As a former student admissions ambassador, I know
some people choose to come to VCU because of its city
environment. But after a couple of semesters, some of
us haven’t really explored downtown Richmond for
any number of reasons, ranging from parking to safety
issues. Even if these issues were resolved, what else
could the city do to improve the downtown area?
The purpose of the Richmond Downtown Master
Plan workshop last Thursday was to iron out this very
question. City planners shared six main points the
Richmond community raised this past summer. These
points, or foundations, were as follows: traditional
city, river, urban architecture, variety and choice,
green and history. (See Page 3 for accompanying
news story.)
In some ways, Richmond is a lot like New York
City or Los Angeles – people who live in one part of
town tend not to leave their bubble for another one.
There is no doubt that improving all of these areas
would enhance the city and invite more visitors both
within and outside the Richmond area.
For us students, most of our problems have to do
with traffic and transit. Anyone who’s ever driven
downtown knows the frustration of one-way streets,
and anyone who’s ever biked downtown must really
want that bike lane.
We’d go downtown more if it were a better place to
drive, bike and walk. I know this because I don’t have
a car. As a result, my adventures have been limited to
wherever my friends or the Greater Richmond Transit
Company can take me. I can count on one hand the
number of times I biked downtown. For one, biking
uphill to campus on Main Street is grueling for a
weakling like me; for another, I got pretty tired of
looking for a suitable place to chain my bike. More
bike lanes, bike racks, pedestrian lanes and better
transit overall would make downtown visits a heck
of a lot more appealing.
For those of us planning to stay in the Richmond
area after graduation, where will we live? Downtown
might be a good place, should the city decide to
develop more mixed-income housing areas there. As
one workshop panelist put it, most of us belong to the
“millennial” age group, having been born between 1977
and 1996. Upon finishing college, millennials have
the highest tendency to want to move into downtown
areas. The experts say Richmond has a pretty decent
growth potential, so why not make it very decent by
putting a good mix of housing downtown?
Looking online at some projected “before and after”
images of Broad, Marshall and Hull streets, it doesn’t
seem like the city has to do a whole lot to upgrade
the downtown area. These streets could easily be
enhanced with better architecture, more trees and
greenery, and improved roads. So what’s stopping the
plan from being carried out? There’s the expression,
“Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Richmond isn’t Rome,
and it’s not trying to be, but all the same – if city
planners want to attract more people in the next 20
years, they should have gotten started ages ago.
After all, if downtown Richmond were a lot nicer
and less sketchy, more of us would take our parents
to lunch there.