A couple of months ago, in the midst of the heated debate over 76 Place, the proposed Sixers arena in Center City, I found myself flummoxed by what seemed like the randomness of the whole thing. Yes, Market Street East is a decades-long disaster that needs a giant rehab, along with all the jobs, economic development and vibrancy that go along with it. And yes, an arena seems like it could do that.

But also: Where were the city planners in all this? Shouldn’t our city leaders have proactively thought through any major development in the middle of Philadelphia, along with residents, rather than just reacting to what was put in front of them?

Turns out at least one actual city planner agreed with me. “Great planning grows from a thoughtful and respectful conversation between a people and their elected representatives,” Drexel University’s Harris Steinberg wrote in The Inquirer last month. “It understands the city as a series of social, environmental, and economic systems anchored by landmarks, with nodes of activity designed to encourage a vibrant public life.”

In the weeks leading up to the City Council votes that have all but guaranteed the Sixers will get their Center City arena, Steinberg — who runs the Lindy Center for Urban Innovation — urged city officials to slow down and think strategically about Market East, 76 Place and its surrounding neighborhoods by issuing a series of best practice principles, published in the Inquirer, to guide the conversations.

That urging came from experience: Twenty years ago, Harris led a deep and widespread community engagement effort that became the development plan now being enacted at Penn’s Landing and along the Delaware River.

I caught up with Steinberg in anticipation of Council’s vote this week to talk about the process that got us here, how we could do better, and what we can do now to make the most out of the development in the surrounding neighborhoods.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What was your initial reaction to the proposed arena back in July 2022?

From the get-go I was pretty circumspect. I did a piece which The Inquirer published urging the City to think this through. Is it the best thing for Market Street? Can we rethink what an arena is? Can there be a new paradigm? There have been all these saviors in the past for this area that didn’t work out.

Those were the waning Kenney years, which had run out of gas. He had carried on the good urban design rules that had started under Nutter — like historic preservation — but by 2022, that had fallen by the wayside.

Why did you decide to step up to shape some of the thinking around it?

With the Parker administration coming in, it became clear there was an opening for us. What we’ve always tried to do, like we did with the Delaware River waterfront, was take a neutral position and shape a public conversation about best practices, values and what’s best for the city writ large. Parker’s imprimatur on the legislation in August became the opening for that, to see if we could broaden the conversation about good vs. bad, destroy Chinatown vs. revitalize downtown.

We had been trying to launch a civic design studio, like they have in other cities, to promote good government around urbanism and urban design, that issue reports and help convene around the big issues of the day. We don’t really have anything quite like that here. That’s what brought us to the table — being shocked by the complete lack of planning in the Parker administration and seeing there was a real need for the kinds of skills that we had, being a neutral honest broker, looking at it critically and seriously in a way that might get the administration’s attention.

I don’t think it did, but I think it was an incredibly valuable process and precedent anyway because it demonstrated both the possibilities and the challenges of having these kinds of conversations in this fractured landscape.

You mentioned a similar project you led around the Delaware River waterfront in the early aughts. Can you explain how that worked?

The idea of developing the waterfront had been rumbling for years. This was the heady days of development before the housing market crashed — there was all this money from New York, people were proposing 900-foot towers in Fishtown, but we had an old zoning code, and no leadership in the planning department. Then-City Councilmember Frank DiCicco [who represented the riverfront neighborhoods] was just doing all these zoning and planning issues on the fly.

Casinos became an accelerant in 2004, after the state passed legislation allowing them to open in Pennsylvania, when two casinos were planned for banks of the Delaware. The river communities and the design community were all up in arms. As casinos came closer to reality, I hosted a forum with [then-Daily News Editorial Page Editor] Sandy Shea on waterfront design, which 600 people attended; DiCicco was there, as was Shawn McCaney from the William Penn Foundation. It was clear that there was no leadership from the City on this, so there was an opportunity to convene a process that could be citizen led, values based and informed by best practices.

We made up a process on the fly, with William Penn’s support, which included the creation of PlanPhilly as a website and recorder of the process. In 13 months, we pulled off what seemed to be impossible: We had a 48-person steering committee created by an executive order from Mayor John Street. It had the usual city agencies and business associations, but also 15 civic associations that were equal partners at the table. We created what I call a civic force field around this to keep special interests at bay.

Around 4,000 people participated — pro-development, anti-casino, neighborhood groups. We had a vision that was endorsed by Mayor Nutter’s incoming administration; we created a new board to oversee the waterfront; we issued a new action plan — and now it’s being enacted. What they are doing there all follows closely to the vision that we came up with.

That demonstrated for me the power of this kind of work.

What’s different now?

Under Mayor Nutter, civic engagement became the norm. He was a reformer, who instituted a more open, transparent, values-based process, predicated on best practices. We helped with planning in Fairmount Park and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. And in the beginning of the Kenney administration, at least, this work continued.

Under the Parker administration, there has been a 180-degree shift in how they value public engagement and how they value the built environment. As an example: Mayor Parker appointed her new Planning Director [in October] a couple weeks after she announced her public support for the arena, and after the legislation to let it go forward in City Council was already introduced.

When we were doing the waterfront, we had a strong relationship with Sandy Shea at The Daily News and Inquirer Editorial Page Editor Chris Satullo; we used the power of the editorial page, power of free press, academia, the public and the armature of a civic design studio. Our challenge now is that the traditional media landscape doesn’t pack the punch it used to.

The question is: How do you gain traction for these conversations in a city that doesn’t have a process or interest in doing this?

City Council paved the way for the arena with their vote last week to approve the zoning changes needed to allow the new building. What is there left to do regarding this project?

We need a public process that engages citizens in co-creating a plan for both the corridor and how the arena is integrated into the social and urban fabric of the city, which would help heal the wounds of what has been a bruising rush to approve the enabling legislation. In a functioning government, the Planning Commission would take the lead and do the work in good faith. We [at Lindy] plan to stay involved in helping to shape an ongoing public conversation about the project and its impact on Market East.

The current design of the arena is very conceptual; a lot of details are unknown; it will have to get approval by the City Art Commission before it can be built, so there is still an opportunity for the community to continue to advocate for an innovative, dynamic, pedestrian-scaled, transit-friendly centerpiece for Market East. Getting SEPTA and Jefferson Station right is key to the success of the project.

It’s not about the arena anymore, but about the area around it. The way it’s been presented and currently designed it’s all about the arena, and nothing about the blast zone around it. We can do big projects that are smart and impactful, but we can’t just rely on a proposal by a sports team and think they will have the public good in mind. That’s the role of the City and its citizens.

Is there an example you can point to?

There’s a relatively new development that could be a model, just across the street from where the arena is planned: The East Market development at 11th and Market streets is a pedestrian-friendly, multiphase mixed-use project that covers a full city block. It includes a healthy mix of retail, residential, commercial, and academic buildings, and a generous amount of public space. It also includes the adaptive reuse of the historic Stephen Girard Building on 12th Street.

The site plan respects the historic street grid that crossed the site and adds inviting new pathways through and across the site. It’s akin to Rockefeller Center in New York in that the development defines strong street edges while also offering intriguing vistas and welcoming pathways into and through the site. It’s a human-scaled, handsome template for the development of the East Market Street corridor.

We’re at an inflection point now. So which vision is going to win?

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