https://apple.news/AaXI3OaQHRzCWqxTUpjydzg Really interesting article about urban restructuring being planned in Manhattan. With the number of employees working from home staying so high, they’re looking to build more parks in areas with office buildings who have like 80% empty tenants. Wonder if this could become a trend in major urban areas.
Article mentions that. Says they may give zones out to expand outdoor seating areas and remove automobile lanes.
minneapolis has been recalibrating itself for pedestrian filled cities slowly. dropping lanes is getting real common to expand sidewalks (which allow for expanded footprints of outdoor seating), bike lanes, parkways, etc. plus auto upzoning etc. its great
Even though I just moved away from one, there's nothing like living in a completely walkable neighborhood.
it feels like every office building in Columbus is currently being converted to apartments, I've got to imagine this is happening everywhere density will actually increase in theory
It’s the best. People don’t even really need drivers licenses in big European cities and I’m supremely envious.
Sure. By definition, successfully converting office space to some combination of public space, residential space, and supporting infrastructure implies that. Also makes it more livable though.
In Cincinnati, there has been a ton of redevelopment downtown and along the riverfront, all walkable living projects. One of the biggest projects nationwide, however, is the redevelopment of the former Tri-County Mall. Developers will spend $1.3 billion to develop the 101 acre site into 2600 townhomes with mixed use commercial and retail called Artisan Village, with the idea that your car stays in the mall’s old parking garage, but everything in the development itself is walkable, including the 2600 homes. https://www.fox19.com/2022/05/09/tri-county-mall-redevelopment-gets-new-name/?outputType=amp Old: New:
I'll live in rural areas my entire career but it'd be cool if cities weren't built like shit by the time I retire
I can walk to the gym, the beach, and bars/food. I will likely never be able to afford to buy in my neighborhood but, god damn, I may never be able to go back to suburban living.
I think that’s a lot of the target audience. There has been a longish cycle of yuppies spending their 20s in the city, then picking up and heading out when it came to time to raise a family. This is an attempt to lure back suburbanites long-term using the changes in society post-pandemic and in line with the push for going greener.
been an interesting growth of retirees moving into the city here will be great when people having kids dont feel like they HAVE to move into the burbs to raise a family
I was in Paris in 2017 and then again in 2021, I couldn’t believe how much of the car traffic they removed from main roads in that short time.
A Republican candidate sent out a flyer during elections trying to trash her opponent SHE WANTS TO BUILD SIDEWALKS AND MAKE YOU SELL YOUR CAR. Whole thing was making city more walkable as well as planting trees and public transportation initiatives. Uhhh yeah this sounds great.
Nashville is building a lot of mixed use buildings lately it seems. Unfortunately they aren't really doing anything to reduce traffic or address affordable housing. Rent and home prices have skyrocketed here. Nice to see other cities taking a better approach.
Live on the north side in Chicago, pre-pandemic used to have to drive to work (was just about the only thing I ever needed my car for anyways) and ended up getting rid of it in early 2021 when our company ended up just making us all permanently remote. If I can help it I don't think I'll ever own a car again, I come down to Birmingham/Atlanta for an extended time during the holidays and while I enjoy both places I really hate the amount of time I have to spend in a car while here to get around. It definitely limits the places I can live in but not having to own a car is probably 1a or 1b on my criteria list at this point.
What Dallas is doing with the building of another Klyde Warren type park/green space over I-35 needs to become more widespread. Not only to reconnect neighborhoods carved up by the building of highways but to cover up the concrete mess that most cities have become
I had a work meeting there a few months back and absolutely loved it. Stayed at the Minneapolis Club, walked down to Target Field and around. Then drove around those lakes that cut through the neighborhood with all the green space around it. Just a fantastic city.
I’ll have put about 2,300 miles on my car this year. I often think about getting rid of my car and purchasing a scooter for the 8 mile round trip to work.
idk if a NYC-specific plan can be taken as a national transition. few cities have the same options as NYC bc of infrastructure and density. but i know where i live, there have been legal changes to allow for outdoor seating / public drinking ideologically, YIMBY and new urbanism keep gaining mainstream appeal. Many smaller downtowns are ringed with neighborhoods of 1900-1950 era 'suburban' houses, and the trend is to add density in these areas where walking/biking/buses are simple and easy. RDU's are popping up in back yards everywhere, or 1 story houses being torn down and replaced with 3-4 story houses.
You guys did that right. Austin has plans to do the same as 35 gets redeveloped through downtown, which would be a couple of blocks from my place. Sure it’s 10 years away, but it’s something’
This is about as anti-sprawl as you can develop. It’s taking a mall built in 1960 on 101 acres and repurposing it for 2600 residences. The area around this development is the intersection of I-75 and I-275, where every square inch of property has been paved over since the mid-1970’s. This isn’t going to the outer belt and building on farm land.
But where am i gonna go for my SuperCuts, Firehouse Subs, GNC and Batteries Plus strip mall? Other than the other one a mile and a half down the road?
Wasn’t there for very long, but it looked like Vancouver had been doing stuff like that when I was there like a decade ago and it was really nice.
yeah that is a lot of units. i think i missed how tall those buildings were the carolinas have a lot of this general layout but with only 2 stories and no real hope of mass transit
We lucked into a decent situation. Our neighborhood was just another cookie cutter suburban sprawl new build on the edge of town on the early ‘90’s that eventually became central as things kept spreading. Roughly 10 years ago they built one of those town square type shopping centers so everything we need (except a supermarket ) is less than a half a mile away. Give me a supermarket in there and I’d be in heaven. Costco is 850 steps from my front door - yes I’ve counted - but there’s not a lot you can buy at Costco that you can walk home with. Our neighbors are mostly Vietnamese or West African immigrants so if you take a walk around dinner time the smells are incredible. Pretty much everyone has fruit trees and vegetable gardens as well. only downside is that we live on a cul de sac and seem to be situated so that every fallen leaf in town ends up in our front yard.
Downtown they’re also gutting the Carew Tower and converting it entirely to residential which should help subside some of the cost of property in the city. I also hope they move forward with the plan to build parks over the interstate between the city and the riverfront so that becomes more cohesive.
The correlate of populations that walk to work and overall improved health outcomes is staggering. Cool to imagine what a modern, walkable American city looks like.
That whole side of downtown has gone residential. The Union Central/PNC Tower let all its existing leases run out in 2020 and will go residential. That 31 story tower was built in 1913. For those unfamiliar, the Carew Tower is an Art Deco 49 story building dating from 1930. Union Central/PNC in front and Carew right behind it below:
it drives me insane when I visit my MIL in Hilton Head area. everything is a 30 minute drive, we drove 45 minutes each way to spend like half an hour at a store. just melts my brain now that I do not have to do any of that ever. there's a completely unnecessary stretch of raised highway through one boundary of my neighborhood. basically i think it was made to speed up people commuting in/out of downtown and annihilated a black community when it was built. the end boss of my neighborhoods goals is to get that stretch destroyed. gets talked about every year at city council meetings but little traction to get it done so far unfortunately.
My job is 2.9 miles from my house. It takes me 10+ minutes to get home. I hate having to own and maintain multiple cars. The worst
Portland is trying to do this but seemingly in the most irritating way possible. The main arteries into downtown from the east side are slowly being turned into single lane in a city most people can barely afford to live in. So traffic just gets worse and worse
Living in the UK and then moving back stateside for four years completely changed my view on car culture / urban planning. Even in the shit tiny village I lived in, I had three restaurants, two pubs, a small grocer, two convenience stores, and a post office inside one of those convenience stores, all within a half mile of my house and sidewalks the whole way, plus pedestrian-only cut throughs and the ability to cut across farm fields. When I moved back to Florida, I had about a million places within a mile circle of my house, but couldn't walk to any of them; no sidewalks on a 50 mph road, only one way in or out of the neighborhood, no pedestrian cut throughs anywhere, and cutting across property will get you hella shot.
Seriously, within a five minute walk, I have: Whole Foods Target My favorite dive bar Ten minutes: My gym My breakfast taco place A great park Top tier restaurants 15-20 minutes Fancy bars Shitty bars World class music venues And that's before redevelopment will improve the area both in mobility and quality of life over the next decade. I got 19 years or so till retirement. I ain't leaving.