Posts about Development
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Is the 1,000 space garage in Columbia Heights a good investment?
The DC USA project in Columbia Heights will open this spring, bringing a Target and many other national chains to DC (many for their first store in DC) in 600,000 square feet of retail along with 1,300 new apartments. It will also bring traffic. There are two main ways to deal with this: provide more parking spaces, and/or use parking management techniques to encourage as many people… Keep reading…
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Grocery stores disappearing in NYC
One of the great things about living in NYC the ease of buying groceries. What is widely considered NYC’s best grocery store was about five blocks from me, and yet I didn’t usually go there because it was crowded and there was another supermarket only three blocks from me, not to mention a little grocery one avenue over. Or at least, this a great thing about living on the Upper… Keep reading…
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Trapped in the “American Dream”
Salon’s advice columnist, Cary Tennis, has a letter from a reader who moved into a big suburban house and is suffering from isolation. “I hate the feeling of slowly falling asleep in suburbia and never waking up. And I hate the commute. And I hate not being able to walk anywhere. And the lack of character. And the McMansions. And the SUVs. I want out and I want out now.”… Keep reading…
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Popular parking at the Poplar park?
Council Chairman Vincent Gray is suggesting that any parking built on Poplar Point for a soccer stadium could be used for baseball games at other times. It’s not a bad idea, as long as the parking is charged at market rate. On the other hand, I wonder how needed it will be—if the ballpark can get by for a few years without Poplar, people will already be used to taking Metro, and… Keep reading…
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Best sprawl photo ever
Both Streetsblog and Smart Growth America used this photo of San Antonio, from Kaptain Krispy Kreme on Flickr, on recent stories about the Bush administration seeking to raid the transit fund to pay for highways. It really is a terrific illustration of sprawl gone mad. Keep reading…
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NYC discusses blank walls
Streetsblog spoke with New York’s Department of City Planning about the new blank wall buildings going up on Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue, which Streetsblog and I criticized. DCP explained why they didn’t require retail, and how the minimum parking requirements forced garages onto these buildings. Keep reading…
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Less parking at 14th and U would solve many problems
At Wednesday’s Dupont Circle ANC meeting, architect Eric Colbert presented revised plans for the 14th and U development proposal. The ANC still wants to make it smaller, but beyond the classic fight over density, this project is a perfect example of the silly and detrimental effects of minimum parking requirements. Current zoning requires one space per two units for… Keep reading…
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Poplar Point may get a deck over I-295
Mayor Fenty has chosen Clark Realty to develop Poplar Point, a large waterfront site near the Anacostia Green Line station. And Now, Anacostia was rooting for Clark, most significantly because their plan included building a deck over part of I-295, connecting Poplar Point to the rest of the Anacostia neighborhood. If you can’t convert a freeway to a boulevard, covering it… Keep reading…
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The favored quarter, illustrated
The Option of Urbanism talks about the “favored quarter”, the pattern in almost every city’s suburban development where most of the wealthy white people settled in certain parts of the region, leading to mall developers and employers wanting to locate there, leading to more highways there, making property values rise and more wealthy white people, malls, and jobs locating there. Keep reading…
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Audio interview with Christopher Leinberger
Leinberger is the author of The Option of Urbanism: Investing In a New American Dream, which I’m currently reading. Leinberger explains how government policy has favored the creation of more sprawl (which he calls drivable sub-urbanism) over walkable urbanism. Rob Goodspeed has a good review of the book. In this podcast on Planetizen, Leinberger explains the key points… Keep reading…