Urban Land
November December 2008
Responses to shaping growth can add value to the build environment through good design—in terms of both net revenue and the public’s sense of community and civic pride.
Feature Article
Return on Perception
by
Dennis Jerke
Four key elements of urban design create value: architecture, green spaces, water settings, and transportation.
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In This Issue
- An Era of Change in America
This has been a tumultuous time in which political change and the downward economic spiral have crossed paths. The freefall of the economy challenges the start of the new administration and its priorities; however, the transition to a new administration allows the United States a time to pause and move in new directions. The chances for recouping momentum become possible. - Beijing—after the Olympics
Due to advance planning, Beijing’s 2008 Summer Olympics is expected to pay for itself. The recent host nation shows evidence of ways it plans to avoid prototypical post-Olympics facility fatigue. - Branding in Area Development
A brand is suited for developments with a fairly high level of complexity, involving many stakeholders and an extended period of development, such as inner-city, mixed-use developments. - California Tackles Sprawl and Global Climate Change
The United States should be paying attention to a series of recent laws enacted in California targeting global climate change and sustainable development. - Definitional Shifts in a Place Called Home
Americans will be seeking out smaller houses on smaller lots and will be driving smaller cars. - Emerging Designers
Projects by ten designers/design duos in their 30s and 40s provide a glimpse into the future of architecture. - Finding Construction Money in Today’s Tight Market
The Federal Housing Administration and some institutional players are providing limited amounts of capital while other parts of the financing arena are retrenching. - Gene Kohn: Leadership through Teamwork
Gene Kohn credits his mother as being his first and most important mentor. - Going to Town
Three European cities— Berlin, Freiburg, and Warsaw—tackle urban vitality and climate change with varying approaches to town center redevelopment. - Greening Urban Townhouses
The first urban townhouse in New York City expected to earn LEED for Homes certification takes the form of a urban infill project. - Investing in Disaster Relief
Though major strides have been made toward recovery in the coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi in the three years since Hurricane Katrina, reconstruction of the devastated areas still requres additional investment in the form of small business loans, municipal bonds for infrastructure repair and rebuilding, and home loans for those whose homes were destroyed. - Mixed-Income Housing
With a broad cross section of workers priced out of homeownership, relegated to long commutes, or living “rent poor,” local governments are intensifying efforts to both grow the stock of affordable housing units and encourage their inclusion into more expensive developments to blur the line between socioeconomic groups. - National Mall: An American Aesthetic No More?
Perhaps it is time to examine the treatment of civic archtecture and its relationship to open spaces. - New Cultural Landscapes
A Japanese garden, noted building, or local playground—whether located on rural land or in carefully designed urban spaces—all offer examples of cultural landscapes as built environments that express human experience, culture, and history. - New Khmer Architecture
Recognition finally comes to a rare Asian innovation in Cambodia. - Opportunities in a Broken Financial System
Europe’s real estate industry leaders offer insights on the opportunities—and challenges—they face in running a business in the turbulent European market. - Parking as a Catalyst for Revitalization
Though parking is about getting people to their desired destinations, it can achieve more than that. - Pattern and Form
- Recovery Efforts on the Gulf Coast
An assessment of the progress of recovery in Louisiana and Mississippi three years after Hurricane Katrina yields some surprises. - Reestablishing Ties in Central Europe
A new redevelopment project in Prague calls for placing the new city center next to Prague’s Old Town, making the historic center easily accessible by tram, metro, car, and even on foot. - Regional Urban Design: A Form Too Far?
The notion that growing metropolitan areas in the United States should be shaped to promote sustainable, affordable development is gaining in popularity among those who understand that current metropolitan growth—and the resulting on-the-ground configurations—is generating unsustainable economic, social, and environmental costs. - Remaking China
China is attempting to address its environmental problems while maintaining development at an unheard-of pace and scale. - Revisiting New Orleans
A number of projects are defining the city’s revitalization. - Saving City Hall
Given the high cost of seismically retrofitting large historic structures, building political support at the grass-roots level early in the design process is crucial. - Saving the Past for the Future
Restoring St. Louis’s Old Post Office building has revitalized the city’s central business district. - Shrinking City Comeback in Germany
Leinefelde, Germany, is approaching redevelopment with an emphasis on revitalizing urban life and improving environmental standards. - Sustainable Design in Emerging Markets
Though fast-growing nations offer design firms unprecedented opportunities to help create a new international blueprint for sustainable communities, in practice, emerging markets offer a vastly different playing field, presenting new challenges from country to country. - Synergistic Landscapes
Attention to environmental concerns and the need to halt sprawl is ushering in a new era in landscape architecture, challenging designers to take a synergistic approach to creating environments that simultaneously satisfy the goals of multiple interests. - Targeting Value-Added Multifamily Properties
The acquisition and repositioning of existing multifamily projects offer a solution for investment and development companies that have the capital resources and real estate experience to take advantage of attractive buying opportunities in today’s market. - The Green Quotient: Q&A with Mindy S. Lubber
“Coastal communities need to be part of our national conversation on climate change. We need strong policies and market-based solutions to reduce their exposure. That means promoting infrastructure investment to adapt to the rise in sea levels. It may also mean limiting or prohibiting development in the most sensitive areas.” - The State of Sustainable Development in Russia
Although the issue of sustainability in Russia has not been a key concern, the Russian market is changing fast. Consultants, developers, and consumers are about to witness a sea change—both in attitudes and design—as the next generation of buildings comes online. - Urban Land Cover November/December 2008
- Urban Land Multifamily Trends Cover November/December 2008
- Urban Land Multifamily Trends Table of Contents November/December 2008
- Urban Land Table of Contents November/December 2008
- Vibrant Communities
Vibrant communities have a brand narrative that is a compilation of origin, creed, context, symbols, and action that attracts people and commerce, and consumes resources. They seem to happen organically but, in fact, are developed through a systemic construct. - Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines
In Art and Upheaval, William Cleveland explores the stories of people and groups who, amid fear and chaos, used creativity to challenge toxic and sometimes brutal political and social environments to save their community. Many of these stories—the perpetrators, the victims, and the nature of the violence—or the time and place in which they occurred may be familiar. These stories are real, not filtered through a political agenda or journalistic sensationalism. They are about people and, ultimately, community. - First Green Retail Project in Mainland Europe Opens
Forum Duisburg, a new retail and leisure development in the heart of Duisburg, Germany, opened in September, the first retail project in mainland Europe to be certified under the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) for its sustainable features. The largest inner-city retail project in North Rhine–Westphalia, it is part of a major redevelopment of the central area of the city. - Five Projects Win ULI Global Awards for Excellence
Five developments with international relevance have been selected as recipients of ULI Global Awards for Excellence. The winners were selected from 20 worldwide finalists, each of which was a winner in its region—the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. - Historic Industrial Site Part of New Jersey City University Campus Plan
Landlocked between traffic-heavy Route 440 and Westside Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey, the blighted 22-acre (9-ha) parcel filled with abandoned infrastructure that New Jersey City University (NJCU) chose for its new campus was an eyesore dividing the stagnant West Side community. University officials, however, saw a project that could restore the richness of a culturally diverse neighborhood, provide opportunities for educationally disadvantaged families, and become a thriving urban setting for scholars, students, and community members. The $350 million campus master plan proposes to turn dead ends into landscaped thoroughfares lined with shops, student and residential housing, art and entertainment centers, pedestrian walkways, and mass transit stops. - Looking Past the Recession to 2050
The current financial crisis dominated nearly every discussion at ULI’s fall meeting because it has resulted in complete unpredictability for an industry that thrives on predictability. While many ULI members have long real estate careers, few have seen fallout of this magnitude, and the overwhelming consensus is that the worst is yet to come for the industry as a whole. - Merging Buildings with the Land
Green roofs are gaining acceptance in the United States as a viable, desirable attribute for the built environment, although implementation trails the large-scale adoption in Japan, Germany, and elsewhere. Physical attributes are the primary drivers, including the two- to fivefold extension of roofing lifespans, reduced energy consumption of the underlying structure, stormwater run-off control via rain absorption by the vegetation, and reduction in airborne pollutants through the filtering of rainwater. These attributes have helped many structures with a green roof achieve Silver and Platinum ratings under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. - Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Communities Draw on Main Street Programs to Rebuild Their Historic Town Centers
Three years after Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Coast continues to bear much of the burden of the devastating storm. The effects on the western section of the Mississippi Gulf Coast were far reaching and are still evident all the way to the Alabama border. The resolve of the communities affected by the storms to rebuild is evident, particularly in the communities’ historic downtowns. - Must Read: Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism
It has been a long time since I have picked up a book that moved me as much as Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency. Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism is that book, and Mockbee would be proud. - Robert A. M. Stern Receives Vincent Scully Prize
The tenth Vincent Scully Prize was presented November 12 to Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture and founder and senior partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Stern, recognized for his years of teaching at Columbia and Yale universities, his leadership as dean of the Yale School of Architecture, and his publications on the history of architecture in New York, was honored by leaders in architecture, urban planning, education, the arts, and private industry at a gala and ceremony at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. The Vincent Scully Prize and endowment were established by the National Building Museum in 1999 to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship, or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design. - The Economy Dominates ULI Fall Meeting Agenda
ULI’s 2008 fall meeting, held October 28 to 30 in Miami Beach, covered the short-term outlook for the industry, with numerous speakers discussing the economic and financial turmoil, as well as provided a long look ahead, as illustrated by ULI’s The City in 2050: Creating Blueprints for Change exhibit, which explored how issues such as climate change, infrastructure needs, urbanization, and population shifts affect urban growth patterns. - The National Mall: Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core
America’s National Mall in Washington, D.C., represents many things to many people. In the minds of some, it is a sublime work of public art, urban design, and city planning; countless others who gather on its vast lawn experience the Mall as the nation’s living room, or more profoundly, as its communal sacred space—the culmination of a pilgrim journey. - Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape
With the publication of Metropolitan Corridor in 1983, John R. Stilgoe helped establish a new understanding of the railroad and how it affected the built landscape of the United States. In Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape, Stilgoe alters his view from one emphasizing the past to one seeking to predict the future. The topic is timely. Rail is a highly efficient freight and passenger transport mode that, as Stilgoe has pointed out previously, creates high-density urban communities linked by metropolitan corridors crossing suburban and rural space. Its efficiency offers immense advantages in an age that will be limited by energy costs and concerns about greenhouse gas emissions. - Trump Golf Resort Gets Go-Ahead in Scotland
Trump International’s proposed $1.6 billion golf resort development near Aberdeen, Scotland—initially refused by a committee of Aberdeenshire Council members a year ago—is set to go ahead after outline planning permission was approved by the Scottish government. - What I Learned at the ULI Fall Meeting
A new and improved vocabulary with emphasis on words starting with “D,” like de-leverage, distrust, derivative, default, dislocation, disequilibrium, decoupled . . .