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High Hopes
The design for One Pennsylvania Plaza is a blueprint for excellence.
-Harris M. Steinberg

March 13-19, 2003

cityspace

Jacobs' Ladder

by Daniel Brook

In her influential 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs uses ecological terms to describe the development of the urban landscape. Places, like living things, go through cycles of birth, growth, death and rebirth. Jacobs described this phenomenon in Philadelphia.

Successful urban places have a way of snuffing themselves out, Jacobs explains. "The self-destruction of diversity can be seen at outstandingly successful little nodes of activity. Consider the crossing of Chestnut and Broad Streets a spot which a few years ago was a climax of Chestnut Street's varied shopping and other activities. The [corners] of this crossing were what real estate men call a Œ100 percent location.' It was an enviable place to be. One of the corner occupants was a bank. Three other banks bought themselves into the three other corners, apparently to be at the 100 percent location too. From that moment, it was no longer the 100 percent location. The crossing is today a dead barrier along Chestnut Street, and the tumble of diversity and activity has been pushed beyond."

Today it would seem the corner of Broad and Chestnut is undergoing a rebirth. For the first time in recent memory all four corners are now occupied with businesses that are open at almost all hours of the day and night: a hotel, a restaurant, a record store and now Borders Books, which has relocated from Rittenhouse Row. The new Borders sports a mezzanine-level café and two floors of books, CDs and videos. Businesses on the east side of Broad are sprouting up farther down the block, including I. Goldberg and an Olive Garden restaurant. The local Marathon Grill, which had been closed on weekends, is now open seven days a week. So has death been replaced with life on one great American city block?

Borders store manager Chris Adams thinks so. "We hope that we're the beginning of a great renaissance of the area," he says.

But not everyone's convinced Borders is adding to the revitalization. Larry Robin, who runs the independent Robin's Books around the corner on 13th Street, thinks that this addition to city life is tantamount to urban brain death. "I hate chains," says Robin. "I don't think they're good no matter where they are. And this is not only because they've put independent stores out [of business] but because they narrow the choice of what is available."

Adams disagrees. It is Borders' "inventory depth," he says, that sets it apart from smaller bookstores.