Infill Development: Patching A Neighborhood’s ‘Holes’

"To Sean Gilligan, a neighborhood is like a piece of fabric," begins a profile in the Albuquerque Tribune. "Sometimes it has holes.

" 'You want to stitch them up, make it work,' Gilligan says.

"The Albuquerque developer has been stitching holes in the inner-city fabric for seven years, bringing cohesiveness and value to its overlooked pockets. "

He adds small, contemporary townhouse and condo projects - 6 units here, 12 units there -- but observers say the projects work. They do well in the marketplace, and they add important neighborhood vitality by pulling a neighborhood together.

Gilligan's mission is infill - developing empty parcels in the city core. He says the way to revitalize Downtown is to start at square one, with residential units, building a little extra density into the area.

"That's the piece that needs to happen," he says. "Then you'll have a market, and business will follow."

The important things here aren't only adding residents and thus critical mass, but turning dead space into lively space. Because it doesn't take much dead space to deaden a surrounding neighborhood.

I don't mean you should build on every inch of open space; of course you want parks and other greenery in your downtowns. I'm talking about "open space" like litter-strewn weeds by a railroad track, or an ugly asphalt strip-mall parking lot that kills off the pedestrian ambiance of a commercial district.

It’s About Time! America’s “Love Affair With SUVs Begins To Cool”

I know there are good, decent, generous and kind people who have purchased SUVs. In fact, I know some personally - family, friends, one of my most delightful neighbors. But let's face it. An SUV says: "I don't give a crap about anyone else on the road."

"I don't care if I'm more likely to kill and maim someone else if I'm in an accident (SUV bumpers are dangerously high when in collision with conventional cars); I'm more important than anyone else."

"I don't care if people behind me can't see ahead."

"I don't care if parking spaces have to be bigger, if roads have to be wider, if I take up more than a fair share of space in crowded urban areas."

And, of course, "I don't care at all about generating more polution than necessary to get where I'm going. I don't care that I use more gasoline than needed for my trips."

Well, it seems that some SUV owners are finally paying attention to gas-mileage issues -- of course, not because they suddenly realize the impact their wastefulness has on the environment, or the danger they cause to fellow citizens, or how they're aiding our dependence on Middle Eastern fuel sources. However, one thing that's changed is the rising prices of gasoline and how it affects their wallets.

Aside: Our "expensive" gasoline is still bargain-basement priced compared to most of the world. In the UK., prices averaged more than $5/gallon; in Norway, also a major oil producer, they hovered around $5 -- and that was last year, before the latest price hikes! (see Money magazine chart). But I digress....

Anyway, today's New York Times has a front-page story that claims "America's love affair with SUV's is taking a breather. For the first time in 14 years, the passenger car is actually taking sales back at the expense of SUVs and other trucks, according to an analysis of auto sales data."

I don't think SUVs do much for livable communities. Beside the psychological concept of people closing themselves off in armored-vehicle-like behemoths, supersized vehicles require ever more space to be given to roads, parking and garages. All those things take a toll on a community's sense of place, making a neighborhood less appealing for strolling and simply being outside, sharing communal space.

Dealing With Insanely High Housing Prices

High housing costs are a key contributor to sprawl. OK, some people live in the exurbs because they want huge McMansions and multi-vehicle "Garage Mahals" to store their tank-sized SUVs. However, many people truly would prefer to live more modestly, in or near cities and closer to their jobs, but simply can't afford any reasonable housing.

In the San Diego area, a recently announced public-private venture aims to make a dent in the problem. A $90 million investment fund will help developers "build homes for middle-income workers throughout San Diego County in the single largest infusion of money targeted at the region's pressing housing needs," according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. "By providing easy access to capital, the fund will be a big boost to smaller builders who specialize in middle-income, urban housing and often struggle to find money for their projects."

The crucially important consumer target for this program is people who earn too much to qualify for government-subsidized housing, yet can't hope to pay the region's sky-high housing costs on their own. A family of four with household income of between $49,600 and $124,000 a year could quality.

Wrap your head around that for a minute or two, please. A six-figure salary still isn't enough to buy a decent home in San Diego County. How can companies possibly attract mid-level workers? How can the average worker in San Diego live anywhere close to their job?

"The investment pool will be used to leverage more than $500 million worth of housing and commercial development in the county. It is expected to generate enough money to build as many as 2,000 rental and for-sale homes within older, urban communities over the next five years," the San Diego Union-Tribune says.

The median price of an existing single-family home in San Diego County - excluding pricier new construction that averages over $700,000 -- is $530,000, while existing condos resell at a median price of $380,000. Housing prices doubled in the area between 2000 and 2004, while household income rose 10.4%, according to the San Diego Housing Commission. Yeah, nice if you bought into the market before then. Not so nice if you didn't.

Livability vs. Traffic Flow

Do you have to sacrifice traffic flow in order to create a livable community? Some Sacramento officials think so, according to the Sacremento Bee: "City of Sacramento residents may have to accept sitting in traffic longer to make their hometown a better place to live, say those working on the city's general plan update. They also may have to put up with a longer hunt for parking spots in the central city."

Well yeah, if you design solely to speed massive quantities of traffic, you end up with 12-lane highways (aka "traffic sewers") that don't generate much appeal to the streetscapes around them. Likewise, if your sole aim is to provide street-level parking lots for massive amounts of drivers, you'll end up with acres of asphalt and a cruddy sense of place.

But does that mean you need massive highways and acres of asphalt to keep traffic moving? I don't think so. Building lots of wide roadways doesn't guarantee the free flow of traffic - just look at Los Angeles, the freeway capital of America, which also suffers from the worst traffic congestion in the U.S., according to a recent traffic study.

The city council is trying to make Sacramento among the most "livable" communities in the nation, while also facing an expected population hike of 200,000 in the next 25 years. What they ought to be talking about in their new master plan is giving people alternatives to driving. Of course not everyone will want or be able to walk or take public transportation to work. But if the option is there, that can help ease demand for roadways and parking lots.

Design so that SOME people can live, work and shop in the same neighborhood. And, make sure the city is a park-once, walk-to-many destination, so that once people drive to the central city and park, they are encouraged by streetscape, ambiance and sense of place to do a lot of walking to different shops, restaurants and entertainment venues..

NYT’s James Traub Is Wrong

In the N.Y. Times Sunday magazine issue on Modernism, James Traub sees just two options available in mainstream urban planning: the neutron-bomb-like results of Modernism, where buildings on steroids ravage urban streetscapes and kill off pedestrian activity; or what he calls Jane Jacobs's "image of a city of stable, small-scale enclaves .... [T]he organic and folkloric alternative [to Modernism] offers us a city in amber -- the urban equivalent of the retro baseball stadium."

Not so! There are in fact urban settings that combine tall buildings with a thriving streetscape. In Manhattan, for instance, 59th Street at Central Park is a nice mix of traditional urban buildings with street life and open space. And I think there's a lot to be said for Rockefeller Center, where the masses of tall buildings didn't completely kill off street life throughout the neighborhood. In Boston, while the Prudential Center kind of deadens pedestrian activity on much of its side of Boylston Street, the Hancock building co-exists with street activity in Copley Square.

However, Traub is unfortunately dead on in this observation: "Today, New York is one of the very few American cities where the street matters enough that the problem bears thinking about."