Build Galesburg for People, Not Cars
My city, Galesburg, Illinois, is talking about Strong Towns ideas, centered around a question that many Strong Towns readers are familiar with: “Is our downtown built for cars instead of people?”
It all started with this opinion article published in the local newspaper by Joe Hicks (who has written for Strong Towns before). He spoke of the olden days when people could be seen bustling around main street, from this store to that café, children peddling around on their bikes, and overall the magical sight of people thriving in a place that’s built for them—a lively aspect of cities we’ve seen dwindling since the start of the Suburban Experiment.
In his piece, Joe mentions two recent local events which called for downtown streets to be closed off to traffic. It got him thinking: What is downtown for? His conclusion: Downtown is for people. Or rather, it should be for people.
“These downtown events are great and I love how busy downtown gets during them,” writes Joe. “But we know the normal reality for downtown is not during these events. Most of the time things are not bustling.”
At least, they are not bustling with people walking about. Over a hundred years after that first video, this is what main street looks like now:
Main Street in Galesburg in 2022.
Now, cars outnumber the people in the street. Downtown has become a place where people drive through, not a place where people tend to go. Over the years it’s become an area of loss in revenue for the town as residents are known for driving to adjacent cities for a night out.
In response to Joe’s thoughts, the local paper sent out a “roundtable,” where they asked the community what they thought about our downtown being built for cars instead of people.
I’ve collected some of my favorite responses, and perhaps you can relate them to similar conversations in your community when you’ve wanted to make changes to your downtown.
“The main problem with any plan is, as Joe pointed out, Main Street is also U.S. highway 150 and thus governed by federal rules and regulations. That makes any local efforts very difficult.”
This is an issue with many downtown main streets throughout the United States. It makes implementing change more difficult, because the reality is the city doesn’t have much control. Still, that doesn’t mean the city should use it as an excuse to do nothing toward making a more people-centered downtown. There are plenty of things a city can still do.
There’s this article that Chuck Marohn wrote last year, “How Do You Actually Fix a Stroad?” where he mentions that sometimes, the big issue you see and want to fix is not a realistic starting point. Bad investments aren’t going to just disappear because we want them to. We have to work at them from the bottom up and build incrementally, fixing one small, easy thing at a time in rapid succession to get to the bigger issue at hand.
At Strong Towns, when we want to make immediate and meaningful changes in our communities, we follow a four-step process:
Humbly observe where people in the community struggle.
Ask the question: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle?
Do that thing. Do it right now.
Repeat.
Through this method, we can observe and adjust and grow in a financially solvent way. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming to make change. We don’t need one big answer to a big problem.
For downtown Galesburg, we won’t fix our stroad by attacking it head on with major ideas and new infrastructure. That’s not the smallest next step. In fact, anything directly on main street may not be the smallest next step.
In Galesburg, there’s a brick street that has some restaurants, a coffee shop, and a few shopping places. It has a couple street trees, a bench, and some adorable overhead lights. I’ve thought about this street a lot, and if we’re looking for the smallest next step to make a more people-centered downtown, it’s probably going to be in this area.
You can tell the city is trying to make this a delightful space, so why not go all the way? A spot like this would be a great opportunity to build on what is already going well to make it better. It’s a street the city could design to be more narrow and experiment with urban park elements, creating a third place where people belong first and cars come second. And it doesn’t have to be a serious investment, either. It’s possible to work incrementally with what is available to make the changes Galesburg residents want.
One way anyone in any city can start making street design changes is by implementing temporary or demonstrative designs before making them permanent. We talk about this in “How to Fix a Dangerous Street in 24 Hours or Less,” and while this specific brick street may not be considered a dangerous one, it’s still cost effective to test out designs before making big investments.
“While the premise of Mr. Hicks’s suggestions deserves consideration, revamping our downtown will require much more than trying to adjust a few things to solve a larger issue. As he pointed out, it’s accurate to say people tend to gather where other people gather. Cities with thriving downtowns have several attributes in common such as suitable parking, a variety of choices for dining, outdoor seating, live arts and entertainment, popular chain stores and niche retail shops. Patrons will frequent places that offer a variety of choices.”
I appreciate the above comment, because John is correct: revamping our downtown will require much more than trying to adjust a few things to solve a large issue. We’ll need to adjust a lot of things, continuously. People also need fun things to do, and I will be frank in saying Galesburg tends to lack on that front. But what worries me about this comment is it feels pretty hopeless, like it’s looking for one big answer to a big issue. And many of the comments in this “roundtable” carry this hopelessness or feeling overwhelmed by the amount of issues our downtown has.
“I agree, though, in his point that there are not a whole lot of people walking the streets of Galesburg, but, except for specific events, why should they? And if Hicks thinks the automobile is the cause he should look forward. The recent pandemic showed that shopping on the internet will make walking downtown even less attractive to people. There will be less traffic downtown, foot and automotive.”
“I do agree that our downtown can be made more pedestrian friendly but I don’t think that there is a viable way to get cars to stop driving through the center of it especially since our Main Street is also Highway 150 from Henderson Street to Grand Avenue.”
“For Galesburg’s downtown to be even somewhat more amicable to the days when the streets were full of people, you would simply need more reasons to go there. And you would actually need more people to live there with lofts, condos and other friendly living spaces for people that would like that walking lifestyle. First Fridays on Seminary, the Taste of Galesburg, Wednesday concerts are all part of that, but, frankly, many would rather trek around the internet for goods and cat videos than actually take a walk. Just think, if downtown had 100s of people walking around like back in the day, everyone would be bumping into each other as they focused on texting their experience of walking in downtown Galesburg.”
There’s so many points of frustration loaded in these comments. Overall, they fail to recognize two major things about human interaction:
People react to the design of their environment. Design affects us more than we think, and if we design outdoor places well, people will flock there and engage with those spaces. (And in this age, they may take some selfies, too.) Bonus points if they can walk or bike there, of course.
We are so used to top-down approaches (building everything at once) that we fail to recognize the effective reality of small steps and the four-step process.
There isn’t ever going to be one big answer that will magically solve the design problems in Galesburg. Once we “fix” one aspect, there will always be another. Towns and the people in them are always changing, and a prosperous and delightful city will create environments that support the natural flow of change.
Another point I’d like to address is that the lack of variety of things to do and places to go in Galesburg is a real issue. In some ways, it’s gotten better, and personally, I think that with more people-centered design efforts, things will take off naturally as more people will find themselves engaging with the downtown area. Because the thing is, not only do people naturally react to the design of their environment, Galesburg residents want their town to be better. They want things to do and places to go. They just need reasonable and visible pathways to get there.
Our car-centric downtown problem is most likely not going to be solved with a singular focus on road design and creating more delightful places (though that is certainly a step in the right direction). We’ll also need to look at how we welcome the dreamers, the people who have big ideas and want to bring value to our towns.
Unfortunately, in many cases throughout America, we expect small, local businesses to function perfectly in a top-down approach. We want them to invest in generally large and expensive downtown rental spaces when they’ve not had the opportunity to sit in an incubator and grow. Large storefronts aren't financially solvent for the city, either: as we can see in Galesburg’s neighboring city of Peoria, a little law office snuggled in between a parking garage and large office building is worth much more in value per acre versus the buildings adjacent to it.
Read about “The Little Law Office That Could” here.
Downtown Galesburg is filled with classic large storefronts, and throughout the years I’ve watched rotating businesses open and close. I’m not an expert in the functions of our downtown businesses, but I’ve come to wonder if we truly provide the best possible avenues for aspiring entrepreneurs. Currently, the city is doing a great job in providing grants for new business owners, and that’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Many downtowns are implementing strategies for small business success which also create lively, people-centered downtown experiences. Perhaps one day, something like this can be the next smallest step Galesburg can do to revamp its downtown.
As one example of ways to revitalize your town’s downtown, read about the pop-up shops in Berwyn, IL.
It's entirely possible to make meaningful changes to our downtowns and bring them back to life. We must not let ourselves become discouraged by the seemingly overwhelming amount of problems they currently face. It only becomes overwhelming when we try to create the perfect solution—one big answer to all the problems. By looking honestly at our situation and making rapid, small changes with careful observation to determine the next step, we can swiftly move forward in bettering our downtowns. Joe Hicks has done a great small step for Galesburg: starting the conversation within the community. Let’s not forget to determine the next small step. And then do it. Right now.
Sam Quinones returns to the Strong Towns Podcast to discuss a recent, moving article he’s written about Hazard, KY, a small town that was hit hard by the decline of coal mining and the rise of the opioid epidemic.