Supporting Milwaukee’s Green Corridor
Throughout 2011, The Gateway to Milwaukee has been an active participant in Milwaukee's Green Corridor effort in the area along S. 6th St. We are excited to stay involved in 2012 and to see this project grow. In addition to providing a great forum for City departments, non-profits, and neighborhood groups to work together towards a common goal, and beautifying one of the area's most important roads, the Green Corridor is inherently linked to our ongoing Aerotropolis Milwaukee development effort.
The Gateway to Milwaukee, at the direction of the Milwaukee Gateway Aerotropolis Corporation, is the entity that promotes aerotropolis development in the General Mitchell International Airport area, which will incorporate land use planning and transportation planning. With respect to aerotropolis plans, land use planning includes reconciling the business site planning needs of individual firms, the airport planning objective of ensuring maximal access at the lowest possible cost, and the urban planning goals of overall economic efficiency, aesthetic appeal, and environmental sustainability. Quoting Dr. Kasarda: “Despite the several areas of promise for the region, Milwaukee lacks a coherent integrated economic strategy. Such an integrated plan would help guide public investments to support long-term economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Setting out a strategic direction could be critical in placing Milwaukee among those regions which find new purpose and a new prosperity. The absence of such a strategy could relegate the region to be among those for whom no sustainable future can be found.” Aerotropolis Milwaukee intends to be such a strategy.
Industrial engineers know how to plan manufacturing and logistics facilities. Transportation planners help facilitate the movement of people and goods. Many planners also have experience in analyzing regional land use needs. In between each of those often separate concerns is a design problem that can significantly affect the three key objectives of aerotropolis planning and development: economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, and aesthetic appeal of urban areas. The Gateway to Milwaukee works at the intersection of these fields to provide coordination of their sometimes competing interests. As The Gateway promotes Aerotropolis Milwaukee as a coherent, regional economic development strategy, the Green Corridor concept is included as part of the overall vision.
In recognition of the haphazard land use patterns of the GMIA area, and indeed of most airport areas, The Gateway and Aerotropolis place a high priority on improving aesthetics. To improve future residential lifestyles, community and neighborhood mixed use residential clusters following new urbanism principles should be planned throughout the greater Aerotropolis. They should be developed to enhance social interaction and provide a sense of human scale in the larger airport-linked urban complex, ideally reducing commute times and contributing to environmental sustainability, as well. Architecture provides an important component of aerotropolis aesthetics. Another consideration is “wayfinding”, which relates to a travelers ease in locating destinations in an area that they are visiting. Moreover, airport access corridors, like passenger terminals, are important urban and regional gateways. Airport access corridors should provide interpretable paths that welcome residents and visitors and lead them to their destinations. They should also reinforce the image and assets of the city and region, rather than detract from them. The challenge is that the GMIA area needs to be interpretable to goods transportation personnel, the truck drivers ferrying shipments between logistics facilities and the Airport, as well as passengers, residents, and customers of local businesses. While S. 6th St does not carry the high traffic counts of W. Layton, S. Howell, or W. College Aves., there are a number of truck terminals with operations on the street. In addition to trucks, tourists must be guided in a positive fashion. They need to be able to “feel” their paths as they approach. Here is where form-based codes, setting standards for building and landscape appearance, have become an integral component of placemaking and branding that need to be implemented in Aerotropolis Milwaukee planning and development.
Stay tuned for updates on the Green Corridor in 2012 as we look to build on our successes of the past year. We are currently engaging the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Community Design Solutions in a visualization and planning effort which will help us carry our momentum forward.
