“In regions that are growing, the objectives of economic efficiency and social justice
suggest that growth be focused in areas that are already at least partially developed.” The
city of Cedar Rapids is the sixth largest city in the state of Iowa. Like all developing
communities in the United States, there are issues in the cultivation of a sustainable city,
suburb, town, or hybrid. Cedar Rapids offers a metropolitan feel in the downtown area, but
in the “Uptown district” along 1st avenue (a main throughway for the city) there are some
problems.
Between the blocks of 10th street northeast and 16th street northeast there lies a small
retail district, a college campus, and adjacent medical district. The business and retail
portion of the Uptown district have a few buildings in poor physical condition (Figure 1).
There is a broken attempt to achieve a functioning retail district. There also lies difficulty
between the drivers of 1st avenue and the pedestrians choosing to use the streets.
Businesses do not yet offer the sustainability to positively impact the community, often
leaving after only months into existence along 1st avenue. The businesses locale in terms
of distance from the street is interchanging constantly with storefronts varying from the
edge of the street to smaller establishments with full parking lots surrounding. In short the
dynamic of the soon to be retail/business district is far from established.
The key to improving upon the problematic areas along 1st avenue are to enable
compatible businesses room to flourish, create spaces for pedestrian movement, as well as
create parking to enable people to take to foot allowing for more flow through the retail
district. In order to resolve the problems facing 1st avenue the district must compliment the
community as more of a town/suburb/neighborhood/city hybrid culmination. For most of
the portion mentioned above there are varying styles, which make the culmination seem
disproportionate. On one end there is the medical district, which flows smoothly with brick
new age facades. This leads to Coe College campus buildings facing 1st avenue, which
consist brick of different coloring, but brick all the same. The free wielding no right angle
design of the Dows Fine Arts building makes for a creative landscape for which the mind
has no bounds. There are reminiscing features of Romanesque detailed on the faade of
Stuart Hall, which has doric order capitals topping the massive front colonnade. The frieze
is unmistakable surrounding the structure with triglyph and metopes such as the Parthenon
