Design of the Times

Youngstown has lived through incredible times and has the scars to show for it. Despite that rich legacy, these are as exciting times as have occurred in the city's history. Youngstown is taking a fresh look at itself and its potential. Its creative class is reimagining its identity and future in a revolutionary way. In how many other cities in this area, if not the country, would you find young professionals, and I mean a solid core of progressives aged 20s and 30s, sitting at the table and creating a shared vision for their city and being heard!

To get a community invested--in every sense of the word--in a plan, one must document it, draw it, model it, and put it out there for people to see. Most people do better with visual imagery than wordy description, and modeling the downtown vision requires nothing less. To that end, fifteen students from the University of Michigan's Master of Urban Design Program are visiting Youngstown (along with Chicago and Ann Arbor) to study its downtown and create a design plan for the area between and connecting YSU and downtown Youngstown – from Wick to DeYor Performing Arts Center, Commerce Street to Boardman Street.

The Youngstown Business Incubator hosted the group last night for a roundtable discussion of what we would like to see in Youngstown. We also talked about what might be missing, from the visitors' perspective. Here are some ideas I heard:

• In addition to places for university students and young professionals to congregate, what about families?
• Should there be some design constraints on new buildings to ensure conformity to existing historical architecture? Or can it mix old and new in a compatible and symbiotic way.
• Is a skatepark a worthy feature of the downtown somewhere, providing recreational sanctuary to urban youth.
• Where's the furniture? Benches, chairs and tables are needed for folks to congregate downtown with lunches or reading material.
• What about a public school downtown? If there are going to be families living downtown, what better place to go to school?
• Art! We need an arts district to showcase the incredible artists in the city and surrounding region. Gallery space, workshops, supplies... Not to mention public art painted on the sides of the many brick buildings. Make the downtown itself a living art gallery!
• We must stop tearing down and figure out how to preserve our peerless landmarks.
• There is plenty of parking, we just have to help people find it. We don't need no stinking diagonal parking on Federal Street, it just extends the commuter culture we're trying to extinguish. Erect signage directing drivers to available parking and get them to walk through downtown to where they need to go. Once you find the place you want to visit, the next thing you look for is parking. If you can see a parking sign from where you want to be, you're set. Even if it's a few blocks down the road.

Add your comments below! What do you want to see downtown become? What's there that needs to be highlighted? How does the river play a part in creating a sense of place?