Professor Pierre Filion from the Canadian University of Waterloo's School of Planning was quoted in the Toronto Globe and Mail declaring "There is a movement in North America now which is focusing on declining cities and what to do with them from a planning perspective."
For smaller cities like Albany, whose population and economy have declined, this focus is timely and should make for interesting times.
Former Gov. Nelson Rockefeller gave Albany the monumental Empire State Plaza and the University at Albany. The federal government sparked the revival of areas like Hudson Park in the 1970s through programs like community development grants, and the revitalization of some downtown structures like Kiernan Plaza through Urban Development Action Grants in the 1980s.
Since then, however, decay has spread in areas of Albany and the city's economy has been stagnant. There is no significant federal or other public support on the horizon for revitalization. Albany needs to look inward for creativity and the resources to apply the creativity.
Albany's South End is a challenge and an opportunity. It is identified in the recent Capital South Plan as the southernmost portion of the city, stretching from roughly Empire State Plaza south to the city limits and from the Hudson River to Delaware Avenue. It encompasses eight neighborhoods. The plan focused on the South End core, including the Mansion and Historic Pastures neighborhoods.
With its plain brick high-rise public housing and blight, the South End's prospects for revitalization appear to be poor. Yet a growing number of institutions — Habitat for Humanity, the Albany Housing Authority, Trinity Institute and the Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering — are increasing their stake in the South End or looking to engage in it for the first time.
I was enthusiastic after a recent talk with Monique Wahba, a planner who moved here from Portland, Ore. She has become director of the South End Improvement Corp., one of the few survivors of the one–time robust neighborhood revitalization organizations of the 1970s. Now, only two of these corporations are left in Albany, with pitifully little public funding.
Wahba overflows with passion for the South End and with lessons learned from planning successes in Portland, where she was a planner. Her successes here to date include getting the Capital District Transit Authority to increase service between the South End and Albany Medical Center, a major employer. Service has doubled since it started. She wrote the federal grant application for the Capital South Campus Center that is under construction, and which will provide a job training facility for South End residents.
Her dreams include developing better connections from Fourth Avenue to the Hudson River, fostering energy innovation projects, and having the Department of Motor Vehicles building site on South Pearl Street become a public square with a supermarket.
In addition, the Nano College and nonprofit partners are organizing a "smart cities" initiative to foster connection of the physical, IT, social and business infrastructure to "leverage the intelligence of the city."
The aging infrastructure of the South End makes it a good laboratory for 21st-century upgrades. Its location near the Hudson River and Port of Albany, Empire State Plaza and Capitol, Albany Medical Center and downtown Albany could make the South End the crossroads for the working features of Albany and a desirable place to live. Its historic features are the basis for an interesting narrative of city heritage.
Next year, Albany will have a new mayor to help fully realize the potential of a historic city that is friendly to education, health, business and neighborhoods, and serves as a hub of local, regional, state and federal government — in short, to lead Albany on the journey out of decline.
Email Bray at pmbray@aol.com.