Author: Robert SteutevilleOutlet: CNU Public SquarePublished: July 26, 2023Link to ArticleArticles
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Photo by: DPZ CoDESIGN
Doral is a community that has been undergoing extensive sprawl repair in recent years. These improvements have already allowed it to grow as an urban center with family-friendly housing, public schools, and a general sense of place. The community has partnered with a developer to create a walkable downtown on the site of a former office park, following a 2006 master plan by DPZ CoDESIGN.
While only 120 acres in size, Downtown Doral creates a focus of activity and civic life for an entire suburban region.
“Much of the success of this project is due to the flexible regulating plan and urban/architectural guidelines based on massing and form rather than uses and quantities,” notes Ana-Marie Codina Barlick, CEO of Codina Partners.
Many office parks beyond the Toys “R” campus have a standard look: “lots of curved surface parking and square buildings,” the Georgia Tech professor Ellen Dunham-Jones said.
Between the lack of sustainability and aggravation by the work-from-home lifestyle boosted during COVID-19, these office parks are becoming increasingly outdated and deserted.
As laid out in the Sprawl Repair Manual, a future life can still be revitalized in business parks through the construction of a mixed-use, walkable community that counters the original isolated nature of such developments.
CURBED capturesEIGHT IDEAS for rethinking suburbia, from eliminating single-family zoning to densifying sprawl to reducing carbon footprints. The results include undoing the long-term impacts of segregation and addressing the realities of rising poverty.
ICSC Report ‘Mixed-Use Properties: A Convenient Option for Shoppers’
The latest ICSC research in 2019 found 78% of U.S. adults would consider residing in environments that have a variety of uses in close proximity to one another. The principal reasons include convenience, an efficient use of time, and more better experience. We wonder who are the remaining 22%?
Author: ROBERT KUNZIGOutlet: National GeographicPublished: March 27, 2019Link to ArticleArticles
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Carlton Landing, Oklahoma – designed to be a sustainable walkable community complete with amenities and features that enhance its livability. www.dpz.com/Projects/0804
The 20th Century family for whom suburban subdivisions were envisioned is no longer the statistical norm. In addition, young people are looking for an urban lifestyle, and so are many of the parents left behind. To build the cities and towns of the future, National Geographic explores the need to fix the recent mistakes and misconceptions of automobile focused suburbia.
Author: Amanda Kolson HurleyOutlet: CitylabPublished: February 11, 2019Link to ArticleArticles
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Schools and amenities within walking distance of homes, Greenbelt, Maryland, 1942. Photo Credit: Marjory Collins/Library of Congress
Offering an alternative to wasteful suburban sprawl, the Greenbelt-Towns Program was a Government-led urban planning approach that began in the late 30’s. Although short-lived, lessons can be drawn from the goals, scope and reaction to the suburban demonstration towns that embodied a mix of housing, walkability, and a traditional downtown.
Author: Richard Vines, Neil Callanan, and Will MathisOutlet: BloombergPublished: January 5, 2019Link to ArticleArticles
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With restaurants and bars now occupying upwards of 25 percent of space, mall owners are struggling to identify new opportunities to stem their decline. There is growing recognition that to compete with vibrant downtowns and online shopping, malls will also need to add hotels, apartments, and entertainment to create attractive mixed-use neighborhoods.
Transformation of the mall from a retail-only destination into a vibrant, mixed-use, urban center – University Mall, Orem, Utah
Author: Katherine ShaverOutlet: Washington PostPublished: January 3, 2019Link to ArticleArticles
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Fountains on Clematis Street, West Palm Beach, Florida
Developers have identified a desire by suburbanites for ‘experiences’ that provide them with activities and places to interact. Hence the rise of cooking demonstrations, outdoor yoga classes, smaller concert venues, farmers markets, and splashable fountains, among others. The more time spent together, the more likely people will also shop, dine, and hold a positive view of their community.
Author: DAVID H. FREEDMANOutlet: NewsweekPublished: December 12, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Image via Newsweek – Courtesy of Volvo
As the scale of testing increases, the potential of driverless cars to transform our lives is becoming clearer. Fewer parking spaces, reduced road space, deliveries on demand, demise of strip malls, longer commuting distances, and a need for flexible parking structures, among others, have major implications for our urban and suburban development patterns – not all are necessarily positive.
Legacy’s vibrant Main Street offers residents and employees a multitude of day to night destinations and traditional urban features such as treelined sidewalks and outdoor cafes.
Much of suburban sprawl is vehicle-oriented, served by inadequate sidewalks, and inaccessible without a car. Highlighting Jeff Speck’s new book, Walkability City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Place, the article discusses how investing in walkability can enhance the appeal of places to a range of ages, increase home values and jobs numbers, and promote local expenditure on goods and services.
Author: Jeff SimmsOutlet: The HighlandsPublished: November 16, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Farmland lost to development from 1992 to 2012. The areas where the most land was lost are dark brown and red. (American Farmland Trust)
More than 60 percent of all development took place on farmland between 1992 and 2012 (American Farmland Trust). Of this, 11 million acres was land most suitable for intensive food and crop production. Sprawl is a recognized contributor and some Counties are responding with programs to conserve these strategic assets.
Author: Metropolitan Area Planning CouncilOutlet: CNU | Build a Better BurbPublished: October 26, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Alongside unsustainable sprawl, unsightly strip malls are too often a feature of our suburban landscape. This article draws ideas from DeSoto Marketplace in DeSoto, Texas. The approach here was incremental and adaptive, introducing small cost-effective changes that, over time, transformed the underutilized shopping center into a pocket of walkability and a vibrant local business.
Further case studies can be found in a paper prepared by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Congress for the New Urbanism, Reclaiming the Strip Mall: A Common Suburban Form, Transformed, by Christopher Kuschel.
DeSoto Market in DeSoto, Texas – an incubator space for authentic local retail. (Photo Credit: Andy Jacobsohn/The Dallas Morning News)
Author: Rob SteutevilleOutlet: CNU Public SquarePublished: October 9, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Taking advantage of unexpected demand, the mixed-use Village Center is defined by three-to-five-story buildings and recalls the character of Huntsville’s historic town center.
“Providence, which won a 2018 CNU Charter Award, is an example of how traditional neighborhood development can add to quality of life in a car-oriented suburban landscape.” explains Rob Steuteville, Public Square. The 305 acre Village of Providence intentionally rebalances the previously fragmented, single-use sprawl at the northwest city limits of Huntsville with infill, housing diversity, shared amenities, and useful commercial. By providing the region’s missing ingredients in a walkable environment, it has become a preferred place to live and a popular evening hang-out.
Author: By Heidi MitchellOutlet: Wall Street JournalPublished: September 16, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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West Palm Beach, FL – Compact places encourage a healthier lifestyle and have potentially higher life expectancy than areas of urban sprawl
A new study confirms cross-sectional associations between urban sprawl and life expectancy. Sprawling counties have higher traffic speeds and longer emergency response times, lower quality and less accessible health care facilities, and/or less availability of healthy foods. Compactness affects mortality through less vehicle miles traveled, which is a contributor to traffic fatalities, and through improved body mass index, which is a contributor to many chronic diseases. Dr. Hamidi, who led the research, concludes “We found that the impact of sprawl amounts to about a 2.7‑year difference on average. Change won’t happen quickly, [but] we can make our cities more dense, walkable and accessible, and less car‑dependent, and ultimately improve our overall health.”
Author: Emily BadgerOutlet: New York TimesPublished: August 21, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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A view of suburban Houston. Credit: Josh Haner/The New York Times
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, wants to spur construction of mixed-income, multifamily housing. With more built, the Department believes that housing will become affordable, and there would be more options of where to live. The approach is not without its challenges. The kind of housing described is often impractical, doesn’t accord with regulations, or simply too costly to build in suburbs and big cities alike. While many see rolling back regulations as a way to open up opportunities, nimbyism continues to provide reason for tightly regulated development. Further, its homeowners of both political parties that support restricting development around them and they do so often in spite of their own ideologies. The fear that such development threatens property values motivates homeowners as voters to protect them. The instinct may simply be too deeply ingrained and politically sensitive in America to change.
Author: Chris Wille, Real Estate EditorOutlet: Herald TribunePublished: August 15, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Main events in Lakewood Ranch, FL.
Millennials seek the live-work-play lifestyle, but evidence suggests they are no longer solely focused on compact, diverse urban centers. In an attempt to attract this valuable demographic “suburban villages” are being created in larger developments. Lakewood Ranch is sighted as an example, with its Main Street cluster of condos, shops, restaurants, theaters and employers nearby. The investment appears to be working as millennials are buying homes in large numbers, and their preference shifting towards mature and emerging suburbs.
Author: Matthew PettyOutlet: Build a Better Burb - CNUPublished: August 8, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Image Credit: Matthew Petty, Infill Group, and Matthew Hoffman, Miller Boskus Lack
A new technique called a pattern zone can be used by cities and towns to make good urbanism a natural outcome of their local real estate market. The concept itself isn’t necessarily new as Matthew Petty, a planner and developer in Fayetteville, AR, discusses.
Before zoning codes and land use lawyers, cities were built from pattern books containing construction plans for the building types in common use. However, a municipal pattern book with pre-approved plans is at the center of the latest pattern zone concept. It changes the market activity because it lowers those barriers in ways that are valuable to developers: time and money. Matthew explains “For a missing-middle project, the savings can equal thousands of dollars per unit, once again making middle-scaled buildings as economical as single-family subdivisions and large-scale developments.”
Author: Dave Merrill and Lauren LeatherbyOutlet: BloombergPublished: July 31, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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These fascinating maps challenge our perception of sprawling America – the urbanized area seems compact in comparison to all other uses, 3.6 percent of the total. However, the urban area is growing at an average rate of about 1 million acres a year and sprawl is still winning the numbers game.
The U.S. is a 1.9 billion-acre jigsaw puzzle of cities, farms, forests and pastures that Americans use to feed themselves, power their economy and extract value for business and pleasure. The above map shows the proportion that is urban. See link above for additional maps.
Author: Robert SteutevilleOutlet: Public Square - A CNU JournalPublished: June 20, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Denver growth in the 1940s: Expanding the urban grid in every direction. Source: Denver Urbanism.
Significant changes in urban real estate markets over the last two decades has invigorated downtowns and urban neighborhoods. People who have choices are forgoing private subdivisions and gated communities in favor of places with more authentic neighborhoods and a sense of community. They are finding these characteristics in historic cities and towns. This article discusses how Sprawl has constrained the expansion of urbanism, inflating the economic pressures in high-demand urban neighborhoods.
“The last time Americans fled the cities for the suburbs, from the 1950s to the 1980s, they were driven primarily by fear of crime. This time the migration is the consequence of the cities’ success, not their failure. Housing
and rental prices in many of the country’s largest metro areas have soared, inspiring residents to pack up and move out.
As more young people decamp from the cities to the suburbs, … a hybrid might develop, where people who leave cities—especially the most vibrant and expensive ones—will gravitate to places with similar amenities. Or transform them—as is happening in San Marcos. Though it has its fair share of cookie-cutter homes and strip malls, its well-preserved old downtown boasts a brewery and beer garden, a yoga studio and, now, a bootcamp boutique.”
Author: Robert SteutevilleOutlet: Public Square - A CNU JournalPublished: April 2, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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The square at the heart of a proposed Southside town center, with Abercorn Street re-imagined as a multiway boulevard at the lower right. Source: CNU Legacy Project team led by David M. Schwarz Architects.
In honor of the annual Congress to be held in Savannah May 15-19, the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) developed a “Legacy Project” intended to leave an enduring mark on the host city and region. Retrofits of a suburban college campus and failing mall are key to creating a safer and more lively community.
“Consultants proposed a new town center for Southside Savannah that connects to the Georgia Southern University Armstrong (GSU-Armstrong) campus and transforms a busy, automobile-oriented thoroughfare into a boulevard. A failing mall could also be redeveloped into mixed-use urban blocks on the scale of Savannah’s historic district. Many tenants have left the mall, and broken escalators are signs of poor maintenance.
If the mall fails, the site could begin to redevelop incrementally. The mall site is rectangular, and so the design team applied the scale of blocks and a square that are similar to Savannah’s Oglethorpe grid plan. The redeveloped mall site would connect to the new town center and allow more urban residential development of townhouses and other “missing middle” housing types. If mixed-use development is to take place here, residential and university-related uses will likely prevail, with civic uses and limited retail and restaurants, Swartz says. The university expansion makes that vision feasible.
A large-scale suburban retrofit requires many moving parts—transformation of thoroughfares, new blocks and streets, mixed-use development, re-imagined green spaces, and revised development regulations. The plan covers all those elements, and city officials reacted positively.
Mayor Eddie DeLoach said, “Their approach to the area was dynamic and provides the City new ideas to spur redevelopment opportunities in a traditional suburban setting which would complement our National Landmark Historic District and pristine waterways.”
Author: Jason Beske and David DixonOutlet: URBANLANDPublished: March 16, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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New normal: As people 65 or older and 34 or younger come to dominate U.S. population growth—a pattern that will continue through the 2030s—demand for single-family houses in suburbs will fall as demand for multifamily housing rises in urban settings in cities … and suburbs.
Authors of the new book Suburban Remix, by Jason Beske and David Dixon, describe the challenges we face as a result of sprawl growth patterns in effect since WWII. The book details examples of unique and successful sprawl repair in several communities through common themes and techniques.
“North America is in the midst of “suburban remix.” A perfect storm of challenges has broken apart a 70-year-old suburban growth model shaped around car-focused, relatively affluent, and dispersed development. But as this model falls apart, another far more resilient model is taking shape: walkable, dense, diverse, compact—and urban.
In a dramatic reversal, more people living in poverty now call suburbs home, while affluent households are relocating to cities. This has slowed tax-base growth, battering local budgets. Demographic and economic trends suggest that these dynamics will grow more disruptive over the next two decades.
[Several suburban case studies offer unique lessons, while utilizing common] process, policies, and placemaking. Each started with civic leadership—a local official, advocate, or organization that stepped forward and made the case for change. Each community launched a transformative planning process built around inclusive engagement that used education to build strong local support in places where terms like “dense” and “urban” had long been anathema. All market-driven, these initiatives also rely on innovative public/private partnerships to fund an “urban” infrastructure of streets, parks, and structured parking. They grow upward, not outward, creating a compact critical mass that supports the people (and disposable income) essential to bringing life to their new streets—without touching a single blade of grass on nearby residential lawns.”
Author: Michael Andersen, PlacesForBikes staff writerOutlet: peopleforbikesPublished: March 7, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Halsey’s sidewalk-facing business strip on a winter morning.
The parking lot at Gateway’s shopping center, just off Halsey, is zoned for skyscrapers.
At the cutting edge of sprawl retrofit, Portland is working to making biking desirable in a neighborhood originally built for cars, where the 1920s-style commercial lots to the north face unbroken sidewalks, and the 1950s-style lots to the south face a two-row parking lot.
“Portland’s leaders [are] thinking these two blocks are the perfect place to begin what many of them see as the great work of the 21st century: undoing the errors of car-dependent design that began in the 1940s.
If this row of buildings successfully leads Gateway’s transition to a more walkable, bikeable neighborhood, it’d put the street at the forefront of a national movement to redevelop close-in suburban neighborhoods.
The city’s plan is to preserve parking on both sides of the street, but flip the parking and bike lanes so a combination of curbs and parked cars would separate bike and auto traffic.
Independence Center in Independence, MO, is a classic 1970s-era property.
More developers are finding new opportunities in underutilized malls and empty storefronts with mall retrofits.
“Tearing down these properties often makes less sense than finding new uses appropriate for an era when consumers shop so much online.
“A lot of these projects are at Main and Main streets,” says Najla Kayyem of Pacific Retail Capital Partners, “and great locations don’t go out of style.” Pacific Retail Capital Partners recently decided to step in as the operator of Independence Center, an iconic lifestyle shopping center in Independence, MO, just outside of Kansas City.
“We want people in the area to be proud of their center,” Kayyem says. She echoes the thoughts of many people currently developing or renovating retail centers in that these spaces need to provide experiences “that really create a community environment.”
Author: Kaid BenfieldOutlet: PlacemakersPublished: February 6, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Kaid Benfield reviews a new book on Bethesda Row in Maryland, where office space, retail, and multifamily housing in an architecturally varied and human-scaled setting has considerable appeal as a place to work, shop, dine out, and live.
“The premise of Suburban Remix is that we need more places like Bethesda Row, to respond to growth pressures and rapidly changing market forces now favoring walkable urban places. And that we especially need them in suburbs, where many people prefer to live and where, as outmoded forms of automobile-dominated commercial development go out of service, there lie many opportunities to build them on “grayfield” redevelopment sites. The case studies in the book provide examples of how forward-thinking communities and developers are doing just that.”
Author: Amanda Kolson HurleyOutlet: CITYLABPublished: January 26, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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The land-use plan for the new Tysons (Fairfax County)
Amazon could turn a vast swath of suburbia into a walkable, transit-connected, mixed-use, and architecturally interesting satellite city. Such a project would prove transformational for whatever region it’s in. But it would also become a template—and an impetus—for many more such projects around the country. As the mother of all suburban retrofits, HQ2 could help rewrite land-use patterns that are environmentally wasteful and experientially banal. It could model a new kind of suburbia—one that younger Americans will actively want to live in, rather than just settle for.
Instead of exacerbating an affordable-housing crisis in a pricey urban center, Amazon could help build a model of an inclusive urban suburb.
One argument against a suburban HQ2 site is that it would fuel sprawl. But infill isn’t sprawl, and a locality could prevent the creep of subdivisions around HQ2 if it abided by smart land-use rules.
The urban renaissance is making only a small dent in it. So polycentric urbanism ought to be the goal in the 21st century.
Author: Galina TachievaOutlet: Best in American Living, Published by NAHBPublished: January 25, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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From the Sprawl Repair Manual: Left: Conventional single-use residential development. Right: The proposed sprawl repair provides maximum flexibility, a mix of uses, and a full range of human environments from rural to urban.
The Policy Watch section of the National Association of Home Builders’ quarterly magazine featured our new article on Sprawl Repair – The next frontier in residential innovation.
Changing demographics, retail trends and lifestyle choices are establishing a new frontier for Home builders interested in helping to transform our suburbs, with actions targeted toward establishing urban centers.
Home builders play a key role in delivering desirable, livable products and can remain competitive by leveraging existing infrastructure, location, and market needs to create value out of stranded real estate assets. By including housing within auto-centric commercial development, sprawl repair promotes economic diversity and vitality.
Form-based zoning is a necessary tool that the home building industry should know well and take advantage of. It enables options and flexibility to transform single-use parcels into more diverse and resilient urban nodes that accommodate different people, incomes, and ages, and serves the suburban population at large.
Author: Robert SteutevilleOutlet: Public Square - A CNU JournalPublished: January 23, 2018Link to ArticleArticles
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Parsons Alley activates abandoned properties, creates a popular and lively new public place, and attracts businesses that appeal to young professionals.
“As downtowns and urban neighborhoods thrive across America, leaders and citizens outside city centers have begun to ask, “How do we reinvent the suburbs?” Moreover, how can this be done in an incremental way that doesn’t require a large transformative project? Major projects are hard to come by and are risky propositions.
Parsons Alley, the public-private redevelopment of a 3-acre infill site, offers answers in a small suburban city 10 miles northeast of Atlanta.
“Parsons Alley is serving as a true a catalyst for redevelopment and has already has sparked over a hundred million dollars of private residential projects within the downtown core,” notes James Riker, economic development director for the City.”
