Burgers, Bulldozers, and Better Cities

City of Yes, And… #6

I’m delighted to welcome so many new subscribers to City of Yes! This is the “City of Yes, And…,” a monthly newsletter for paid subscribers where I share quick hits, hot takes, outtakes from the cutting room floor, and good takes from other writers. All subscribers receive my free weekly essays, usually published on Thursdays. My next essay will cover Texas’s unprecedented pro-housing legislative session.

This week’s “City of Yes, And…” includes:

• Quick Hits: Let’s Be IRL Friends!

• Hot Takes: What Planners Can Learn from YIMBYs, Strong Towns…and McDonald’s?

• Outtakes: Urban Renewal and Revival in Providence

• Good Takes: Doing the Discourse Right

As ever, if you’d like to support my work, the best way to do so is to upgrade to a paid subscription. Sharing with friends also helps. Thank you for reading along.

Quick Hits: Let’s Be IRL Friends

I had the opportunity to speak about zoning reform in Austin at the recent Strong Towns National Gathering in Providence, Rhode Island. It was wonderful to finally meet in person some of the writers and thinkers I’ve come to know and admire on Substack—and it was wonderful to meet some subscribers, too.

I’ll be attending at least a couple more urbanist-flavored conferences this year. If you’ll be at any of them, please reach out, and let’s be IRL friends at:

• YIMBYtown: September 14-16 in New Haven, Connecticut

• Progress Conference: October 16-19 in Berkeley, California

I’ve also just learned about Utopian Hours, the “international festival of citymaking,” taking place in Turin, Italy from October 17-19. It looks like an exciting event with a compelling lineup of speakers, but I’ll be in Berkeley then. If anybody has been or goes, I’d love to hear about it…I wish I could be in two places at once!

Hot Takes: What Planners Can Learn from YIMBYs, Strong Towns…and McDonald’s?

My last essay was an attempt, after attending the Strong Towns National Gathering, to bridge the perceived gap between two approaches to building better communities, that of the Strong Towns and YIMBY movements. My view is that both movements have way more in common than not: they’re each fighting against the breakdown of community by fighting for better communities. But, at least reading the comments, it seems like most readers saw the essay as really about McDonald’s.

That’s my own fault, since I sandwiched my commentary about the movements between a hook about how McDonald’s provides a space for community, as argued by prolific traveler

Chris Arnade

. (Chris has since published a version of the remarks he gave at the Strong Towns National Gathering.) Since I’ve been writing and thinking a lot lately about public spaces, I’m somewhat chagrined that I didn’t more explicitly make the connection to my own writing about what makes for a great, inviting public space. Arnade, for his part, describes what McDonald’s is doing well: they are “welcoming, social, inexpensive, have Wifi, good food, and great coffee, and clean bathrooms.”

Diana Lind

added:

McDonald’s has good hours, low priced food and ample seating. If any local coffee shop was open 6am to 10pm, had items that were less than $2, and could seat 40 people, it too would be the center of community.

Andrew Burleson

comments:

McDonald’s genuinely serves everyone. It meets them where they are. It’s clean and safe and unpretentious. It offers pretty tasty food for a very low price.

Elites tend to turn their nose at things like McDonald’s as being too unhealthy or too consumerist, without stopping to appreciate how many people actually can’t afford $6 Lattes and organic Arugula, and don’t have the time to fix Whole 30 approved meals at home. McDonald’s doesn’t judge, it welcomes.

I agree with both and suggested that, from a planning perspective, we ought to invert the McDonald’s approach and design our public spaces with these ideas in mind. Another commenter disagreed with the premise, arguing that McDonald’s is a symptom of capitalist failure and that we need to “demonetize” our culture before we can build public spaces. I strongly disagree with this worldview. In fact, I think quite the opposite is true: too many of our public spaces aren’t monetized enough.

While we can certainly learn something from McDonald’s methods, when it comes to burgers and fries, I’m a Shake Shack stan. Nevertheless, my M.O. here isn’t to plug burgers, but to share what we can learn about public-private partnerships in city spaces.

Shake Shack started as a truly urban experience, in a kiosk in the middle of Manhattan’s Madison Square Park—an actual public square. In its early days, before they opened retail storefronts, huge lines of people used to snake around the park waiting to order Shackburgers and crinkle-cut cheese fries. There was even a walk-up window for those who just wanted shakes or drinks. Nevertheless, the result was that tons of people came to Madison Square Park to get good food and hang out. The kiosk enlivened the park—and through rent paid to the park conservancy, helped fund its upkeep.

The original Shake Shack in the park…looks almost European (Source)

This was a win-win for everyone: it made the park safer, cleaner, more enjoyable—and better resourced. Indeed, this is the type of public-private interface that makes public squares across Europe in particular so successful. The public provides the place; the private sector brings it to life. New York has a few examples of this: Bryant Park—which is administered by a nonprofit, not the city—has a mix of amenities plus award-winning bathrooms. The long esplanade of the Hudson River Park is activated by regular amenities, particularly along the reconstructed pier parks, where you can find a mix of public and private vendors, along with restrooms, playgrounds, kayaking, and more. New York has a lot of terrible, underutilized, and un-amenitized spaces, too—but it can learn from its own experience how to bring these to life.

The point is, by commercializing these spaces, the public is better able to enjoy and take care of them. So, no: the way to better public spaces is not to “demonetize” them; it’s to provide amenities that them more usable and enjoyable to more people—whether it’s McDonald’s, Shake Shack, or something else. And don’t forget clean bathrooms!