Everyone wants to live in (a) Princeton Urban planner uncovers yearning for sense of place - and birds By Kathleen McGinn Spring Princeton Packet Business Editor Monday, March 22, 1999 Anton Nelessen knows exactly where citizens of the 21st century want to live, because tens of thousands of them in Durban, South Africa, Orlando, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Metuchen and hundreds of other spots around the globe have told him. And where they want to live is ..... downtown Princeton. Well, perhaps not in Princeton per se, but in a place that looks and works very much like it. Mr. Nelessen is a professor of urban planning at Rutgers, the founder of ANA Vision Planning, a Princeton urban planning firm, a reluctant Jerseyite and a man who, even in the midst of Central Jersey sprawl, has not lost hope for a more user-friendly landscape. Computer enhanced photos of parking lots and downtowns and residential streets decorate the walls of his office. Though they represent locales on both sides of the Equator, their common elements are markedly alike, but not always obvious. Each photo is softened by trees and shrubs. So, people want greenery? "But not just that," Mr. Nelessen said. "People have told us again and again that they want birds. They like the sound. So the urban environment needs trees birds like." Translating residents' priorities, their vision of what their town should look like, and how it should work, is Vision Planning's job. "We are the spokesperson for the average guy," Mr. Nelessen said. And what does the average guy want? "The common denominators," Mr. Nelessen said, "are open space, parks, water, tree-lined streets, sidewalks that go someplace, some place to go, great streetscapes, jobs close by, good schools, buildings which never go higher than six stories, a way to get around that is cheap and easy, a sense of place, parties and festivals." He knows this because he asks. And the way he asks is by showing pictures to residents of each town for which he prepares a design. Using photography combined with computer wizardry is something Mr. Nelessen has been doing since the early '70s when he spent two years traveling the world taking 360 degree photos of all the major public spaces on earth. Now he layers elements onto photos of existing elements of a town. One series of photos in Mr. Nelessen's extensive files starts with what looks like an irredeemably ugly residential street. In photo number two, some trees soften the space between the sidewalk and the curb on the curving street. It looks better. As the series goes on, a row of shrubs goes up behind the houses on the left-hand side of the sidewalk and ornamental streetlights sprout between the trees on the right-hand side. A few benches later, the street is a knock-out, a wholly inviting visual treat. In another example that has been executed by a shore town, a downtown corner featured cracked curbs and a crab shack restaurant with a large sign. Not attractive. Surprisingly, some trees and other plantings placed around the corner, attractive lighting and a place to sit made a huge difference in that site, even though the tall sign remained. Mr. Nelessen has residents in towns he is designing rate a streetscape, and has found that small changes can raise approval ratings significantly. One stretch of street, for example, had no trees. "It rated a -4," he said. After a few trees and fences were added: "It jumped to +5." In what he calls "Design by Democracy," Mr. Nelessen and his associates have taken photo series like these to town residents gathered in public meetings all around the world. The residents then indicate which elements are most important to them. In a current project, the design of a new downtown for Milwaukee, Mr. Nelessen took the consensus-gathering one step further, putting the drawings onto the Internet. Some 900,000 residents took the time to evaluate and give opinions on the plans. These respondents want what Mr. Nelessen has found most people want - the sense of place, the attractive surroundings, the convenient ways of getting around, the vital downtowns. This being the case, why do so few of us get this? Why, instead, do we have impersonal developments, treeless big box shopping centers, strip malls and hourlong stop-and-go commutes instead? "Depression thinking," Mr. Nelessen said. "They just sprawled it." The "they" to which he refers are mayors and members of planning boards, who, in his view, granted - and still are granting - building permits, thinking of their own town's tax base, but caring nothing about the regional effects of their decisions. In towns ringing Princeton, for example, Mr. Nelessen said "old guys on boards have figured out that a 6,000-square-foot ranchburger will bring in enough taxes to pay school costs, while a $200,000 house will not." This type of thinking gives rise to more and more spread out developments and less open space. On the retail front, "West Windsor does not care about Princeton," Mr. Nelessen declared, citing the harm shopping centers in West Windsor have done to retail and quality of life in surrounding towns. "I have no choice," Mr. Nelessen, a downtown Princeton resident said, "I have to go to Home Depot. I have to get into my car." (The owner of a 32-year-old Mercedes that he likes to keep in its garage space, Mr. Nelessen walks or takes buses whenever possible.) And even where a desire for more planned regional growth may exist, he said, it is often frustrated because developers' permits never expire. So, for example, a developer who won approval 10 years ago for a housing development, office complex or strip mall and then sat on the permits waiting for better economic times - a common occurrence - can go ahead and build now even though residents' might not want the growth. In addition, there are zoning ordinances that frustrate more inviting landscapes, Mr. Nelessen said. For example, many towns will now allow trees to be planted between the sidewalk and the curb because that space needs to remain clear for sewer lines. Where will all of this lead? If sprawl remains unchecked and towns ignore regional needs, "In 20 years we will all be stranded in our ranchburgers," Mr. Nelessen predicted. Gas by then will be prohibitively expensive, and lacking a system of public transportation, aging Boomers will rattle around in their four bedroom Colonials, whose three car garages with entrances leading directly to the media center/gourmet kitchen acted as shields against their neighbors. The 65- to 75-year-old Boomer population will have 21 closets, but no neighborhood social system and no easy way of getting around. But it doesn't have to be this way, and Mr. Nelessen doesn't think it will be. "Boomers want to leave a legacy," he said. "And that legacy will be the environment." He sees today's fiftysomethings taking the reins on planning boards, pushing for regional plans, livable downtowns, and sane transportation. But if Boomers lack the will to stop it, Mr. Nelessen sees necessity becoming the mother of more human-friendly environments. A strong advocate of public transportation on demand, Mr. Nelessen said a system of satellite-directed vans taking development residents to downtown Princeton or to a friend's house or the train station could have positive social effects. "There could be a central pickup point in each development," he said. Perhaps benches would be added and a public bulletin board, Mr. Nelessen suggested. Friendships would develop as development residents waited together for a van. This would be preferable to endless, faceless sprawl, but we can do a whole lot better, Mr. Nelessen is convinced. And he thinks we will because of one photograph. "When we saw the first shot of the Earth from the moon, it changed everything," he said. We realized that "This really is one place."