« September 17, 2006 - September 23, 2006 | Main | October 1, 2006 - October 7, 2006 »

September 29, 2006

City hall, Chicago

The next great public places

Many of us are aware of the immeasurable value that Central Park, NYC and Golden Gate Park, SF bring to their respective cities. In the words of Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park, “There need to be places where the rich and poor, the cultivated and the self-made shall be attracted together and encouraged to assimilate.”

Economically speaking, extraordinarily designed public places more than replace the opportunity costs of the land they take up by significantly raising the value of the land both adjacent and within walking distance around them.

However, is anyone aware of what the next generation of such celebrated public places could be? Good Magazine provides a sneak peak:

The High Line, Manhattan, NY - $60M, 7-acre former elevated railroad. "It became the kind of legendary place you had to sneak into from the rooftop of a Chelsea art party—a forbidden world of weeds and graffiti. It was beautiful but unseen, private but floating just above the public streets." (pictured)

Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brookyn, NY - $150M, 85-acre waterfront park transformed from an outdated industrial site, will finally provide New Yorkers with the first true waterfront community.

Rose Kennedy Gateway, Boston, MA - $31M, 1300-acre parkway through the city, replacing a highway with "volleyball courts, concerts, art festivals, hanging lanterns in the autumn, a bamboo forest, performance space and events for school children".

Also profiled are Orange County Great Park, Irvine, CA and JetBlue Terminal at JFK Airport, Queens, NY. One can hope the Orange County park can inspire the built environment around it.

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September 28, 2006

City hall, Chicago

Urban green building - from Mayor Bloomberg to Brad Pitt

It seems the hybrid car phenomenon is spreading to green building - though while auto manufacturers are finding the market for hybrids is finite, not so for buildings, as it's quickly becoming a standard demand by the next generation of home buyers.

Here's just a few of the recent stories this month alone:

- Brad Pitt is advocating for 500,000 new green building homes in New Orleans that would save $38 to $56 million/year, $1200 per home. Not surprisingly though, the homes look a little more L.A. than LA.

- 1600 homes over 34 blocks of mixed-use green development (along with plans for the largest natural drainage system in the U.S.) will replace failed public housing via a public-private partnership in Seattle.

- NYC's Mayor Bloomberg announced a new Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability.

- Chicago's Mayor Daley of Chicago has had long-time plans to make Chicago the sustainable capital of the U.S., lately touting a major exhibit to advance this vision, Sustainable Architecture in Chicago: Works in Progress. (Pictured - City Hall's green roof)

- Universities are going green, with sustainable initiatives being voted on by its students, largely because they want to establish their eventual alma maters as role models.

- Speaking of setting an example via education, Portland voters are advocating a measure to build 19 new green schools. Portland has a long history of raising the bar for sustainable development.

The key now is ensuring green building design is human-oriented rather than machine-oriented, as all too often the latter is the result.

Check out this list of ten rules to follow when building green.

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September 27, 2006

This Is Smart Growth

The rising demand and development of 'TOD's

Since transit-oriented development (TOD) sites are the most logical for initial investment in city downtowns, the Urban Land Institute (ULI, the leading organization for real estate developers) brings us an update on TOD demand, trends and incentives in TODs: Location, Location, Collaboration.

Demand - By 2030, the nine-county SF Bay Area will experience added potential demand for 248,000 housing units near transit (source - ABAG, while the same demand in Denver is expected to grow to more than 138,000 households, up from 18,600 households in 2000 (source - CTOD).

Trends driving demand:
- Gas prices
- Longer commutes and heavier traffic in the suburbs
- Health impacts of worsening air pollution caused by traffic.
- On the carrot side of things (not cited in the article), cities are cool again

Government incentives to spur supply to meet demand
- Tax increment financing (TIF), an extremely effective funding tool that captures future increases in property tax revenue resulting from property improvements to help pay for those improvements;
- Land writedowns, common in redevelopment, allowing a municipality or public owner to sell a site at a reduced price;
- Fee waivers, which provide incentives for development and redevelopment, particularly on abandoned sites and high-risk properties.
These help as well.

Image: Hitachi Transit Village, San Jose. TODs apply to both small town and big cities, both light rail and bus stations (and with BRT, buses may soon be 'cooler' than light rail).

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September 26, 2006

This Is Smart Growth

The definitive guide to Smart Growth

If you're looking for one illustrative guide to define smart growth, The Smart Growth Network (SGN) and the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) have recently done the work for you with This Is Smart Growth.

The 32-page image-filled color document presents dozens of model communities to describe the Smart Growth Principles:
- Mix land uses
- Take advantage of compact building design
- Create a range of housing opportunities and choices
- Create walkable neighborhoods
- Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place
- Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas
- Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities
- Provide a variety of transportation choices
- Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective
- Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions

Here are some of the more urban places profiled:
East Bay Regional Park District, SF-Oakland Metro Area, California
Barracks Row, Washington DC
Garfield Park, Chicago, Illinois
Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts
Traverse City, Traverse City, Michigan
Excelsior & Grand, St. Louis Park, Minnesota
Cotton District, Starkville, Mississippi
Missoula, Missoula, Montana
Moore Square Museums Magnet Middles School, Raleigh, North Carolina
Slavic Village, Cleveland, Ohio
Portland, Portland, Oregon
East Liberty, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
South Providence, Providence, Rhode Island
Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina
Chattanooga, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Envision Utah, Greater Wasatch Area, Utah
Arlington County, Northern Virginia, Virginia

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September 25, 2006

Can Company, Baltimore

Reader question: How to ensure developers are fair to creatives?

"In response to the blank canvas Savings #2 - As an up and coming home buyer in Atlanta as well as being a young architect, I love the idea of a blank canvas or "shell" although I feel as though developers would not lower the home price and instead make more profits by leaving out the "finishes" of the home and call it a feature. I think that this is a great idea but it needs to be done in such a way as to protect the young "creatives" who's buying power is minimal." Kellen

It starts and ends with the integrity of the developer, and at CoolTown Studios we only work with those who have it. That means it's in the developer's DNA to pass on their savings to the home buyers. The following is the basis of criteria we use when determining which developers we'll work with when establishing a beta community to provide high-style, low cost communities for creatives:

1. Integrity (doing the right thing when no one is looking)
2. Motivation (passion)
3. Capacity (open-minded)
4. Understanding (do you know what really drives creatives?)
5. Knowledge (implementation know-how)
6. Experience (to answer the question, where have you done these?)

"Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities."

Note that many of today's investors have this reversed, then wonder why so many deals fall apart in the end, or why they never invested at all in what became highly profitable ventures.

These are the qualifying principles used be Dee Hock, the founder of Visa, in establishing a system we trust even more than cash, based on a "very old, very basic idea - the idea of community."

Image: Can Company, Baltimore, by Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, among the firms that follow these six principles better than any I know of, especially when it comes to passing on savings to customers.

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