The new downtown: A place for all of us

Like almost all major US cities, Washington is having to reimagine and remake its urban core. Instead of lurching back to a 20th century paradigm, our political leaders should take a leap into a sustainable future and embrace this historic opportunity to reinvent our downtown. The key is mixed-use development, creating an environment where people can live, work, play, send their kids to school, and age in place.

The question is how to spur that development to quickly revitalize—and capitalize on—vacated streets.

Seizing this moment

In the wake of the pandemic, an exodus of workers from acres of multistory office buildings has laid bare the vulnerability of a monoculture: reliance on 500,000 commuters to keep office and commercial real estate afloat. As in agriculture, a built environment with a single purpose is fragile; when that one crop or one function fails, the entire enterprise fails.

Flailing around for quick fixes, some policymakers call for restoring the downtown monoculture by forcing, or at least enticing, workers to not only return to obsolete office buildings but also shop, dine, and park cars near their workplaces. But you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Too many people have discovered flexibility, work-life balance, and freedom from crushing commutes that sap their time while wasting energy and polluting the environment. Much of the time, they can just meet, shop, and order food online.

We don’t have to look far—and certainly not to Cleveland, as a recent Washington Post article did—to see what works. In the past 20 years, Washington’s public and private sector leaders have created some of the nation’s most exciting and prosperous neighborhoods, including the Wharf, north of U Street, NoMa, Union Market, and the Navy Yard. Soon Buzzard Point and Ivy City will join them. They blend three main ingredients needed for diverse, resilient placemaking.

Making innovative redevelopment affordable

Entrepreneurial developers seek affordable opportunities, investing in underutilized areas with low property values, publicly financed incentives, or both. That’s why instead of propping up failing downtown real estate, policymakers need to let the cost of redeveloping underutilized office buildings fall. That can be left to the market or accomplished through public-private partnerships.

Some of Washington’s greatest successes involved collaboration between the DC government and master developers or nimble downtown development corporations. Taking advantage of falling property values, the city can use tax incentives and the outright acquisition of land to consolidate redevelopment opportunities for a developer with a vision.

The city can then use its leverage to put people, not cars, at the center of every choice. That means incorporating desirable features into the redevelopment plan—such as replacing the blank facades of soulless buildings with appealing commercial spaces and animating streetscapes with pedestrian-friendly sidewalks and plazas that invite people to stroll and linger.

Incorporating major amenities

Washington’s most successful neighborhoods feature signature attractions. Some are built-in, like the Washington Channel and the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers. Others have been created, like Union Market’s eclectic food hall, City Center’s trendy retail and event spaces, and the U Street corridor’s entertainment venues.

With the amenities we have in place downtown, Washington can exceed many other cities’ goal of 15-minute living by fostering 10-minute living that everyone can enjoy. Planners can build on assets including numerous renowned theaters, museums, parks, and universities by concentrating redevelopment on small, geographically distinct neighborhoods. Within these areas, they can strategically introduce new grocery stores, commercial services, restaurants, and coffee shops, supported by higher density housing—including increased percentages of affordable units for both lower- and middle-income residents.

Reimagining public infrastructure

Downtown Washington’s roads, bridges, and mass transit were designed and built along major arterials to get commuters in and out of the city as quickly as possible. Transforming our urban core from a repository for suburban workers into livable, walkable neighborhoods demands more than just tinkering with this infrastructure by providing bicycle lanes and pedestrian barriers. Miles of paved surfaces created to accommodate commuters’ cars can be repurposed for use by the people who live and spend time here.

Look no further than street closures for the vibrant Eastern Market stalls, the outdoor street cafes in Penn Quarter and Barracks Row, and the pedestrian-oriented development throughout the Wharf to see how using public infrastructure for people instead of cars can energize a neighborhood. Worldwide, cities like Copenhagen and Paris are transforming congested motorways into green spaces, pedestrian plazas, and bike lanes while also providing interconnected bus and tram transitways. While increasing the cost of driving and parking can discourage driving into urban cores, those costs are effectively offset by convenient transportation alternatives and a more vibrant urban environment.

Public-private collaboration that mixes these three ingredients will speed the kind of downtown revitalization that benefits every DC resident, worker, and visitor. At the same time, it will fuel economic activity and boost tax revenues for even greater investment to come.