H&M brand COS starts to sell Kronan bikes

Just before the Easter holidays it was announced that H&M founded retail chain COS (Collection of style) will start to sell the Swedish bike Kronan at its newly opened shops in England, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Kronan bikes are based on a classic Swedish military model (they actually started once by selling from an old stock of military bikes).

Maria Brunstedt, Managing Director of Kronan comments the collaboration like this: “We have noticed increased interest from other countries, and the timeless design of our bicycle has attracted consumers from the Netherlands and Japan for some time now. Now we have matured enough to take an additional step out into the international market. We are increasing our marketing efforts and are looking forward to meeting many more quality and style-conscious Europeans.”

UniverCity's Flex Units

From : Smart Bylaws Guide – Secondary Suites – Multi-Family Flex Units

New zoning for the mixed-use development called UniverCity in Burnaby at Simon Fraser University allows suites in strata townhouses or apartments. These “multi-family flex units” are minimum 74 square metre (796.5 square feet) dwellings containing a defined area for potential rental accommodation. The potential rental must be at least 24 square metres (258.3 square feet) and not more than 35 percent of the gross floor area of the dwelling.

The Flexsuite must:

• Contain a secondary kitchen area with a compact range or microwave oven and built-in cook top, compact refrigerator, sink, counter, cabinets and venting
• Have at least one closet and bathroom with a toilet, sink and bathtub or shower
• Be wired for an independent telephone connection prior to occupancy
• Have a separate lockable entrance door providing direct access to the exterior of the dwelling unit.

Not less than ten and not more than 50 percent of units in a multi-family dwelling shall be flex units, and the dwelling must provide a common washing machine and dryer for every 20, or part thereof, multi-family flex units. If the unit is available for rent it must be registered with the student housing registry at the University.

Burnaby Zoning Bylaw No. 4742 (Consolidated to May 12, 2003) – see Section 3 Definitions and Schedule VIII – Off-Street Parking

Tokyo Green Space?

Exerpt from Multi-Housing News, By Diana Mosher

Midtown Tower, the tallest skyscraper in this city, is now open for business. The 53-story mixed-use building is the centerpiece of Tokyo Midtown, the most diverse mixed-use project to date, by Tokyo-based Mitsui Fudosan. Comprising more than one million square feet, Tokyo Midtown was designed around the concept "diversity on the green." In compliance with a local ordinance, 40 percent of the 25-acre site -- which was formerly occupied by Japan's Self-Defense Agency -- is now green space in the densely populated Roppongi neighborhood.

The 140 existing trees removed during construction have been replanted, according to specifications by landscape architect EDAW. The architectural team also includes: master architect SOM; retail designers Communication Arts Inc. and Kengo Kuma and Associates; multi-housing designers Jun Aoki & Associates; and Sakakura Associates Architects and Engineers.

According to Toshihide Ichikawa, managing officer and general manager of Mitsui Fudosan Co. Ltd.'s Tokyo Midtown Development Department, mixed use is a relatively new concept in Japan that has steadily gained acceptance over the past 10 years. The Tokyo Midtown complex is likely to advance this real estate model. In addition to three office buildings (Midtown Tower, the 24-story Midtown East, and the 13-story Midtown West), it also features 410 rental units at Tokyo Midtown Residences, 107 Oakwood Premier long-term stay/serviced residences, and the Ritz Carlton Hotel—and Park Residences at Ritz Carlton—on the top floors of the Midtown Tower.

The city within a city is also home to the city's largest medical center, a 24-hour food market, a museum designed by Tadao Ando, a convention hall, and an array of retail choices. Tokyo is known for its sophisticated and efficient rail transportation system, and Tokyo Midtown's transit-oriented design provides interesting lessons for urban planners, developers and architects.

The project is attracting international business, and all of its commercial space is fully leased, according to Toshihiko Omachi, project leader, planning and administration group, Mitsui Fudosan. Tenants include Cisco Systems Inc. and Yahoo Japan Corporation.

The design of the public areas was an important consideration in filling the space. "SOM was one of six companies we considered for master architect," added Ichikawa. "SOM proposed a very open and spacious concept with an emphasis on the plaza and square, and they incorporated the green areas into the overall design.

"The design of Midtown Tower was also critical. "If the building had been overpowering, it would have looked out of place," Ichikawa said. "This design is elegant and nicely integrated into the skyline. The sky is for everyone [to enjoy], not just for us."

According to Ichikawa, "When we procured the site, the local economy was in decline and was also feeling the effects of 9/11. We wanted to contribute to the rebuilding of Tokyo's reputation. Now, the entire world is doing better. Our exports are good. Japanese banks have completed writing off bad debt, and the Japanese economy right now is in good shape."

Mitsui Fudosan is project manager of Tokyo Midtown and a 40-percent investor with five other companies who are also business owners and have funded the project: National Mutual Insurance Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives, Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company, Sekisui House, Ltd., Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Company, and Daido Life Insurance Company. Outside Japan, Mitsui Fudosan also has a presence in New York, Hawaii, Europe, Shanghai and Singapore.

Fruitvale: Challanged TOD

from New Urban News

Fruitvale Village in Oakland, California, has become a reluctant symbol of the difficulties that transit-oriented development (TOD) can encounter.

Three years after the $100 million collection of apartments, retail, and community and professional services opened next to a Bay Area Rapid Transit station in the Fruitvale neighborhood, four of its 23 retail spaces remain empty. Slowness in filling the stores has been a source of frustration for the Unity Council, which sponsored the project.

The slowness has given developers and transit specialists yet another case to cite when cautioning about putting large volumes of retail space in TOD projects — at least in unproven locations. Dan Parolek, a principal at Opticos Design in Berkeley, says a developer at the Pleasant Hill BART station in Contra Costa County tried to use the example of Fruitvale “as the reason why they should do very little retail within the project plan.”

Fruitvale’s problems do not seem insurmountable — the vacancies are now on the way to being filled, says Jeff Pace, Unity Council’s vice president of finance and business opportunities. But they have sparked discussion about how much spending commuters can be counted on to do in TOD projects. They have also highlighted the need for effective parking strategies.

Pace, who joined Unity Council in 2004, after the retail problems emerged, says Fruitvale Village has been a huge success in most respects. The 3.7-acre development is now a vital center for its predominantly Latino section of Oakland. The Village’s 114,000 square feet of office, professional, and community space include a public library, a Head Start program, a community-based medical clinic, a children’s counseling clinic, and a senior center, as well as the Council’s headquarters. The project’s 47 apartments, ten of them designated “affordable,” rented quickly and have remained in demand.

Jeff Ordway, manager of property development for BART, credits the Council with helping to strengthen International Boulevard, an old commercial corridor nearby. Retail buildings on International “went from 40 percent vacancy in 2000 to less than 5 percent in 2004,” he notes.The one blot on Fruitvale’s achievement is the tortoise-like progress in filling the 40,000 square feet of retail. Some observers fault the design, pointing out that the stores are arranged along a pedestrian plaza — one that the station’s 6,500 daily commuters have no need to traverse. BART more or less mandated that the main commuter parking garage be built where it would create a short and direct route between commuters’ cars and the station, says Pace, noting, “Pedestrians getting out of their cars have no natural incentive to walk through the retail.”

Parolek says that placing the retail along a pedestrian-only plaza and then converting a city street between the plaza and International Boulevard into a pedestrian-only passage probably harmed the retail by making it harder for motorists to become familiar with the Village’s offerings.

Unity Council, like many nonprofit organizations with a social mission, was inexperienced at managing a retail center, and made mistakes in signing up merchants. National retailers were turned away while independent local merchants were favored. A locals-first policy can, of course, enhance local character. In Fruitvale, though, it led to selecting some merchants who were inexperienced and undercapitalized — unable to survive when pedestrian traffic fell short of expectations. “We turned away Starbucks twice,” says Pace. “That’s a really stupid thing to do.”

The Council did not obtain adequate legal protections. Its standard lease lacked a “going dark” clause, which would have stipulated that if a tenant did not get its business operating by a certain date, the agreement would terminate. “We have someone who has been paying rent for 21 months and is still not open,” Pace acknowledges. That business is now expected to open late this year. Leases contained no ban on retailers having other locations close by. “A record store had one store a block and a half away; they couldn’t make them both work,” says Pace, who is articulate and candid on what to do and what not to do.

FINDING REMEDIES
The Council has sharpened its leasing strategy in the past two years, and is now giving people more reasons for exploring the plaza. “We’ve been running a farmers’ market right in front of the BART patrons,” Pace says. “Our plan is to extend it through the main Fruitvale plaza.” In the summer, an outdoor cinema operates on Friday evenings in the plaza. “First Thursdays,” an event featuring food and mariachi music, operated until early October and will return in the spring.

The Council has introduced seating, better lighting, and other improvements to the passage from the plaza to International Boulevard. A public market will soon occupy one of the buildings along the passage, and there will be places for permanent outdoor stalls as well as stalls that can be assembled and disassembled each day, Pace says. Small merchants will sell arts and crafts and handmade foods such as tortillas.

At the end of October, negotiations were under way to fill the plaza’s four remaining vacancies. “We think we’re really turning the corner,” he says. Architect Ernesto Vasquez, a principal in McLarand, Vasquez, Emsiek & Partners, involved in the project for years, says Fruitvale Village is becoming a destination for people seeking Latino products and services. He urges developers: “Be patient; you need to avoid being rushed into getting tenants, and not getting the right tenants.” Delaying the retail component of a project or building it in phases may reduce the risk of its failing. Vasquez thinks conditions at Fruitvale will improve when the project’s second phase, containing approximately 300 to 450 housing units, is built.

“Retail is the Achilles’ heel of TODs,” warns Richard Cervero, a transportation specialist who teaches at Berkeley. “If not done right, it can really stigmatize a development as a loser.” Richard Willson, a Cal Poly Pomona planning professor who has advised BART on parking policy, says, “Among developers, I find a bit of naiveté about how people use transit facilities.” They often don’t realize that many commuters rush through, not buying much, Willson says. Ordway says commuters generally constitute a tertiary market — less important than the people who live in the surrounding community and individuals who live or work in the project area.Ordway says developers would be wise to study a TOD project that Calthorpe Associates was involved in planning next to a BART station in Richmond, north of Berkeley. There, buildings along a pathway to the station were constructed so they could start as wholly residential and be converted to live/work — with street-level offices or retail — after the location proves itself.

RECONSIDERING PARKING
BART has abandoned its policy of providing free parking at many of its East Bay stations. BART has also modified its requirement that when parking lots at a station are built upon, an equal number of new parking spaces must be provided, typically in garages or decks. The changes bode well for future TOD, by eliminating major financial hurdles.

Patrick Siegman at Nelson\Nygaard consultants in San Francisco, says the next step should be the establishment, by municipalities, of “parking benefit districts” in neighborhoods around transit stations. Commuters could pay to use designated on-street spaces. The revenue would be devoted to public improvements desired by the neighborhood, such as better sidewalks, lighting, and landscaping. “At $4 each for 250 cars, you’d have $1,000 a day in revenue to spruce up the neighborhood,” Siegman calculates. Parking benefit districts are being considered at two Oakland stations, Ordway says.Despite challenges, TOD is gaining momentum. On land owned by BART, nearly $2 billion of capital has already been invested in TOD or is in process or in negotiations, according to Ordway. At Pleasant Hill, which contains substantial housing and employment, approximately 40,000 square feet of space is expected to be available for retail. “It’s not just pure retail,” Parolek emphasizes. “It’s allowed to be used for professional services such as a dentist or optometrist.”

Bohemian today, high-rent tomorrow

Excerpts from BusinessWeek online By Maya Roney

Want to know where a great place to invest in real estate will be five or 10 years from now? Look at where artists are living now.

Sociologists and policymakers have long been touting art and culture as the cure-all to economically depressed neighborhoods, cities, and regions. The reason? It has been proven that artists—defined as self-employed visual artists, actors, musicians, writers, etc.—can stimulate local economies in a number of ways.

Artists are often an early sign of neighborhood gentrification. "Artists are the advance guard of what's hip and cool," says Bert Sperling, founder and president of Portland (Ore.)-based Sperling's Best Places and compiler of BusinessWeek.com's list of the Best Places for Artists in America.

Creativity Leads to Growth
Artists, because of their typically lower incomes, usually need to seek out less expensive, developing neighborhoods where they can afford the rent. But because of their creativity they are able to fix up these areas, eventually attracting hip boutiques, galleries, and restaurants. Not all artists are starving. While some are able to achieve success writing, acting, painting, or dancing, others get tired of scraping by as waiters or bartenders and sometimes apply their abilities in more entrepreneurial ways.

Anne Markusen, an economist and professor at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and a leading researcher on the effects of the arts on regional economics, once profiled an abstract painter whose work is now displayed on ceilings and in MRI machines in hospitals across the country. In Markusen's research, artists have also been found to stimulate innovation on the part of their suppliers. A painter may need a certain type of frame that is not manufactured, forcing the frame maker to create a new design that happens to also work well for other artists.

But Markusen also maintains that artists bring more than culture to a community. "Businesses don't often understand the extent to which art affects them," Markusen says. "[Artists] are just as important as science and technology companies."

Nonarts businesses also use artist contractors to improve product design, help with marketing, or even use dramatic theory to solve employee relationship issues. Being a cultural center also helps local businesses attract employees who want to be able to regularly go to the ballet or the theater, hear authors read from their latest books, or attend art gallery openings.

Follow the Money
Due to the individual nature and economics of their work, artists are also some of the most itinerant professionals out there. When relocating, they often look for cities and towns that already have high concentrations of artists and a young, racially and ethnically diverse population. The presence of a nurturing art community in the form of art societies and centers is also essential, especially to young artists.

A low cost of living is important, but many artists make financial sacrifices to live near an art-rich urban center or live in a cheaper neighborhood. Few struggling artists can afford to live in neighborhoods like New York's SoHo and Greenwich Village, or even Williamsburg, which once were artistic havens before attracting wealthier residents. Now you are more likely to find New York-based artists in the Bronx, Brooklyn, or even Philadelphia.

In addition to the presence of like-minded individuals, proximity to wealth is also important. The fact of the matter is that artists can seldom earn a living, let alone become rich, selling to other artists. They need wealthy benefactors to buy their paintings or support their local symphony, which explains why each of the places in the U.S. that we found to be the best for artists are in or located near centers of wealth. Los Angeles, No. 1 on our list, is most commonly associated with the film industry. While the city provides great opportunities for actors and directors, there are equally rich prospects for musicians, artists, writers, and dancers. Of course, the majority of these people can't afford to live in Beverly Hills—at least not until they get their big break—and instead opt for more affordable digs in areas like Echo Park.

Lifestyle Centers & European Roots

Exerpt from Good Malls and Bad Cities by Philip Nobel

There’s really nothing wrong with Santana Row. There should be, of course; we’ve all been bred to hate malls, and what could be more hateful than a mall masquerading as a chic, vaguely European town? Taking advantage of the sun in San Jose (the more or less real place it is situated in), the mall does away with interiority, offering shoppers an artfully paved and fountained plaza, arcaded sidewalks, live music, “street food,” and oversize chess in a shaded square—all to differentiate yet another collection of shops from the market. Crate and Bar­rel, Design Within Reach, and the Container Store anchor one end of the neighborhood, luring you with the promise of a design-rich life.

Santana Row has a hotel too—a very good one—right on the main drag, and walking out the huge stone portal of the front door at night, seeing the sidewalk cafés packed under the brick arches and the lovers all atangle at the glass-and-steel tables, shopping bags at their feet, you might be drawn in for a second, overlooking the uniform signage, the uniformed guards, the too feeble stream of traffic in the well-controlled quasi-public street, and the way everything conspires to keep the experience free of distracting surprise. You can even live there. Above the main street and ringing the plaza are flats and town houses, accessible through their own garages and concealing their own swimming pools but opening out to the little shopping city with cute Juliet balconies. “Call it energy, call it charisma, call it style & substance,” the marketing copy reads. “Santana Row has a certain something that is impervious to time.”

There’s really nothing wrong with Easton Town Center either. It’s actually sort of charming the way the planners of this mega-mall in Columbus, Ohio—again seeking that elusive saturated-market edge—have modeled the thing after an ideal American courthouse square. It’s a true Midwestern civic typology, missing only the civic, but there’s an Apple Store and a place for the kids to play outside; it’s not at all a bad place to kill a few hours between the airport and your next pilgrimage to the Wexner Center.

At Easton Town Center the mall-planning protocols are retained to a much greater degree than at Santana Row (there’s a proper interior, modeled incongruously after a Milanese arcade, and you’re glad for it when it sleets). But there is still that salutory urge to make a center, even to flatter the “consumer” by advertising it as such; and judging by the foot traffic around its signature square one winter weekday last year, it works. As at the more upscale Santana Row, the mall is surrounded by housing, though not in the complex. On the access roads all around, there are acres of low town-house blocks that reminded me of similar swaths near Harvard Square. You can live close to other people, and if you can’t quite abandon your car, it would be possible at least to leave your SUV in one of the shared garages when you scamper across the street to go to Johnny Rockets. You could even walk to a movie theater.

It was visiting those two sprawl-patching hot spots within a few months last year that began to erode my knee-jerk aversion to malls: fake places, captive minds, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. I still feel like it’s the end of the world when I see a shopping center replace the exterior life of a city—the beautiful, well-scaled, well-heeled streets of Providence, Rhode Island, may never recover from the vampire of Providence Place—but in San Jose and exurban Ohio, there is scarcely a center to mourn, and the malliers should be credited for responding to a human urge that looks like it will easily survive the decentralizing effects of multiuser gaming and Netflix.

People like to gather, and not just to shop. For many years I liked to think that it was in search of those extracommercial urban moments that Americans went to Europe in such numbers: a stroll on cobbles, a chance crepe stand or busker, the feel of being in a mass. But there’s a predictable feel to those places these days that rivals the formula of the American mall. Think of the center of any European city: the train station lets out at one end of the pedestrian-only zone, chain stores are everywhere, the unified street furniture and signage announce an advanced state of central control. Parking is underground, out of sight. Events are known, programmed, and disturbances of the peace are few. Though you’re still free to riot after a soccer match.

In terms of land use, it’s preferable to paving the orchards or cornfields to make more sprawl (even in the form of little downtowns), but experientially the zentrum and the shopping center are fast converging. You scan the shop windows as you wander toward the city’s central point—a clock, a fountain, a bridge—just as you would gravitate toward the food court or art object at the center of some old-school mall. Walking around the center of Munich for several days last winter, I found it increasingly untenable to prefer one form of regulated commercial experience to another, to damn the American solution and reflexively embrace the European. The city fathers had even installed an ice rink at the gate of the main walking street, just as shrewd mall-makers from Edmonton to Dallas have done since the 1980s.

With free speech (thriving elsewhere) taken out of the equation, with all arguments based on “authenticity” banished to the postmodern echo chamber, with the European models of urbanity themselves sinking into the for­mulaic banal, places like Santana Row and Easton Town Center look like unadulterated good news—little training grounds for the experience of being with lots of other people on a street at the same time. That alone can build civic health. And subversion is only a wireless connection away.

Eco Boulevard

Excerpt from Brand Avenue

Along a new main thoroughfare in the Madrid suburb of Vallecas, ingenious "air trees" made of recycled gasworks are growing.

Equal parts garden folly, architectural icon, town square, and adaptive reuse, the enclosures are the result of a competition won by Madrid design firm ecosistemaurbano:
Ecosistemaurbano were the winners, having come up with a dynamic and futuristic answer to the two goals specified by the competition regarding the main street of Vallecas: to generate social activity and adapt an open space from the bioclimatic point of view. The architects resorted to urgent action with the aim of creating a sort of linear wood at the centre of the boulevard – a green belt of compact vegetation to be grown in the next 15 to 20 years. In the middle of a young tree plantation along the boulevard, they placed three mock gasworks. These constructions will act as focal points for the social life of the new urban settlement, which to date has no public meeting places. At the base of the three so-called “air trees”, each with a diameter of about 20 metres, a slight hollow will accommodate the normal activities of an urban park.
One has been built thus far. Two more are soon to follow.

Inside, each air tree is distinct: the first air tree has "columns of air" on the outside and climbing vines on the inside; the second will gradually be encased in vines on both exterior and interior surfaces; a third will feature vegetation on the exterior and a projection wall on the interior--a 360-degree theater for public use.

The air trees are also energy independent, offering solar-powered cooling in addition to shade:
The first air tree is the result of 16 hemicycles arranged in a circle, covered with a thermal fabric and supported by a lightweight, easily assembled frame, which is identical for the three large “dynamos”. In terms of energy these theatrical scaffoldings are self-sufficient, relying on a system of photovoltaic solar collection. An evaporation and transpiration plant has been devised for the air conditioning of these open spaces, which are situated in a zone that suffers from very high temperatures in summer. Water pumped into tanks at the top of the cylinders will be redistributed in the lower layers, where it will be vaporised. This will lower temperatures by eight to ten degrees in the small circular spaces, thus making them very pleasant places in which to relax.

Workforce Housing

exerpts from Hernando Today, March 13, 2007, Michael D. Bates

Most people are familiar with affordable housing, which the federal government defines as housing that costs no more than 30 percent of a household's monthly income. Such housing also comes with state guidelines. But workforce housing is a relatively new animal whose description varies depending on who you talk to.

The federal Urban Land Institute (ULI) defines it as housing that is affordable to those between 60 and 120 percent of the area's median income. Many households in this group do not qualify for federal programs, yet do not have enough income for adequate housing, according to the ULI.

Nicholas Nicholson, president of Nicholson Engineering Associates, said his idea of workforce housing is a household that earns $45,000 annually or less, which includes teachers, firefighters, police officers and service-related workers. These people don't make the kind of money to afford $200,000-plus homes or homes on the scale of Glen Lakes or the proposed Hickory Hill.

But whatever they call them, county commissioners have made it clear they support developers' plans to build homes that meet more realistic budgetary constraints of the citizens. You need houses for all kinds of people on all kinds of income levels, County Commissioner Rose Rocco said.

Often, there is a death in the family, and the surviving spouse is forced to downsize because of income restraints, she said. Other candidates for these types of homes are older couples who don't want the hassles of yard maintenance or empty nesters who now find they don't need large, expensive homes, she said. These types of homes also provide a springboard for couples to move up in the future, she said. You want to be able to see your young couples, those who can't afford to go into a house at this point in time, and give them a nice place to live that is within their income range, she said. There isn't a whole lot out there like that now.

"Neighborly" Housing

By Kelly Sheehan, Multi Housing News

Chicago residents who buy housing in low-income neighborhoods prefer homes that are designed to be part of their communities and not insolated from them, according to a new report by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a think-tank based in Cambridge, Mass., funded the year-long study.

"I'm interested in neighborhood revitalization and I study the way that the design of housing connects or doesn't connect to surrounding communities," Brent Ryan, UIC assistant professor of urban planning and policy, told MHN. "Since there is so much housing being constructed in Chicago right now, we asked the question, 'Does the design of new urban developments popping up around the city affect the value of housing?' As it turns out, it does."

Ryan and Rachel Weber, a fellow UIC associate professor of urban planning and policy, analyzed assessed values of housing built between 1993 and 2003 in parts of Bronzeville, Bucktown, East Garfield Park, Lawndales, Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park. Every census tract in the analysis had a poverty rate of at least 20 percent in 1990, according to federal standards.

Buyers are willing to pay 33 to 50 percent more for units in small multifamily buildings or single-family homes with entrances that face the street and parking that faces the rear, according to the report. Buyers also favor relatively short setbacks from the street and designs similar to those used for neighboring buildings.

"The value differential implies that buyers of these homes recognize the connections of this housing to the neighborhoods, whether those connections are physical, social or economic," Ryan said. "This might be expected in higher-income neighborhoods, but it’s more surprising in low-income neighborhoods, given that the literature portrays an overriding concern for personal and property security."

Ryan and Weber defined three basic housing design models common to many U.S. cities. They are:


Infill , or housing built on scattered individual lots by multiple developers, which is visually in keeping with surrounding housing. Infill is common in older neighborhoods where houses were demolished one at a time due to deterioration and arson, such as Bronzeville, East Garfield Park, Humboldt Park and North Kenwood.

Traditional neighborhood development, or large planned communities that maintain the neighborhood’s street grid, which face the street and are relatively close to it. They do not have rear parking. An example is North Town Village on the Near North Side.

Enclave or self-contained complexes on large sites, often behind a gate or wall, which are consciously separated from their surroundings.

Many enclaves and traditional neighborhood developments are built on former industrial or institutional sites. Homan Square in Lawndale and Picardy Place in North Center are enclaves. Ryan and Weber determined that infill housing had the highest assessed values. Units in traditional neighborhood developments were assessed only slightly higher than those in enclaves. Values were lowest in enclave or traditional developments with private roadways and entrances facing private spaces. Ryan and Weber suggested that some buyers might associate the size, homogeneity and isolation of these buildings with suburban housing or 20th-century public housing. The study indicated that buyers can be swayed toward enclave or traditional developments by convenient parking in front of or attached to their homes, as well as landscaping that forms a buffer between units and streets.

Ryan told MHN that he lives in a high-rise building in Chicago because he is interested in being a part of the surrounding community. "Our study finds that other people value housing that is integrated into the community as well," he said. "People aren't moving to Chicago to live in a development that could be found in the suburbs--they're moving here to be involved in all that the city has to offer. We were surprised to find that this translated into economic value."

Weber said that the research team found that the cost per unit might be higher to build infill housing, but the cost to build enclaves also can be pushed higher because of the need for private roadways and landscaping. "

The study should be reassuring to urbanists who believe that the best way to revitalize urban neighborhoods is to respect and augment existing places rather than attempt to transform them into another type of neighborhood entirely," Ryan said.

Ryan is currently working to secure funding for a new study that will examine the spillover effects of the design of 800 to 1,200 new urban developments. "We want to look into how the design of these new urban developments affect the housing around them," he said.

5 Sustainable Reuse Principles

by Alan Mallach, Research Director, National Housing Institute

REUSE PRINCIPLE 1: The ultimate goal of all reuse strategies is the reuse of vacant properties in ways that are appropriate and sustainable

• Appropriate for the site and area, taking into account redevelopment plans and long term strategies for the area. It means not only that the land use is appropriate, but that the development or building is designed and sited so that it improves the area or reinforces its positive features, such as architectural or historic character
• Sustainable in that it enhances the long-term social, economic and physical vitality of the community, be it a block, a neighborhood, or the city as a whole.

REUSE PRINCIPLE 2: Sound reuse strategies must be based on an understanding of the market, and must be responsive to the market

• Understand how the market works in the community and region
• Identify market strengths and weaknesses in your neighborhood and city – strengths can be:
  · A major institution, such as a university or medical center
  · A historic district, or an area with attractive and undervalued houses
  · A major park, or water body
  · An ethnic neighborhood, or a cluster of stores and restaurants
  · Proximity to downtown, or to a public transit hub
• Identify target markets and opportunities :
  · People who live elsewhere in the region
  · People who are moving into the region from outside the area
  · People who live in the community – never underestimate the importance of the people who are already in the community to drive future revitalization
• Develop strategies based on target markets and market opportunities
• Design incentives to stimulate – not replace – the market
• The most effective incentives are those that leverage private investment by filling the market gap between the cost of creating the opportunity and its resulting market value.

REUSE PRINCIPLE 3: Sound reuse strategies should be grounded in a vision of the community’s future, and based on well-grounded plans designed to make that future happen.

• Create a vision for the future of the city and each neighborhood
• Take planning seriously
• A plan is more than pretty pictures – design the plan to serve as a guide for implementation and action
• Engage everyone in the planning process, particularly the residents of the area to be redeveloped – not as a pro forma matter, but meaningfully
• Follow the plan – not slavishly, but seriously – treat it as the road map to the future.
• Evaluate the plan regularly – if it’s working, keep going – if not, change it.

REUSE PRINCIPLE 4: Sites should be reused in ways that make the not just the property, but the entire community a better place

• Reuse decisions must be based on sound community design principles
• Respect the past – new development of vacant sites should fit harmoniously with the existing fabric of a community
• Develop and enforce design standards to ensure that new development is compatible and consistent
• Recognize the strengths of urban neighborhoods, and reinforce them through reuse of vacant properties
• Create green neighborhoods – use vacant properties to create open spaces

REUSE PRINCIPLE 5: Within the city and neighborhood framework, specific decisions about reuse of specific sites should be rational ones, based on specific reuse criteria:

• Is the proposed reuse consistent with the long term vision and with the plans that have been adopted to further that vision?
• Does the proposed reuse further specific citywide policy goals, such as creating jobs or increasing the homeownership rate?
• Does the proposed reuse respond to preferences and desires of the residents of the community, such as a need for more affordable – or for move-up – housing, or better neighborhood-scale shopping?
• Does the proposed reuse reflect present or anticipated future market demand?
• Is the proposed reuse responsible, in terms of present and future public sector cost and the availability of resources?

Considerations for Live-Work Space

by Zimmerman Volk

“Live-work” is a unit or building type that has been designed to accommodate non-residential
uses in addition to, or combined with living quarters. Live-work units are commonly
proposed in new traditional neighborhoods or new town centers, particularly as a transition
from residential to commercial areas or as a means of introducing small-scale retail.
The growing number of home-based businesses in the United States (reported in 1997 as four
million) is often cited as a justification for live-work. However, there is an important
distinction between a “home-based business” and a “business-based home.” Most home-based
businesses can be accommodated in almost any kind of dwelling unit. In contrast, the
business-based home is a true live-work unit: a dwelling unit with a configuration that is
influenced or even dictated by the non-residential activities.
Four live-work development considerations:

1. Flexibility
Live-work units should be flexible in order to respond to economic, social and technological
changes over time. The unit configuration must also be flexible in order to comply with the
requirements of the Fair Housing Amendments Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

2. Non-restrictive zoning
Compatible uses (retail, office, residential) should be permitted on blocks in and surrounding
the neighborhood center, regardless of unit configuration.

3. Tenure
Rental live-work units are absorbed faster than for-sale. The financial commitment of a lease
is small and of relatively short duration compared with a mortgage. A for-sale live-work unit
represents an opportunity for the small investor: a resident investor can lease the flex space for
residential, retail or office use; a non-resident investor can lease both the main residential space
and the flex space.

4. Timing
Live-work is not exempt from normal commercial real estate dynamics. In new
neighborhoods, live-work should be one of the later building types to be introduced, not the
first. It is easier to capture the full value and appeal of live-work units in locations where the
benefits of traditional neighborhoods are readily apparent.

Sydney's Greenest Building

by Jorge

30 Bond
What’s more impressive than a building design that aims to reduce its greenhouse emissions to a 5 Star Australian Building Greenhouse Rating benchmark, which is the approximate equivalent to that of a Gold LEED greenhouse certification level? How about one which has proven to meet its target and improves on it. This is the case of the building known as 30 The Bond located at Hickson Road in Sydney.

When Lend Lease, its builder and current owner decided to create its new headquarters in Sydney it decided to hold numerous employee workshops to determine what they believed were the important priorities. Those priorities were reduction in pollutants, increase in environment quality, water management (as Australia has now been in what seems a permanent drought), waste management and a green area for them to enjoy. All of this resulted in an extremely well designed commercial building.

Built over the old contaminated gasworks site, which had to be restored, 30 The Bond was the first building in Australia to achieve the rating of 5 stars ABGR, with a certified emission that resulted in over a 20% reduction over the already stringent targets set by its initial 5 star design commitment, as well as receiving a 5 star Green Star - office as built rating from the Australian Green Building Council . It achieved this rating by using chilled beams (a first in Australia), wintergarden rooms and automatically controlled external shades to keep the heat out as well as providing external views to 60% of its occupants. It also contains low VOC carpets and paints, a roof garden with native plants and timber decking from sustainable sources. Water saving fittings as well as a sub-metering system to allow for any leak detection sealed the deal.

And while all of that is important, what we like here at Inhabitat is when we can achieve all this with style, and this building does it in droves. When entering the building you cannot help to notice the exposed four-storey sandstone wall that serves as one wall of the atrium. Aside from being a reminder of the site’s history, as it was originally cut by convicts early in Sydney’s history, it also serves as insulation as well as providing natural cooling to the atrium.
The 9 storey building was designed by PTW Architects (who we recentally raved about for their “Bubble Building”) in conjunction with WHO interior architecture and Bovis Lend Lease.

Award Winning Sustainable Design

by Evelyn

Collaborative Designworks in Houston, Texas proves that sustainable design practices can lead to award-winning architecture. Their 505 Housing was recently one of the 19 recipients of the American Institute of Architect’s (AIA) 2007 Housing Awards, winning 1st prize in the One-and Two-Family Production Homes category. Now in its seventh year, the award recognizes the best of the best in housing design while promoting the importance of housing as “a necessity of life, a sanctuary for the human spirit, and a valuable national resource.”

The 505 incorporates 4 units on a site eligible to hold 5, allowing space for yards and optimum utilization of daylight due to the reduction of shared walls. Each window was placed to maximize views, let in a considerable amount of daylight, maintain each unit’s individual privacy, and provide natural cross-ventilation. Other sustainable ideas deployed in the design of The 505 include permeable ground coverings, stack-vented rain-screens on the east and west facades, radiant barrier roofing, recycled/sustainable materials and finishes, tank-less water heaters, and high-efficiency appliances and equipment.

Bodega-Innovative Retail

If you’re starting a new independent clothing store in Boston’s typically fashion-challenged environs, you’d probably take out an ad to promote your grand opening and give away cheap-but-seemingly-generous swag to the first days’ customers. But if you’re opening a high-end-streetwear boutique meant to become a global destination and you have a clue about the Internet-hyped urban market, you’d instead keep your store on the down low, build the environment into something that’s more like a living-art installation than like a straight-product shill, and wait for the customers to come to you.

Bodega’s retail concept is a stroke of genius: one of the birthplaces of hip-hop/graffiti/sneaker/urban culture is the corner store. Even one of Adidas’s most recent marketing stunts for its relaunched early-’80s product line Adicolor was to randomly display seven individual shoe samples in various New York corner stores. So while there are a couple of “magical” secrets about the place that its inventive owners are still trying to keep hush-hush, Bodega is not only designed to convert into an art gallery, but there’s also an awesome fully functional bodega on site, replete with grape sodas, candy necklaces, and ceiling tiles that have had coffee poured on them to mimic water stains. Owner Mak says with a smirk, “We wanted to get flytraps that already had flies in it and mice traps that had mice in it.”

In truth, Bodega is innovative not only for Boston, but for retail. “Will Bostonians really get it? That’s not really our aim,” says Mak. “This is a global market. But we’d like to put a flag in the sand and be like, there’s really good stuff coming out of Boston. SoHo isn’t the only scene on earth.”

"Place-making" Arizona Style

Tempe officials hope to make downtown a "place" - a vibrant hub of pedestrian activity engulfing Papago Park, the Mill Avenue District and Tempe Town Lake.

To do that, Tempe needs a seamless connection of pedestrian-friendly roads and walkways throughout the region. It needs to cluster landmarks, destinations and icons close together, then build attractive passageways between them, Phil Myrick, vice president of Project for Public Spaces, said at a meeting Monday.

"When you push them together, it makes more energy," Myrick said. "There should be so many things to do that everybody in the community has the opportunity to go there and spend hours."
Tempe hired the New York-based nonprofit consulting organization to help bring people to downtown Tempe landmarks.

Through town hall meetings and volunteer data collectors, including more than 100 ASU students, the consultants are identifying the key destinations that can become "places."
Myrick calls his project "placemaking" - turning a neighborhood, city or destination from somewhere people can't wait to get out of to somewhere they never want to leave."
[Tempe has] all the elements, but they're not organized in a way that makes sense," Myrick told a joint meeting that included the Tempe City Council and the boards of directors from the Tempe Chamber of Commerce, Tempe Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Downtown Tempe Community.

He then presented a preliminary plan to link Tempe's landmarks and destinations in a way that would entice pedestrians to stop and spend time instead of passing through.
"We can't leave it to the private sector to come up with a vision for this lake," Myrick said. "It's just not going to happen."

City staff, volunteers and ASU planning students combed Mill Avenue and other locations, asking questions and gathering data to pinpoint the most popular destinations, their strengths and their shortcomings, said Eric Hansen, a Tempe planner who has been working on the project

Role of arts in urban revitalization

Below is an excerpt of a talk given at The Peabody Institute Forum. Speakers included Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Dr. William Brody, President of Johns Hopkins University,Adam Gordon, Editor-in-chief of The Next American City.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg:
We’re here to consider the role of arts in urban revitalization. Probably can’t have a better example of that than the Peabody campus. It’s right in the middle of Baltimore. It’s not quite as famous as Camden Yards, but it is getting there.

Arts and arts organizations seriously are a vital component of a city’s cultural life, particularly for the diverse communities that live there. They are also magnets for people that come from outside: tourists, of course, but also talented and ambitious dreamers.

Art defines our lives. Art pumps us up and makes us complete and gives us something to put a smile on our faces about, as well as gets the brain cells to keep going. When you talk about the pulse of the city, in many ways you really are talking about the artists that live there and the artists that work there. Art is one of the ways in which ethnic communities express themselves. Not everybody has had the kind of education that lets them write well. There are people who just instinctively have the ability to communicate in other ways. I think that great cities recognize this.

Art is about economics as well. I don’t think there’s any question why New York City’s tourism is the way it is. I was with a very well known clothes designer last night at dinner, and he had a friend coming to town who said, “Can you get me a hotel room?” He said both he and his secretary dialed for an hour before they finally found one room. New York City is full, and the reason the hotels are full, the reason the tourists come there, is because they want to see the museums, the performing arts centers–the tiny museums and not just the big ones. Art brings in millions and millions of dollars to any city. It transforms whole neighborhoods.

One of the great challenges we have is to bring artists into communities that are down on their heels and have the artists transform the communities–and that works–but as Mayor O’Malley knows, the great challenge is how do you keep it so the artists are able to live there as these neighborhoods become magnets and more and more people want to move in and drive the starving artists out. There’s no easy answer to that. What is clear is that culture changes neighborhoods, and that all of these things take money to do. There’s no question the arts have to be supported. They have to be supported by private philanthropy as well as public philanthropy. Public philanthropy is great, but it’s private philanthropy that really lets people be totally creative. If we didn’t have private philanthropy we’d be back in the old masters days. We certainly never would have had something as blasphemous as impressionism. Medicine–the same thing is true: you would never try anything new because the public’s money can’t do that.

I think the stakes are very high. If you falter in your community or in your city and you walk away from the arts, it can be generations before you can turn that around. Once it becomes unfashionable to go someplace it stays unfashionable for a long time. It is also a very competitive world. Mayor O’Malley has got to get people to move here; Mayor Bloomberg’s got to get people to move to New York. People have choices today that they never had before.

Low-Rise High Density Housing

Borneo Sporenburg is one of the most celebrated contemporary examples of dense urban housing within a Western European context. It caters both to the aspirations of middle-class urban dwellers and to a social agenda for regeneration and community renewal.

Borneo Sporenburg was a dock area on the outskirts of Amsterdam serving trade with Holland’s colonies in the East. As part of the phased regeneration of these now disused areas, a residential brief of 2500 dwellings was set for this zone, dictating a high density of housing, despite the predominant market demand for a suburban self-contained house. The development demonstrates that family housing is not incompatible with dense urban areas. It reverses the predominant social trend towards a dense urban core inhabited by childless couples, singles and the extremes of high and low income, and a suburban fringe occupied by middle-class families.

Concept and method
West 8’s masterplan was based on a new approach towards the familiar demands of single-family houses – generous private outdoor space, a secure parking space, safety and individuality. Usually associated with a suburban and low-density form, West 8 created a framework for high-density living that nevertheless satisfied all the demands of a conventional household. It proposed a typology that was also reassuringly reminiscent of historical models in street layout and proportion. West 8’s masterplan set strict yet imaginative rules for the development including guidelines for streetscape, parking, private open space, storey height and plot width. West 8 also directly designed several landscape features, such as the three steel footbridges.

Volkshaus

Devised by a design group called Landship, (see also Be-haus, A-Kit, and Oji-Group) the Volkshaus concept was intended as a means to realize the simple practicality embodied by the Volkswagen Beetle in a DIY home building system. Bearing some characteristics of a plug-in architecture platform, it uses a system which combines 4x9.5" (105x240mm) wood beams and 4x4" posts connected with a concealed modular steel joint and modular floor, roof, and prefabricated insulated wall panels which nail into place on the post and beam frame. The system integrates both Japanese and western styles of design with modern materials and new eco-sensible systems for energy and climate control, such as a roof trombe wall style heat collector, a roof-peak passive ventilator system, and integrated photovoltaic panels. It has so far been used for about 2000 homes in Japan and is offered in a variety of kits from a community of companies specializing in making products for it. Unfortunately, the exchange rates and the fact that almost all building lumber in Japan is imported makes the cost of importing these kits to the US unattainable.

Crime Prevention Through Design

By Diane Zahm

Our urban neighborhoods are suffering from years of suburban development, which has destroyed their physical, economic and social fabric, and left it torn and frayed. In some neighborhoods this process has created an urban wasteland of vacant lots, buildings, streets and sidewalks that have become havens for crime. It is these vacancies—or voids—that are now the most problematic. Abandoned buildings serve as residences for drug users and prostitutes. Vacant lots full of trash and weeds attract homeless persons or become the local hangout for gang members. Vacated or unused alleys function as a street network for drug dealers.

In many ways, land-use policies exacerbate the problem. Long ago, in an effort to promote economic development, downtown neighborhoods were rezoned for commercial or industrial uses, eliminating any opportunity for ongoing investment in residential or mixed-use development. Instead, property ownership became highly speculative. Nonresident investors accumulated parcels for profit, all the while renting to tenants who themselves lacked any emotional investment in the neighborhood. Real property tax revenues dried up; so did neighborhood support services. Grocery stores, pharmacies, department stores, banks, doctors and dentists—all moved to the suburbs. But this was not just a loss of residents or taxes or services; the process destroyed the dynamic mix of uses and activities that made urban neighborhoods vibrant and contributed to community safety and security.

Studies show that crime occurs most frequently in those places without observers or guardians; in other words, in the voids. Many years ago Jane Jacobs, in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, offered observations regarding those elements that contribute to a safe and healthy urban neighborhood. Among them are a mix of uses, clearly defined public and private spaces, 24-hour activity, eyes on the street, adequate lighting, uniform setbacks, architectural variety and short blocks. Many planners and designers took Jacobs' insights as a wake-up call, but were undeterred by her disdain for the "doctrine of salvation by bricks." Their new plans called for mixed uses, uniform setbacks and other important physical elements without considering the extent to which residents, property owners, business managers, visitors and others must be engaged in order for a neighborhood to be truly safe. For what good is a mix of uses if the activity they generate never attracts people who care about the neighborhood around them, who pick up litter and scrub off graffiti and report drug dealing? Without them the neighborhood is also without the observers or guardians who are so critical to safety and security, a need that cannot be filled by police or private security.

Traditional neighborhood development represents an important step toward safer, more secure urban neighborhoods. It begins by mending the physical and economic fabric of the neighborhood, by filling the voids left by vacant lots, buildings and alleyways. Open spaces, then, are no longer merely voids, but carefully located and designed streets, walks, yards and parks that knit together the uses and activities that surround them. Traditional neighborhood development has the potential to re-establish the social network of the neighborhood as well. Of course, traditional neighborhood development cannot guarantee "community," but it can provide a dynamic and attractive mix of uses, with lot sizes, building scales and floor plans that reflect contemporary lifestyles. If traditional neighborhood development is successful, no space or place in the neighborhood will be without a guardian or owner, someone who participates in its management and upkeep—and who, therefore, helps to prevent crime.

Net Zero Energy Building

by Jetson Green

I just thought I would blog about this real quick because it caught my attention in the latest edition of BusinessWeek. There was a full page ad saying, "Imagine that. You can do well in the world without hurting it." Pictured in the ad is a pretty neat looking building (above), which is interactive at www.utc.com/curious. Go give it a look...United Technologies' (NYSE: UTX) green building page has information on electrochromic glazing, 100% recycled structural steel, vertical axis wind power turbines, photovoltaic solar power arrays, zero VOC paints, green roofs with an integrated reclamation systems, conserving energy, fuel cell power plants, and combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP) systems. Maybe someone should actually build the structure that's in this rendering.