In the 1960s Holladay (within the Salt Lake City metropolitan area) made dubious history by being the first city in Utah to build a shopping mall. In 2008 it’s making history again, albeit a bit more noble, by transforming the mall into a walkable neighborhood.

Not only is the developer, General Growth Properties, redeveloping the 57-acre Cottonwood Mall site into a neighborhood, but as a focal point, gathering place and town center for the Holladay community of 14,000. To be known as

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Small town absorbing growth in the center

What happens when your population doubles from 10,000 in 2000 to 20,000 today? In the case of Woodstock, Georgia, 30 miles north of Atlanta, the result will be a vibrant downtown rather than sprawl and congestion - thanks to investment in the city core.

They’re off to a good start, with their downtown plan winning a regional development of excellence award followed by a national award (CNU Charter Awards).  The plan consists of 340 residential

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The atrium lofts that helped transform a city

The development firm Urban Splash’s pioneering founder, Tom Bloxham was profiled in the previous entry, so now it’s fitting to present one of his signature projects that initiated the loft movement in Manchester, England. It sparked a transition from a built environment designed for the industrial economy, to a knowledge-based one.

Constructed before 1904 as a major department store (Affleck & Brown), the Smithfield Buildings, a group of nine

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Way back in November 2005 we published the projected vision of the new Del Mar Station Transit Village in Pasadena. Well, it’s time to show you the built result, and it’s inspiring to see it not only match the rendering, but look even better.

The 4.2 acre development hosts 346 apartments (though only 21 are affordable), 20,000 s.f. of retail, and 1200 underground parking spaces (ironically, more than three times the number of living units).  600 of those spaces are for the residents at

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Professional Building Lofts.

These aren’t run-down units, but newly renovated loft-style residences with built-in washer

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Trio, a 3.8 acre, 283,000 sf (14,600 sf retail), 304 apartment development in Pasadena’s Playhouse District. The developers, Shea Properties ensured that the new construction blended

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An artist/musician ‘community in a building’, Syracuse, NY

There are numerous cities and neighborhoods with a reputation for attracting creatives, but what about buildings in particular? There are places like the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA that provide studio and retail space for artists, but what about to live and play as well? That’s where Rick Destito and his Vibrant Syracuse Spaces in Syracuse comes in.

Rick’s a next generation developer who owns a five-story historic warehouse

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Pasadena’s Central District Specific Plan as a model for visionary urban planning. A year or so later the city welcomes Westgate Pasadena, some of the fruits from that labor, in the form of a 12-acre urban village emerging from currently abandoned brownfield industrial buildings and parking lots.

Located right at a transit station, the award-winning three-block development consists of 22,000 s.f. of retail

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human-proportioned buildings not only provided a more welcoming urban fabric, but higher property values as well. These were generally in historic neighborhoods, but seldom in new developments.

Well, it took an Italian urban designer with a tremendous amount of respect for historic Italian neighborhoods to design these new buildings (pictured) in the Shiodome Italia, Tokyo development. The 30 Italian-inspired

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Rockville, MD may not have a reputation for being a creative urban city in the Washington DC area, but it’s certainly looking to change that in a hurry. It’s Rockville Town Square makes a noble attempt at replicating a piazza, and its upcoming Twinbrook Station is garnering prestigious awards for sustainable urban planning.

The 26-acre Twinbrook (pictured) is a transit-oriented

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Reinventing the ‘burbs, sort of

The civic leaders of St. Louis Park, an inner-ring suburb of Minneapolis, wanted a downtown where there was none.  They got one in Excelsior & Grand, a 15-acre pedestrian-oriented mixed-use development adjacent to a major park.

Much of the placemaking is effectively urban, with contemporary urban architecture fronting tree-lined sidewalks, no surface parking, and high-ceiling apartments above restaurants and shops.  This is a vast improvement over a strip

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Durham turns the corner from industrial to information economy

Yesterday’s entry profiled how a French town evolved from the industrial age to the information age. Today’s entry profiles how a small American city is doing the same while respecting the history that put it on the map.

Just as the city of Robaix, France saw the transformation of its outdated textile factories into modern uses, Durham, North Carolina’s downtown took a major economic turn upward when the first tobacco factory

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A rising place in a rising district

Does your town have a manufacturing district that just feels very 1960s? That’s probably because that’s the last time anyone’s invested in them as we slowly evolve to an information-based economy. However, the Olneyville neighborhood in Providence, RI isn’t going to settle for living in that bygone era.

The City designated 175 acres for development investment based on a more contemporary economy - the Promenade District - with 10,000 new jobs, 2000 new

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NY Times - What did three college graduates have to do with a $15 million urban village?

That’s right, they’re the developers, and four years later, they’re in the New York Times - Young, Idealistic and Now Developers.  Starting out four years ago as 22 to 23-year olds with liberal arts degrees and no real estate development experience, Ben, Naomi and Joshua realized that they already had what it took to take on a $15 million urban village - integrity, motivation and capacity.

Located

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As the Netherlands shifts from industry to knowledge-based economy, they certainly know their placemaking, transforming blocks of a neglected industrial district into a $150 million mixed-use development, Arnhem City Center, known locally as ‘Musiskwartier’.

Opening last month, the predominantly a retail/entertainment center hosts a residential community above its shops of condos with terraces, gardens and balconies.  The largely pedestrian-only development features a timeless architectural

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Carlsbad, CA sure to attract the creative class...

...IF they continue to support more developments like Poinsettia Commons, a $55 million mixed-use, transit-oriented urban-style community that was unanimously approved by the Carlsbad City Council.  For a perspective of Carlsbad’s current creative class status, check out the comments to this entry.

Located right next to a train station leading directly to downtown San Diego, this innovative vision by forward-thinking developer Urban West

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While not exactly fitting in height-wise with the surrounding buildings, developer Scott Kimball’s The Aspen, a $20 million proposed urban mixed-use development in Boise, Idaho has a number of significant innovative, progressive features, including:

- The building site is only 32 feet deep.  Shows how much you can build in the tightest spaces.
- Home buyers have the ability to purchase 600 s.f. modules ($180,000) to build 600 to 2400 s.f. (or more) lofts, in the building locations they

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First a lumberyard is transformed into an urban village. What next - a pub?!

Most people haven’t exactly heard of Collingswood, New Jersey.  It borders Camden, and is within the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area.  Well, having a ban on the sale of alcohol in restaurants and bars (which I guess means there are none) doesn’t exactly help in attracting the demographic that tends to start new companies and spawn jobs, but at least you can bring your own, which to many may be even

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Jumpstarting a manufacturing town with an urban village for creatives

Up until the middle of the 20th century, the economy of Easthampton, MA ran on textile mills.  Ever since then, the town of 16,000 people about 100 miles west of Boston has been struggling to find a new economy to grow from.

Enter the Eastworks, a 500,000 s.f. former mill turned mecca for arts-related industries founded in 1997 by some rather visionary small developers.  Among designers in clothes, jewelry, software, art

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What to do with 104 acres/23 blocks of failed (the trend nowadays) regional shopping mall?  Well, after you get over how much land these malls really do eat up, you can find a visionary investment team like Continuum Partners to turn it into an urban village, as the image shows.

Yes, the homes in the new mixed-use development of Belmar in Lakewood, Colorado are priced too high for the average person and the stores are mostly chains - not a primary destination for the creative class - but the

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The coolest of the CNU Charter Award winners

Well, outside of the fact that it’s hardly affordable, the renovated/new Historic Front Street in Seaport North (near the Brooklyn Bridge) in Manhattan is the best creative class development among the seventeen CNU Charter Awards profiled yesterday.

Eleven 18th century buildings plus three brand new buildings host 96 residential apartments for rent from 600 s.f. to 1400 s.f., plus thirteen retail spaces on the ground floor.  The project

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CNU’s annual Charter Awards announced

If you’re wondering what the best new models for placemaking are each year, it’s wise to keep tabs on the CNU’s (Congress for the New Urbanism) annual announcement of its Charter Award winners.

Out of 160 entries, here are the 17 they chose, and I’ll profile my favorite over the next couple of days.  Each year the winners are increasingly urban, which is refreshing over past selections that were largely greenfield (ie ‘well-designed sprawl’)

Block,

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When 2250 homes replace 64...

Environmentalists value land preservation.  Commuters hate traffic.  Home buyers can’t afford single-family homes.  There aren’t many inspiring, pedestrian-friendly places to shop, dine and be entertained.  Well, Pulte Homes just made a lot of those people happy with MetroWest in Vienna, Virginia.

64 single-family home owners on 60 acres sold their homes at a hefty profit so that Pulte could build 2250 homes, plus 300,000 s.f. of office and 100,000 s.f. of

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Now that’s some healthy convenience

For those who like to cook and commute by transit, it doesn’t get much better than this, that is, if you can afford to live here in Mission Bay, San Francisco.  At least 28% of the housing in this progressive new neighborhood is supposed to be below market, though in this particular development, a good portion of it is above market (pun intended).

Thanks to Portland’s innovative urban planning heritage, which hosted the first Safeway with housing above,

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SF’s new ‘city’ taking shape one unique development at a time

Disneyfication - the term given to developments that look a bit sterile because it was built by one developer, in one style, all at once (ie non-organically.)

So far one of the most noticeable and admirable traits about the first signs of construction in Mission Bay is that it doesn’t look like it was built by one developer, which is so often the case (like many of the new developments recently reviewed here.) Part of the

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