So Today I ventured into suburbanization with a rental car. I found the State Highway 6 Corridor (or Dodge St) an interesting progression in the form factor of the street and the repetition of standard products (drawing to come explaining this). I then returned through the I-80 industrial corridor, which is the fairly standard mix of sheet metal industrial buildings and fast food chains. The key thing about this corridor is that it is easy interfaced to the highway, to expedite the trucking process.
Despite journeying far out west, I was drawn back to the city center and the North Downtown Area. Its very clear that the core of Vibrancy is straight west. I also visited the Ak-Sar-Ben Redevelopment (or Nebraska spelled backwards), it was originally a coliseum and horse racing track and is now parceled out and a large amount of town homes have been built. The retail portion is starting, and the office buildings are just starting. The Midtown Redevelopment that I went to (pictured below) is really interesting. It puts a lot of density where very little existed, but still relies wholeheartedly on the car. Thats the point of Omaha though, a concentration on the automobile and the farmland. As I drove farther west the more Trucks and SUVs I was surrounded by, and the bigger the roads became, which is typically American.
Based on these generalizations and the lack of public transport it is clear that there is no plan to change, no plan to push forward. The simple reality is that the car will be king. The midtown redevelopment adds density and program to the area, but also massive parking support in the form of parking garages. It's an interesting development that there is this kind of primacy in the face of a city that was founded on the train.
That brings me to the real conclusion of my time in Omaha, and that is that the city is continuing to reclaim rail yards. It shows the evident transition of rail transport and organization to areas outside of towns and cities. Switching yards still occur in cities, but for the most part organization takes place outside of civilization here. This is evidenced by the fact that there is a massive rail yard in western Nebraska, which serves as the organizing body of the rail system.
This creates unique undeveloped parcels within cities. Here in Omaha the whole riverfront was once a series of rail yards, and through acquisition and gifting it has steadily moved back into the cities hands. Certain parcels work better for redevelopment than others. An example of this is that the rail yard that is now the newly claimed North Downtown area works as a parcel because adjacent businesses had moved out and otherwise folded to allow a takeover. Whereas the parcel between the two Union Stations doesn't work as a redevelop-able site because it is still a train thoroughfare, and the Train runs in a curved path through the area. This means instead that there is simply unused land.
The other observation I was able to make while on the ground is how much topography plays a role in things here. This part of Nebraska is hilly and due to that the riverfront isn't so accessible. The only real 'window' to the water is from ConAgra's campus to the airfield. To the south is hilly and to the north is the airfield and then an industrial area that houses a power plant.
I also ventured south to where the stockyards were, which is now the site of a community college. This would be ideal for all parties except for the reality of the infrastructure that supported the stockyards is still a functioning rail yard. This goes back to the point I've made in my earlier research that right of ways have to be respected and therefore not all adjacencies are ideal.
There will be drawings to follow, with all this running around its difficult to settle down and get work done, but it will have to happen of course. Tonight I'm off to Denver via Overnight Train.... So far said to be running 12-15 minutes late. Full Report on that will follow tomorrow morning.
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