Small stuff makes Philly better, a bit at a time

Architecture tends to follow the money, and right now there isn't much green stuff to be pursued. But just because banks aren't lending and governments aren't spending doesn't mean we should assume urban design is dead.

Welcome to the year of small - small parks, small houses, small improvements, small plans, but not necessarily small thinking.

Only a short while ago, there wasn't a big city in America that didn't salivate at the prospect of building a downtown sports arena, an attention-getting museum, or a clutch of vertiginous condo towers, preferably by brand-name architects. That's done.

While the lousy economy has forced cities to lower their sights, it has provided clarity about what really matters. The smart places are investing their limited disposable income in low-cost, high-impact projects that improve the quality of life for people who actually live in them.

Philadelphia's Race Street pier park, set to open in April, is perfectly tuned to the times, as is New York's experiment with appropriating stretches of Broadway for pop-up parks. The rowhouse boomlets taking place in certain Philadelphia neighborhoods, such as Fishtown and the area south of Graduate Hospital, also belong in the category of incremental improvements that make urban life better. And these infill projects remind us that progress continues even in hard times.

One of the nice things about the new, do-it-yourself-style projects is the quick payoff. When the Nutter administration painted bike lanes on Pine and Spruce Streets in 2009, it not only provided a crosstown link between the city's two waterfronts and their no-frills recreation paths, it also established the outlines of a major bicycle network. The cost of that instant amenity was little more than the price of paint.

Philadelphia was never the boldest of places during the boom years. A city of distinct neighborhoods with a rough-edged authenticity, Philadelphia doesn't do glitzy well. The small stuff suits its spirit better.

Mayor Nutter's just-released Green2015 plan, which calls for converting 500 acres of vacant lots and asphalt schoolyards into an archipelago of green parks, plays to Philadelphia's strengths. Its proposals are cheap to execute and super local. Every neighborhood gets to customize its own acre.