From boastful mayors to hype-happy Chamber of Commerce chiefs, big cities have never been short on advocates. The same is also true of the latest suburban development ring, promoted aggressively by profit-hungry development interests.
But who speaks for America's first-tier suburbs, places just outside a big city's borders? Once hot growth spots, many now find themselves aging and declining, threatened by the investment pull of newer suburbs even farther out.
The missing national spokesman seems finally to have appeared in the person of William H. Hudnut III. Ironically, Hudnut has a big city background--16 years as mayor of Indianapolis, where he formed partnerships that led to an exemplary downtown renewal. He was elected president of the National League of Cities and received 12 honorary degrees. In 1988, City and State magazine proclaimed him the ``nation's best mayor.''
Now 70, Hudnut could easily rest on his laurels. But no. Expending shoe leather like a cub reporter, he traveled coast to coast to interview citizens and leaders in literally dozens of suburbs. The result: ``Halfway to Everywhere," a lively first-hand report on how America's first-tier suburbs are doing, combined with a seasoned pro's assessment of their 21st century prospects. It's published by the Urban Land Institute in Washington, where Hudnut is a senior fellow.
Hudnut confesses he started with ``the misconceived stereotype that America's first-tier suburbs were all in trouble, full of ramshackle houses and broken-down buildings, dead commercial strips and empty factories.''
And indeed, woven into his narrative are many communities--poverty and scandal-afflicted Camden, N.J., and East St. Louis, Ill., a string of tired industrial towns on Chicago's southside, fiscally destitute Lincoln Heights, Ohio, and others--where a first glance suggests a train wreck of the American Dream.
Yet even in those most afflicted spots, Hudnut turns up a surprising tapestry of determined civic leaders, faith-based organizations and nonprofit housing groups, all resolutely determined to beat the odds.
The same can-do and must-do spirit, Hudnut reports, is surfacing in post-World War II suburbs going through difficult transitions. A prime example: Roseville, just north of Minneapolis-St. Paul, incorporated in 1948, filling fast with a jumble of ranch houses, bungalows and 800-square-foot ``Cape Codders.'' Strip malls and the Twin Cities' first McDonald's followed, plus trucking firms and corporate heavies including Honeywell and Control Data.
Then, in 1970, growth stalled as still-newer suburbs exerted a centrifugal pull on Roseville residents. Corporations started to leave. The population started to age. The town appeared ready to suffer the same disinvestment its own growth had exerted on the Twin Cities.
But it didn't happen. The town determined to reinvent itself. Retailing and corporate jobs--based in part on the community's key location between the center cities and outer suburbs--started a comeback in the '90s.
Today, Hudnut reports, Roseville is working to redesign and reinvigorate key intersections. A prime development site is turning into the high-tech park that city fathers have consistently backed--not the big-box retail complex some business interests sought. And now a town that grew on the automobile has purchased an old railroad right of way and dreams of commuter light-rail line sometime in the future.
Successful redevelopment of first-tier suburbs, Roseville development director Dennis Welsch told Hudnut, will exert strong positive impact both inward, toward the center city, and outward, to aging outer ring suburbs, helping them learn how to avoid decay. The great hope: healthy metro regions in this century.
Hudnut developed a list of ``urban acupuncture'' tips in which some suburbs already excel--and many more could.
Some examples from his book: ``Rebuild Main Street''--a strategy that's already worked for such towns as Bethesda, Md., Merchantville, N.J., Webster Groves, Mo., and Pasadena, Calif. ``DeMall'' failing shopping centers for second-generation uses such as offices (Whitehall, Ohio)--or even demolish them for radically redesigned, pedestrian-friendly, full-service town centers (Park Forest, Ill.).
Some other acupuncture items: ``Ensure Public Safety'' by imaginative community policing (Richmond, Calif.). ``Don't Forget the Unum'' (as in e pluribus unum)--embrace diversity, including a welcome mat for the high numbers of new immigrants, from Asians to Latin Americans, now flooding into older suburbs.
One suggestion I found especially appealing: ``Public Space Equals Sense of Place.'' Hudnut relates how Lansdowne, Pa., residents had long honored a 350-year-old sycamore tree, already growing in William Penn's day. So when the land on which the tree stands came up for purchase in the '90s, the town bought it and developed a park--the City Council declaring the sycamore to be ``pretty much integral to who we see ourselves as being, as it represents our history, our commitment to natural beauty, and our desire to preserve for our children.''
I'd translate that to say we need suburbs that don't just make economic sense, but incorporate soul and civics. Hudnut, earlier in his career, was an ordained minister with a parish. The old fire still burns.
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