Critical Mass

Top: Eugene (photo by the City of Eugene); Bottom: Paris (photo by Yann Caradec from Paris, France - La Tour Eiffel vue de la Tour Saint-Jacques, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34933538)

  

Sunday’s edition of The Register-Guard features the latest column by Don Kahle. He reflects on whether Eugene left a lasting impression on those who attended and the millions of viewers worldwide who watched last month’s World Athletics Championships. Did Track Town USA make the most of its big moment? Beyond the excellent showing within the confines of a gleaming and telegenic Hayward Field, probably not. In Don’s view, Eugene suffered from a deficit of memorable and iconic sights. We have our buttes, rivers, and waterfalls, but Eugene failed the “branding test for exclusivity.” Eugene need not aspire to be a world-class city (though it hosted the Championships in world-class fashion), but our city can become a better version of itself.

 
Don suggests a couple of ways to remedy the failings he perceives. One is to encourage more distinctive buildings and the other is to capitalize on our already distinctive people. Beyond distinctive architecture and a community full of character(s), I additionally believe an absent ingredient is critical mass.
 
Many American cities lack the critical mass required to achieve the vibrancy, sense of place, and urban fabric we typically consider memorable, attractive, and sustainable. Such critical mass is not a function of a necessarily large population. Many smaller cities and towns possess everything they need to provide their residents and visitors with the meaningful moments and enduring images of the sort Don laments Eugene fails to deliver. In the U.S. alone, many small communities—including Sedona (Arizona), Carmel-by-the-Sea (California), and Santa Fe (New Mexico) to name a few spots I can claim I have visited—are noteworthy for their scenery, history, and culture. They possess critical mass.
 
Is population density essential to critical mass? Interestingly, Don compares the relative areas of land occupied by Eugene and Paris, France. Within its urban growth boundary, Eugene’s 172, 630 citizens occupy 41.14 square miles. Contrast those figures with Paris’ population of 2,214,690 within the city’s 20 arrondissements across 40.7 square miles. The footprint of both cities may be similar, but their populations most certainly are not. Paris is 14 times as densely populated as Eugene.     

Eugene: 3,911 people per square mile (the dark gray zone is the urban land reserve study area)

 
Here are some to-scale comparisons overlaying Eugene’s physical area on top of maps of other cities (the blue outline is Eugene’s urban growth boundary, while the shaded blue zone is the area governed by the Eugene Downtown Plan):
 

Portland: 4,890 people per square mile

Chicago: 12,000 people per square mile
 

Vancouver: 14,892 people per square mile (43,420 people per square mile on the downtown peninsula)
 

New York: 27,000 people per square mile (69,468 people per square mile in Manhattan)
 

Paris: 54,415 people per square mile

 
Livability matters, and many will argue the factors that add up to a community’s quality of life—the built and natural environments, economic prosperity, social stability, and equity—are not a function of density, nor is density a prerequisite. Likewise, density by itself does not confer imageability of the sort Don says Eugene is missing. Nevertheless, I believe it can be a significant factor in determining the critical mass a city needs to secure an enviable and recognizable identity.
 
Most often, recognizable and vibrant cities have at their center a densely developed downtown that is home to both businesses and a demographically diverse resident population. Ideally, Eugene’s downtown would possess sufficient gravitational pull—the critical mass—to keep the city’s disparate and far-flung neighborhoods within its orbit; this it currently lacks. Done well, a dense downtown would complement and enhance the character of the neighborhoods, minimize environmental impact and energy use, be adaptable over time, and contribute to safe, walkable streets. More effort, not less, should be applied by the City of Eugene to ensure that its historical core reasserts its primacy as the civic, economic, cultural, and governmental center for the metro area.  
 
Density, particularly within a city’s historic downtown, is more productive and yields a greater return on investment than sprawl. Highly valued downtowns generate much more public wealth than low-density subdivisions or strip malls by the highway. Low-density development isn’t just a poor way to generate property tax revenue, it’s also extremely expensive to maintain. By comparison, dense downtowns cost considerably less to maintain in public services and infrastructure.
 
Development patterns that evolved over much of the past century will be difficult to undo. The suburban lifestyle, fostered by decades of pleasant imagery and appeals to independent American sensibilities, remains desirable to many but is also sustained by the current economics of real estate. The fact it is also ultimately unsustainable (in both the environmental and fiscal senses) is what many people fail to understand. 
 
In his column, Don makes the point to say creating a built environment that rewards visitors takes centuries. True enough, wonderful cities do not spring up overnight, lest they appear artificial and inorganic. Does Eugene have sights worth seeing? It will if we work incrementally, piece by piece over generations, to achieve a coherent whole that is uniquely and recognizably “Eugene.” This is a reasonable goal, but one requiring a critical mass that inheres within that ambition.