Urban Development (Richmond, Alexandria: apartments, houses, neighborhoods)

[seanpecor]

I know that everyone wants their white picket fence and large back yard, but I'd like to see more urban skyscrapers in the denser urban areas of Virginia with comfortable city apartments rising into the sky with ample community greenspace around them. The more I reflect on the environment and economic development, the more central I think this sort of approach should become. If you take an example where 500,000 commuters hop into their cars, and commute to/from work a total of 80 minutes daily, the cumulative time wasted equates to 76 years - or one entire lifetime almost completely wasted each day. Presuming the distance traveled is 50 miles round trip for each commute, people cumulatively log 25 million miles on the road and consume over 800,000 gallons of fuel, equating to about 2 million dollars spent on fuel alone each day (although counting automobile upkeep, the total cost is likely around 8 million daily, or 2 billion dollars a year). The dollar cost of 76 man years of labor lost every day, and I suspect that the economic loss of that alone would be 2 billion dollars. If I'm doing my fuzzy math well enough, then that equates to $8,000 that the commuter spends every year just getting back and forth to work. And of course that doesn't factor in the real and expensive impact of managing the environmental affects of all that carbon based fuel. But setting that aside, I've roughly calculated a +/- $670 per month per commuter expense. If you assume that there are 1.5 commuters per household, then you're at roundabout $1,000/month in commuting expenses. And that's before you even start talking about commuting expenses for the children of each family. I believe that I've seen per pupil commute expenses of $800/year but it may be more or less.

If you build a 50 story tall apartment building with a 1 acre footprint and 8 acres of community parks surrounding it, you might fit 750 families or more into the building, each w/ a 2,000 square foot 4 bedroom apartment. Assuming a family size of 2.3 people, that would equate to 1,725 people living on a total of 9 acres. You know, instead of 25 people. Imagine the resources you could have in an adjoining 9 acre grid, consisting of all desired shopping and service and educational venues. And in a high rise, almost everyone has a stupendous city view. Commutes would then be handled by mass public transportation and overall commute distances would be drastically reduced.

Just some thoughts from a mad scientist at the end of a work day

Sean

[EricD]

Here is something I copied from a website about a planned town which is about to be constructed in Caroline County, VA.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Town of Haymount

Haymount, VA


Duany Plater-Zyberk Architects and Town Planners

The new town is built in Caroline County in Virginia. The town will have approximately 12,000 people, 4,000 homes, 250,000 square feet of retail space, 500,00 square feet of commercial and light industrial space, 14 church sites, numerous parks, 2 schools, and a college campus, and an organic farm. Only one-third of the land will be developed and the rest will remain forested lands, wetlands, and farming areas. The houses will use green building products.

-------------------------------------------------------

Now, this may seem great, but there's even more to add into the equation. All roofs will have solar panel shingles (they look like normal ones, but provide solar power). Each building will be hooked up to the power grid, so that if the building produces more energy than it needs, the extra power will go into the over-all power grid. This will supposidly provide 50% of the power needs of the community. To provide the rest, there will be a wind power plant, with a natural gas back-up. Also, they plan on having electric-powered public transportation, and each home will be sold with 2 bike's, to promote the use of bike paths to get around. The community will be able to pull water from the river, and will have it's own water treatment plant.

I think that, if anything, this should be our future. Not skyscrapers, but regular small towns, which are semi-self sufficient. At least in this case you can still own a peice of land, have your fence... but still not affect the environment too much.

http://www.dpz.com/pdf/8920%20Haymount.pdf (broken link)

[seanpecor]

When Haymount is finished it will have +/- 4,800 people per square mile. That's about half of the population density of the city of Alexandria. That may be a good balance, but I'd like to also see higher density neighborhoods also. Neighborhoods as dense as Boston with 12,000 people per square mile, so residents can be assured walking access to groceries, church, a family doctor etc. A "town" the size of 12,000 people might be large enough to support a retail base but that's questionable in today's economy. The same land area (2.5 square miles) housing 24,000 people would lend itself more to today's economic scales.

In 2005 we went horse shopping in Holland and I was amazed at how healthy the people looked there. Nearly every where there was a public road for vehicle traffic, there was also a small "bike road" that was paved that ran parallel to the main road. Virtually all families lived within walking/biking distance to public schools and daily needs. You saw people on bikes everywhere and I don't think I saw one overweight person in dutch towns while I was there and we drove all over the place to various farming communities. The bike road also served tractors in dutch farming communities. I was told there that the school kids get let out for lunch and return home to eat, and then return to school to finish out the day. This requirement helped enforce the customs and it was clear that the citizens benefitted from this arrangement from a health and quality of life standpoint. It sounds like Haymount will mirror much of those qualities.

Sean

[EricD]

You're right in a way about retail... I doubt it'll support a walmart, but I am sure there would be enough population to support a lot of independant businesses... And well, I think they're making it as big as they can... this is such a new idea, it was hard enough for them to get approval. The creater has been working since 1989 to get this project approved... it required a lot of re-zoning, and winning over the approval of the county board. If the town were bigger, it would have just been that much harder to get approved. Caroline county currently has a population around 25,000 people... adding 12,000 is a huge deal.

I just hope this works out, and it can become a model for future development. The town style seems to be becoming popular in the Richmond area anyways. Lots of communities are now being built with shopping, schools, and office buildings right inside the community, along with bike paths and walking trails to help access all of these areas.