As an important economic hub and the fifth largest city in California, Fresno faces many challenges that one would not expect to encounter in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Extreme homelessness, poverty, pollution, and lack of affordable housing combine with low educational attainment, deficient job skills, and other inequities—and even food insecurity—as major obstacles that keep this diverse community from taking its place alongside California’s other great cities.
Fresno and the entire San Joaquin Valley also face the existential threats of climate change and diminishing water resource resilience in our arid region, and the pressing need to respond strategically. We are at a critical juncture, a point of inflection and uncertainty as to whether there will be a future here with environmental, economic, and social sustainability.
People in Fresno cannot seem to agree on why things are the way they are. From its beginning, Fresno was a progressive town that brought in leading architects and planners to design civic buildings and monumental open space that were rooted in the “spirit of the times.” Yet the strong ties that once connected city planning, public policy and architecture have frayed, and the urban fabric has suffered.
Blackstone Avenue
In Fresno, the story of Blackstone Avenue is a vivid example of aspirations never realized. During Fresno’s 19th century infancy, the street was named after the English legal scholar William Blackstone, due to the number of lawyers living along the thoroughfare. Through most of the 20th century, Blackstone was known as “the boulevard of dreams,” an over eight-mile-long commercial corridor that connected the downtown core to the expanding post-war suburbs. Today, however, Blackstone is known for crime, poverty, and vacant buildings that together speak of failed land use policy and lack of development ingenuity.
Until recently, the local development code would not allow for mixed-use development along the Blackstone Corridor. In 2015, the Development code was updated to allow mixed use-development.
The Challenge
The Better Blackstone Design Challenge (BBDC) is a study that recognizes the Blackstone Opportunity Corridor as a critical urban form asset that has measurable potential to significantly contribute to increasing the relevance and resilience of Fresno and the region. The BBDC study was funded by Caltrans through the Fresno Council of Governments, and was planned and led by Fresno Metro Ministry/Better Blackstone Community Development Corporation, a community-based organization collaborating with community stakeholders, local design professionals, a national caliber data analytics firm, a university, and many other contributors. This effort was only made possible through the contributions of local architectural and design professionals, who donated many times the billable hours they were paid for the project. Included in this exemplary, community-minded team were Arthur Dyson Architects, Darden Architects, Paul Halajian Architects, Robert Boro Landscape Architect, Terry Broussard Landscape Architects, and Urban Diversity Design.
The Process
The study offers spatially feasible urban design scenarios and site plan solutions for intensifying the Blackstone Avenue corridor, in which mixed-use development with housing and supportive commercial and public facilities and services can provide much needed affordable housing. These scenarios reveal design imagination and opportunity, not prescriptive plans, should commercial property owners, neighborhood stakeholders and local government wish to work together and reap the related benefits.
Four “nodes” were identified along the eight-mile corridor and assigned to each of three architect-led teams, with all three teams collaborating on the most challenging node. Each node consisted of selected clusters of parcels defined as “activity centers” along Fresno’s Blackstone Bus Rapid Transit Corridor. Three scenarios were devised for each parcel in each of the nodes.
The scenarios included a depiction of the Existing Conditions, a Constrained Scheme consistent with current zoning requirements and various discernible restrictions and existing building conservation judgments by the architects, and an Unconstrained Scheme that proposed the highest spatially feasible densities and imaginative features generally allowed by the current code. The study also provides quantitative, multi-variate performance impact analyses of these design scenarios evaluated by UrbanFootprint, a comprehensive urban, climate, and community resilience data platform that can compare the proposed scenarios with citywide and suburban edge development impact performance metrics.
The Potential Of Transit-Oriented Development
One purpose of the BBDC study is to demonstrate the potential of intense Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) as a distinct land use/multi-modal transportation connected development concept with scalable capabilities for addressing serious, systemic urban and population sustainability challenges.
Transit-Oriented Development directly contributes to meeting state and regional climate action goals. For example, when people use public transit instead of driving private vehicles, vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions decrease, while traffic congestion and air quality improve. The climate benefits of affordable homes in TOD are even greater, as households with low incomes own fewer vehicles and use public transit more often than households with higher incomes living in the same location. These trends are associated with transit ridership benefits and the social benefits of minimizing displacement. (For more, see “Measuring the Promise of Transit-Oriented Development: a Proposed Methodology for BART.”)
Another purpose of the study is to stimulate individual and collective design imaginations into action, to envision and realize the unique placemaking benefits The Blackstone Opportunity Corridor—“The Spine of Fresno”—offers. The study inspires attractive urban form through mixed-use activity center development that integrates walkable/bikeable/transit accessible housing, jobs, public and commercial uses, and more.
Yet another purpose is to provide not only illustrations, but also performance measurement of these concepts, and how they contribute to many aspects of resilience and sustainability.
Comparative Scenarios
The performance impact analyses of the BBDC design scenarios compared with citywide and suburban edge development impact performance metrics speak strongly to greater equity, resource, and climate resilience performance of the TOD urban form.
BBDC: Urban Footprint Comparative Performance Impact Analysis Summary.The Future
Bold action at the scale of our complexities, constraints, and challenges is required now. Fresno has long neglected inner city neighborhoods and business districts, populated by low-income people of color in extreme need. These neighborhoods deserve equitable and equity-producing investment that creates inclusive, revitalizing opportunities for people and businesses to thrive and succeed.
The city is growing in population and housing demand, and it is pressured to sprawl again into suburban edge areas. The locations and ways in which Fresno grows will determine its long-term relevance and resilience. The BBDC study provides an illustrative, infill development design framework and supporting impact analyses to aid the collaborative deliberations required to make better, more equitable, and more sustainable planning and development decisions.
Many cities throughout America have their own Blackstone Avenues to contend with. If not addressed, these vestiges of the auto-dominated, post-war American city will continue their downward spirals. The BBDC is a vivid example of how positive change can be the byproduct of a healthy and engaged team led by a savvy and knowledgeable non-profit, partnered with collaborative and committed members of the local design community and funders who expect visionary and actionable results.
The “Blackstone Avenues” that exist in cities across America can be transformed from blighted urban wastelands to valuable aspirational assets. As demonstrated by the BBDC, the improved environmental, social, economic, and urban design outcomes offer a novel approach that capitalizes on existing yet dysfunctional infrastructure that no longer promotes health and vitality. What is happening in Fresno can become a model for other cities in California and beyond.
Article images courtesy of Better Blackstone Association. Cover photo courtesy of Better Blackstone Community Development Corp.
