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38 Planning June 2005 . By Rodney E. Engelen, AICP PLANNING PiRAC;:FICiE , e Heart of In the fight against sprawl, it's . mixed-use cores to the rescue. . . lanners work hard to make great communities happen. But would great communities: · Relentlessly destroy farms, wetlands, and natural resources? · Wantonly waste energy and water? · Stick with expensive and inadequate trans- portation systems? · Make second-class citizens of the poor, elderly, and disadvantaged? · Do little to elevate the human spirit through beauty, amenity, culture, and history? Many of us are trying to re-energize plan- ning at the project scale. Consider the many recent initiatives to deal with sprawl, manage growth, and market "new urbanism" prin- ciples. But we must do much more, more boldly, on a larger scale, and do it better. To start, we must define what we mean by "greatness." Here are four possible elements of such a definition: Allow everyone to live in well-planned communities and neighborhoods. Save natural areas and open space and protect cultural and historic features. Provide adequate infrastructure. Locate all intense, "attraction" activities in well-planned, mixed-use areas- downtowns and cores. While we need more success in all of these areas, the most important would be building good downtowns and cores. Intense commer- cial, governmental, institutional, and cultural functions are the key generators of employ- ment, focal points of society, and basic shapers of our cities. We should require them to be part of healthy, mixed-use cores. A familiar tune It is discouraging to realize that this conclu- sion was reached more than 40 years ago in dozens of research projects, books, and re- gional plans. Some of the early work in this area was undertaken in cities seeking to over- come years of neglect during the Depression and World War II-and to cope with compe- tition from newly energized suburbs. The Chicago Central Area Committee did excellent work in the 1950s, when Ted Aschman, the city's former planning director, served as the committee's consultant. He drew on experiences in Cincinnati and Seattle as well as Chicago. Aschman assembled a set of development principles and convinced a re- ceptive business community and the first Mayor Daley of their value. They guide development in downtown Chicago to this day. In 1958, Minneapolis became the first city to adopt these principles for its downtown. Others followed suit. Briefly stated, the principles say that to be successful a downtown or core must have the following: good access, mixed uses, compact- ness, ease of internal movement, amenities and images, strong environmental support , 10 OJ -0 01 ~ , "' .0 , '" 0. ~ "' ~ ~ "' -0 o '" ! 3