Road Trip Highlight: The Delights of Baker City

I recently had the opportunity to drive with my children to southern Idaho, passing some of my favorite places. The joy was in the journey and we took respite from the continuous world of our automobile to enjoy the brisk winter delights of Baker City, Oregon—The (self-proclaimed) Premier Rural Living Experience in the Pacific Northwest.

Main Street - Baker City

I must begin with two caveats: I adore nearly every place and I am quite partial to Baker City. This small sojourn only cemented my adoration for one of the most, if not the most, attractive city forms of any small town in the Inland Northwest. Honestly, what other town of its size offers so much! The second stop in our trip, Baker City, for those not familiar, is a modest small town (pop. 9,439) located on I-84 on Oregon's northeastern region. Nestled up against the Blue and Wallowa Mountains, some of the most beautiful rolling highlands, Baker City was an important stop on the Oregon Trail.

Powder River, from a bridge on the Leo Adler Parkway

Baker City has obviously changed in 140 years, but some things endure. Our covered wagon was a mini-van and our trail was the interstate. While sadly I always seem to pass through Baker City during the winter, a more moderate temperature allowed my children and I to stop at Geiser Pollman Park to burn a few under-used calories. Baker City exhibits so many of the place principles, but foremost are accessibility and connectivity. Geiser Pollman Park has a museum on one side and connects on the other to Baker's delightful public library right along the Powder River running through town, stitched through by the Leo Adler Parkway which extends out on a quiet path one direction and parallel to Main Street on the other. Main Street is attractive, with beautiful architecture anchored by the Geiser Grand Hotel, City Hall and the impressive art deco Baker Tower.

Geiser Grand Hotel, a national
historic building and one of local pride

Baker Tower, what town under 10,000
has architecture like this?!

Moreover on this venture, I was able to engage some friendly locals, like "The Neighbor" Mike Morrissey (oxfarm@oregontrail.net), a handyman, proud life-long Baker City resident and true ambassador of his city. He explained many of the buildings on Main Street and let me know some of the developments planned, as well as further increased my appetite for more Baker City. I hope to plan a long weekend vacation there this summer; give it a try—savor Baker City, a different flavor of small town.

Experiential: Beyond Passive Place

The experiential seeks to facilitate poignant experiences, not simply fabricate them.  Each person who visits a place will have an experience; the key is to guide shape that experience into something positive, remarkable and memorable.

Boise at night, courtesy of sangres.com

The experiential concept can be difficult to explain. A simple example is going to the movies. The product of movie theatres isn’t necessarily the movie.  If going to the movies were just about the movie, the pragmatists and market would cause every theater to close. Going to the movies is so much more of an experience: foremost the enormous screen and sound system; the chairs, popcorn, crowds, choosing a seat, sneaking candy in, part of a cliché first date …If theaters (and all neighborhoods, developments and business) would truly realize this, and focus the overall experience, creating new enduring experiences, that they could significantly improve their profit margins.

This is nothing new to business: Disney has been doing this for decades at their theme parks; Cabella's, Hooters, Apple stores, The Rainforest Cafe, Anthropologie, horse and carriage drivers—they all knows this, as do good downtown managers and placemakers. Just a few colored lights and some live music can completely change a street's nightlife.

Holiday lighting show in Coeur d'Alene; courtesy of fyinorthidaho.com

Good farmer’s markets build this type of energy and experience, like Moscow, Idaho’s farmer’s market—live music on the community square, a wide range of cultures and foods—creating a balance of functional and experiential. Coeur d’Alene is brilliant at experience. From the 4th of July fireworks, to the wonderfully designed city park with its castle play equipment and beach, to the floating 14th hole on the resort golf course, to the Christmas light display on the boardwalk—all next to a beautiful cohesive downtown core.

The Pulse of Vibrancy

If authenticity focuses on the location, vibrancy focuses on the people. Vibrancy is an intangible energy you feel in specific places and at certain events.  A vibrant downtown bustles with a correlating number of people; shops are well frequented; restaurants and cafes are full of clientele. Popular plazas and parks have this feeling when alive with events or gathering crowds. Good farmer’s markets, like the one in Moscow, Idaho, are a prime example of this collective energy and excitement. So are prime commercial centers, downtowns, main streets and districts like Salt Lake City’s Gateway District. This vibrant commercial center features adaptive reuse, high density, a mix of uses and pedestrian orientation.

Moscow, ID Farmers Market - courtesy of photo.matusiak.org

Gateway District - Courtesy city-data.com

Vibrancy is not always busy or crowded.  A crowded Walmart traffic jam has plenty of people but little vibrancy. It’s not the masses of people, but the life-affirming energy felt by those in attendance. This pulse indicates a variation from bustling to relaxed. Vibrancy is why baseball games are more enjoyable in the stands, why you laugh more in the theater, why people attend public events, go downtown and even conglomerate to form cities. It’s a social pulse.

Authenticity Primer

Gernika Basque Pub sits on the corner of the Basque district and Capitol Boulevard in Boise, Idaho. An authentic Basque bar with rough hewn cross beams and stucco walls, its mutton sandwiches and microbrews are popular with college students and trendy Boiseians alike. It is also an excellent example of the truly authentic.

Bar Gernika - Courtesy of Roadfood.com

Authenticity is what nowhere else has. It is unique and genuine. Other downtowns may have bars, they may have bars that serve identical food or have similar décor, but none will have an authentic Basque bar in a Basque district.

What if Bar Gernika franchised? They could recreate the same atmosphere and food, and could possibly be successful elsewhere, however, it would not have the same identity and sense of authenticity. It’s the same with any chain or franchise: the first Starbucks was authentic, but replicating it has made it one in thousands. An intelligent, place-conscientious entrepreneur could take the fundamentals that made Bar Gernika successful (oddly similar to the principles outlined here) and create authentic pocket ethnic experiences in other cities based on local cultural palates.

Successful neighborhoods, developments, business districts and businesses operate similarly. Authentic places are centers of communal affection and significance to local culture, centers of meaning, importance, memories and traditions. Not a wishy-washy emotional speculation, this affection represents brand loyalty, true market value and enduring economic significance—not something attributed to typical placeless developments.
Contrasting Boise commercial districts Bown Crossing with Hyde Park exemplify why authenticity is so important.

Bown Crossing - Courtesy of cityofboise.org

While progressing positively away from strip malls, blind subdivisions and placelessness, some new urbanist developments still fall short of authenticity.  Bown Crossing characterizes these failings. It lacks true authenticity, not because it is a new development—I firmly believe new development can be authentic—but because Bown Crossing lacks any true identity, whether historic or crafted. It is like an urban amusement park, faux but not authentic and exhibiting many desirable place qualities; however it feels like a development still and at the end of the day, everyone will get in their cars and drive away.  Hyde Park is truly authentic.

Courtesy of NorthEnd.org

Hyde Park is the central commercial district for the trendy historic North End neighborhood in Boise. While not as polished in structure as Bown Crossing, Hyde Park is far more organic and engaging. A chain restaurant could fit snuggly into Bown Crossing; it would be rejected outright in Hyde Park. Starbucks would be idyllic in Bown Crossing; only a local coffee bar would fit into the fabric of Hyde Park.

Authenticity test: where do you take visitors to your city?

Seven Principles of Place

From visiting, studying and enjoying my sample places of the Inland Northwest, varied reading on urban design and placemaking; and research into place-conscious policy, education and community collaborations, I deciphered the following principles which frequently are present in exciting and attractive places:

Authenticity
Vibrancy
Experience
Narrative Conscientious
Accessibility
Connectivity
Remarkability

These principles are not absolutes, present in every instance of true place, but help show general trends, help to define true place and serve as guidelines to developing the characteristics of place. By looking through these seven interconnected lenses, we can better view and understand places and why they impact us. This blog will focus on these central concepts.

While I refined these ideas in cities like Boise, Baker City and Walla Walla, subsequent travel has helped me reinforce the validity of these concepts. Grevenbroich, Germany, a small town outside of Dusseldorf, centers around a dense pedestrian central commercial district interlaced with beautiful gardens and parks as only Germans can do. What's most startling is the proximity and transcendence of these green spaces—two minutes walking outside the center square (with its towering cathedral spire and Saturday open-air market) and you're rejuvenated under a canopy of branches near a burbling stream. Grevenbroich reinforces not only that small can be remarkable, but that constructs of vibrancy, accessibility and connectivity truly resonate for that places excellence.

Beautifully dense pedestrian core of Grevenbroich

The true benefit of density, proximity and connectivity

Best Places to Raise a Family

Forbes posted an article back in October about the best small towns to raise a family. Evidently, according to Forbes, the best small towns to raise a family are in the Midwest/Great Lakes regions, with few exceptions. I'm sure these towns are great places, but it was far too geographically exclusive to not ping my sense of curiosity and regional indignation. The result: a short survey of the data used in ranking those cities compared to my lineup of all-star unknowns. Pulling all the data from Sperlings best places (for its ease of use and comprehensive data sets), I reviewed the following criteria, based on the data used in Forbes ranking:  commute time, high school graduation rate, median household income, home ownership rate and cost of living index. Compared to their ranked places and in a revised top 15, the Places Northwest sample captured #2, 4, 6, 7, and 8th place. Not the brilliant tromping of the Forbes list I'd hoped for, but a respectable comparison. Better than the top 15 however, was that one of the their ranked towns was pushed down to #37 on the list. Giving credit to their list, Helena was ranked 9th on their list and similarly on mine.

That done, I was unsatisfied with the filtering criteria for a best place to raise a family - what about unemployment, pupil/teacher ratios, general college attainment, median home values, crime rates, climate and environmental quality? Examining this data led me to rank the Places Northwest sample along this criteria.

Palouse, WA	(1)	Dillon, MT	(2)	Pullman, WA	(3)
Helena, MT	(4)	Moscow, ID	(5)	Pocatello, ID	(6)
Bozeman, MT	(7)	Richland, WA	(8)	Idaho Falls, ID	(9)
Grangeville, ID	(10)	La Grande, OR	(11)	Lewiston, ID	(12)
Tekoa, WA	(13)	Missoula, MT	(14)	Colville, WA	(15)

As my wife said, the data is not going to convince me where to raise my kids; there are the endless intangibles. However, it does give some quantifiable measure of conducive metrics and reinforces my view that these places are places worth examining. 

Where Dreams May Come

One of the core concepts of place-conscious study is examining the local. Our surrounding environments overflow with readily accessible data and experiences. The same applies to our study of place. While your palette of place may differ, my scheme flows from the Inland Northwest / Intermountain Regions. Let me introduce you to the places that have stirred my conscious and sparked my imagination:

Baker City, OR		Moscow, ID
Bend, OR		Ogden, UT
Boise, ID		Palouse, WA
Bozeman, MT		Pendleton, OR
Burley, ID		Pocatello, ID
Coeur d'Alene, ID		Pullman, WA
Colville, WA		Salt Lake City, UT
Dayton, WA		Sandpoint, ID
Dillon, MT		Spokane, WA
Ellensburg, WA		Tekoa, WA
Grangeville, ID		The Dalles, OR
Helena, MT		Tri-Cities, WA
Idaho Falls, ID		Twin Falls, WA
La Grande, OR		Walla Walla, WA
Lewiston, ID		Weiser, ID
Logan, UT		Wenatchee, WA
Missoula, MT

There are no perfect places; I don’t believe any place does everything wrong—you can learn and discover something in every place.