Not so long ago, the future of American cities looked like a Jetsons cartoon, with moving sidewalks and “25-lane” highway conglomerations, according to urban planner John Fregonese. In that Space Age vision, people were ferried door-to-door from suburban home to urban workplaces or shopping centers on preprogrammed shuttles, allowing almost no human contact on the route. “You could be just kind of a brain on a plate,” he told attendees at today’s Baton Rouge Growth Coalition lunch. “Things have really changed.”
Planning certainly has evolved since the ’50s, which made a comic appearance in Fregonese’s presentation on parish growth plans via an animated clip of naively imagined, uncrowded sprawl that didn’t work out the way George Jetson would have expected. Today, the watchword is “mixed-use,” meaning people want more places of beauty around them and other people to mingle with, rather than what Fregonese called a “dispersed Le Corbusier future” that was in vogue a half-century ago.
The Portland, Ore.-based planner worked on the West Feliciana Parish comprehensive plan and is involved in the Loop project. Today, Fregonese addressed some broad issues in the parish’s competitive future, including that one- to two-person households are clearly on the rise and that a historic labor shortage is on the horizon. To make the region appeal to skilled workers, he says ramping up the “digital economy” should be a priority, as well as presenting the area as welcoming of a multiethnic population in order to attract economic development.
Despite wetlands issues and low-lying spots in the parish, he says current zoning would support almost 44,000 new households and 107,400 new jobs, a prospect that Fregonese says made him “salivate with potential” over building prospects. On the other hand, he says 16% of the population earns $100,000 or more — the same percentage that earns less than $15,000. While East Baton Rouge has a crime rate roughly on par with Denver, he says the city of Baton Rouge looks more like New Orleans in its crime rate. Although he spoke of the appeal of creating places where people live and work, rather than the commuter vision that once dominated urban expansion, several of his slide-show illustrations featured citadel-like blocks of mixed-use development a la Perkins Rowe, which include walkways and plazas inside, yet sharply abut traffic arteries and obscure vertical open space.
Fregonese also discussed the importance of involving the whole community in discussions on growth, pointing to the example of Tulsa, Okla., where 2,000 people gave input on redevelopment plans his firm worked up that now have broad public support. In a couple odd days, he says a Web site, www.futureebr.com, will detail some of his strategy for the parish’s comprehensive master plan and a five- to seven-year strategic plan to implement it. In the meantime, people can learn more about the growth coalition on the group’s Web site.
More information on the master plan is on the city’s Web site. The planning is set to kick off at 5:30 p.m., Jan. 26, at the Louisiana State Museum.
