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Late 80s and early 90s continued today what is "suburbia" urbanization. La has incorporated the ideals of urban living in suburbia atmosphere witch is need but over done. LA has to embrace its population
Virginia Beach has some interesting plans if they ever get implemented. There is a serious NIMBY mentality in that city though. Plus there are a lot of dead zones, even off of major arteries.
Seattle's Yesler Terrace 28acre neighborhood on the edge of downtown Seattle has 561 low income rentals. Its in the process of being redeveloped into a neighborhood of all income levels . It will have 5,000 housing units,1.2 million square ft of office space and 88,000 square ft of retail. Alot of the neighborhood will be highrise buildings. They have already finished the Othelllo Landing and Othello Station neighborhoods in Seattle they are very sucsessfull with mixed housing and retail.
Location: northern Vermont - previously NM, WA, & MA
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Revival of old thread, must give an honorable mention to Salt Lake City with it's rapidly developing light and commuter rail systems (very extensive and impressive given the size of this medium sized metro), and also a lot of recent downtown infill developement. http://www.city-data.com/forum/urban...-makeover.html
Probably more discussion to add in other cities as well since 2010. I had some strong opinions in earlier postings, but over time (and more recent traveling) my POV has changed some.
"Sixty percent of the housing built in San Jose since 1980 and over three-quarters of the housing built since 2000 have been multifamily structures."
City of San Jose Planning: Building Permit History (http://www.sanjoseca.gov/planning/data/build_permit_hist/table1.asp - broken link)
That's with a city population density beneath only LA, Miami and Seattle from that list and a metro that's third densest overall.
Yet San Jose is still incredibly sprawling and has lacklustre transport to boot. If VTA had better-planned the light rail system, it might be slightly less of an issue. Density in and of itself is nothing, it's land use patterns and proactive zoning that are critical. You can't have only one and expect good things.
why? Looking at a pattern of cheaply design houses that all look the same on a unnecessary curvy road, boxes they call a store with a huge parking lot that never get utilized can be an eyesore. Most suburban sprawl is the result of places put in bad spots. This makes them difficult and inconvenient to get to them contributing to traffic.
The way I see it, different cities arrived to the urban infill game at different times. With real urban infill occurring since the 90's, you have to first prize to places like Portland, Seattle, and Denver.
Later on in the game, you've got places like Miami, Charlotte, and Austin. Miami is tricky because so much of that urban infill is second/vacation homes...
Then you have places like Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and LA.. which boomed so much, urban infill was largely ignored. They came into the game late, but not insignificantly. The biggest challenges for these cities are the vast swaths of central-city areas that simply have been left for dead. There are urban oasis' in each of them, but they are a long way from truly redeveloping their complete inner cores into vibrant neighborhoods. Some are really too far gone into the sprawl zone for it to ever become a reality.
This poster is really mixed up with where they rank the cities - Miami, Portland, Seattle, San Diego and LA are the first cities to infill. These cities are significantly more dense than the other cities with Miami and LA leading the pack density wise (All four have 30k ppsm census tracts).
I think Atlanta, Denver, SLC, San Jose, Austin and Dallas are the late in the game cities.
Houston, Phoenix, and Charlotte are the late comers with very few neighborhoods over even 15k ppsm.
why? Looking at a pattern of cheaply design houses that all look the same on a unnecessary curvy road, boxes they call a store with a huge parking lot that never get utilized can be an eyesore. Most suburban sprawl is the result of places put in bad spots. This makes them difficult and inconvenient to get to them contributing to traffic.
Because the suburbs are where you can have a place of your own. Where you don't have to live stacked up in tiny apartments with no outdoor space. And if you want to go to the store, you just get into your car and drive to it; none of this waiting for the bus to transfer to the other bus. You can park at the store, thanks to the huge parking lot. You can find a lot of the stuff you want, because the store is big and carries a lot of stuff. Then you can bring it home without another bus ride.
Because anyone who doesn't want that place of their own, that they have to mow and maintain lest they draw the ire of their neighbors, or doesn't want a car of their own, with its own maintenance costs, or who doesn't want to spend many hours a week staring at the taillights of the car in front of them when stuck in traffic on the way to work or on the way to the big-box store, is obviously a deviant, especially if they don't have children, so why should we build anything for them?
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