Golis: How cities retain their vitality

Drive around America and you will find too many faceless cities. Their downtowns sit deserted and forlorn, while the roads on the edge of town are adorned by aging strip malls and the occasional big-box store. Drive down one of those nondescript commercial streets and you could be anywhere. They all look alike - the same signs, the same buildings, the same traffic.

Whether you want to start a business or find a place to live or enjoy a weekend vacation, these cities don’t give you any reason to want to be there.

Like it or not, the identify and economic vitality of every city is judged by the well-being of its downtown. Any city that doesn’t take care of its downtown risks becoming one of those faceless places.

For Santa Rosans, this is why the conversation about re-uniting Old Courthouse Square is important.

You may never go downtown, but you have a financial stake in its future. If you don’t think so, you might check real estate values in cities such as Healdsburg and Sonoma, cities with vibrant downtowns.

Earlier this year, James Fallows, a national correspondent for the Atlantic, set out to study the evolution of American cities, hoping to determine why some find success and others do not.

“As we’ve traveled around the country,” he wrote, “we’ve become stronger and stronger believers in the connection between the condition of a city’s downtown district, and the overall state of the city’s economy and culture.”

Progress is being made. As a Press Democrat editorial noted last week, downtown Santa Rosa is on its way to becoming a destination for more visitors. The monolith that was the AT&T building is being transformed. New restaurants, pubs and coffee joints are popping up. More people are playing downtown - and living there, too.

But no one doubts that more work needs to be done.

Changes in the retail business have challenged cities to re-invent themselves. Small stores have given way to shopping malls, which have given way to big-box stores. And we wait to learn the full impact of online shopping.

Successful downtowns - say, Healdsburg or Sonoma, Palo Alto or Walnut Creek - re-made themselves with shops and restaurants, downtown housing and public spaces.

Think about how often we are drawn to a city with great public spaces. We don’t go there to see big-box stores and strip malls. We go there to see the parks, squares, museums, clubs and theaters that bring people together. Such cities prosper because people want to be there.

Vibrant downtowns also serve as a hedge against the economic and environmental costs of sprawl development.

Like many cities, Santa Rosa has often declared its intentions to “revitalize the downtown.” Owing to a lack of money - or nerve - the results have been mixed. Somewhere in the deep recesses of City Hall, a dusty closet contains the remains of various blue-ribbon studies that were supposed to transform the city center.

For a couple of decades now, city officials have been talking about re-unifying Old Courthouse Square, creating a public space that would bring more people downtown. Every two years, City Council candidates talked about bringing back the square, but nothing ever happened.

Now the City Council has endorsed a plan advanced by downtown property owners and business leaders. The proposal is less expensive than the previous plan - which is to say, it’s more doable. The gold-plating on the 2007 proposal became an invitation to kick the can down the road, which is what happened.

Some Santa Rosans don’t care about the square or the downtown because they don’t think they are important. The refrain is heard: Why would the city spend money on the Old Courthouse Square when there are streets in need of repair?

Others complain about an interruption of traffic flows, as if the downtown exists to allow traffic to move quickly through the area. You could make the same argument in Healdsburg and Sonoma. If it weren’t for those damned plazas, we could get home in three minutes less time.

It come down to this: In whatever city they are found, the big-box stores and strip malls never change. What defines the character and heart of a city is what people find when they go downtown.

Given their shared geography, there’s no reason that the things that make Healdsburg and Sonoma popular to locals and visitors couldn’t be re-created in Santa Rosa as well.

No one can guarantee that one project will transform the downtown, but reunifying the square needs to be part of a larger conversation about bringing more people to live, work and play there.

To be successful, we only need to revisit assumptions that history left behind and reconsider past decisions that turned out to be wrong.

All over America, the most admired, proud, livable and visited cities embrace the possibilities, daring to imagine urban life in new ways - and daring to take risks. Downtowns define what other people think about your city. They also represent jobs and money in the bank.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.