Redevelopment

“Why amenitize an office park when you can build a town center?”

from:

https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2022/12/22/turning-office-park-town-center

Front Yard Businesses

 Video of the week:

"How do we add mixed uses in single detached neighbourhoods? People have some ideas…"

Implementation can be as simple as:

1. Use corners first;
2. Expand on what's already happening;
3. Create social spaces, and;
4. Create agreements between neighbours.

Adaptive Streets

"Adaptive Streets is an illustrated handbook to inspire and guide citizens, planners and officials to re-imagine how our streets can be adapted to increase utility and delight as well as enhance human and environmental health. The book presents a collection of strategies, demonstrating how they can be implemented in prototypical streets. Adaptive Streets can be used as a community empowerment tool to create new visions to transform the right-of-way."

from:

https://issuu.com/schwin/docs/14_04_26_adaptivestreets_final

 

Friday video: How radical gardeners took back New York City

"Seed bombs, the "tree lady of Brooklyn," and the roots of urban gardening."

"New York City looked a lot different in the 1960s and 1970s. A sharp economic decline and white flight meant there was mass disinvestment and urban decay, particularly in the city’s lower-income neighborhoods. It’s what Hattie Carthan and Liz Christy noticed in their communities when they each set out to revive their neighborhoods by making them greener. Ultimately, their radical acts of gardening would transform the landscape across New York City."

Renewal - one building at a time

 "Less than a decade ago, Water Valley, Mississippi was a forgotten small town: there were 18 empty storefronts lining its four-block Main Street and plenty of decaying homes for sale. Located only twenty miles from the University of Mississippi and the pricey town of Oxford (also former home to William Faulkner), it was well-placed for revival.

In 2002, Mickey Howley and his wife Ole Miss professor Annette Trefzer bought an $80,000 century-old home and one of those empty storefronts for $60,000. They were early pioneers in the effort to rehabilitate the old 19th Century railroad town- turning their former drugstore into the Bozarts art gallery, but it took the formation of a community to create real change.

“In the last seven years,” explained Howley- now director of the Water Valley Main Street Association - in 2015 to a White House meeting on rural placemaking, “and remember Water Valley is 3,500 people with a four-block long downtown, this team has been instrumental in bringing 88 new jobs to downtown. Adding 26 new businesses. Fixing buildings and I don’t just mean façade jobs, but major renovations in 29 buildings. Adding 14 upper floor apartments. In that new business mix, we’ve added four new restaurants, three art galleries, one grocery store, one doctor’s office, and one brewery.”

Howley calls it “reimagining” structures: a foundry is now a brewery, a service station is now a restaurant, a drugstore is now an art gallery and a department store is now a grocery store/school."

Policing & community design

"Widespread outrage and protests over recent acts of police violence in the United States have prompted a renewed national conversation on policing reform. Studio Gang's Polis Station seeks to contribute to this critical dialogue by exploring how design can help people imagine changes in police-community relations."

Polis Station from Studio Gang on Vimeo.

Shopping centre to downtown

"A new downtown is being built for Westminster, Colorado, a suburban city with no previous walkable downtown—on 105-acre former shopping mall site. Downtown Westminster will include 2,300 residential units with substantial affordable housing, and 1.7 million square feet of commercial uses—such as a grocery store, shops, restaurants, a movie theater, and office space. There will be 18 publicly accessible parks and civic spaces."

"The plan allows for the site to:

• Provide a pedestrian-oriented environment, with building-to-street relationships that foster an active, engaging pedestrian realm;
• Become the visual and physical center of the City of Westminster, with an urban form that reinforces the human scale and an urban environment; and a street-grid orientation that visually connects the site with prominent peaks of the Front Range;
• Provide an interconnected circulation network for vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian circulation including the re-routing of Westminster Boulevard through the site to become the ‘main street’ of the new Downtown;
• Connect the City’s green space system into the site with a multi-faceted public-space and park network;
• Ensure direct, convenient access to transit with facilitated access to the Downtown Westminster BRT station and a future Regional Transit District FasTracks rail station."

from:

https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2019/06/26/converting-shopping-mall-downtown

Rethinking the design of goods

"There's a world of opportunity to re-think and re-design the way we make stuff. 'Re-Thinking Progress' explores how through a change in perspective we can re-design the way our economy works - designing products that can be 'made to be made again' and powering the system with renewable energy. It questions whether with creativity and innovation we can build a restorative economy."

"Innovation, quality and good design Cradle to Cradle® is a design concept that was developed in the 1990s by Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart, William McDonough and the scientists of EPEA in Hamburg. It stands for innovation, quality as well as good design and describes the safe and potentially infinite use of materials in cycles."



from:
https://epea-hamburg.com/cradle-to-cradle/

Video of the week

Interim Use Farming

Tactical Urbanism 101

"If you're a public space aficionado or transportation maven, one only needs to sign on to one of the various social media feeds to see the daily movement that is sweeping across the world: groups of people are literally taking back their streets by implementing low-cost, temporary solutions to what they see as simple ways of making their streets safer or more livable."



"In many cities, people have started placing traffic cones at intersections to slow turning vehicles and make drivers behave more predictably when they interact with bikes and pedestrians. In fact, many citizens have formed Twitter groups generally referred to as Departments of Transformation (DOTr) as opposed to the traditional city Department of Transportations (DOTs). These groups are showing their fellow citizens innovative visual solutions to make safer streets with quick strike executions - which sometimes only last a few hours until they are removed by their government. But each week more empowered people are deciding they are fed up and joining the movement and not waiting for their agencies to act. Over the years, this sort of inexpensive, rapid-deployment has been known by various terms, but since around 2010 the term Tactical Urbanism has gained a lot of traction in the transportation community. And not only are we seeing some cities starting to responding positively and making some of these citizen resolutions permanent, but even outright sponsoring and sanctioning their own. So sit back and watch as we visit just a small fraction of the community making this happen!"

Transform Your City With Tactical Urbanism from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

Places for people downtown

"Rethinking alleys matters because livable gathering places in the heart of city blocks sparks neighbor-to-neighbor engagement, and cities grow healthier with more person-to-person interaction in public spaces full of life."

from: http://alleyactivation.org/

Alleys acts a thoroughfares for pedestrians. They are mid-block connections and can become livable spaces, acting like make-shift parks and places for public art and more.

The City of Vancouver is looking for ideas from the public to improve its downtown places. "Vancouver’s public spaces – our plazas, squares, streets, laneways, pathways, and waterfront – are where public life happens."

from: http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/places-for-people-downtown.aspx

Alley Oop is only of those places:

#pink and #yellow #downtownimprovement in #vancouver #placesforpeoplevan

A post shared by Cherish (@cherish2028) on Jul 20, 2017 at 2:30pm PDT

For more information, see: http://hcma.ca/project/more-awesome-now/

And it is not just Vancouver. "2017 seems to be the “Year of the Alley Activation” in Seattle. Two separate alley activation projects just wrapped up in Chinatown and the University District, and two more projects are still on the way for Pioneer Square later this year. The most successful and beloved active alley known to Seattleites and visitors alike is Post Alley, which weaves its way through the Pike Place Market Historic District featuring a mix of restaurants and specialty shops, the famous gum wall, and its iconic namesake signage."

from: https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/06/30/alley-activation/

New ways to build shopping malls

"Hong Kong’s urban mall developments have become the envy of other cities—including Shenzhen and Shanghai—that are looking for ways to build compact, transit-oriented, lucrative developments. The Asian hyper-dense urban mall is also making an appearance in American cities. Miami has Brickell City Centre, a five-story mall in the heart of the city. Covering three city blocks, it’s topped by three high-rises (and was built by a Hong Kong developer). New York City is building a seven-story mall attached to two skyscrapers in Hudson Yards, America’s largest private development. The Santiago Calatrava-designed Oculus—the centerpiece of the World Trade Center—has a mall with over 100 stores, with its white-ribbed atrium attracting an army of tourists taking pictures with selfie-sticks. Since the hub connects office buildings with train and subway stations, the stores are also “irrigated” by the 50,000 commuters who pass by each weekday. In short, the mall isn’t “dead”—it’s just changing."



from: https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/05/decline-of-shopping-malls-hong-kong-design/526764

Mapping the solar potential

"Google has long stated its ambitions to run its global operations solely on renewable energy, and now it wants to lead by example. The company has updated its interactive Sunroof map that helps people estimate whether it makes sense to install a solar panel on their roof." 

from: https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/03/16/google-sun-map-solar-panel/

and:

https://blog.google/products/maps/shedding-light-solar-potential-all-50-us-states/

The difference a park makes

“Urban policy often focuses too much just on housing,” Mr. Emanuel told me, grateful to focus on what has become a central plank of his administration and not talk policing or murder rates. “Housing alone doesn’t make a neighborhood.”



from: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/arts/design/chicago-philadelphia-parks-rahm-emanuel.html

The human scale

"Reconnecting America is a national nonprofit that integrates transportation and community development"

"Reconnecting America advises civic and community leaders on how to overcome community development challenges to create better communities for all. Reconnecting America develops research and innovative public policy, while also building on-the-ground partnerships and convening players needed to accelerate decision-making."

from: http://reconnectingamerica.org/who-we-are/

The 20-minute neighborhoods

Definition:
"20-minute neighborhoods are places where residents have easy, convenient access to many of the places and services they use daily including grocery stores, restaurants, schools and parks, without relying heavily on a car. They are characterized by a vibrant mix of commercial and residential uses all within an easy walk. They have higher concentrations of people and are complete with the sidewalks, bike lanes and bus routes that support a variety of transportation options."

from: https://www.eugene-or.gov/1216/What-is-a-20-Minute-Neighborhood

Or comparing a neighbourhood using the three D's method:

• "Distance: how far can you walk in 20 minutes?
• Destinations: is everything you need on a daily basis within that distance?
• Density: are there enough people in the area to support the businesses and facilities you need for daily needs?"

"No one has to give up their car, or walk, bike, or take the bus to anywhere they want to go. Instead, they're aimed at making life easier for those who do want to walk, bike, or use transit -- by strengthening those modes."



"Important, too, the 20-minute neighborhood concept is aimed at meeting the broader strategic goals of Portland being a "high performance city."



from: http://plannersweb.com/2013/07/distance-destinations-density/

Walkability

"What makes a neighborhood walkable?

• A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a center, whether it's a main street or a public space.
• People: Enough people for businesses to flourish and for public transit to run frequently.
• Mixed income, mixed use: Affordable housing located near businesses.
• Parks and public space: Plenty of public places to gather and play.
• Pedestrian design: Buildings are close to the street, parking lots are relegated to the back.
• Schools and workplaces: Close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.
• Complete streets: Streets designed for bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit."

from: https://www.walkscore.com/walkable-neighborhoods.shtml

Clean green jobs

“The basic facts are simple. When we invest, say, $1 million in building the green economy, this creates about 17 jobs within the United States. By comparison, if we continue to spend as we do on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, you create only about 5 jobs per $1 million in spending. That is, we create about 12 more jobs for every $1 million in spending — 300 percent more jobs — every time we spend on building the green economy as opposed to maintaining our dependence on dirty and dangerous oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.”

from: https://cleantechnica.com/2013/03/20/over-3-times-more-green-jobs-per-million-than-fossil-fuel-or-nuclear-jobs/

Cyclists creating change?

"Does cycling really contribute to gentrification? John Stehlin, a geographer at the University of California, Berkeley who has studied San Francisco’s cycling politics, says the relationship is complex. “Cycling feeds into wider urban changes, including gentrification, but it does not cause gentrification. A bicycle lane gets put on a street that is already undergoing change.”



"Among what urban theorist Richard Florida calls “the creative class”, the bicycle is a potent symbol of identity and status. And more bikes, it seems, means more well-paid knowledge economy jobs. “Cycling to work is positively associated with the share of creative class jobs and negatively associated with working-class jobs,” Florida wrote in 2011."

"City planners often “use cycling infrastructure as a way to facilitate development. So where gentrification goes cycling infrastructure follows, but that is a problem of planning, not cycling.”

from: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/05/blame-bike-cycling-contribute-city-gentrification




Many cyclists are white and wealthy. But not all of them are. More info here:
https://urbanful.org/2014/11/17/do-bike-lanes-gentrify-neighborhoods/