STROAD, it has lots of opportunity to grow. All of the parking can easily be converted to more productive uses. When that low hanging fruit is consumed, all of the buildings can be improved. The second and third floors can be recaptured, renovated and remodeled. This doesn’t require one sugar daddy but can be accomplished through the organic functioning of many different players. And when this happens, it won’t suck the life out of the surrounding properties. To the contrary, this can only happen successfully in conjunction with the surrounding neighborhoods. Even though the current downtown is far more financially productive than the STROAD, the current atrophy and decline should be the low point. With a little different focus, it is easy to envision the value of these nine downtown blocks doubling, tripling or more.

We need to focus on making our places productive. In an era when we bounce from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis, we cannot afford to keep throwing money into low value infrastructure and development patterns. As Chuck advocates, we must put our limited resources into making places that are productive and efficient. The good news is that those same patterns that make for resilient, productive places also make for the most livable places as well. We literally can get more for less.