Paul Buck has spectacular views of downtown Vancouver from the two glass walls of his condo, which wow everyone who walks in. But what really impressed one of Mr. Buck’s friends, in from a town near the Yukon border, is that he lives over a giant Home Depot.
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All-in-one projects with retail, residential and office components are attracting attention. But not everyone is onboard.
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Some 120,000 people work in Tysons Corner, Va., but only 17,000 live there. To transform this hotbed of suburban gridlock into a green, walkable city, a soon-to-be-adopted plan-as envisioned by our artist-calls for as much as tripling the current square footage by expanding upward, with the tallest buildings located next to four new train stations, which should be completed by 2013.
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The Lego ‘City Corner’ set happens to be a superb example of sound urban design. Notice first the mixed use development, where people can live and work in the same spot, in this case there is residential use above the pizzeria. Almost every truly vibrant place has a mix of land uses, as opposed to segregated uses where people live in one district, work in another, and shop in yet another, etc.
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Jeff Speck, who first introduced himself to Oklahoma City by announcing “your codes are bad,” is back with a new message: the sidewalks and streets aren’t great, either.
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Today, nearly 20 percent of the 2,000 largest malls in the United States are failing, according to an interview in Newsweek with Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of “Retrofitting Suburbia,” a collection of case studies of suburban property redevelopments and the director of the architecture program at Georgia Institute of Technology.
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Launched in 2006 by LA planning director Gail Goldberg, the Urban Design Studio was created to address the city’s lack of urban design standards and to create a more pedestrian-friendly city. The small studio, headed by planners Emily Gabel-Luddy, and Simon Pastucha has already spearheaded the recent creation and approval of a set of Downtown Street & Urban Design Standards and Guidelines, which encourages wider sidewalks (at least 15 feet on some downtown blocks) and the possibility of street life, and a set of Walkability Guidelines.
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The recession is bad news for retail developers, and a recent gathering of them was rife with concern about the field and its future. But amid the uncertainty is an air of hope — and an understanding that to survive, the face of retail development must adapt.
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Don Elliott, author of A Better Way to Zone, argues that dynamic zoning regulations can help cities grow appropriately and avoid bottlenecks to good development.
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Suburbs are often stereotyped as selfish and soulless, but the communities highlighted here could teach towns everywhere a thing or two about civic spirit and livability. We’d like to hear your thoughts on other great suburbs throughout the world.
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