Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges

A brand-new collection of 32 case studies that further demonstrate the retrofitting of suburbia  This amply-illustrated book, second in a series, documents how defunct shopping malls, parking lots, and the past century’s other obsolete suburban development patterns are being retrofitted to address current urgent challenges they weren’t designed for: improving public health, increasing resilience in the face of climate change, leveraging social capital for equity, supporting an aging society, competing for jobs, and disrupting automobile dependence. Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges provides summaries, data, and references on how these challenges manifest in suburbia and discussion of successful urban design strategies to address them in Part I. Part II documents how innovative design strategies are implemented in a range of northern American contexts and market conditions. From modest interventions with big ripple effects to ambitious do-overs, examples of redevelopment, reinhabitation, and regreening of changing suburban places from coast to coast are described in depth in 32 brand new case studies. Written by the authors of the highly influential Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs Demonstrates changes that can and already have been realized in suburbia by focusing on case studies of retrofitted suburban places Illustrated in full-color with photos, maps, plans, and diagrams Full of replicable lessons and creative responses to ongoing problems and potentials with conventional suburban form, Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges is an important book for students and professionals involved in urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, development, civil engineering, public health, public policy, and governance. Most of all, it is intended as a useful guide for anyone who seeks to inspire revitalization, justice, and shared prosperity in places they know and care about.

Table of Contents:
Introduction vii Acknowledgments xi Part I. Urgent Suburban Challenges Chapter I.1 Disrupt Automobile Dependence 3 Roads, Streets, and Stroads 4 Can’t We Do Something About All This Traffic? 6 Parking, Parking. . .and Parking 9 Walk, Pedal, Hail, and Scoot 11 Autonomous Urbanism? 13 Urban Design Tactics for Disrupting and Reducing Automobile Dependence 14 Chapter I.2 Improve Public Health 16 The Burdens of Disease 17 Category 1: Physical Activity, Obesity, and Chronic Disease 18 Category 2: Emotional Health and Degree of Community Engagement 19 Category 3: Likelihood of Being Killed or Injured in a Vehicle Crash 19 Walk This Way: Linking Physical Activity to Physical Design 19 Access: To Good Food, and to Healthcare 23 Safety: Preventing Preventable Injuries 24 Seeing Green: Biophilic Design and Mental Wellness 26 Combatting Loneliness: The Importance of Social Connectedness 27 Cleaning Up: Reducing Impacts of Polluted Air, Soil, and Water 27 Well-Executed Retrofitting Improves Public Health 28 Chapter I.3 Support an Aging Population 29 A New Name: Perennials 29 The Lifelong Community Model 30 A Brief History of Retirement Living: Sun City and The Villages of Florida 31 Learning Lessons from Retirement Communities 34 Social Support: Reinhabiting Ghostboxes and Parking Lots into Amenities 34 Housing Choices: Aging-in-Community at Malls, Strip Centers, and Office Parks 36 Economic and Wellness Factors: Evolution of the "Granny Flat" and the Household Model 38 Post-Car Life for Perennials? 41 Chapter I.4 Leverage Social Capital for Equity 42 Conceptual Frameworks for Increasing Equity Through Social Capital 43 Demographic Trends in Suburbs as Drivers of Change 45 A Framework for Asserting the Role of Design in Achieving Social Diversity 47 Third Place Redux 48 Social Capital in Ethnoburbs 49 Providing More Housing Types and Choices, Including Units for Rent 50 Protecting Apartments Under Threat 52 A Right to the Suburb? The Public Realm 53 Retrofitting the Suburban Social Body 55 Chapter I.5 Compete for Jobs 56 Generational Shift? 57 Retrofitting the Office Park and Corporate Campus 60 Urbanism as the New Amenity 62 Reinhabiting and Regreening the Office Park 64 Boosting Small Business by Reinhabiting Dead Retail 65 Future Forecast for Jobs Competition 68 Chapter I.6 Add Water and Energy Resilience 70 Retrofits to Improve Water Quality: From Gray to Green 71 Retrofitting Water for Resilience: Too Much Water 74 Retrofitting Water for Resilience: Too Little Water 76 Retrofitting Suburbia for Energy Resilience 77 Adding Resiliency by Design 82 Part II. The Case Studies Case Study II.1 Aurora Avenue North 89 Shoreline, Washington Case Study II.2 Hassalo on Eighth and Lloyd 91 Portland, Oregon Case Study II.3 Lake Grove Village 98 Lake Oswego, Oregon Case Study II.4 Phoenix Park Apartments 101 Sacramento, California Case Study II.5 Parkmerced 104 San Francisco, California Case Study II.6 The BLVD 111 Lancaster, California Case Study II.7 TAXI 116 Denver, Colorado Case Study II.8 Guthrie Green 121 Tulsa, Oklahoma Case Study II.9 La Gran Plaza 127 Fort Worth, Texas Case Study II.10 The Domain 131 Austin, Texas Case Study II.11 ACC Highland 138 Austin, Texas Case Study II.12 Mueller 144 Austin, Texas Case Study II.13 Promenade of Wayzata 152 Wayzata, Minnesota Case Study II.14 Maplewood Mall and Living Streets 157 Maplewood, Minnesota Case Study II.15 Baton Rouge Health District 160 Baton Rouge, Louisiana Case Study II.16 Uptown Circle 163 Normal, Illinois Case Study II.17 One Hundred Oaks Mall 166 Nashville, Tennessee Case Study II.18 Historic Fourth Ward Park 169 Atlanta, Georgia Case Study II.19 Technology Park 174 Peachtree Corners, Georgia Case Study II.20 Walker’s Bend 178 Covington, Georgia Case Study II.21 Downtown Doral 185 Doral, Florida Case Study II.22 Collinwood Recreation Center 189 Cleveland, Ohio Case Study II.23 The Mosaic District 192 Merrifield, Virginia Case Study II.24 South Dakota Avenue and Riggs Road 199 Fort Totten, Washington, DC Case Study II.25 White Flint and the Pike District 203 Montgomery County, Maryland Case Study II.26 The Blairs District 211 Silver Spring, Maryland Case Study II.27 La Station – Centre Intergénérationnel 214 Nuns’ Island, Verdun, Quebec Case Study II.28 Bell Works 217 Holmdel, New Jersey Case Study II.29 Wyandanch Rising 223 Town of Babylon, New York Case Study II.30 Meriden Green 229 Meriden, Connecticut Case Study II.31 Cottages on Greene 233 East Greenwich, Rhode Island Case Study II.32 Assembly Square 236 Somerville, Massachusetts Index 245

About the Author :
About the authors: JUNE WILLIAMSON is associate professor and department chair at the City College of New York's Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture. She is the acclaimed author of Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb (Island Press, 2013). ELLEN DUNHAM-JONES is professor of architecture and directs the urban design degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was voted one of the world's 100 most influential urbanists by Planetizen and hosts the Redesigning Cities podcast. The authors' first book, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (Wiley), was deemed "the Bible of the retrofitting movement" in the Chicago Tribune. It was featured in The New York Times, CBS Evening News, Urban Land, Architectural Record, and received the 2009 PROSE award for architecture and urban planning.