At the end of my City Talk column on Sunday, I noted that some key concerns about the quality of life for residents of the downtown area would be ameliorated if more folks were simply living downtown.
The need for greater residential density in our urban neighborhoods has been a consistent refrain of this column for many years. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but the need for increased density seems more widely accepted than it used to be.
In part, this is purely a political calculation. While residents of historic neighborhoods have considerable clout, there simply aren’t enough voters living in the Historic District, Thomas Square or adjacent neighborhoods to determine who holds any single seat on Savannah’s City Council.
But there are much more fundamental reasons to encourage increased density.
The neighborhoods bounded by Victory Drive, East Broad Street, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and the river once had about three times the population of today.
The core of the city is dotted with vacant lots and unoccupied properties, and we’ve also seen over many decades a sharp decline in household size.
These trends have been reinforced by others, especially widespread automobile ownership and the growth of the suburbs.
Viewed in isolation, the decline in residential density downtown might seem like a pretty good thing, especially for residents who want as much quiet and privacy as possible.
But Savannah’s urban design and historical land-use patterns dictate a certain ratio of commercial versus residential properties.
We have a number of important commercial corridors downtown, including Broughton Street, River Street, Bay Street, MLK, Abercorn Street and Bull Street. There are key pockets of commercial activity elsewhere too, including the City Market area and the Downtown Design District along Whitaker Street.
This balance of residential and commercial uses has changed relatively little since Savannah was founded. The design worked well for a couple of centuries, but the decline in residential density and other cultural trends in the latter half of the 20th century devastated the downtown commercial sector.
To put it simply, there aren’t anywhere near enough downtown residents to support all the downtown commercial areas.
The void has largely been filled by tourists, which has prompted commercial investment that caters primarily to that sector. Zoning codes have skewed things further by encouraging hotels rather than apartments.
I’m painting with a broad brush in this short column. Obviously, you can find all sorts of exceptions, and it’s worth noting that commercial traffic varies considerably by neighborhood and by time of day.
But we’d have more neighborhood businesses in the greater downtown area if we had more residents in those neighborhoods.
We’d simply have a stronger neighborhood fabric.
City Talk appears every Sunday and Tuesday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net and http://www.billdawers.com. Send mail to 10 E. 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.