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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
A brand-new collection of 32 case studies that further demonstrate the retrofitting of suburbia This amply-illustrated book, second in a series, documents how defunct shopping malls, parking lots, and the past century's other obsolete suburban development patterns are being retrofitted to address current urgent challenges they weren't designed for: improving public health, increasing resilience in the face of climate change, leveraging social capital for equity, supporting an aging society, competing for jobs, and disrupting automobile dependence. Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges provides summaries, data, and references on how these challenges manifest in suburbia and discussion of successful urban design strategies to address them in Part I. Part II documents how innovative design strategies are implemented in a range of northern American contexts and market conditions. From modest interventions with big ripple effects to ambitious do-overs, examples of redevelopment, reinhabitation, and regreening of changing suburban places from coast to coast are described in depth in 32 brand new case studies. * Written by the authors of the highly influential Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs * Demonstrates changes that can and already have been realized in suburbia by focusing on case studies of retrofitted suburban places * Illustrated in full-color with photos, maps, plans, and diagrams Full of replicable lessons and creative responses to ongoing problems and potentials with conventional suburban form, Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges is an important book for students and professionals involved in urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, development, civil engineering, public health, public policy, and governance. Most of all, it is intended as a useful guide for anyone who seeks to inspire revitalization, justice, and shared prosperity in places they know and care about.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
Notes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART ONE: URGENT SUBURBAN CHALLENGES
Chapter I.1: Disrupt Automobile Dependence
ROADS, STREETS, AND STROADS
CAN'T WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT ALL THIS TRAFFIC?
PARKING, PARKING…AND PARKING
WALK, PEDAL, HAIL, AND SCOOT
AUTONOMOUS URBANISM?
URBAN DESIGN TACTICS FOR DISRUPTING AND REDUCING AUTOMOBILE DEPENDENCE
NOTES
Chapter I.2: Improve Public Health
THE BURDENS OF DISEASE
WALK THIS WAY: LINKING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY TO PHYSICAL DESIGN
ACCESS: TO GOOD FOOD, AND TO HEALTHCARE
SAFETY: PREVENTING PREVENTABLE INJURIES
SEEING GREEN: BIOPHILIC DESIGN AND MENTAL WELLNESS
COMBATTING LONELINESS: THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS
CLEANING UP: REDUCING IMPACTS OF POLLUTED AIR, SOIL, AND WATER
WELL-EXECUTED RETROFITTING IMPROVES PUBLIC HEALTH
NOTES
Chapter I.3: Support an Aging Population
A NEW NAME: PERENNIALS
THE LIFELONG COMMUNITY MODEL
A BRIEF HISTORY OF RETIREMENT LIVING: SUN CITY AND THE VILLAGES OF FLORIDA
LEARNING LESSONS FROM RETIREMENT COMMUNITIES
SOCIAL SUPPORT: REINHABITING GHOSTBOXES AND PARKING LOTS INTO AMENITIES
HOUSING CHOICES: AGING-IN-COMMUNITY AT MALLS, STRIP CENTERS, AND OFFICE PARKS
ECONOMIC AND WELLNESS FACTORS: EVOLUTION OF THE “GRANNY FLAT” AND THE HOUSEHOLD MODEL
POST-CAR LIFE FOR PERENNIALS?
NOTES
Chapter I.4: Leverage Social Capital for Equity
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS FOR INCREASING EQUITY THROUGH SOCIAL CAPITAL
DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS IN SUBURBS AS DRIVERS OF CHANGE
A FRAMEWORK FOR ASSERTING THE ROLE OF DESIGN IN ACHIEVING SOCIAL DIVERSITY
THIRD PLACE REDUX
SOCIAL CAPITAL IN ETHNOBURBS
PROVIDING MORE HOUSING TYPES AND CHOICES, INCLUDING UNITS FOR RENT
PROTECTING APARTMENTS UNDER THREAT
A RIGHT TO THE SUBURB? THE PUBLIC REALM
RETROFITTING THE SUBURBAN SOCIAL BODY
NOTES
Chapter I.5: Compete for Jobs
GENERATIONAL SHIFT?
RETROFITTING THE OFFICE PARK AND CORPORATE CAMPUS
URBANISM AS THE NEW AMENITY
REINHABITING AND REGREENING THE OFFICE PARK
BOOSTING SMALL BUSINESS BY REINHABITING DEAD RETAIL
FUTURE FORECAST FOR JOBS COMPETITION
NOTES
Chapter I.6: Add Water and Energy Resilience
RETROFITS TO IMPROVE WATER QUALITY: FROM GRAY TO GREEN
RETROFITTING WATER FOR RESILIENCE: TOO MUCH WATER
RETROFITTING WATER FOR RESILIENCE: TOO LITTLE WATER
RETROFITTING SUBURBIA FOR ENERGY RESILIENCE
ADDING RESILIENCY BY DESIGN
NOTES
PART TWO: THE CASE STUDIES
Case Study II.1: Aurora Avenue North Shoreline, Washington
NOTES
Case Study II.2: Hassalo on Eighth and LloydPortland, Oregon
NOTES
Lake Grove Village Lake Oswego, Oregon
NOTES
Case Study II.4: Phoenix Park Apartments Sacramento, California
NOTES
Case Study II.5: Parkmerced San Francisco, California
NOTES
Case Study II.6: The BLVD Lancaster, California
NOTES
Case Study II.7: TAXI Denver, Colorado
NOTES
Guthrie Green Tulsa, Oklahoma
NOTES
Case Study II.9: La Gran Plaza Fort Worth, Texas
NOTES
Case Study II.10: The Domain Austin, Texas
NOTES
Case Study II.11: ACC Highland Austin, Texas
NOTES
Case Study II.12: Mueller Austin, Texas
NOTES
Case Study II.13: Promenade of Wayzata Wayzata, Minnesota
NOTES
Case Study II.14: Maplewood Mall and Living Streets Maplewood, Minnesota
NOTES
Case Study II.15: Baton Rouge Health District Baton Rouge, Louisiana
NOTES
Case Study II.16: Uptown Circle Normal, Illinois
NOTES
Case Study II.17: One Hundred Oaks Mall Nashville, Tennessee
NOTES
Case Study II.18: Historic Fourth Ward ParkAtlanta, Georgia
NOTES
Case Study II.19: Technology Park Peachtree Corners, Georgia
NOTES
Case Study II.20: Walker's Bend Covington, Georgia
NOTES
Case Study II.21: Downtown Doral Doral, Florida
NOTES
Case Study II.22: Collinwood Recreation Center Cleveland, Ohio
NOTES
Case Study II.23: The Mosaic District Merrifield, Virginia
NOTES
Case Study II.24: South Dakota Avenue and Riggs Road Fort Totten, Washington, DC
NOTES
Case Study II.25: White Flint and the Pike District Montgomery County, Maryland
NOTES
Case Study II.26: The Blairs District Silver Spring, Maryland
NOTES
Case Study II.27: La Station – Centre Intergénérationnel Nuns' Island, Verdun, Quebec
NOTES
Case Study II.28: Bell Works Holmdel, New Jersey
NOTES
Case Study II.29: Wyandanch Rising Town of Babylon, New York
NOTES
Case Study II.30: Meriden Green Meriden, Connecticut
NOTES
Case Study II.31: Cottages on Greene East Greenwich, Rhode Island
NOTES
Case Study II.32: Assembly Square Somerville, Massachusetts
NOTES
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure I.1-1 Nearly half of the trips in suburban areas dominated by single-...
Figure I.1-2 The hypothetical image on the left distinguishes roads from str...
Figure I.1-3 Orthophotos from 2000 (a) and 2011 (b) of TOD redevelopment at ...
Figure I.1-4 For their project Civic Arches, featured in the ParkingPLUS des...
Figure I.1-5 The “Pavement to Plazas” movement uses low-cost interventions—p...
Figure I.1-6 Buford Highway, a stroad north of Atlanta, Georgia, is home to ...
Figure I.1-7 El Camino Real is Silicon Valley's 45-mile long commercial arte...
Chapter 2
Figure I.2-1 Obesity rates in the United States are alarmingly high, as show...
Figure I.2-2 Before and after views of regreened Freedom Park Drive, a pilot...
Figures I.2-3 The Jackson Medical Mall (JMM) was first established in 1996 b...
Figure I.2-4 Since the mid-1990s, Carmel, Indiana, a fast-growing suburb nor...
Chapter 3
Figure I.3-1 Over the past quarter century as segments of the US population ...
Figure I.3-2 Mableton Town Square was established in 2016 in one of the firs...
Figure I.3-3 Residents walk, bike, and drive cars and golf carts through Lak...
Figure 1.3-4 At a key intersection, or “node,” along Columbia Pike in a dive...
Figures 1.3-5 Tucked into the sloped site, the gym at the Arlington Mills Co...
Figures 1.3-6 Metropolitan Minneapolis–St. Paul is home to two of the most n...
Figure I.3-7 Before (a) and after (b) views of Eastern Village Cohousing. Lu...
Figure I.3-8 Typical floor plan showing the household model for supportive c...
Figures I.3-9 Ground floor plan of Hogewey dementia village in Weesp, Nether...
Figure I.3-10 The public atrium of Hogewey provides access to Hogeweyk Super...
Chapter 4
Figure I.4-1 Walala Pump & Go is a 2019 art installation by Camille Walala m...
Figure I.4-2 Income distribution in the US, 1913–2018, tracking the top deci...
Figure I.4-3 The commercial epicenter of the South Asian community in New Je...
Figure I.4-4 In a city not typically associated with suburban form, the long...
Figure I.4-5 “Knuckles and Jogs” by architect Michael Piper for Toronto Metr...
Chapter 5
Figure I.5-1 Most new jobs in the US by 2028 are projected to be in the serv...
Figure I.5-2 Santana Row, San Jose, California, proves the case for urbanism...
Figure I.5-3 The former parking lots fronting Crystal Drive in Crystal City,...
Figure I.5-4 Crystal City is targeting entrepreneurs with the conversion of ...
Figure I.5-5 The Pleasant Ridge neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio, grew local...
Figure I.5-6 This analysis of retrofit proposals for enclosed shopping malls...
Figure I.5-7 A business incubator in a suburban strip mall? Developer Monte ...
Figure I.5-8 Christo Rey St Martin College Prep in Waukegan, Illinois, is on...
Chapter 6
Figure I.6-1 Before the US Clean Water Act in 1972, it was normal practice t...
Figure I.6-2 The first of five detention ponds at Exploration Green, a forme...
Figure I.6-3 Revitalizing a suburban corridor into the Fiesta District in Me...
Figure I.6-4 This chart from the “Location Efficiency and Housing Type: Boil...
Figure I.6-5 Vancouver, British Columbia, has designated the intersection of...
Figure I.6-6 The Housing + Transportation Affordability Index interactive ma...
Figure I.6-7 Hammarby-Sjostad in Stockholm integrates (a) bike routes along ...
Figure I.6-8 Boulder Housing Partners redeveloped an aging mobile home commu...
Part 2
Figure II.0 Location map of the case studies, as found in metropolitan areas...
Case Study 1
Figure II.1-1 Before retrofitting, the Aurora Avenue North corridor near 160...
Figure II.1-2 The Shoreline Interurban Bridge links two segments of the regi...
Case Study 2
Figure II.2-1 The before photo (a) and the after rendering (b) look southwes...
Figure II.2-2 The green arrows in this diagram, from Portland's Central City...
Figure II.2-3 The streetcar is about to pass the light rail station in this ...
Figure II.2-4 This aerial view with north to the left shows the reconstitute...
Figure II.2-5 NORM is Hassalo on Eighth's on-site district water treatment s...
Figure II.2-6 Walking, biking, and wastewater treatment meet in this evening...
Case Study 3
Figure II.3-1 Flowers and produce bins spill out from Zupan's Market, throug...
Figure II.3-2 View of Lake Grove Shopping Center before reinhabitation, circ...
Figure II.3-3 One urban design tactic for big box stores is to add shallow l...
Figure II.3-4 The City of Lake Oswego envisions a series of greenscape and h...
Case Study 4
Figure II.4-1 Franklin Villa, diagrammed in 2002, was a 1960s condominium co...
Figure II.4-2 A current diagram of the complex, as retrofitted by Sacramento...
Case Study 5
Figure II.5-1 Built in the 1940s in accordance with many of the progressive ...
Figure II.5-2 Not your typical suburban apartment complex, Parkmerced's rent...
Figure II.5-3 Rendering by SOM showing the integration of livability and bio...
Figure II.5-4 The redevelopment disconnects the downspouts and stormwater dr...
Figure II.5-5 Existing bus transit at Parkmerced is expected to be augmented...
Figure II.5-6 In addition to passive energy strategies to capture sun and bl...
Figure II.5-7 This site plan (a) and photo of the new landscaping around the...
Case Study 6
Figure II.6-1 These photographs before (a) and during construction (b) show ...
Figure II.6-2 This early partial plan shows the flexibility of the tree-line...
Figure II.6-3 These simulations show the sequential transformation of the th...
Figure II.6-4 The rambla has many lives. It is typically used for parking (a...
Figure II.6-5 A former grocery store turned furniture store with parking in ...
Figure II.6-6 Business owner Gabrielle Ratcliff (a) considered space at the ...
Case Study 7
Figure II.7-1 This 2018 view shows TAXI squeezed between the Platte river in...
Figure 11.7-2 New parcels and new buildings (in black) have been added to th...
Figure II.7-3 Lofts in both renovated old buildings and new construction att...
Figure II.7-4 The award-winning TAXI II was the first new building on the si...
Figure II.7-5 This pairing of the daycare center in “Freight,” a renovated t...
Figure II.7-6 The Fr8scape Plaza, designed by Plot, maintains connections to...
Figure II.7-7 When Kyle Zeppelin heard that a local nonprofit family resourc...
Case Study 8
Figure II.8-1 Before and after diagrams of the Guthrie Green block (at cente...
Figure II.8-2 Destroyed buildings on the 100 block of N. Greenwood Avenue, f...
Figure II.8-3 As shown in the center of this early plan for streetscape impr...
Figure II.8-4 Guthrie Green's open-air stage, in the foreground, faces the g...
Figure II.8-5 On 8 July 2016, hundreds of Tulsans marched from Guthrie Green...
Case Study 9
Figure II.9-1 A
lucha libre
professional wrestling match at La Gran Plaza de...
Figure II.9-2 Fountains and families in a before view of the Seminary South ...
Figure II.9-3 A colonnaded arcade at La Gran Plaza de Fort Worth. In the mid...
Figure II.9-4 Large crowds gathered in September 2017 in La Gran Plaza de Fo...
Figure II.9-5 Small booths and narrow aisles in the
mercado
at Plaza Fiesta ...
Figure II.9-6 “A Day Without Immigrants” demonstrators assembled along the B...
Case Study 10
Figure II.10-1 1986 figure-field diagram. The site was built as an IBM Resea...
Figure II.10-2 2013 figure-field diagram. The North MoPac Expressway was com...
Figure II.10-3 Projected future figure-field diagram. Build-out includes Dom...
Figure II.10-4 To break up the blocks and create walkable nodes, the develop...
Figure II.10-5 The new pedestrian-oriented streetscapes and public spaces of...
Figure II.10-6 Endeavor lured several of Austin's downtown hip restauranteur...
Figure II.10-7 Taller, fatter new office buildings and their parking podiums...
Figure II.10-8 The 5,000 residential units permitted in The Domain are mostl...
Case Study 11
Figure II.11-1 A before aerial view of the Highland Mall in East Austin show...
Figure II.11-2 Before (a, c) and after (b, d) views of the JCPenney show the...
Figure II.11-3 Instead of chopping the former JCPenney department store into...
Figure II.11-4 This site plan from late 2018 shows ACC in the reinhabited ma...
Figure II.11-5 In this view from early 2019 looking south, ACC is in the ret...
Figure II.11-6 Highland Greenway Park, on the left, is the first of three pl...
Case Study 12
Figure II.12-2 2003 figure-field diagram. The Robert Mueller Municipal Airpo...
Figure II.12-3 Projected future figure-field diagram. At build-out, the 711 ...
Figure II.12-1 The bright red Thinkery Children's Museum adds a playful civi...
Figure II.12-4 Mueller contains a wide variety of compact housing types and ...
Figure II.12-5 One of several pocket parks, Paggi Square combines community-...
Figure II.12-6 Whether along the strictly pedestrian Aldrich Street Paseo (a...
Figure II.12-7 A January day in the parks found plenty of evidence of health...
Figure II.12-8 Future walkable urbanism? The strip shopping center and parki...
Case Study 13
Figure II.13-1 The 1967 Wayzata Bay Shopping Center was built on 14 acres of...
Figures II.13-2 Street (a) and courtyard (b) views of senior housing by Folk...
Figure II.13-3 A free concert on the Great Lawn in the Promenade of Wayzata,...
Figure II.13-4 LHB, Inc. engineered three primary systems to handle the exte...
Case Study 14
Figure II.14-1 Rain gardens cut out of parking lot asphalt, a prominently lo...
Figure II.14-2 Schoolchildren studying
Rainy Day
, the mosaic mural designed ...
Figure II.14-3 Raindrop ripples are stenciled into new sidewalks at each rai...
Case Study 15
Figure II.15-1 Perkins & Will's visualization of potential future transforma...
Case Study 16
Figure II.16-1 Uptown Circle in Normal, Illinois. A pathway connection from ...
Figure II.16-2 An awkward five-way trail and road intersection (left) was re...
Figure II.16-3 The roundabout is designed as a series of concentric elements...
Figure II.16-4 The fountain and wading pools at Uptown Circle have become a ...
Case Study 17
Figure II.17-1 Views of the main second level entrance to One Hundred Oaks, ...
Figure II.17-2 Interior views of the entry lobby, before (a) and after (b). ...
Figure II.17-3 The floor plan for the VUMC, on the second floor of the One H...
Case Study 18
Figure II.18-1 These before-and-after diagrams looking northeast show the fo...
Figure II.18-2 In 1953 the Sears building was serviced both on its third flo...
Figure II.18-3 The land was excavated and sloped down to create an attractiv...
Figure II.18-4 The Eastside Trail Gateway in the foreground opened in 2014 m...
Figure II.18-5 The first of many examples of bike-oriented development along...
Figure 11.18-6 In addition to numerous daytime festivals and sporting activi...
Case Study 19
Figure II.19-1 The manicured and heavily wooded landscape of Technology Park...
Figure II.19-2 The Technology Park Trails Master Plan connects existing trai...
Figure II.19-3 Cortland Peachtree Corners (built as Echo Lakeside) contains ...
Figure II.19-4 In 2019, Peachtree Corners opened Curiosity Lab, which it cla...
Case Study 20
Figure II.20-1 1987 figure-field diagram of the southeast quadrant of Coving...
Figure II.20-2 2007 figure-field diagram. Walker's Bend, at lower left, with...
Figure II.20-3 Projected future figure-field diagram. By 2020 Walker's Bend ...
Figure II.20-4 The charrette plan from 2000 for a neighborhood to be called ...
Figure II.20-5 When the developer of Walker's Bend declared bankruptcy in 20...
Figure II.20-6 The housing at Walker's Bend is more mixed, and more affordab...
Figure II.20-7 Two three-story buildings provide supportive housing for resi...
Case Study 21
Figure II.21-1 The top half of this 2019 master plan shows the original retr...
Figure II.21-2 This view looking east shows the “lean urbanism” version of M...
Figure II.21-3 Downtown Doral Park replaced a low-rise office building and p...
Figure II.21-4 The Downtown Doral Charter Elementary School was designed by ...
Figure II.21-5 Similar to new buildings in cities like Toronto and San Franc...
Case Study 22
Figure II.22-1 While the basic structure of the old building was retained, n...
Figure II.22-2 The Collinwood Recreation Center features a central spine lab...
Case Study 23
Figure II.23-1 In addition to serving onsite residents, Mosaic is a popular ...
Figure II.23-2 1980 figure-field diagram. Merrifield's commercial district s...
Figure II.23-3 2000 figure-field diagram. The drive-in theater went to seed ...
Figure II.23-6 Similar to the way that grocery stores try to encourage a “de...
Figure II.23-4 Future figure-field diagram. The Mosaic District Phase 1, a w...
Figure II.23-5 At the outset, Edens had difficulty interesting residential d...
Figure II.23-7 Unlike most suburban retail frontages that are designed as si...
Figure II.23-8 Design matters! The redevelopment at the Dunn Loring Metrorai...
Figure II.23-9 Tall ground floors in parking garages are designed to be infi...
Figure II.23-10 The park's most innovative feature was an afterthought. “Luc...
Case Study 24
Figure II.24-1 The approach to the rebuilt, more pedestrian-friendly interse...
Figure II.24-2 “Before” and “future” building footprint, land use, and roadw...
Figure II.24-3 Relatively low-key Walmart signage at Fort Totten Square. The...
Figure II.24-4 The exterior face of the Modern at ArtPlace, the first phase ...
Figure II.24-5 The entry court of the Modern at ArtPlace.
Figure II.24-6 Some of the remaining garden apartment blocks of Riggs Plaza,...
Case Study 25
Figure II.25-1 1980 figure-field diagram. Older, low-rise industrial and com...
Figure II.25-2 Future figure-field diagram. The plan to transition to a fine...
Figure II.25-3 Regulations from 1978 and 1992 encouraged density near the Me...
Figure II.25-4 The approved plan adds ten additional east-west streets and s...
Figure II.25-5 This view of Pike & Rose from 2018 shows development focused ...
Figure II.25-6 The master planners, landscape architects, and environmental ...
Figure II.25-7 Pike & Rose's roofscapes are mostly put to good use as tenant...
Figure II.25-8 MoCo and M-NCPPC are now extending the basic goals and method...
Case Study 26
Figure II.26-1 Redevelopment plan for the Blairs District, approved in 2014,...
Figure II.26-2 A “before” 2008 orthophoto of The Blairs shows it largely una...
Figure II.26-3 Public realm landscapes at The Blairs: an urban farm (a), pla...
Case Study 27
Figure II.27-1 “Before” view of the iconic Mies van der Rohe–designed gas st...
Figure II.27-2 Exterior (a) and interior (b) views of the spaces after renov...
Figure II.27-3 Working drawings of the renovation. The largest space, at lef...
Figure II.27-4 Carrefour, a 2013 artwork by Francis Montillaud, commissioned...
Case Study 28
Figure II.28-1 The atrium at Bell Works is one quarter mile long and six-sto...
Figure II.28-2 Eero Saarinen–designed Bell Labs was a fabled center of telec...
Figure II.28-3 The first site plan for retrofitting the site, a 2008 proposa...
Figure II.28-4 Rebranded a “metroburb,” the atrium is beginning to bustle wi...
Figure II.28-5 Bell Market (a) draws customers from throughout the area. Hol...
Figure II.28-6 View of the rooftops of the Toll Brothers “Regency” carriage ...
Figure II.28-7 During the late twentieth century, R&D and industrial campuse...
Case Study 29
Figure II.29-1 The first phase of Wyandanch Rising features two new mixed-us...
Figure II.29-2 Orthophoto taken in 2007 shows the “before” conditions (a) in...
Figure II.29-3 Street view along Station Drive of the new mixed-use building...
Figure II.29-4 The Delano Stewart Plaza at Wyandanch, designed by Olin Studi...
Figure II.29-5 Speck & Associates designed a striking stair tower for the ne...
Figure II.29-6 The gracious new Wyandanch Station, designed by Keller Sandgr...
Case Study 30
Figure II.30-1 Before retrofitting, the urban renewal–era Meriden Hub mall s...
Figure II.30-2 Entrance canopy to the vacant Meriden Hub mall, built in 1970...
Figure II.30-3 Before and after view of the demolition of the Harbor Brook c...
Figure II.30-4 Signage in Meriden Green includes a reminder of the primary p...
Case Study 31
Figure II.31-1 Pedestrian paths flank the central linear green of Cottages o...
Figure II.31-2 Sequence of diagrams illustrating (a) the “before” condition;...
Figure II.31-3 This view of the on-site contouring for bioswales and rain ga...
Case Study 32
Figure II.32-1 Located north of downtown Boston, the Assembly Square area in...
Figure II.32-2 Interior view of the historic Ford Assembly Plant in Somervil...
Figure II.32-3 1955 figure-field diagram. From the 1920s until the 1970s, Fo...
Figure II.32-4 2000 figure-field diagram. By the turn of the millennium, the...
Figure II.32-5 Projected future figure-field diagram. Gradually, the area is...
Figure II.32-6 For Assembly Row, FRIT followed their previous successes, bui...
Figure II.32-7 The new Assembly Station stop on the MBTA Orange Line provide...
Figure II.32-8 Elements of the public realm at Assembly Square are designed ...
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Early Praise for Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia
“Contentious and desirable as ever, suburbia continues to beguile and confound us. And there is no one more competent to analyze the challenges and dissect the opportunities in our sprawling communities than June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones. With their new follow-up book on the past decade's best practices in retrofitting suburbia, a monumental achievement of scholarship and insight, they succeed in positioning this socio-economic phenomenon within today's predicament of converging crises when leveraging every possible transformative feat feels ever more urgent.”
Galina Tachieva, author of Sprawl Repair Manual
“The most important single challenge facing the American built environment is to “retrofit” 20th century suburbs to meet 21st century goals of equity, sustainability, and community. June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones not only grasp the most difficult suburban issues ranging from automobile dependence to aging populations to water and energy resilience. Their uniquely comprehensive research has enabled them to identify and to document key case studies from across North America where redesign has led to successful retrofits. At once deeply practical and deeply idealistic, this book opens up important opportunities for suburbs everywhere.”
Robert Fishman, author of Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia
“June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones's latest book, Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia, masterfully chronicles the innovative spirit of planners, developers, advocates and policy makers retrofitting American car-oriented suburbs into thriving, people-centric communities of opportunity and resilience. This book paints a loud and clear picture that our movement must address the intersectionality between urban design, racial justice, climate, economic prosperity and public health to meet the current and future challenges we face in the American suburban built environment. If you're a community innovator dedicated to reimaging America's car-centric suburbs into thriving, people-centric communities of opportunity and resilience, this book is for you!”
Christopher A. Coes, vice president of Smart Growth America and director of LOCUS: Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors
“In 2008, Retrofitting Suburbia was a revelation. Why do so many suburban communities want to change their built environment, and just as importantly, how can they do it? It quickly became a must-read not only in the planning field, but also for residents seeking answers to seemingly immutable local challenges. By offering concrete advice that was adaptable and scalable to the many different types of places, the book quickly became the “how to” guide for retrofitting the suburbs. With Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia, June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones deepen their exploration of the “why” and double down on the “how.” This time, the case studies are organized by imperatives, such as public health, how to support an aging population, and social equity. Together, they cover a rich diversity of challenges in virtually every type of suburb from all corners of the U.S. Individually, the examples are fascinating reads. The discussion of Guthrie Green in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, delves into the history of the adjacent Greenwood neighborhood, site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It highlights the ways in which a wide range of Tulsans—architects and planners, community members, public health officials, educators—have come together to reshape the physical space as a contribution to much-needed healing and reconciliation, and the building of social cohesion in a deeply traumatized community. That case study and many others remind us that while the physical form of places typically gets most of the attention in local debates, “the suburban social body,” as the authors call it, is the reason why we are compelled to seek change.”
Don Chen, president of the Surdna Foundation
JUNE WILLIAMSON | ELLEN DUNHAM-JONES
CASE STUDIES IN RETROFITTING SUBURBIA
URBAN DESIGN STRATEGIES FOR URGENT CHALLENGES
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INTRODUCTION
Change is everywhere in the suburbs of northern America, the built landscapes where most residents of the United States and Canada live. Speculative visions of futuristic solar suburbs powering electric cars and e-bikes make headlines at the same time that mid-century-modern ranch house renovations are all the rage. Exurban “McMansions” fill with multigenerational families while new infill housing and backyard cottages are built to meet the needs of smaller households in inner suburban neighborhoods. Established suburbs largely built for young white families are more likely to be populated today by older white faces and younger faces of color.
The shopping centers, office parks, garden apartment complexes, and highway strip corridors of the twentieth century are aging and changing too. Many are being retrofitted to meet new needs. In areas experiencing growth pressure, they’re being redeveloped into more “urban” places—read: more mixed in use, walkable, and dense in building area. In communities with little to no economic growth pressure, many of these failing properties are providing lower-cost space for entrepreneurs to start or expand small, local businesses.
The growing vacancies in weaker markets make visible longstanding discrimination and structural racism in the built environment and growing societal inequalities, expressed by a shrinking middle class and increased rates of poverty in suburban populations. As the gap between rich and poor places widens, so does the ability to cope with infrastructure maintenance, adaptations to prepare for the impacts of climate change, public health pandemics and epidemics of obesity and loneliness, as well as the economic shifts presented by online shopping and the automation of labor. Based on decades of tracking a wide array of case studies, this new book adds dozens of newly documented case studies describing how suburban places conceived and built for obsolete twentieth century paradigms are retrofitted to address the most pressing challenges of today.
We are both architects, urban designers, and academics; since first meeting in the early 1990s, together and apart we have closely tracked the transformational trends in northern American suburban areas. This scholarly and creative journey has led us to develop complementary expertise in the histories of suburbanization and its discontents, the economics of land development, the subtleties of demographic analysis, and the complex intersections of built form, culture, ecologies, and politics. Our accumulated knowledge and our shared wisdom—we think—are captured in these pages. We advance and expand arguments made in our first collaborative book-length project, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs.1 That book was released in late 2008 and updated in 2011. This book, next in the series, contains entirely new contents and is not a revision. We conceived it to be deeply rewarding to read on its own and as a sequel that builds on the earlier book.
In Part I, we spell out newly emergent challenges manifest in suburban situations and what communities and their designers can do to address them in six thematic chapters: Disrupt Automobile Dependence; Improve Public Health; Support an Aging Population; Leverage Social Capital for Equity; Compete for Jobs; and Add Water and Energy Resilience. Each of these chapters describes the contours of the challenge and summarizes current research about how suburban development patterns have exacerbated the problems, sometimes unintentionally. These chapters set the stage by discussing a variety of retrofit solutions, available resources, and successfully employed techniques from various fields, including urban design, building and landscape architecture, urban planning, and real estate development. Our focus in these chapters is on how changes to the physical form of suburbia help communities adapt to challenges and embrace potentials to become more resilient, livable, enjoyable, equitable, and prosperous for all.
Part II features 32 case studies of a wide range of suburban retrofits in diverse market conditions in northern America. Organized from the west coast of the continent to the east, the “before” uses cover the range of typical suburban property types: suburban arterial roads and intersections, parking lots, shopping malls, strip centers, big box stores, office and industrial parks, garden apartments, residential subdivisions, auto-body repair lots, a gas station, even a decommissioned airport. They include ambitious, large-scale, resource-intensive redevelopments, more modest community-serving reinhabitations of buildings and landscapes, and impressive regreenings. Many of our favorites include aspects of all three primary retrofitting strategies: some redevelopment to connect us to the future, some reinhabitation to connect us to the past, and some regreening to connect us to nature. We selected the case studies based on how much they “raised the bar” in meeting at least one of the particular challenges outlined in Part I and how well they layered solutions to aspects of additional challenges. Each case study narrative is written to highlight replicable design strategies and policies, recognizing market constraints. Each, we hope, describes enough of the implementation process to inspire others to follow.
As authors, we can’t help but hope our readers will devour every word from cover to cover. However, the book is deliberately organized with bullet point references to allow readers to focus on a particular challenge in Part I and go immediately to the most relevant case studies in Part II, and vice versa. We commissioned photographer Phillip Jones to take many of the excellent photos in the book. We encourage readers to further explore the case studies via our ample footnotes and by searching images online. Hint: our inner geeks love using the clock icon in Google Earth Pro to travel back through time and track changes while zooming in and out at the larger context.
Readers will benefit from understanding the larger context for the book, starting with how we define “suburban.” We’ve chosen not to engage ongoing debates over how to quantitatively define suburbs.2 We focus on built form. A property with a building surrounded by surfaces that are lawn or paved for parking we define as suburban form. If the building fronts a sidewalk and places the parking either under or behind it, that’s urban form. If the road infrastructure is dendritic—branching out like a tree—that’s suburban form. If the streets are networked—interconnected and walkable, with frequent intersections—that’s urban form. Most instances of suburban form are located in places we generically refer to as suburbs or suburbia. There are many cities, however, that have properties within them characterizable as suburban form that are good candidates for retrofitting. And there are many suburbs with districts of good urban form that should be preserved, if not extended.
Places built with suburban form have been highly resistant to change. Land-use policies, defended by NIMBYs (neighborhood activists who protest “Not in My Back Yard”), and highway investments have directed new growth to the places of least resistance, at the ever-expanding metropolitan periphery. These developments have often come at the expense of opportunities to densify already developed properties. A shift started with a handful of private-sector-led retrofits in the late 1980s and picked up steam by the mid-2000s with the growing popularity of new urbanism, smart growth, and the “return to the city” movement. In our first book we featured case studies on redeveloping “underperforming asphalt” (developer-speak for underused parking lots) into more sustainable, compact, walkable, mixed-use places.3
The Great Recession of 2008 hit suburbs hard and resistance to change began to fade as dead shopping centers and stalled subdivisions proliferated. An occupied or demolished building was better than a vacant one and the number of reinhabitation and regreening projects in our database of examples grew.4 The Great Recession also prompted ambitious public planning efforts, such as the Obama administration’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities and Neighborhood Stabilization Program.5 These federal programs resulted in successful community revitalizations, demonstrating the benefits of integrating mixed travel modes, uses, and incomes—especially in suburbs.
The combination of an increasingly ambitious public sector willing to invest in public-private partnerships, ongoing vacancies due to the so-called “retail apocalypse,” and a significant market shift in favor of walkable, urban lifestyles dramatically expanded the movement to retrofit suburban sprawl.6 The market interest in walkability aligns remarkably well with the public sector’s efforts to meet the challenges of improving public health, equitable and affordable access to opportunities, a society with more people living longer, and the pressing need to mitigate climate change impacts. Our database of retrofitting examples has exploded over the past decade from 80 to over 2,000 entries. Slightly more than half we classify as redevelopments, only 2% as regreenings, and the rest comprise incomplete tallies of the vast number of reinhabitations and adopted corridor retrofit plans. This book is inspired by how complex, diverse, and creative the newest retrofits are. If the previous generation of retrofits were mostly about reducing auto dependency, these projects continue that effort but also layer on aspects of solutions to multiple challenges. We are humbled by the tremendous imagination it took to envision such change and the dedication of the numerous public- and private-sector champions without whom these projects would not have been implemented.
Will retrofitting maintain the same pace? In early 2020 the US entered another recession and numerous retail chains declared bankruptcy at the same time as a viral pandemic spread across the globe, leading to a great many deaths and unprecedented job losses. We believe these crises have increased the need and opportunities for retrofitting, although the long-term effects are unknown.
Our first book has since been joined by others engaged by the topic. We welcome their work and the growing efforts to document how well retrofits perform over time.7 How much more sustainable are they than what proceeded them? Which performance metrics are most useful and comparable in our emerging age of big data? Where and when does retrofitting risk displacement by gentrification? What unknown new challenges lie ahead? While we and our cohort look to northern America, some answers may come from researchers studying diverse suburban retrofits around the world. Retrofits of superblocks in China, Soviet Khrushchevka in Eastern Europe, and shopping centers everywhere are all on the rise and deserve ever more attention. This is especially important at a time when many in the growing global middle class aspire to adopt versions of northern America suburban lifestyles. We hope that the new suburbs built for them might learn from how yesterday’s models are being retrofitted today. Future researchers should have much to work on and we look forward to learning new retrofit strategies to help all of us transform suburban places to meet local and global challenges.
NOTES
1
Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson,
Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008). An updated, paperback edition was released in 2011.
2
Despite suburbs being where the majority of US citizens live, neither the US Census Bureau or the Office of Management and Budget provide a systematic definition of the term. They distinguish and report on urban and rural, metropolitan and micropolitan (small towns). By default, the suburbs are simply those parts of a metropolitan urban area that aren't the core cities. This has prompted numerous attempts to better distinguish types of suburbs through history and in the present. A few of many sources include Ann Forsyth, “Defining Suburbs,”
Journal of Planning Literature,
5 June 2012; June Williamson,
Designing Suburban Futures: New Models From Build a Better Burb
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2013); RCLCO, ULI Terwilliger Center, “The New Geography of Urban America: An Interactive Map for Classifying Urban Neighborhoods,” 19 June 2018; Whitney Airgood-Obrycki and Shannon Rieger, “Defining Suburbs: How Definitions Shape the Suburban Landscape,” Working Paper, Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 20 February 2019,
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/research-areas/working-papers/defining-suburbs-how-definitions- shape-suburban-landscape
.
3
We only track examples that, one way or another, are improving sustainability. We do not track examples where new retail replaces old retail.
4
See the foreword to the updated edition of
Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011).
5
Between 2009 and 2016, the US Federal Sustainable Communities Partnership funded $240 million in planning grants and over $3.5 billion for implementation to over 1,000 communities to improve their infrastructure and rewrite their zoning to attract development in the future that would integrate more uses, more transportation choices, and more income groups. For the first time ever, grant proposals were coordinated between the US Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
6
The significance of changing demographics driving new market preferences should be understood as communities plan for tomorrow's residents. The majority of households in the US today are one- to two-person and the proportion is expected to rise. While each local condition varies, the majority of households in suburbs overall are either empty-nester Baby Boomers or Millennials (in 2020, they aged 56–74 or 24–39 respectively). Despite their different motivations, both generations' interests have converged to drive the market to retrofit the suburbs for more urban lifestyles, contributing to the 75% rent premium that walkability now adds to real estate values. See Tracy Hadden Loh, Christopher B. Leinberger, and Jordan Chafetz,
Foot Traffic Ahead
(George Washington University School of Business & Smart Growth America, 2019). See also Arthur C. Nelson,
The Reshaping of Metropolitan America
(Washington DC: Island Press, 2013).
7
The literature on suburban retrofits continues to grow but tends to be heavier on documenting design intentions than project performance. See Galina Tachieva,
Sprawl Repair Manual
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010); Emily Talen, ed.,
Retrofitting Sprawl: Addressing Seventy Years of Failed Urban Form
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015); and Jason Beske and David Dixon, eds.,
Suburban Remix: Creating the Next Generation of Urban Places
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2018). See also Build a Better Burb:
http://buildabetterburb.org/
.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As we look back on all of the individuals and organizations that helped this book come to fruition, we can’t help but also look forward to those we hope will find the work within lights a path through uncertain times ahead. We hope the strategies this book documents to boost health, equity, and prosperity for all will be relevant as communities focus on reestablishing a more just public life in towns, cities, and suburbs across the globe.
There have been many stepping stones along the way from completing our first book together in 2008, Retrofitting Suburbia, to this one. Each step both deepened our lines of inquiry and expanded our grasp of the complex, diverse challenges that retrofits can and are addressing. Former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros invited us to write a chapter on suburban retrofits for the book Independent for Life: Homes and Neighborhoods for an Aging America. Dr. Richard Jackson interviewed us in his documentary series “Designing Healthy Communities.” We are each frequently requested to speak to issues of climate change and resilience as well as equity and affordability in suburbia. June organized the Build a Better Burb ideas competition and ParkingPLUS design challenge for the Rauch Foundation. The competition resulted in a website of the same name that’s a terrific resource, hosted by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) and steered by Robert Steuteville. June published the research and results in Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb. Ellen steadily built the database of retrofits to over 2000 entries. (She wishes there were more regreenings, and regrets that the database is not yet ready to make public.) She gave a TEDx talk on retrofitting suburbia that went viral. Ellen and June were commissioned by AD to write “Dead and Dying Shopping Malls, Reinhabited.” Interactions with locals as we’ve traveled far and wide giving interviews, lectures, and workshops—many thanks to publicists Irina Woelfle and April Roberts—have enriched our understanding of the obstacles and workarounds to implementing retrofits. We are grateful for all of these opportunities, and so many others.
We learned much from shared discussions with our peers, their publications, and practices. Thanks go to John Anderson and David Kim, Allison Arieff, Barry Bergdoll, Rick Bernhardt, Scott Bernstein, Jason Beske, Peter Calthorpe, Ann Daigle, David Dixon, Victor Dover and Joe Kohl, DPZ CoDesign (Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Andres Duany, and Galina Tachieva), Stephen Fan, Doug Farr, Richard Florida, Ann Golob, Rachel Heiman, Jim Hughes, Amanda Kolson Hurley, Interboro (Georgeen Theodore, Tobias Armborst, and Dan D’Oca), Kaja Kühl, Robert Lane, Nancy Levinson, Mike Lydon and Tony Garcia, Liz Moule and Stef Polyzoides, Chuck Marohn, Reinhold Martin, Jana McCann and Jim Adams, Michael Mehaffy, Joe Minicozzi, Becky Nicolaides, Christopher Niedt, Nathan Norris, Brian O’Looney and John Torti, Michael Piper, Dan Reed, Duke Reiter, Lynn Richards, David Smiley, Emily Talen, Anne Tate, Marilyn Taylor, John Tschiderer, and many others.
We owe a special gratitude to the numerous colleagues and students who helped us along the way. From the City College of New York where June serves as Chair of Architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture, we offer thanks to faculty colleagues Nandini Bagchee, Hillary Brown, Gordon Gebert, Marta Gutman, Brad Horn, and Sean Weiss, and we extend a special debt of gratitude to the late, great Michael Sorkin. He is deeply missed. We thank all the students who participated in June’s suburbs-focused seminars and studios, and especially Belma Fishta, Melanie Nunez, and Mary Gilmartin for their superb help with the graphics and permissions. We offer similar thanks to students in Ellen’s Retrofitting Suburbia seminar and studios at Georgia Tech, where she directs the Master of Science in Urban Design degree and benefits from ongoing conversations about retrofitting with many of the faculty. Special thanks to Steve French, Scott Marble, Julie Kim, Subhro Guhathakurta, Richard Dagenhart, John Crittenden, Valerie Thomas, Marilyn Brown, and Michael Chang for insights into analytical methods and to the many students who have helped with the database, graphics and performance research: Liz Teston, Kyla Dowlen, Zorana Matic, Sarthak Dhingra, Animesh Shrestha, Wesley Brown, Jiaxuan Huang, Jules Krinsky, Jinxin “Angela” Xu, Yeinn “Grace” Oh, Jun Wang, Yilun Zha, Osvaldo Broesicke, Nevidita Sankararaman, and Alexandra Maxim.
From our academic perches, we are especially grateful to all those working out in the field who generously shared their stories with us for the case studies. We tried to acknowledge all the lead participants, but we recognize that complex urban design projects often involve too many consultants to name them all. We apologize for the inevitable omissions. Look for continuing work in this area at www.retrofittingsuburbia.com.
At Wiley, thanks for your talents—and considerable patience—to editors Margaret Cummins, Helen Castle, Kalli Schultea, Todd Green, Amy Odum, Indirakumari S, and Amy Handy.
Most of all, we thank our readers. The impact and popularity of our first book completely surprised us. To see how it emboldened many of you to champion for change in your own communities and practices is what inspired us to write this new book. We’re sorry that we could only fit in 32 case studies!
Finally, we thank our families for putting up with our being obsessively preoccupied much longer than expected and for dragging you to visit so many off-the-beaten-track locations. To David and Theo in New York, Ellen is enormously grateful to you for embracing June in love, laughter, and productive energy. To Phil in Atlanta, June (and Ellen) still can’t quite believe that you became a drone pilot just to be able to produce so many of the original photos in this book. It’s been a team effort all the way through and we love you madly.
June Williamson, New York, November 2020
Ellen Dunham-Jones, Atlanta, November 2020
PART ONEURGENT SUBURBAN CHALLENGES
Chapter I.1Disrupt Automobile Dependence
Trying to cure traffic congestion by adding more capacity is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt.
If every place worth visiting had enough parking for all the people who wanted to visit, there would be no places left worth visiting.
Widely cited amongst traffic engineers, unknown sources
Suburban form has always been shaped predominantly by transportation. Early suburbs from the mid-nineteenth century centered on the railroad stations, while early twentieth-century streetcar suburbs were designed with row after row of narrow-lot blocks a short walk from the transit corridors. The rapid, widespread adoption of private cars enabled the emergence of late twentieth-century auto-oriented suburban sprawl, characterized by low-density urbanism, separated uses, and “leapfrog” development patterns wherein lower-cost agricultural or forested land further out on the periphery, accessible from a highway exit, was preferred for new construction over closer-in sites. Soon, many more households were in locations where private cars were the default mobility choice.
In 2016 there were 1.97 motor vehicles per US household.1 No one knows just how many parking spaces there are nationwide, but there are some startling city-wide numbers. Des Moines, Iowa, has 19 parking spaces per household while Jackson, Wyoming, has 27. Seattle, Washington has 29 parking spaces per acre servicing a population density of 13 people per acre, while Los Angeles County has 200 square miles worth of parking spaces.2 In the words of the US Supreme Court, car ownership is now a “virtual necessity.”3 This sense of “necessity,” we believe, can be altered. We don't really require that much parking. And couldn't the land be put to better use?
Meanwhile, the growing global middle classes, in pursuit of lower-density living and the status and convenience of the private automobile, are at risk of becoming just as auto-dependent as northern Americans. That convenience comes at a staggering cost to public and environmental health, let alone the $25 per day on average that Americans pay to own a car.
Yet converging forces are increasingly disrupting conventional patterns of private car ownership and automobile dependency. These include:
New forms of mobility such as carsharing, carhailing, electric vehicles, mobility-as-a-service models, autonomous shuttle buses, autonomous cars, and drones
New forms of electric micromobility that help with the “first/last mile problem” such as e-bikes, e-scooters, and e-skateboards
Increased traffic congestion in areas of growing population, reducing the convenience of travel by private car
Increasing investments in public transit (although results in ridership are mixed)
Apps with real-time information about transit schedules, weather, and traffic
Online shopping and the transfer of consumer trips to delivery trips
Increasingly crowded and crumbling highways and subways
Younger generations’ reduced interest in car ownership and increased preference for urban lifestyles and shared mobility
All of these disruptive factors are accelerating the trends to retrofit underperforming and vacant suburban commercial properties and excess “grayfield” parking lots that we identified in our first book, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs. Back in the 2000s, we were focused on projects that did anything to reduce automobile dependency. Since then, retrofits have become both more common and more ambitious at tackling the many challenges facing suburban landscapes.
Increasingly, the question isn't just “What are you doing to reduce dependence on the car?”—it's also “What are you doing for climate change, social equity, and the loneliness epidemic?” Many retrofits more directly address these social and environmental challenges by reinhabiting underperforming properties with more community-serving uses or by regreening them. However, the imperative to pursue a variety of steps to reduce automobile dependence remains fundamental because of the cascade of impacts. This isn't a war to get rid of the private car and the freedom associated with it, although the future impact of autonomous vehicles might lead in that direction. It is about expanding the freedom of transportation choices, reducing the number and length of car trips, and creating healthier and more prosperous communities at the same time. Fundamentally, this chapter is about understanding how to better organize suburban roads, streets, and parking to achieve these goals.
Figure I.1-1 Nearly half of the trips in suburban areas dominated by single-family detached houses are under three miles, yet over 90% of those are made by car. More sidewalks, bike lanes, and everyday uses could dramatically reduce auto dependency. Rezoning to allow denser housing types could even make transit feasible. Source: Authors.
ROADS, STREETS, AND STROADS
What's the difference between a road and a street? A road's primary function is mobility. Its job is to connect you from point A to point B at good speed with minimal interruptions. Think of a “rural road,” a railroad, or a highway.
A street, on the other hand, is designed to maximize access to the homes, businesses, and civic institutions alongside it. It is a public space to facilitate transactions and generate both financial and social capital. It is generally part of a well-interconnected street network that distributes traffic. Some congestion on streets is a sign of a healthy economy. Streets are for getting to know one's community and for getting around: by foot, bike, bus, as well as car. Think of an “urban street”—whether Main Street (commercial), Elm Street (residential), or a grand avenue (mixed). For centuries, cities have been based on walkable streets and connected to each other by ridable roads. We still need both roads and streets.
Unfortunately, much of suburbia has been deliberately planned without good versions of either. Soon after the mass production of automobiles, visionary planners called for a dendritic “street hierarchy” to replace the urban grid and its walkable mix of uses.4 Conceived like a tree, the highway is the trunk: large branches are the arterial roads with commercial uses; smaller branches are collector streets, often lined with higher-density residential; and the twigs are the culs-de-sac. The intent was to combine high-speed movement with the zoned separation of uses, while shielding residential neighborhoods from cut-through traffic.
In the name of safety and speed, modern reformists called for the complete separation of cars from pedestrians, even going so far as to call for the death of the street. Uses were to be disentangled from streets and separated into shopping centers, government centers, business centers, and so on, reached by high-speed roads.5 These ideas set the pattern for the planning of modern mass suburbanization—and the acceptance of an average 100 US and 3,300 global deaths a day in car crashes as “accidents.”6
Figure I.1-2 The hypothetical image on the left distinguishes roads from streets. It shows a road through countryside connecting to the streets of a small settlement at an intersection and those surrounding a town's courthouse square. The image on the right depicts actual, by-right, development in suburban Atlanta Georgia. It shows a “stroad” lined with strip malls, fast food outparcels clustered at the major intersection, and residential subdivisions of homes and apartment complexes laid out on “faux-roads.” Source: Authors.
In addition to killing the street, suburban development also unintentionally killed the high-speed road. As growth expanded along rural roads, the property fronting the roads was typically rezoned for commercial use, buffering the residential uses behind it. Because of the roads’ relatively high speed, commercial driveways were usually spaced from 150 to 250 feet apart, spreading development at low densities behind large parking lots. More residential subdivisions led to more signalized cross streets, set at minimum intervals of 1500 feet, with a half-mile recommended. The resulting pattern became anything but walkable or easily served by transit. Neighbors backing up to the commercial strips still need to get in their cars to access the businesses. Before long, the roads designed for high-speed mobility were clogged with cars also seeking access. Derogatorily referred to as “stroads,” such arterials or “commercial strips” try to provide both access and mobility, but end up doing neither well.7 Speeds along stroads barely compete with the horse and buggy for much of the day, the cost of the infrastructure and delivery of public services per household is often double that along urban streets, and the taxes generated per acre pale in comparison to urban commercial streets.8
Suburban residential streets similarly evolved into a hybrid form. To distinguish them from gridded urban streets, their designs typically mimic rural roads with curves, whether or not topography calls for it. These “faux-roads” are laid out to maximize the number of residential lots in a subdivision and reduce the number of four-way intersections, both to thwart through traffic and increase safety. Yet, to further the rural image, they also deliberately lack sidewalks. Counter to the purpose of a road, their winding patterns lengthen the time it takes to get from point A to point B.
Co-benefits of Replacing Dependence on Cars with Multimodal and Transit Options
Economic
Environmental
Public Health
Reduced household transportation costs.
Less public subsidy of gasoline.
Increased physical activity and exercise.
Opportunity to invest transportation savings in equity-accruing investments, such as housing.
Nonpolluting travel, reduced contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.
Improved mental health from biophilic and social interactions—instead of stress and road rage.
Reduced municipal cost of roadway wear and tear.
Less land consumed, less asphalt and stormwater runoff per capita.
Less exposure to automobile exhaust and tire dust both inside and outside vehicles.
Tax revenue of redeveloped parking lots and spaces.
More contact with greenways leads to increased ecological awareness.
Increased mobility for nondrivers of all ages.
