Posts tagged Smart Growth
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New Partners: The Yards and public-private partnerships
I’m at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference, a major annual conference on Smart Growth. I’ll be liveblogging the conference today. The first panel I’m attending is about the development called The Yards in Near Southeast and how partnerships between GSA and Forest City are revitalizing this area. Katherine Aguilar Perez, VP of Forest City: “Smart… Keep reading…
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“Structure of voids” and chain restaurants in Ballston
Last weekend, we visited a friend who recently bought a condo in Ballston. Zachary Schrag highlights the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor as the region’s biggest success from Metro’s original construction, creating a new transit-oriented Smart Growth development around the subway, and it’s true: there were people and shops and other signs of life everywhere,… Keep reading…
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Three projects to watch
All over the region, consulting organizations are going through the legal requirements for Environmental Impact Statements, necessary for any major project: convening public scoping meetings, collecting input, evaluating alternatives, and so on. They’re doing this in downtown Columbia, along Rockville Pike, and on both sides of the 14th Street Bridges, used by I-395,… Keep reading…
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Walkability’s comeback
Planetizen links to an article in Governing Magazine that says what anyone in Adams Morgan or Park Slope or San Francisco knows: walkable neighborhoods are on the rise. But it’s not just old cities: Plano, Texas has a booming Smart Growth development. And “it’s not just the New Urbanists who are talking the language of walkability now,” writes the author,… Keep reading…
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Long Islanders crave alternatives to suburbia
Long Island’s lack of walkable downtowns containing apartments and townhouses is hurting the region and causing young people to leave, according to Long Island Index, and a third of Long Islanders would like to have the option to live in that kind of downtown. Keep reading…
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Another side of Capitol Quarter
Via DCist, new documentary Chocolate City examines gentrification from the point of view of Capper/Carrollsburg residents, who feel the new mixed-income Capitol Quarter development doesn’t do enough to enable previous residents to return to the community. Keep reading…
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Ward 3 Vision
A community coalition pushing for smart growth in the upper Wisconsin Ave corridor (Tenleytown to Friendship Heights) and elsewhere in DC’s far Northwest ward 3. Keep reading…
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Maybe they can build ‘em like they used to
During the dark ages of urban planning (the 1960s and 70s), many old residential buildings were replaced with boxy, alienating public housing projects, until Jane Jacobs discredited the idea. Block after block of attractive row houses are gone forever, even though brownstones in places like Brooklyn, Boston, San Francisco, and DC sell for a million dollars or two, or more. Can… Keep reading…
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Density on U Street?
I got my first taste of local politics last month by attending the Dupont Circle ANC meeting. DC is divided into a number of regions each with an Advisory Neighborhood Commission, a group of unpaid local elected representatives. They do have certain powers, such as reviewing and approving liquor license applications, though most of the board’s actions are advisory, like giving… Keep reading…
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Brooklyn puts retail in municipal building
“From the street, [Brooklyn’s Municipal Building] looks like ‘dead space,’” writes the Brooklyn Paper. “‘People have just accepted that government buildings are only for government,’” says Joe Chan of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Downtown DC is even worse, with back to back Federal buildings each of which… Keep reading…