Posts Tagged 'urban infill'

Out With the Ugly Infill

Published July 18, 2011 Urban Philadelphia 5 Comments
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Snobbery isn’t a trait I find very attractive in many people, especially when it’s directed at superficial things like cars, house’s, school districts, and clothes.  And yet, I can’t help but take full ownership of my own snobbery regarding urban forms and how easy I believe it is to implement them properly.  It may be the snob in me, but I honestly believe developing and maintaining good urban forms is really a simple concept:

  • Step One – Open your eyes
  • Step Two – Take note of the streets, neighborhoods, and cities that attract investment, have strong sense of place characteristics, and are aesthetically pleasing
  • Step Three – Emulate them
  • Step Four – Done!

And yet, my recent move to the Northern Liberties neighborhood in Philadelphia has brought me back to reality and made me realize that maybe this isn’t such a simple concept and maybe my snobbery has clouded better judgment.  Essentially, my first impression is that the neighborhood has been inundated with urban infill that diminishes the great forms that already exist and therefore threaten the very reason the area has attracted so much investment to begin with.

To understand why this is happening in a place like Northern Liberties takes a bit of storytelling.  A long time ago, in the 1990’s, Philadelphia’s Center City started becoming extensively gentrified, modernized and no longer affordable to the masses.  As real estate prices increased, this effect began spilling out into surrounding neighborhoods, eventually landing in Northern Liberties just north of Old City.  Since the 1950’s, the neighborhood has seen its fair share of demolitions and neglect, leaving large swaths of land ripe for large-scale redevelopment.  This fact coupled with gentrification pressures moving into the neighborhood bore the fruit of large-scale urban infill development throughout Northern Liberties.

This is where the spotty infill comes into the story, a phenomenon that seemed to happen for three reasons:

  1. There wasn’t enough regulation or strong enough a Neighborhood Plan to enforce better infill standards from the onset
  2. The developer’s are likely not attuned to what types of forms make a great neighborhood
  3. The individual developer is more concerned with their bottom line than creating a cohesive neighborhood and thus uses ‘edgy’ materials and irregular building placements as a marketing tool to stand out in the crowd rather than fit in.

While I am sure individual developers have had immense profits from their developments throughout Northern Liberties, the collective neighborhood has been left with a number of issues, outlined in the series of images below:

Garage doors abound on ground floor residential streets, with no entrance articulation

Buildings are positioned at odd angles and do not provide cohesive urban building walls

Buildings ignore street corners

Cheap materials

Buildings don’t address public parks (this sits across the street from Northern Liberties premiere park)

Creates monotonous walls that don’t activate the ROW

Poor parking design

All of these examples, while individually annoying, collectively make for a bigger problem and create an urban realm that seems more like an odd patchwork collection of buildings than a unified district.  I am not calling for building or material monotony; I am simply stating the need for a more cohesive product that achieves a sustainable neighborhood worth caring about long-term.  My fear is that because a unified district is not being recreated in many Northern Liberties streets, overall sense of place will suffer and in 30 years the area will once again fall into neglect and disrepair.

All is not lost though as the neighborhood still has many opportunities to fill in the fabric gaps that still exist.  But post-recession, investment seems to be picking up steam again and new infill projects are constantly rising from the ground.  Therefore, the neighborhood needs to develop even better standards for urban infill projects; ones that compliment the very reason infill is happening to begin with: the existing historic fabric already in place.  My hope is that this can happen and Northern Liberties can maintain and build upon its current upswing for many years to come.

“Sex and the City” Urbanism: Human Scale the Key to Sustainable Development

Published February 7, 2011 Urban Cincinnati , Urban Indianapolis , Urban New York 7 Comments
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If you’ve ever watched Sex and the City, you can’t help but take note of the moments when Carrie is walking to and from her Upper East Side apartment.  If you’re like me you might think ‘now that is a neighborhood I would love to live in.’  The intimate narrow streets, beautiful human scaled buildings, and fully developed tree canopies scream ‘sense of place’ in ways that make you want to pack up your bags and move to New York yesterday.  Well the truth of the matter is Carrie’s neighborhood was actually shot on Perry Street in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood known the world over for its unique attractions, high densities and great streets.  Show producers knew selling the ‘city’ was just as important as selling Carrie, explaining the Upper East Side white lie and the choice of Greenwich Village to showcase the image they were selling.

So what makes Greenwich Village so great – why shoot a show about being single and fabulous in New York City in this neighborhood?  The answer is simple: the neighborhood is a vibrant urban neighborhood ideal for the human experience due to its built form, narrow streets, vertically oriented structures of varying ages, and pedestrian scaled commercial districts.  And while much of Greenwich Village was developed in the 19th Century, it is these urban forms that we ought to be looking at for inspiration and replicating in 21st Century urban infill projects.  To be fair, we have made great strides in building urban forms in our urban environments over the past 30 years, but judging by recent projects like The Banks in Cincinnati and North-of-South in Indianapolis, we aren’t quite Greenwich great.

Infill or new developments in today’s urban realm are achieving a lot of positive designs.  As showcased in North-of-South, seen in the first image below, and The Banks, seen in the second image below, there is an understanding that urban buildings should interact with the public realm and directly abut the sidewalk, feature ground level retail and other activation uses, and include office, residential, or other mixed uses above.  These are very important components to creating and maintaining an active, vibrant urban neighborhood as seen in Greenwich Village.  Unfortunately, another critical factor still seems missing from new developments, something that can ultimately make or break the long-term success of the buildings and their form.

North-of-South Development Indianapolis

The Banks Development in Cincinnati

When you watch Carrie gallivant around her New York neighborhood in Sex, you notice a variety in building shapes, sizes, and age.  Having a diverse building stock is important to maintaining vibrancy and diversity in a community over the long-term because it allows for diverse users, diverse price points on apartments and condos, and flexibility for diverse uses as consumer needs and demands change.  The Banks and North-of-South will not be able to achieve this level of diversity because the buildings have been developed as a superblock and are oriented horizontally instead of vertically.  This creates monotonous urban forms and diminishes use flexibility and thus diversity.  Over time, these developments will likely become as homogenous in use as they are in vertical form, killing diversity and vitality in its wake.  Simply put, these developments could prove unsustainable in the long-term.

To achieve long-term sustainable urban forms and neighborhoods, we ought to be developing infill and new urban projects parcel by parcel, plot by plot.  Too often, an ‘all-or-nothing’ approach is  taken with new projects and if the entire development cannot be financed and built at once then nothing happens at all.  This can result in large blocks of prime urban land sitting vacant for years on end (see Cincinnati’s riverfront from 2000-2009 or Indianapolis’s old Market Square Arena site at present.)

An alternative to this ‘all-or-nothing’ approach is to split developable land up into urban, human scaled plots and let the market dictate when and how they will be developed.  Some regulations and plans would have to be developed and enforced to ensure urban areas aren’t stuck with tacky architecture or varying setbacks but even these plans should be reviewed and changed every five years or so.  By doing this, cities can more easily achieve diversity in urban forms and uses that are human experience oriented and thus more sustainable for long-term neighborhood stability.  Only then will the 21st Century urban developments be able to achieve Greenwich greatness as shown on episode after episode of the great show Sex and the City.

Top Image Source

North-of-South Image Source

The Banks Image Source

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