alded as an absolute model of infill development, being built on a slag heap and what not. If you haven’t been there, it’s worth a drive-through, or you can take a look at their website. Back in my college days, friends and I used to bike around at the base of the slag heap along Nine Mile Run. It was a pretty desolate place back them, complete with skeletons of burned-out cars, and you always had the feeling there was something unseemly happening when you weren’t around to see. The new development has all the trappings of New Urbanism, sidewalks and back alleys, on-street parking, some nice public spaces, a community center (of sorts) and a mix of housing sizes and types. It has also helped to restore Nine Mile Run and eliminate acidic runoff from entering the stream and the Monongahela River.But for all of its neat features and formulaic traditional neighborhood development (TND) qualities, Summerset still has an eerie feeling about it, and I just can’t bring myself to like it. The best I can describe it is like a body without its soul; the place just doesn’t have any vibrance or energy. This may be the result of the relatively homogenous population that is mainly white and middle-class (from what I could see), perhaps along with the total absence of any type of commerce. Furthermore, the neighborhood is walkable within its own confines, but way too isolated for allow residents to get anywhere by any means other than driving, especially shopping (the Waterfront is by far the closest commercial center), child care or schools. As one Squirrel Hill denizen noted, despite its geographic proximity it’s really not a part of Squirrel Hill. Despite the short-lived bus line that terminated at Summerset, public transit is not very viable for this small and affluent community. The community center, although it sounds nice, seems to be more of a pool house and rental facility for residents, and less of a node of activity. Overall, Summerset has the quality of being manufactured, albeit based on a checklist of characteristics found in vibrant neighborhoods. All buildings are subject to pre-established design standards enforced by the developer, and the building types on each lit have all been pre-determined.
Given all of Summerset’s shortcomings, could it have been done any better? What one might have expected is an attempt at a more mixed-income community, but could that even really have worked? Can a New Urbanist development, which is built entirely by one developer, ever have the character and soul of truly vibrant community that is being sought? Or is this an urban incarnation of a typical suburban subdivision? Perhaps true mixed-income communities either doesn’t exist or are extremely rare (see sidebar below), nor can we replicate the social fabric we find in other places. Could this development have been as successful if it were allowed to grow organically, giving it a unique character of its own? Would the city have been able to undertake this all themselves creating the “shovel-ready” parcels for developers and homebuilders to come in? How could this development have turned out any differently? All questions, few answers. Sorry, folks. If you have any answers, let me know, I’d love to hear them!
[relevant sidebar] I believe that the only mixed-income communities that can live harmoniously in perpetuity are those that are one, and at most two, income levels from each other (think three sub-levels within each of lower, middle and upper classes). For example, solid middle class families can coexist long-term with either lower- or upper-middle class families, but lower-upper class families will not mix well with upper-lower class families. These drastically different classes may actually live in the same neighborhood at the same time, but this is often taking place while the community is responding to market demand of being a more or less affluent place. {/sidebar]
