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Placemaking Conference: Retrofitting Suburbia
This document discusses strategies for retrofitting suburbs to be more sustainable, affordable, and socially inclusive. It provides examples of retrofitting malls, strip malls, office parks and other commercial areas into mixed-use town centers with housing, parks, and transit access. Emerging trends discussed include health, aging in place, resilience, energy efficiency, sharing economies, and using social media to build community. The document advocates partnering to reform standards and practices to remove obstacles to creating more walkable, mixed-use places.
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Placemaking Conference: Retrofitting Suburbia
- 2. imperatives : climate instability mitigatingsuburbanites‟ high carbon footprints and adapting to severe weather rising energy costs living compactly reduces energy use in buildings and for transportation poverty and social segregation since 2005 more Americans in poverty live in suburbs than cities public health suburban living raises risk of obesity, suicide, and death by automobile crashes Affordability the savings of “drive „til you qualify” are wiped out by rising transportation costs
- 3. market driver headlines: demographic shifts suburbia simply isn‟t “family-focused” anymore. 2/3 of suburban hh‟s don‟t have kids, 85% of new hh‟s won‟t through 2025 . Millenials are looking for nightlife and value wifi and connectedness more than cars. the new centers as metros have expanded, first ring suburbs and commercial corridors now have central locations, often meriting densification and urbanization of their “underperforming asphalt”.
- 4. relocalization of people,place, landscape, and activity tactical urbanism, crowdsourceing, and collaborative consumption cheap space for community- serving uses “third places” placemaking through : Re-inhabitation
- 5. Congress for theNew Urbanism: Next Gen short-term projects for long-term gains pavement to plaza depave parklet yarnbombing Walk posters
- 6. From strip tojob and town center Willingboro Town Center Willingboro, NJ Croxton Collaborative Architects 1960 1. Boscov’s Furniture 2. Sears 3. Woolworths 4. Power plant 2009 1. Mail-service pharmacy 2. Office building 3. Public library w/ retail 4. Community College 5. Town Commons 6. Townhouses 7. Planted swales Courtesty Croxton Collaborative Architects MTC Aerial Photography
- 7. - 100 Oaks Mall& Medical Center, Nashville TN: Medical center on 2nd floor of once-dying mall Wellspring Medical & Wellness Center, Woodburn, OR in former K-Mart Collinwood Recreation Center, Collinwood OH: from dead Big Lots store to public recreation center with bioswales on former parking lot RWJ Hamilton Ctr for Health & Wellnesss, Hamilton, NJ: Former Ames Dept Store
- 8. Updating the “L”strip mall as a “third place” with portals to the neighborhood Lake Grove Shopping Center, Lake Oswego, OR: Eric Shoemaker Beam Development From “back” to a new front to the neighborhood
- 9. urbanize – organizebuildings to create connected outdoor rooms and walkable street networks densify and diversify: reward the pedestrian eye green the infrastructure placemaking through: Redevelopment
- 10. Suburban Form UrbanForm -buildings as discrete, stand-alone objects -buildings align and front onto the street -open space lacks form, is dominated by cars -open space is shaped by the buildings; outdoor room -blocks and streets are large, unconducive to walking -blocks and streets are smaller, more walkable,safer -single uses, separated infrastructure systems -mixed uses, more integrated infrastructure systems From dead mall to green downtown Belmar, Lakewood, CO: Continuum Partners; Elkus Manfredi Architects, Civitas Inc.
- 11. transit triggers infillof an office park University Town Center, Hyattsville, MD Prince George’s Metro Center, Inc.; Parker Rodriguez, RTKL Associates, WDG Architecture 1980 2009
- 12. From a park-n-ride+ mall to a high-design civic centre geothermal TOD Surrey Surrey Central City, Surrey, BC; Simon Frasier University, Bing Thom Architects, Inc source: Dunham-Jones, Williamson, 2009 Library Classrooms above shopping mall Phase 1: college classrooms built above mall, + new high rise
- 13. Recapturing traffic islandsfor redevelopment while making walkable intersections Fort Totten MetroRail stop, Washington DC Planning Department, WAMATA Source: Washington DC Planning Dept website
- 14. Intersection retrofit andpublic placemaking as catalyst Normal Illinois Roundabout, Normal Illinois: Doug Farr Associates, Hoerr Schauer Landscape
- 15. Photoz; G. Komar From5-lane arterial to 2-lane Main Street with multi-use parking Ramblas Lancaster, CA: Moule & Polyzoides
- 16. retrofitting land use,transportation and energy on a commercial corridor Cambie Corridor, Vancouver, BC, Vancouver City Planning Department
- 17. reconstruct local ecology,daylight culverted streams, and clean run- off add parks to increase adjacent property values food and energy production carbon sequestration placemaking through: Regreening
- 19. from mall parkinglot to TOD with water treatment bioswale as park amenity Northgate Urban Center, North Seattle, WA: LEED-ND pilot program Thornton Place, Mithun Architects for Stellar Holdings & Lorig Associates •Added 530 units of housing at net 96 units/acre (another 1800 coming?) •Increased open space within the Northgate Urban Center by 50% •Provided pedestrian links that shortened walking distances by 50% from several adjacent neighborhoods Source: Dunham-Jones, Williamson 2011 2000 condos to replace 200 apts?
- 20. Thornton Creek WaterQuality Channel: City of Seattle, SvR Design •Reduced impervious surface by 78% •Designed to remove an estimated 40-80% of suspended solids from 91% of the avg annual stormwater runoff from the 680-acre drainage basin •Created new habitat: native birds were observed within one month and native volunteer plants have gotten established with the 85% native species that were planted. Source: Kaid Benfield, Natural Resources Defence Council •Adds an estimated 30% increase in adjacent property values
- 21. From urban mallto park ringed with urban housing Columbus City Center Park, Columbus OH
- 22. Target retrofitting morestrategically at the metro scale Support new tools: Form-Based Codes, Transfer of Development Rights, Health Impact Assessments, Retrofittability Analyses, Greyfield Audits, etc. Replace “drive „til you qualify” with compact housing with affordable transit by retrofitting commercial strip corridors into transit-served boulevards Come to CNU 21 in Salt Lake City May 29-June 1 strategy: Next Steps
- 23. From edge citysprawl to developer-driven 430-acre TOD White Flint, MD; White Flint Partnership, Washington Metropolitan Planning Council 1. Permits development of a new downtown over next 20 years 2. Dedicated-lane BRT circulators outward from Metro Station 3. 10,000 residential units, 2600 of them “affordable” 4. Commercial space up from 14mil s.f to 20mil 5. Limited parking 6. High-rises up to 30-stories 7. Generate $6-7bil in revenue for the county
- 24. From edge citysprawl to developer-driven 430-acre TOD White Flint, MD- North Bethesda Market East & Market II; JBG Companies
- 25. Connecting the Dots:Retrofitting the airport, mall, chemical plant and corridor Airport Boulevard, Austin TX: City of Austin, Gateway Planning Group
- 26. • Healthy Communities •Aging in Place: Rethinking Retirement • Resilience planning and adaptation to local climate change, local food • Local/district energy, net zero energy, low carbon communities • Collaborative Economies: bike- sharing, scooter-sharing • Using social media to enhance community building strategy: Emerging Trends
- 27. Partnering to Remove Obstacles toUrbanism by Reforming Standards and Practices Past Initiatives: HOPE VI Mixed- Income Communities LEED-ND CNU/ITE Manual on Walkable Urban Thoroughfares Emerging Initiatives: Tactical Urbanism, Urban Agricutlure, Code Reform, New Urbanism in China
Editor's Notes
- #3 -so, these 2 examples speak to the many co-benefits of retrofitting the unintended consequences of sprawl
- #4 The brain trust assembled here will speak to the significant market shifts. I’ll simply mention the headlines.
- #5 Suburbia’s “newness” is often at odds with its traditional imagery
- #7 -reinhabitation at the multi-parcel scale-adding jobs, education, a library – and residences to the rear – while greening the parking lots with a town commons and swales
- #9 Adapting a conventional L-shaped grocery-anchored strip mall into a “third place”. OK City has some dead malls being reinhabited. Crossroads Mall bought last week to be reinhabited as a hispaniccommunity center.
- #10 While re-inhabitation tends to help with social sustainability, to get environmental benefits, one tends to need to redevelop and urbanize these properties into mixed-use, walkable, transit-served neighborhoods.
- #11 Suburbanization isn’t JUST a matter of low density or distance from the downtown. Perhaps the greatest contributor to the unintended consequences has been the way in which suburban form reduces walkability and increases dependence on the automobile. This single factor increases carbon and transportation costs, while it decreases human and environmental health. This slide shows the retrofit of a 45-hectare dead shopping mall outside Denver, CO into the downtown the community never had. It’s not very dense, but it is urban, compact, with very walkable streets, 2 public parks, a mix of housing types, has 8 bus lines coming through, and has reduced per capita vehicle miles traveled, reduced water runoff, increased trees and integrated solar and micro wind turbines. It’s done this by design. As Subrho said, “Design matters.”
- #18 But densification won’t work everywhere. Sometimes, regreening is the better answer.
- #22 So while redevelopment of the dead urban mall worked in the strong market of Rockville, regreening has worked well in the slow market of Columbus, OH. Driver here is replacing drag on economic development, with a catalyst.Mall demolished in 2009. Park opened in 2010. First new housing to open in 2013.
- #23 But densification won’t work everywhere. Sometimes, regreening is the better answer.
- #26 Series of fortunate events: airport closed, redev’d as mixed-use NU Mueller (green and lower right); Voters approved 1 cent tax for MetroRail, City rezoned a chemical plant (in blue) for TOD, upper right photo is the view from the train of the transit plaza at Crestview Station; Dying Highland Mall (red) has been purchased by Austin Community College – planning to reinhabit the mall and build a full campus on the mall’s pkg lots – as shown in the middle image. AND the city just approved pilot test of a FBC for this 3.5 mile stretch and the planning dept is now working on much smaller grain infill and strategies to preserve affordable housing.
- #28 Next step for all of you, is to consider joining CNU in removing the obstacles to urbanism. (I know a LOT of architects are suspicious of the MOVEMENT of NU – and I understand the reasons! But, less people understand the WORK of the ORGANIZATION. Great track record of initiatives at the national level – just got F/F to lift the cap on comm’l in m-u res’lbldgs from 20 to 35%. Sprawl Retrofit’s dev’g toolkits for municipalities. You have a great local chapter here too. I look forward to coming back and learning how Denver’s advanced the NEXT generation of suburban retrofits.