Quote:
Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc
Note that Aiken appears to have been designed, in 1835 no less, by a time-traveling SimCity aficionado. All the streets in the original part of town are less streets than they are boulevards with wide, planted medians. Where these boulevards cross it leaves a small square of land that in two places downtown has been given over to fountains, and in the rest of town has been given over to plantings, just like the medians themselves. Likely, this plan was the result of the prevailing belief at the time that mosquitoes could only fly so far before dying, and this was an attempt to build some malaria and yellow fever protection into the city plan. Columbia, SC's wide downtown streets were made so broad for that exact reason as well.
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Columbia is fortunate to have such an expansive grid system to accommodate future growth and development, but exactly how it was laid out and located resulted in a less visually appealing setting. The city couldn't be built right on the banks of the Congaree River due to flooding concerns and today much of that land is owned privately which means that the city's greatest recreational asset isn't as easily accessible as it could be. There has been some movement on that front with the continued development of the greenway and USC has plans to extend its campus to the river but that's a long-term project. There was actually a plan released prior to the recession to develop a downtown research campus between USC's campus and the river to include a grand new riverfront park, but the economic downturn coupled with poor oversight and leadership essentially shelved the entire plan, although some elements have been developed and the park is supposed to be a long-term project.
Secondly, unlike Georgia's planned cities, Columbia's original city plan didn't include landscaped medians, squares, or a central common; gathering spaces don't seem to have even figured into the plans. The state capital grounds are full of statues and monuments and it essentially operates as a park with the statehouse itself and its grand features making it a popular photography hotspot in the city which compensates a little bit for that deficiency, but Savannah beautifully illustrates the aesthetic that landscaped areas and well-maintained civic spaces can give to a planned city.
And as for the wide streets, they present a bit more of a challenge today than anything. Assembly Street serves as the best example here, being six-eight lanes wide and serving as a psychological barrier between the Congaree Vista district (a revitalized commercial area of historic commercial buildings, train stations, etc) and the Main Street corridor north of the statehouse. The street was beautified on the stretch south of the statehouse a few years ago, but it wasn't narrowed and I think something more interesting could have been done with the median besides brick pavers and iron fencing to prevent jaywalking, but that stretch of Assembly is flanked by USC on both sides so it already has a bit more natural synergy. Ideally the entire length of Assembly Street downtown could be a showcase Complete Street overhaul, but Columbia is surprisingly hilly in several spots downtown (I'm pretty sure that's due to the the city being in the Sandhill region of the Carolinas/Georgia which roughly tracks with the Fall Line) which makes bicycling and even some walking longer distances challenging. Even so, a standard road diet to eliminate some lanes on key thoroughfares like Assembly would be an improvement but I think there are fears about traffic being negatively impacted, during the workweek as well as on game day Saturdays. I think such fears are unfounded, but alas...
Finally, there is the issue of just how expansive the grid system is and consequently how much of downtown is undeveloped and disconnected. There are a ton of surface lots that need to be developed to give downtown more cohesiveness, including some along Assembly Street whose width already serves as a detriment to creating synergy. Then within the past 25 years or so, you have state government unloading large tracts of land downtown that formerly housed a state prison complex (25 acres) and the state mental health complex (181 acres)--on opposite sides of downtown at that. That's definitely a good thing as it presents an opportunity to get them developed and added to the tax rolls, but such developments have to occur in phases over several years to become fully built-out and there are obstacles to overcome so that they become fully ingrained in the urban fabric of the city. The city bought the state prison complex property in 1994 and the final phase of the residential development that was built there was completed last year--a total of 24 years. The redevelopment of the former state mental health complex is said to be the largest urban revitalization project in a downtown city east of the Mississippi; the state sold it to a master developer in 2010 and who knows when full build-out will be. Because the complex was self-contained and many historic buildings on the campus will be redeveloped, the grid system will not be extended; hopefully it won't wind up feeling like a huge upscale mixed-use neighborhood separate from the rest of downtown when it should be properly integrated into the rest of the city and hopefully facilitate more development to connect it to other commercial districts in the urban core. In a city Columbia's size, that's a real challenge and I'm unaware of a huge segregated parcel of land in a planned/gridded city that was retrofitted to seamlessly integrate into the urban fabric. I'd love to see such an example if it exists but I'm aware of some smaller developments that are doing that or something similar like
Eastern Wharf in Savannah.