Design: Drawing a Blank Downtown

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Although not included in Whyte's exhibition, another prime example is Detroit's Renaissance Center, a bundle of skyscraping glass tubes consisting of a 73-story, 1,424-room hotel, convention halls, four office towers, four movie theaters and a big circular mall full of shops, boutiques, restaurants, glitter and Muzak-drenched confusion. It goes so far as to defend its blank walls with a forbidding berm, a long, grass-covered concrete rampart. Entering this fortress on foot is a difficult task. Such defensive isolation could hardly be expected to spark a renaissance. Indeed, Ren Cen, as Detroiters call it, is in severe financial difficulties.

"The idea of these fortresses is that you attract the middle class back to the city by offering them security from the city," says Whyte. "It's like trying to beat suburbia at its own game." Some cities, however, are beginning to counter with their own ancient game and are winning customers and revenue beyond all expectations. Recalling the classic agora, Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Baltimore's Harborplace offer shoppers, tourists and strollers a stimulating blend of food, fun and culture. At the same time, they demonstrate that bustling places are also secure. Having lots of people around, lots of "eyes on the street," Jacobs pointed out, is better protection than police cruisers or defensive walls. As Robert Frost once put it:

Before I built a wall I'd asked to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn 't love a wall,

That wants it down.

—By Wolf Von Eckardt