Great Urban Streets Design Principles

Principle 1:
Manage CongestionCongestion is a fact of life in successful urban places. By definition, a place that supports a great concentration of economic and social activities within a pedestrian-scaled environment is going to be congested.

Principle 2:
Balanced/Active StreetsDowntown streets must balance the needs of pedestrians, bicycles, transit and the automobile in creating an attractive and viable urban core. Downtown streets are for people first, commercial second, parking third and through traffic fourth.

Principle 3:
Streets as PlacesThe Great Streets Program envisions downtown as a vital focus of city life, and as a primary destination. Our downtown streets are our most important and pervasive public space and common ground.

Principle 4:
Interactive Streets Urban Streets are the stages on which the public life of the community is acted out.

Principle 5:
Pride of PlaceVisible, caring and upkeep are critical to the vitality of urban street life.

Principle 6:
Public ArtArt in the public environment can help to establish a stronger sense of place and a continuity between the past, present and future.

Pitiousa- Human Scale Development

The design for the town of Pitiousa recognises that every context is a self-regulating, living system; that the basic elements of urbanism are the urban block, the street and the square; that buildings should never be as large as the commission; and that they should use well-tried constructional techniques and materials. Pitiousa also recognises that " Classicism is not a Style ", but a tradition that has evolved from and coexisted with the vernacular. It is a living tradition open to adaptation and interpretation, and responsive to region, climate and nature. "

-Demetri Porphyrios

" Unlike the currently marketed conception of tradition as the "peddling of antiques", the classical project does not aim at upholstering a spurious restoration. Instead, its aim has been to ferret out in existing society those traditional elements that could foster the new. The story of cities has been the story of endless innovation. But the new has never been a mere novelty. The new has always been the result of a process of knowledge and merit. the various phases of history are additive and the storing of new experience has been the law of mankind. The exclusive characteristic of civilised man has been his ability to record and to retrieve from memory. In that sense, Classicism and the Traditional City are less absorbed in the dialectic between an imagined future and a nostalgic past ( as many critics have claimed ), than in the search for realistic projects. The ultimate criterion in the design of cities ought to be the public well-being of their inhabitants. "

-Demetri Porphyrios

Sustainable co-op supermarket?

from cool town studios

Good neighborhood supermarkets are hard to come by. Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are the de facto choices by the downtown crowd, though the former has a limited selection and the latter caters to an upper class income. The most progressive neighborhoods in forward-thinking cities like Madison WI, Burlington VT, Cambridge MA and Ann Arbor MI have it figured out - co-op supermarkets.

As you can see (above), co-ops have evolved - they're organized via grassroots efforts, but don't look like grassroots efforts. In fact, they're sharp-looking, well-managed, and price competitive because they follow the mass customization/crowdsourcing/beta community model of future patrons organizing to design and develop the grocery they want. In fact, as a result, most of them have built-in cafes (right) and community bulletin boards.

The question then becomes, how does one start a co-op supermarket? The answer is with the Food Co-op 500 (perhaps a play on the Fortune 500), cooperative effort to help establish a total of 500 co-op supermarkets in 10 years (there are 300 today).

The outline of the development guide can be found here, based on:

1. Four organizing principles:The 'Four Cornerstones' of Vision, Talent, Capital and Systems.
2. Three stages of development:Organizing, Feasibility and Planning, and Implementation.
3. Two sources of funding:- $10,000 matching Seed Fund grant for the first stage of development.- $25,000 matching Sprout Fund loan for the second and third stages of development.

Finally, you can 'find a co-op supermarket near you' with the Cooperative Grocer Directory... and if there isn't one, you now have an idea of how to solve that!

In Praise of Smaller Developments

by Trisha Riggs E-mail: priggs@uli.org

ULI’s Place Making Conference Explores Fundamentals of Designing and Building for Change

Conference panelists discussed the benefits of building smaller developments. The smaller the town center development, the more necessary it is to link with the surrounding neighborhoods, resulting in ample points of connection. Conversely, while larger developments have more capability to be self-sustaining, this can lead to isolation, participants noted. “Going small forces you to connect to what is around you, because you are not big enough to do things on your own,” said Richard E. Heapes, principal of Street-Works in White Plains, N.Y.

According to John E. Felton, principal and director of community design at Cline Design Associates in Raleigh, N.C., there are several steps that can be taken upfront to help smoothen the process of developing small, mixed-use projects, including conducting a full analysis of the entire site’s potential and the timing of the development of each use; developing a clear strategy for integrating each use; using a simple, efficient design; understanding that parking for each use is critical; and planning for the creation of an engaging place that draws people back for repeat visits.

Felton advised conference attendees to “go to where the people are” to find promising sites for smaller projects—including downtown infill locations, sites near transit, places close to universities or cultural centers, and old shopping centers. Many of these sites represent lucrative opportunities for adaptive reuse, he said.

Katherine Kelley, president of Green Street Properties in Atlanta, shared four key lessons learned in developing small-scale projects: 1) Be externally focused—build to the perimeter of the project so it connects to the external infrastructure. “This is beneficial to the surrounding community as well—each can enjoy the benefits of the other.” 2) Anchor the project with great restaurants. “They (restaurants) are a primary channel for the public, and they draw people to the adjacent retail.” 3) To the extent possible, arrange the project’s components horizontally. “If you have to layer vertically, make each building easily walkable to the next.” 4) Realize that something has to give to make the numbers work. “If you don’t have high density (which is sometimes a challenge to achieve in smaller projects) you have to look elsewhere for a sufficient revenue stream.”

The place making trend, said Terry Shook, president of Shook Kelley in Charlotte, N.C., has resulted in a “new breed” of community developers who are catering to rising consumer demand for convenient living environments that save time by offering a variety of development uses close together. Town center development provides an opportunity to reclaim areas with no sense of community—particularly in suburban settings—by “turning the ordinary into the special, until we reach a point at which the special becomes the ordinary,” he said.

Shop in a Box

The latest in the world of pop-up retail? From Singapore comes the Venue VBOX, a portable store in a shipping container, which can be set-up temporarily. Any place. Any time.

The VBOX enables a brand or company to follow an event they wish to align their brand with, or pop up where consumers least expect it. Tag along with a photography exhibition or set up shop temporarily at a large sporting event. Brands can even showcase items that consumers may not otherwise be able to purchase elsewhere: just fill the VBOX with one-offs or special editions and you'll pull in consumers with the prospect that they'll able to purchase something unique.

The VBOX comes self-contained and equipped with an iMac and iPod HiFi. It's entirely ready to go; all that needs to be done is fill it with enticing products. To date the VBOX has housed collections by some of the fashion world’s most prestigious names: RAF SIMONS (Prada Group) and limited PUMA designer co-labs by Alexander McQueen, Christy Turlington, Mihara Yasuhiro as well as CDs, magazines/books and Motorola phones.

Whether the VBOX is placed in a remote village in Spain, on a beach in California or on the ski slopes of Canada, it's a refreshing way to inject fun and excitement into a brand and win over a swag full of new consumers. Japanese clothing brand UNIQLO used container stores for its recent launch in the United States. More about that here. And for much more on pop-up retail, check out trendwatching.com's overview.

People=Power!

By SAM COOPER

Fred Kent believes in people power.
You can have the most attractively built community in the world, he says, but if people don’t come together to mix in public spaces, it’s just dead space.

Kent recently spoke to the West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce and Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, in relation to the plans to renew Ambleside.
The world-renowned urban planning expert has worked with over 2,000 communities through his New York-based Project for Public Spaces consultancy, started in 1975.

His theory is that attractive, non-automobile dominated public spaces layered with multi-use functions will pump vitality back into communities that have become too isolated.

Educated at Columbia University, Kent brings studies of geography, economics, transportation, planning and anthropology, into his “place-making” philosophy. He’s taken about a million photos in communities around the world, using time lapse technology to understand the underlying motivation of people’s attraction, or repulsion, to certain public spaces.

“Foot movements are like a sort of language,” he explained of his photographic methodology, to a table of listeners including Goldsmith-Jones and Park Royal vice-president Rick Amantea, over a lunch of grilled salmon at Saltaire in Ambleside.
The group had earlier toured Ambleside and found traffic overpowered their conversations.
“Your main street is only functioning at 40 per cent of what it could be,” Kent said.
“When you look at your city, there are a lot of opportunities and a lot of things not happening.”

Kent’s group holds that great cities have a formula of ten great destinations. And each location should also be enriched by ten different activities, he says.
But a location doesn’t have to be an attraction like the Eiffel Tower to draw people.

For example, a city hall, library, laundry, coffee shop, and bank could be layered together.
“If you triangulate those things with other activities you’d have one of the busiest places in Canada.”

Busy is a positive concept for Kent, meaning regular people interacting.
“The important business of the city is in the social functions, not what happens in city hall,” he said.

Hearing this, Goldsmith-Jones nodded enthusiastically.
“I try to go to a different coffee shop every day and I find what I’m running into is so interesting, I have to move back my (municipal hall) meetings,” she told Kent.
Kent suggested West Vancouver citizens should be engaged in a process to imagine what new public spaces in Ambleside should encompass.

Investment Funding for New Urbanists

Exerpts From New Urban News

Since the late 1990s, a number of people have tried to form investment pools that would provide money for new urbanist developments. It has not been easy going.

The Traditional Neighborhood Development Fund, started in 1997 by new urbanist developers Robert Chapman, Rob Dickson, and Lloyd Zuckerberg, obtained backing from the multi-billion-dollar Hillman Company and from a major shareholder in Goldman Sachs, but was never able to place any significant capital.

The Fund for New Urbanism, started in 2002 with Andres Duany, Sam Young, and businessman Wayne Huizenga as partners, hoped to finance several projects but is now limiting itself to just one — a 930-acre development near Edenton, North Carolina. Another pool, the Green Living Fund, which Kacey Fitzpatrick in the San Francisco Bay Area expected to have in operation by late 2006, has delayed its startup by at least several months.

Yet while some investment pools are being postponed or pared down, others are springing into existence. In January, the Denver-based Revival Fund Management of Dennis Fleming and Charlie Randall started its Urban Green Fund, which will invest in walkable, mixed-use developments within a half-mile of mass transit. Also importantly, philanthropies are coming forward. The New York-based FB Heron Foundation, for example, is investing in New Urbanism through funds such as the Bay Area Smart Growth Fund and the California Smart Growth Fund.

What seems to be under way is a sorting out of investment concepts and participants. In some instances, new urbanists tried to start funds before conditions were ripe. “We were way premature nine or 10 years ago,” says Chapman, who leads an established new urbanist development company, the North Carolina-based Traditional Neighborhood Development Partners. “I think the time is absolutely right now. We’ll make an announcement in midsummer about a new fund that will have a sustainability and green building aspect.”

Some funds have run into difficulty because they employed methods that diverged too much from the real estate field’s usual ways of doing business. DPZ’s Fund for New Urbanism, whose research and organizing were carried out primarily by Young and Demetri Baches, had what seemed an ingenious idea: The Fund would identify eight sites “ideally located for smart growth,” design plans and codes for them, secure entitlements so that construction could occur as-of-right, and transfer the approved plans to developers prepared to follow the plans.

There turned out to be at least two flaws in the Fund’s premise, according to sources consulted by New Urban News. First, developers resisted paying to obtain planned, entitled projects. “A developer doesn’t want to pay retail,” Chapman says. “He wants to pay wholesale.” Second, the Fund suffered from being seen as more a planning operation than a development organization. Baches acknowledges that DPZ did not want to devote time and energy to becoming a full-fledged developer itself. With a busy international planning practice, DPZ would have had a hard time managing several development projects. Thus the Fund settled upon carrying out the one project it had pushed the furthest — Sandy Point.


THE NEED FOR PATIENT CAPITAL
Analysts agree that there is clearly a need for pools of “patient capital.” Mainstream real estate financiers mostly have “a time horizon that is so compressed that you have to make [undesirable] compromises,” Chapman observes. A new urbanist development will surpass a conventional subdivision in value in the long run, he says, but first a great deal of money and time must be invested. It’s not uncommon for 15 years to be needed.

“We need to understand real estate as a 40-year asset class again,” says Fleming. Fleming expects to put money into a project for eight to nine years and to have a provision allowing the investment to be renewed twice. By comparison, conventional real estate funds usually “have a time horizon of five [years] plus two [extensions] or seven [years] plus two [extensions].”

Revival Fund Management expects its Urban Green Fund to amass $250 million and will invest it in approximately 20 to 30 projects in “progressive real estate markets” such as Denver, Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth, Boston, Washington, and the Bay Area (except the purportedly overpriced city of San Francisco). Each project will get $7 million to $12 million from the Fund, says Fleming, the managing director. Properties will typically be “within a half-mile radius of frequent transit service” and will feature energy-efficient technologies, a fund statement says.

Once the first Urban Green Fund is established, a second fund would be started, and so on. Eventually Revival would like to establish a real estate investment trust (REIT) for properties that are new urbanist and “green.”

Criteria similar to Revival’s are already being used by the $100 million Rose Smart Growth Fund, which developer Jonathan Rose established about a year ago. After buying two buildings in downtown Seattle for $23 million last April, the Rose fund announced its second investment in November: half of the $38 million needed to convert the historic Clipper Mill buildings in northern Baltimore to 51,000 sq. ft. of arts and crafts studios, 62,000 sq. ft. of offices, 36 loft apartments, and other uses. The Rose Fund became a 50-50 partner with Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, which is developing the project, with Cho Benn Holback + Associates as architects. The property adjoins a light-rail stop in Jones Falls Valley.

A new urbanist investment of more limited duration is “mezzanine capital,” which Philip Blumberg’s American Ventures Realty in Coral Gables, Florida, supplied to projects such as market-based, moderate-income housing in the Little Havana section of Miami and the luxury-class Gold Avenue Lofts in downtown Albuquerque. Mezzanine financing — so called because it occupies a level between loans and long-term equity— generally is paid off after about 18 months. Blumberg says the investments made through his company’s South Florida Urban Initiatives Fund and New Mexico Urban Initiatives Fund, both of which are near being closed out, have performed well, delivering operating returns of 15 percent or better.

Blumberg says plans for a third urban initiatives fund, in New Jersey, fell through when Governor Jim McGreevey, with whom the fund organizers were working, unexpectedly resigned in November 2004 (after the governor admitted having an extramarital affair with a male state employee). “Given the current down cycle in residential real estate, we’re evaluating what would be the next form for a fund,” Blumberg says, noting that he remains “bullish” on this kind of investment.Chapman views better financial structures as a key to improving the quality of community development in America. When he rolls out a new fund later this year, many of his investors are expected to be “foundations, endowments, and other socially conscious organizations” comfortable with a long timeline.

A growing number of foundations are putting money from their endowments into environmentally and socially responsible real estate development. The Heron Foundation has placed $11 million (3.5 percent of its endowment) into the Bay Area and California Smart Growth Funds and the Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund, Genesis Workforce Housing Fund, and UrbanAmerica funds.

California has become a hotbed for smart growth funds, which often favor energy-efficient buildings along with urban locations near mass transit. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has invested in funds such as the Green Development Fund — which was begun with the Houston-based real estate firm Hines, for construction of LEED pre-certified office buildings — and the $676 million CIM Urban Real Estate Fund. Two of the fund management companies most active in California are Pacific Coast Capital Partners and Pacific Realty Group. Among the sponsors of such funds is the Bay Area Council, which in 2002 started the $66 million Bay Area Smart Growth Fund I for projects in or near neighborhoods of below-median income and which has since launched a second fund.

Baches is now managing partner of DPZ Pacific, a firm licensed by DPZ to produce plans, designs, and codes in Australia, New Zealand, China, and other parts of East Asia. “ He expects to start funds in that part of the world, where he thinks the prospects for New Urbanism are bright.

Sustainable Fresh Local Markets

Excerpt from New York Times

PORTLAND, Me. — Until last summer, the 136-year-old building at 28 Monument Square had been one of the most visible eyesores at the center of this energetic Atlantic Coast city. You would never know it now.

Most days, a steady stream of customers follow their noses, thirst and appetites into the building, home of the new Public Market House, where in a narrow corridor flanked by vendors they can buy fresh-cut flowers, cheese from Maine farms, a sandwich on fresh-baked bread and beer from state microbreweries.

The seven-month-old market occupies the basement and first floor of the partly renovated four-story building at the heart of downtown, which was last home to a failing surplus store.
Kris Horton, whose K. Horton Specialty Foods has become a local landmark, led an active public campaign last year to establish the new market after the Libra Foundation, a philanthropic organization in Maine, sold the last of its real estate holdings in Portland, including the larger indoor Portland Public Market, two blocks away. Ms. Horton and other food and farm-product vendors had worked in that market since 1998.

The new Public Market House, situated in a square that has supported a large outdoor seasonal farmers market for decades, has become the latest example of how fresh local food and downtown markets can stimulate activity in American cities, big and small.

Although the Public Market House is and will continue to be significantly smaller in size and sales than the old market it replaced, it will not be subsidized. Moreover, the Public Market House’s proximity to the existing outdoor Wednesday farmers’ market prompted the authors of a new economic study to propose promoting the indoor market as the centerpiece of a “market district.”

“Markets bring life to a city,” said Nelle Hanig, a business development specialist in Portland’s Economic Development Division, who helped accelerate the permit process to have the market built. “This one is already a destination. The location of the Public Market House is important to its success. It’s right in the middle of town. It’s becoming a focus of activity, and that’s always good in a city.”

The study, completed last month for the Portland Downtown District, an economic development agency, said that the Public Market House is already attracting enough shoppers to generate $1.2 million annually in sales. The building’s owner is planning to renovate the second floor to provide space for four or five more vendors, who could generate a further $1.2 million in sales.
The market district, the study said, might also include a covered outdoor market with 25 vendors on nearby Lancaster Lane, as well as producers selling goods on “day tables” in Monument Square.

The old market’s sale last August and the steady departure of vendors until its formal closing in January stirred passions throughout the city. Downtown workers and weekend shoppers from the suburbs loved the old market’s homegrown vendors and special events.

But vendors paid less than $20 a square foot to rent space in a market that cost the foundation as much as $75 a square foot, said Morris Fischer, president of CB Richard Ellis-the Boulos Company, which represented Guggenheim Real Estate, the New York investment firm that bought the market last August.

“I believe in the spirit of a public market being a community,” said Ms. Horton, while attending to early afternoon customers. “We found out that a lot of other people in Portland feel the same way.”