Retrofitting Suburbia, Updated Edition: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs

Updated with a new Introduction by the authors and a foreword by Richard Florida, this book is a comprehensive guide book for urban designers, planners, architects, developers, environmentalists, and community leaders that illustrates how existing suburban developments can be redesigned into more urban and more sustainable places. While there has been considerable attention by practitioners and academics to development in urban cores and new neighborhoods on the periphery of cities, there has been little attention to the redesign and redevelopment of existing suburbs. The authors, both architects and noted experts on the subject, show how development in existing suburbs can absorb new growth and evolve in relation to changed demographic, technological, and economic conditions. Retrofitting Suburbia was named winner in the Architecture & Urban Planning category of the 2009 American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (The PROSE Awards) awarded by The Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers

Table of Contents:
Preface vi Introduction viii Urban Versus Suburban Form viii Why Retrofits? Why Now? xii Organization of the Book xiii Acknowledgments xv Chapter 1 Instant Architecture, Instant Cities, and Incremental Metropolitanism 2 Instant Cities and Suburban Retrofits 2 Instant Architecture, Instant Public Space 6 Incremental Metropolitanism 9 How Sustainable? How Urban? 12 Chapter 2 Retrofitting Garden Apartments and Residential Subdivisions to Address Density and the New Demographics 16 Never Homogenous? The New Suburban History 17 Demographic Changes 18 Retrofitting Policy 20 Retrofitting Residential Subdivisions 22 Revising the Rules: Kansas City First Suburbs Coalition and DADUs in Seattle 23 Connect the Culs-de-sac: Apollo Beach and Laurel Bay 25 From Subdivision to Edge City: Greenway Plaza 27 From Subdivision to TOD: MetroWest 27 Reintegrating Garden Apartment Buffer Sites 29 Accommodating New Immigrants: Brookside Apartments and Gulfton 30 Market Devaluation: Park Forest Courts 32 Gentrification Infill: Gramercy and The Colony 34 Tomorrow’s Suburbanites 35 Chapter 3 Residential Case Study: Changes to “Levittown” 44 The Earliest Postwar Suburbs Are Sixty Years Old Demographic Diversity in Levittown, Willingboro, and Park Forest 46 Failure and Redevelopment of Retail Properties 51 Resistance to Change in Residential Patterns 52 Diversifying Housing Choices 54 Paths Toward Further Change 56 Chapter 4 Retrofitting Social Life Along Commercial Strips 59 Third Places in Suburbia? 59 History of the Strip and Its Building Types 62 The Drive out of Town 62 Adaptive Reuse of Big Boxes and Strip Malls for Community-Serving Activities 67 Reviving Ghostboxes 67 From Strip Malls to Community Anchors: La Grande Orange and Camino Nuevo 70 Retrofitting Shopping Centers: The Middle Scale 72 Regreening: Phalen 72 Public Sector Strategies to Support Retrofitting 75 Santana Row’s Rough Road to Riches 78 From Strip Centers to New Downtown: Temple Terrace 80 Retrofitting the Corridors Themselves: Designing for Mobility or Access or Both 81 The Transit Boulevard and the Urban Network 82 Return of the Multiway Boulevard: Cathedral City 84 Rezoning Corridors: Three Examples in Atlanta 87 Inducing Transit on a Corridor Through Form-Based Codes: Columbia Pike 90 Retrofitting the Urban Structure of Commercial Strips 92 Social Infrastructure 9 Chapter 5 Strips Case Study: Mashpee Commons, Cape Cod, Massachusetts 95 Attaching to a Well-Established Fragment of Urbanism Site History 98 Morphological Analysis 102 From Strip to Downtown: Mashpee’s Third Place 105 Chapter 6 From Regional Malls to New Downtowns Through Mixed-Use and Public Space 108 The Significance of Public Space 110 A Brief History of Malls 112 Dead and Dying Malls 114 Changing Uses to Meet Local Needs 119 Downsizing: Park Forest and Willingboro 119 From Enclosed Malls to New Downtowns 123 From Dead Mall to New Downtown: Mizner Park 123 Turning a Mall Inside Out: Winter Park Village 126 Incremental Metropolitanism Around Denver: CityCenter Englewood 129 Infilling Around a Live Mall 134 You Can Save the Tree and Have Tiffany’s, Too: Walnut Creek 134 From Mall to Transit-Served University and Office Tower: Surrey Central City 136 The Role and Form of Mixed-Use and Public Space in Retrofitted Malls 138 Chapter 7 Mall Case Study: Cottonwood, Holladay, Utah 140 From Concept to Press Release Repositioning Mall Properties 142 Market Study and Mini-Charrette 143 Charrette 146 Benefits of the Charrette 151 Chapter 8 Mall Case Study: Belmar, Lakewood, Colorado 154 “Enrich Your Life, Not Your Lawn” in Lakewood’s New Downtown “Greening”: Finding the Funding for Sustainable Urbanism 159 Morphological Analysis 162 From Bunkers to Streetscapes: Public Space 166 New Uses/New Users 170 Chapter 9 Edge City Infill: Improving Walkability and Interconnectivity 172 Redirecting Edge Cities 173 The Evolution of Edge and Edgeless Cities 177 Edgeless Cities 179 Infilling Edge Cities 180 Addison Circle 180 Legacy Town Center 182 Perimeter Place 183 How Effective Are the Infill Strategies? 186 Edge-City Retrofits Across Multiple Parcels 187 The Future of Edge Cities 191 Chapter 10 Edge City Case Study: Downtown Kendall/Dadeland, Miami-Dade County, Florida 192 Zoning the Creation of New Blocks and Squares over Multiple Parcels Regulating an Urbanizing Framework 196 Morphological Analysis 198 Demographic Analysis: Reaping the Benefits of Interconnectivity 201 Chapter 11 Suburban Office and Industrial Park Retrofits to Recruit the Creative Class 203 Suburban Industrial Parks, Office Parks, and Corporate Campuses 204 Nonconcentric Patterns of Commuting 206 Polycentric Atlanta: Bellsouth in Lenox Park, Midtown, and Lindbergh City Center 207 Recruiting the Creative Class 209 Creative Campus: SkySong 211 Retrofitting Suburban Workplaces 211 Glass Box Lofts: Cloud 9 Sky Flats 212 Lofts on the Interstate: Upper Rock 214 Retrofitting Industrial Parks 216 Instant Urbanism: Westwood Station 217 Chapter 12 Office Park Case Study: University Town Center, Prince George’s County, Maryland 219 Finishing a Job Started Almost Half a Century Ago Transit Provides Opportunity for Infilling with Mixed Use 222 Morphological Analysis 225 Demographic Analysis: Appeal to the Creative Class? 228 Epilogue: The Landscape of Incremental Metropolitanism in 2050 230 Notes 234 Image Credits 248 Index 249

About the Author :
Ellen Dunham-Jones, AIA, is professor of architecture and urban design in the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. An award-winning registered architect, she has published extensively on urban design and criticism and is on the board of directors of the Congress for the New Urbanism. June Williamson, LEED AP, is associate professor of architecture at The City College of New York. A registered architect, she has contributed to numerous urban design projects. Her writing has been published in numerous journals and, in 2010, she conceived the design competition "Build a Better Burb."