Noted planner Jeff Speck partners with Hammond, Indiana to breathe new life into the city. During the 20th century, many cities in the United States saw their centers turn to veritable ghost towns. One such community is Hammond, Indiana. Recently, the city partnered with noted planner Jeff Speck to create a new vision for the city through the eyes of a person walking.
Through the lens of Hammond, the film examines the history and concepts behind contemporary urban design. Walkable USA is available to stream on pbs. The way Jeff Speck conveys his ideas on the importance of walkability in Downtowns, they really resonated with us here in Hammond.
You don't wanna let your Downtown fall apart 'cause it hurts the image of your entire city. Mayor Thom challenged us and said, "Hey, why don't we find someone that is outside the box of Hammond, outside the box of Northwest Indiana, to take a look at our Downtown and get a different perspective? That's when I started Googling and watching videos and TED Talks and reading master plans on other communities, and that's where we got connected with Jeff Speck.
And what Jeff was saying just made so much sense to us and the focus on the pedestrian and creating an urban core that feels safe for people to get out of their cars, walk around, hang around, live, all that good stuff, walkability. In a country in which driving is so easy and so cheap and so subsidized, the answer is that the walk has to be as good as the drive, but to do that, it needs to do four things simultaneously.
This project presents a very specific problem that I've never had to solve to this degree, which is a main street, forgive me, that's so far gone. And as you were walking down from here around the corner, you probably heard six different languages, minimum, just walking a block. The Higbee's department store where he goes to visit Santa and gets kicked down the slide and told- - You'll shoot your eye out, kid. And so the jobs left and when the jobs left, the people don't shop much anymore or they move away.
