Technically any municipality can be called a city as long as they provide all of the essential services as required to manage it like police, health & sanitation and emergency services. Population is not supposed to be a factor so you can have a city as small as 8000 people in size or as large as 10 million.

I suppose there should be more of a clarification on what defines a city as oppose to an urban environment. For most cities, the heart is the traditional downtown core surrounded by older densely packed residential areas and as you travel further out from the city core, you will be in more spreaded out suburban areas.

That is the matter of most large cities in the world today but for many people, a city is not truly a city unless it has a downtown core spiked with skyscrapers of towering height but for me, a city is more than that.

Here in Winston-Salem, there is a new development called Civic Plaza located in the downtown core. In the past few weeks, several older structures have been torned down in preparation for the first phase of the project, One Park Vista, a luxury condo development. The second part of the project is a tower located at Liberty and Fourth on the other side of the block where the abandoned Pepper Building currently sits. This tower was originally planned at fourteen stories then increased to twenty stories and now as of today has been scaled back to the original fourteen stories.

Along Fourth Street, near Town Run Lane, passers-by peer through fencing at a construction site during lunch breaks. A crater of dirt, stone and wood marks the area where a group of buildings used to stand in downtown Winston-Salem.

The former Davis Department Store building is gone. So is the Mother & Daughter Store building.

What the lunch crowd sees taking place is the construction of a $17 million building called One Park Vista, which is the first phase of a public-private project known as the Civic Plaza plan. That plan calls for a downtown plaza flanked by One Park Vista and another condo building on a 3-acre tract.

One Park Vista is on schedule, but the second phase still has holes in it. Financing, and the city’s possible use of tax-increment financing, is being discussed. In addition, the size of the second condo building, which would sit on the southwest corner of Liberty and Fourth streets, has been reduced.

Niemann Capital LLC, the lead developer on the Civic Plaza plan, had proposed a building of 21 stories, similar to the height of the Nissen Building. But the latest proposal made in September changed the height to 14 stories. Tom Niemann, the company’s president, could not be reached for comment.

Jason Thiel, the president of the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership, said that the change in the height of the building was presented last month at the partnership’s development meeting.

Thiel said that the proposed building, which does not have a name yet, started off as a 14-story building.

“When it was presented at a larger scale, they were trying to show potential of the market. It (the change in size) really is simply a reflection of budget risk and market forces,” he said.

The building would probably go at the southwest corner of Liberty and Fourth streets, down the block from One Park Vista, which is being built by other developers, Kerry Avant and Thad Lewallen.

The two condo buildings would have a park between them, on a tract from Town Run Lane to Liberty Street. To make space for Niemann’s building, the developer has suggested that the vacant Pepper Building be demolished.

Whatever the height of Niemann’s building, Ginger Baldwin McCollum, a real-estate agent working on One Park Vista, said that demand is running high, with 19 of the building’s 34 units reserved, sold or under contract.

(Source: Second downtown condo in Civic Plaza plan shrinks - Winston Salem Journal)

The reason for the reduction in the plan is I think that the real estate reality is starting to sink in that the market for high end condos is reaching saturation point in Winston-Salem’s downtown. West End Village, 248 Main, Gallery Lofts are all new developments that will scores of new residential units downtown. It may not realistic to put an additional 6 stories of condos on a building if the developers can not sell them.

I do not think fourteen stories buildings is a small building which you can find in the suburbs. There are a few towers downtown now that exceed that height such as the Wachovia and Winston towers. It is a reasonable height and considering that its neighbouring towers like One West Fourth and RJ Reynolds towers are of comparable height, placing the fourteen story tower at Civic Plaza will not not seem to far out of place. My preference is for buildings to occupy as much of the area as possible creating a dense effect. Winston-Salem is not Charlotte or any other type of large city and having a few towers scattered here and there does not make it a large city. Then you have to consider that having such large towers is that they require setbacks from the street which result in these windblown plazas which to me are one of the reasons for the decline of cities in the dark age (50’s-80’s). These plazas created dead areas in many downtown cores and is not something I like to see in Winston.

I have lived in many large cities around the world and what defines urban living is simply density of people and architecture. Image if you will a street lined on both sides with buildings ranging from 6 to 14 stories with wide sidewalks but no plazas. Commerical enterprises at street level, apartments & offices on top. Such a compact living arrangement brings the jostle of urban living close up to you every day. You can feel that you are in a city as you walk past blocks and blocks of such building. Compressing all of that urbanity into a tower or two takes away that experience.

Winston in its heyday was considered to be one of the premier cities of the south and looking at photographs from that era and even as late as the 1950’s, you could see how dense the city was at its core with factories, offices and homes all in close proximity to each other with nary a tower around except for the RJR building. Perhaps the rise of skyscrapers in many urban cores, along with the rise of suburban shopping malls, was the factor that lead to the decline of downtowns as offices scattered throughout the downtown consolidate at this new gleaming edifice which lead to the abandonment of buildings throughout the rest of the downtowns. With the same number of downtown workers housed in fewer buildings, you will get these vacant buildings and surface parking lots that seem to rise up.

Fourteen stories is a good height for this development. There is another phase of the project that could see the removal of the old courthouse in favour of another tower of comparable height. However as there is significant amount of commerical space downtown available right now I can not see anyone building office towers on speculation. What I would like to see after this spate of condo building and conversions is more infill development downtown to help use up all of that empty space particularly on Liberty St. Spreading out the density of the downtown core help makes tratransitre efficient and may lead to the building of the oft-discussed streetcar line.

There are many things that can define a city: the ability to sustain a vibrant art scene, opportunities to learn, bountiful and diverse job prospects, the number of interesting and unique restaurants and cafes. To focus on just one visual aspect of a city, the number of tall buildings it has is to me the wrong premise to judge whether a city is worthy of the term.