Keeping up with downtown development

6/24/07
The mayor was mad at me.
In response to some unkind words I wrote in this space a few weeks back about the pace of downtown Bridgeport’s redevelopment, Mayor John M. Fabrizi offered to take me around town and show me all the bright spots, all the progress being made.
I was happy to accept, mostly because, since I haven’t been doing this all that long, I liked the idea that the mayor knew who I was.
But I also liked the idea of getting a firsthand look at these places I read so much about. It’s true, I could have driven myself down to any number of these spots — and I have checked out a good number of them — but still, a legitimate tour guide seemed like an opportunity worth taking.
In my life outside work, I take classes toward a degree in urban planning. Waterfront redevelopment, transportation initiatives, inclusionary zoning — these topics put plenty of people to sleep, but I spend my spare time on this stuff.
It affects everyone. We all drive on I-95, we all pay taxes, we all go to the mall, or the beach, or the movies. Land-use regulation can seem pretty arcane, but no one’s life is detached from it.
And of all the cities in the country to live in, it’s hard to think of a better petri dish than Bridgeport. This city has faced every urban blight in the books these past few decades — disappearing industry, flight to the suburbs, dangerous streets, epic corruption. The fact that it’s maybe, possibly on the way back is a testament by itself.
There’s a niche for Bridgeport to fill. Working people, especially young ones, need to live somewhere, and Bridgeport might be a palatable possibility. The multitude of housing proposals on tap needs to pay some dividends for the downtown.
It all comes down, in many people’s opinion, to eyes on the street. If there are people downtown, at all waking hours, then everything else will come together. The safest cities in the country (like New York) have constant activity, perpetual motion. The more people are around, the safer everyone feels, and the more skittish potential criminals become.
This isn’t a novel concept. It goes back at least to New York City legend Jane Jacobs, a Greenwich Village resident and activist who fought to keep her neighborhood intact when it was threatened by an expressway. The plan, at the time seen as a foregone conclusion, was to extend Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue south through Washington Square Park and connect it to the planned Lower Manhattan Expressway.
That road never got built. Activists saw how other highways had chopped neighborhoods to bits, and were determined it wouldn’t happen to them. Farther north, the Bronx is just now starting to recover from its multiple body blows, the most egregious of which, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, is held up as the symbol of all that is wrong with out-of-control planners who care nothing for the cities they purportedly serve. I-95 through Bridgeport could fill that same role.
Jacobs fought to keep neighborhoods together; she recognized the fundamental value in local stores, sidewalk encounters and person-to-person contact. It’s what makes New York City great, and what cities around the country, Bridgeport included, have been trying to build for generations now.
The downtown is here; the buildings are up. Now we just need the people. No one wants to see the city recover more than the people who live and work here, and I do both. And with Citytrust, the Remington site, Read’s and even Steel Point, things are happening.
In the meantime, we need people. Walkers, runners, pedestrians, stroller-pushers, theater-goers, lunch-eaters, game attendees — all sorts. They are the ones who will get Bridgeport back where it belongs.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor at the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6233 or via e-mail at hbailey@ctpost.com.