By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer

A recent presentation on urban planning and transportation filled a downtown meeting room and left the audience with one thought: Freeways are so yesterday.

John Norquist, who was mayor of Milwaukee for 16 years and led a dramatic renewal there that included zoning revisions and a more pedestrian-friendly downtown, now heads

Congress for the New Urbanism, a San Francisco-based nonprofit agency that works to find alternatives to sprawl.

In his presentation to about 80 planners, architects, engineers and others, Norquist emphasized his view that street grids, rather than fast-moving freeways with no sidewalks, work better in densely populated areas.

“Even Wal-Mart now will locate a store on a street with sidewalks and will build stores next to other buildings,” Norquist said. “Real estate values go up when freeways are removed, boulevards are built and views are restored.”

Josh Martin, Charleston city planning director, said Norquist made good points.

“For so long in this country, transportation and land use have divorced themselves from one another, and they operate in two separate spheres of influence that rarely collide,” Martin said. “He’s saying we’ve got to get back to the way we used to address these things.”

Norquist illustrated his talk with photographs of Milwaukee, Charleston and Seoul, South Korea, among other cities. In Milwaukee as well as in Seoul, elevated freeways that had dissected parts of the downtown area have been removed to allow for pedestrian streets lined with retail shops, cafés and other businesses.

Norquist said federal zoning regulations implemented after World War II forced retail, office and other types of businesses to locate outside residential areas and ended the practice of placing living quarters above commercial space, a traditionally European concept.

He used a photo of Prague in the Czech Republic to show how centuries-old building techniques still work today.

Norquist also showed a photograph of downtown Charleston’s Crosstown route, where pedestrians have worn a path alongside the chain link fence that separates the highway from the residential area. The Crosstown empties into downtown Charleston at the terminus of Interstate 26, which runs elevated across much of the city’s north side and the Neck area of the Charleston peninsula. The area has been targeted for a vast redevelopment project called Magnolia.

“The Neck could be developed intensely, but it is dominated by infrastructure that doesn’t serve the neighborhood and lowers the real estate values,” Norquist said. “You could create a place that you love, just like historic Charleston. Giant roads and parking lots create boring places.”

The city might also look at its own past for ideas about improving public transportation in Charleston, Norquist said.

“Even if you don’t have transit, a street grid in the most densely populated area makes more sense than building freeways,” he said. “What would be appropriate for Charleston? Look at your own history. Charleston had streetcars. That’s just another name for light rail.”

Norquist said that a light rail system and other public transit would make more sense for Charleston than extending Interstate 526 onto Johns Island toward Kiawah Island.

“That will reduce the value wherever it goes,” Norquist said. “That would be a mistake, in my opinion.”

Martin, the Charleston planner, said the city’s Parks Conservancy is working on a beautification plan for the Crosstown that recognizes how the roadway is being used and that will give it more of a boulevard-type feel.

Christopher Morgan of the city’s planning department said Norquist’s presentation demonstrated how cities around the world are coping with growth.

“It brought the perspective from his having visited lots of places and watching how lots of cities have evolved,” Morgan said. “I also liked how he emphasized the point of how very often in this region and county, we think mass transit has to pay for itself. Our highways don’t pay for themselves. We subsidize highways. Why don’t we subsidize mass transit?”

Jeff Tyndale, planning director for Berkeley County, said that just because his county is not now densely populated doesn’t mean there will not be more development in the future. Eventually it will have to deal with more transportation issues.

“If we can build denser places that are more interconnected and areas with a sense of place, that will contribute to the vision of the entire area,” Tyndale said.

Architect Sandy Byers of Byers Design Group said he thinks planners and others should create living environments that allow people to have a diverse work-live environment that does not force them to drive everywhere in a car.

“Our roads are getting so congested now, we’ve got to start thinking about how to get people out of their cars and off the roads,” Byers said. “I think he was making a statement about how our cities have grown and how they’ve sprawled and why that hasn’t been a good thing. It has ruined our landscape.”

Norquist said Charleston is lucky in the sense that there was an intense effort led by the Historic Charleston Foundation in the mid-20th century to save the historic district and that Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. has continued those efforts.

“Pensacola (Florida) was just as nice, and they wrecked it,” Norquist said. “They put freeways through the middle of it. You shouldn’t expand your inner city highway system. Stop, don’t do it, roll it back. Replace it with four-lane streets.

“I call it the Detroit shadow. If you want to have low real estate values, build a lot of freeways.”

Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@setcommedia.com.

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