Retrofitting Suburbs

Ellen Dunham-Jones Director, Architecture Program Georgia Institute of Technology Guest Professor, Lund University

Where will half again as many people live and work in 2050?

The suburban good life

…. in Nanjing and Idaho

Duany Plater-Zyberk Retrofits: Apollo Beach strip mall, Mashpee Commons Shopping Center

Liner strategies

Scrape and re-build

The Congress for the New Urbanism views the disinvestment in central cities, thespread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income,environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and theerosion of society’s built heritage as one inter-related community buildingchallenge.

We stand for the restoration of existing urban centers and towns within coherentmetropolitan regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities ofreal neighborhoods and diverse districts, the conservation of natural environments,and the preservation of our built legacy.

www.cnu.org

Conditions driving suburban retrofits• Aging, out-of-date properties, often in first-ring suburbs

•Fear of blight trumps NIMBYs and triggers public-private partnerships, TIFs, etc.

• Booming new agglomerations, often in Edge Cities, or “Edgeless Cities”•Concern over traffic and air quality,triggers TODs, transit,and market for more “intown” locations replacing“underperforming asphalt” with mixed-use

• Changing economic identity of the suburbs and desire for distinction•The “bedroom suburbs”, peripheral to the core city, have become economic engines in their own right

• Changing demographics and markets•Growing market for more urban housing types and places

•Smart Growth practices and policies•Especially, the arrival of transit and the need for affordable housing

Winter Park Mall Mall Retrofit Strategies North Hillsborough CountyDover Kohl & Partners with - Decide what to keep and scrape Duany Plater-Zyberk & CoGlatting Jackson - Connect neighboring streets through the site

- Line new Main street with trees and new buildings - Establish secondary streets, blocks and public spaces - Phase in structured parking and perimeter block buildings

Mizner Park, Boca Raton, FL; Cooper Carry Architect, 1990From dead mall to mixed-use downtown

Belmar, Lakewood,CO From dead mall to downtownContinuum Partners, Elkus Manfredi, Van Meter Williams Pollack

Surrey Central City, Surrey, (Vancouver) British, ColumbiaFrom dated mall to mall + university + office towerfocused on central plaza and atriumBing Thom Architects, Inc

Downtown Kendall, Miami, FLFrom thriving mall and office park to downtownTransit-oriented-developmentDover, Kohl & Partners, Duany Plater-Zyberk& Company

Town Square: the heart of the newKendall community, overlooked by multi-story mixed-use and civic buildings

Snapper Creek Canal: Before and After

Dadeland Boulevard: Before and After construction images

Demographic Drivers of Suburban Retrofits

Population growth• U.S. population in 2050 is expected to be half again what it was in 2000• By 2030, half of the buildings in the U.S. will have been built since 2000

Rise in single households (even and especially in the suburbs)

• Aging Population• The percentage of Americans over age 65 will double by 2050

•AARP reports that 71% of older households want to live withinwalking distance of transit

• Echo-Boomers

• Almost as large as the baby boomers, they are just entering thehousing market, and are the emergent “creative class”

Ethnic diversification of suburban households• Racial minorities now make up more than a quarter of the suburbanpopulation, up from 19% in 1990

• In a 2004 survey conducted for Smart Growth America and the NationalAssociation of Realtors, African Americans were more than three times aslikely to pick the “smart growth” community over the “sprawl” choice withlarger lots (78% to 22%.) Hispanics chose the smart growth choice 57%of the time, while Caucasians were split 50/50

University Town Center, Hyattsville, MDEdward Durrell Stone, RTKL, WGA

From office park to mixed-use center

“Upper Rock”, Rockville, MD, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co, 2004From office park to “green” 20-acre live-work neighborhood

Upper Rock (before and after)

Twinbrook Commons, Rockville, MD Torti Gallas CHKFrom Park n’ Ride to TOD

Tools at the Project Scale

-public spaces, public realm

-liner buildings

-adding density to older under-parked sites

-selling roof rights

-re-zoning

-form-based codes

-Tax Increment Financing

-Location Efficient Mortgages

-Health Impact Assessment

Tribeca Housing, Seattle, WA: The Sienna ArchitectureCompany. Selling roof rights to promote vertical mixed-use

Mixed-Use Nodal Pulsing along Arterials Partial plan of the Atlanta ARC’s LCI locations

Palm Canyon Drive, Cathedral City, CA; Freedman, Tung & BottomleyFrom commercial strip to boulevard node

7th Avenue Pedestrian Amenities, Phoenix, AZ; Darren Petrucci

Branding the strip while providing shade and bus stops for pedestrians

Buford Highway Redevelopment: Doraville, GA; Michael Gamble and Jude LeBlanc, Georgia TechFrom 6-lane death trap to healthier, walkable system

Boulder, Colorado

Projects resulting from shift fromSuburban Codes to Urban Codes

North Boulder Pre-development aerial view

Wiffleball Court, Los Angeles(documented by Roger Sherman)Infilling the wedge of space between cul-de-sac houses with a communal wiffleball court

Recent publications on retrofitting suburbs

For more info go to www.cnu.org

• The percentage of Americans over age 65 will double by2050

•AARP reports that 71% of older households want to livewithin walking distance of transit

•Racial minorities now make up more than a quarter of thesuburban population, up from 19% in 1990

•In the 2004 American Community Survey conducted forSmart Growth America and the National Association ofRealtors, African Americans were more than three timesas likely to pick the “smart growth” community over the“sprawl” choice with larger lots (78% to 22%.) Hispanicschose the smart growth choice 57% of the time, whileCaucasians were split 50/50