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American Cities are Revitalizing Their Downtowns and Recreating Their Profiles Mar 28, 2012 12:26 PM, By Susan Piperato, Managing Editor The push toward downtown revitalization that began in the 1990s has survived the Great Recession. ARTICLE TOOLS Email Save Print Reprint LATEST NEWS Lenders Eager to Take Back Trophy Assets CMBS Delinquencies Spike, But Outlook for the Year Remains Stable A Coming Deluge of Apartment Construction Cornerstone Raises $315M for Debt Investment Club, Closes Mortgage Fund The Early Phase of Real Estate Recovery MORE LATEST NEWS advertisement But in this gradually improving economy, attracting development isn't easy. It means carrying "a Swiss Army knife" of creative tools, says West Palm Beach Downtown Development Authority Director Raphael Clemente. For 10 years, West Palm Beach's downtown has lost retail to an urbanist infill project on the CBD's outskirts. Clemente's shoestring-budgeted campaign to recruit retailer Trader Joe's, including a YouTube video in which residents give humorous answers to the question, "What would you trade for Trader Joe's?" has already succeeded in differentiating the city from "the other 50 cities in Florida that are trying to get a Trader Joe's" and starting a dialogue. "We know we're fighting for tenants and investor dollars and consumer dollars with other areas, malls and midsize cities in our region," Clemente says. "So when we go out there to recruit, we do the best job we can with limited resources to set ourselves apart." Philadelphia's population has grown for the first time in 50 years. Clemente's experience is typical of American cities, regardless of size or location. Yes, the movement to reinvigorate Main Street is back, but it's very different than it was 20 years ago. For today's urban downtowns, development means redevelopment, and attracting redevelopment dollars means reinventing a city's identity. A city's individuation is crucial

Expanding Downtown Yonah Freemark February 25th, 2011 | 94 Comments » Debating growth limits in a downtown? Consider transportation. Washington, D.C. is a lucky city: Its downtown has been filled up with new construction over the past few decades to such an extent that it has virtually no space for new office buildings. Some, like Matt Yglesias, have suggested that one way to resolve this problem would be to increase densities by ridding the city of its height limit, which in essence makes it impossible to build structures in the city that are over about 10 stories. Lydia Depillis, another local commenter, has argued that the municipality still has plenty of developable sites which, though they may not be directly downtown, still offer opportunities for more office space. What would be the manifestations of these different approaches? How can we weigh the advantages and disadvantages of upzoning the center city for more office space? Is our goal to produce vital, walkable, and dense downtown districts, or simply to expand new construction there, no matter the use? The missing ingredient in this discussion is transportation. When we discuss the demand in downtowns like Washington's for more office space, we sometimes make an assumption that the transport network will be able to handle whatever is thrown at it. In fact, there is a direct relationship between a downtown's growth and the transportation provided to it. In general, businesses want to locate their offices in places that are accessible and that provide the benefits of agglomeration, and this sometimes means downtown, but not always. If the trip to and from the center - by whatever mode - becomes too arduous, there are significant reasons to locate outside of it. How does this fact apply to a place like Washington? Once a downtown - which I will define as a traditional single-use American CBD - reaches a certain size, once it provides employment for a certain number of people, it has thr

The new urbanism: toward an architecture of community Peter Katz 7 Resenhas McGraw-Hill Professional, 1994 - 245 páginas The move to liveable communities--ideal ``small towns'' and neighborhoods where people work, live, play, and walk from place to place--is on. Profit from what a visionary group of architects leading this movement has learned about designing new ``small towns'' in Peter Katz's The New Urbanism. You'll discover the amazing potential for this kind of work as well as case studies, site plans, project analyses, and 180 beautiful photographs. This unique reference also tackles--and answers--the critical issues of crime, health, traffic, environmental degradation, and economic vitality and opens a startling window on the look and feel of future communities. Every designer can profit from this guide to building the utopias of tomorrow--today! « Menos    Ver uma prévia deste livro » O que estão dizendo - Escrever uma resenha Avaliações de usuários 5 estrelas 6 4 estrelas 2 3 estrelas 0 2 estrelas 1 1 estrela 1 Review: The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community Comentário do usuário  - Chris Watkins - Goodreads Loved the clear examples, the photographs and plans, and the introductions to key thinkers like Peter Calthorpe. Ler resenha completa Review: The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community Comentário do usuário  - Grace - Goodreads I want to live in a TOD! Ler resenha completa Todas as 7 resenhas » Livros relacionados ‹ Suburban nation Andrès Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck Home from nowhere James Howard Kunstler The next American metropolis Peter Calthorpe The Regional City Peter Calthorpe, William B. Fulton New urbanism Peter Calthorpe, Robert Fishman, Lars Lerup A Better Place to Live Philip Langdon The geography of nowhere James Howard Kunstler The death and life of great American cities Jane Jacobs › Páginas selecionadas Página 1 Página 60 Página 30 Página 126 Pági

The Interdependence of Land Use and Transportation Yonah Freemark February 5th, 2011 | 43 Comments » Northern Virginia's growth patterns demonstrate the degree to which transit can play an essential role in spurring inner-city growth. There is little need for data to demonstrate just how important the Washington Metrorail system has been for Arlington, Virginia's growth over the past few decades. Visit anywhere along the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor or in Crystal City - the two areas best served by Metro - and you'll see dozens of new residential and office buildings lining the street. But new information from Census 2010 provides empirical confirmation of the significance of land use planning around Metro stations in influencing the growth of Arlington and other places in Northern Virginia. Over the last ten years, Arlington County's growth has been overwhelmingly concentrated along the Metro corridors, as has growth in Alexandria and some parts of Fairfax County. The densification of these areas is effectively extending the inner-city core of the Washington, D.C. region and substituting sprawling development in the exurbs with dense construction. This represents a change in trends compared to the period between 1990 and 2000. As the map above shows, the areas of Northern Virginia that saw the greatest percentage growth between 2000 and 2010 were all clustered around Metro stations - in Arlington along the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor (Orange Line) and in Crystal City (Yellow and Blue Lines); in Alexandria near Van Dorn Street Station (Blue Line) and Eisenhower Avenue (Yellow Line); and in Fairfax County near Vienna/Fairfax Station (Orange Line). As other areas of close-in Virginia have been fully developed, these station area zones have densified through the coordinated planning decisions of city officials, the availability of rail rapid transit, funds from developers, and a clear interest of a large portion of the population to inhabit the new bui

CROSS COUNTRY Updated April 9, 2012, 6:38 p.m. ET California Declares War on Suburbia Planners want to herd millions into densely packed urban corridors. It won't save the planet but will make traffic even worse. By WENDELL COX It's no secret that California's regulatory and tax climate is driving business investment to other states. California's high cost of living also is driving people away. Since 2000 more than 1.6 million people have fled, and my own research as well as that of others points to high housing prices as the principal factor. The exodus is likely to accelerate. California has declared war on the most popular housing choice, the single family, detached home-all in the name of saving the planet. Metropolitan area governments are adopting plans that would require most new housing to be built at 20 or more to the acre, which is at least five times the traditional quarter acre per house. State and regional planners also seek to radically restructure urban areas, forcing much of the new hyperdensity development into narrowly confined corridors. Related Video Transportation consultant Wendell Cox on why California pols want to force people into denser urban housing. In San Francisco and San Jose, for example, the Association of Bay Area Governments has proposed that only 3% of new housing built by 2035 would be allowed on or beyond the "urban fringe"-where current housing ends and the countryside begins. Over two-thirds of the housing for the projected two million new residents in these metro areas would be multifamily-that is, apartments and condo complexes-and concentrated along major thoroughfares such as Telegraph Avenue in the East Bay and El Camino Real on the Peninsula. For its part, the Southern California Association of Governments wants to require more than one-half of the new housing in Los Angeles County and five other Southern California counties to be concentrated in dense, so-called transit villages, with much of it at an e