I recently returned to Madison, Wisconsin to write about Middleton Hills, a new urbanism development located just outside the city in Middleton. This was a homecoming of sorts for me, since I went to college in Madison, and remember Middleton Hills when it was but a glimmer in the developer’s eye. It all goes back to the fall of 1993. I was a freshman at UW-Madison, hadn’t declared a major, and took a landscape architecture course on somewhat of a lark. Phil Lewis was a guest lecturer for that course, and I was fascinated by him, as he seemed to…
I’ve never seen anything like it. Descend from street level at Atlantic Station in to one of the numerous access points, and you are not underground. Not even close. You are still three stories up, as the ground level is the third level of underground parking below the street. You can see for what seems like an eternity in every direction in a bizarre underworld of parking. I had been hearing about Atlantic Station for some time, as it is held up as a good example of TOD and infill. I was in Atlanta for a short time on business,…
You can see a long way out here in Denver, where the mountains meet the plains. Except when there is smog in the city, the Denver air has a desert clarity. Is it this clarity, or maybe just the altitude, that has resulted in some great urban visioning in the past few years? Certainly enough has occured for the Congress for the New Urbanism to return here for their 2009 annual meeting. When I first came to Denver to explore the city, it was early in 2001, and I was on assignment to write an article on the downtown for…
“There are the same number of notes in the Moonlight Sonata as there would be if you put two cats on a piano for twenty minutes.” Those are the words of a John Anderson, Principal of Anderson Kim Architecture + Urban Design of Chico, California, when describing how our various zoning related codes prescribe but don’t always achieve good results. If an infill site allows, say, 50 units according to the zoning code and FAR rules, there are many possible outcomes as far as both form and function. In other words, those 50 units can be a Moonlight Sonata of…
One of the most remarkable urban stories I have come across in the past several years is the Gateway Quarter in Cincinnati. Located in the Over-the-Rhine district just north of downtown Cincinnati, the Gateway Quarter is a development effort with public, private and non-profit involvement to renovate buildings that make up the largest concentration of Italianate architecture in the United States. To top it off, the Gateway Quarter may get a streetcar line in the next couple years. I visited Over-the-Rhine recently on a writing assignment, and have to admit, the development already complete is stunning. The buildings are beautiful,…
I really like Buffalo. There is something about the big industrial cities that have fallen from glory in changing economic times. Among them all, I like Buffalo best. Not sure what it is, really, although you visit there and sense just how far its fortunes have tumbled. Maybe it is the grit, the history, the vacant industrial buildings and their ghosts. Maybe it is the whiff of possibility. I visited Buffalo last summer, and what I found there was a burgeoning arts community centered on the new Buffalo Artists Lofts, developed by Minneapolis-based ArtSpace. Visit their website, or with a…
There is movement afoot to bring high-speed rail service to Minneapolis and St. Paul. A recent article in the Star Tribune newspaper highlighted some of the opportunities and challenges involved. Read the Star Tribune article here. Challenges abound, and financing may not be the least of them. The rivalry between the two Twin Cities could, ahem, derail the deal at any time. This is because both cities want the train service, which would connect to Chicago in less than three hours when fully operational. St. Paul plans to use its lovely, historic and largely vacant downtown Union Station as the…
My neighborhood is home to just about every urban issue. We have a little graffiti, some of it gang-related, which we pretty much keep down. We have crazy traffic on our through streets. People move here for the light rail, but don’t want more development near stations. Neighbors generally want more community spaces, more green space, and a community garden. We also take great pride in our local businesses. Typical. Biking is our biggest issue now. The city, with the help of federal dollars allocated pre-stimulus, is paying to create a cross-city bike trail that will mostly follow 40th Street…
David Brooks had a column in the New York Times today entitled I Dream of Denver. I found it interesting because he was citing the results of a recent Pew Research Center survey that seems to reinforce our desire for suburban living, and that it is still a strong part of the American Dream. He also infers that all planners love Amsterdam and think American cities should become just like that. Let me just say this first. The center of Amsterdam (to which Mr. Brooks is really referring) is a unique place. And the definition of unique like no other.…
I read the news today oh boy…. Between the daily news and the real estate industry news, it is hard to avoid being “over-stimulused.” Will the stimulus be enough? It seems most agree it will not. But we can sure argue about it. My began on a flight home from riding the new light rail system in Phoenix, and continued on Minnesota Public Radio this very morning – the stilted argument over federal stimulus for transportation and whether roads and/or transit are “subsidized.” Where are our precious tax dollars best spent? Of course they are all subsidized. Rail, roads, transit,…
