From sub-urban to urban, Tysons Corner’s 30 year plan

The problem of what to do with suburban edge cities with their mega malls, inhospitable pedestrian environments, and thousands of parking spaces will be one of the biggest challenges facing urban environments in the coming decades. Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia has been used as the perfect example of an edge city, springing from its status as a census designated place, with no discernible center other then its collection of malls and office parks. What makes it different though, is that it is an edge city with a plan, when the Washington, DC metro rail system arrives in the next couple of years the city has laid out a vision for the future that is very different from its present.

“This is your classic drivable suburban place that is anchored by a regional mall, just like Perimeter Center in Atlanta; King of Prussia, outside Philadelphia; Schaumberg, west of Chicago; Newport Beach; and Costa Mesa south of Los Angeles,” says Chris Leinberger, a developer turned academic and urbanist who is now at the Brookings Institution. “This is, however, one of the biggest, if not the biggest concentration of retail, office and hotels in the suburbs, in the country.”
“This is something that we the people wanted very badly,” he says. “What we didn’t know is as you build more of it, you decrease the quality of life.”

The city has woken up to the fact that in today’s world, and more importantly marketplace, people want walkable, livable, urban environments. The city plans to capitalize on its connection to the Washington metro by turning itself into one of these environments, a city in its own right. Building off the success of previous developments like the Bethesda metro center, the city is planning a drastic a redesign of the urban environment.

Bill Lecos, who runs the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce, admits that Tysons was designed for cars, not people.  “About 17,000 live here and about 117,000 — give or take — come to work here every day,” Lecos says. “So that incredible imbalance is why you have the absolute commuter nightmare of trying to get 117,000 people in, in one period of time in the morning, and out again at 5 o’clock.” S

Tysons Corner Today

In order to fix this imbalance the major goal of the plan is to increase residential housing stock in a big way. Plans call for the construction of enough housing units for 100,000 people, but in order to create the livable environment the city will need more than just new housing stock it means a complete redesign of the city with no love for pedestrians. Things like pedestrian lights that are too short, sidewalks to nowhere, and acres and acres of parking will need to be changed.

Tysons Corner's Potential Future

The plan calls for a grid of streets, shorter blocks, and better public transportation linkages. What’s different about this urban plan is that there are no plans to restore the former vibrancy, because in this case it didn’t exist. By the looks of things that entire area will be rebuilt, it doesn’t appear that many structures have made it from the before to the after pictures. However, the city hopes to be a model for how to transform these former edges cities into livable urban environments. Time will tell, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

IKEA 1, Breuer 1/2

In Urban Neighbourhood’s continued expansion as the posts get larger and the links get more numerous I am constantly coming across new things. Today over at archidose (a great blog devoted to architecture) I came across a post about what happened when an Ikea went head to head with the Armstrong Building, built in New Haven Coneticut in 1969 by Marcel Breuer. It is the age old story of old versus new, contemporary historic vs current economics. The Pirelli Building sat on a lot adjacent to where Ikea was building one of their stores, and needed parking spaces.

Marcel Breuer's 1969 Armstrong (aka Pirelli) Building, pre-IKEA

Click here to read more at archidose and see what happened when IKEA came to town.

The author also has the same thoughts about where parking should go as in our article about parking at asian department stores.

Public Squares, public parking, and the Soul of a City

Dancers in Young Dundas Square

There was an article in the Toronto Sun this past Sunday about the best way to save the soul of a city in trouble because citizens are worried the city “has begun to go down the dark road of social mistrust.” There are a number of factors that contribute to this including the government’s insistence that Canadians need a government willing and prepared to fight violent crime, even though crime rates have been in decline for years. (Stats Canada puts the crime rate at a 30 year low) Consider the public’s obsession with crime dramas–how many different ‘CSI’ and ‘Law and Order’ variants are out there?

Another often overlooked factor is how the very structure of the city can have a real impact on the way citizens relate to each other. Blank walls, improper lighting, and giant parking lots can have a big impact on how safe a city feels. Matthew Blackett puts forth the suggestion that any number of the city-owned Toronto Parking Authority’s 150 surface parking lots could be converted to public squares. Most downtown public parking lots are only used/full for about eight hours a day; the rest of the time they are wasted space. A better use would be for the city to move the parking underground and convert the surface space into a public square or other public use facility.

Movable Seating in the Square

Public squares (as long as they are not in shadow most of the day) tend to attract people who like to linger and people watch and, by extension, stimulate economic growth around their periphery. They also increase interaction between city residents and, by extension, trust and a feeling of community by allowing the public to spend time around each other. They serve as a place to stop, to consider the city around us, rest, and converse with those around us. The redevelopment of Younge-Dundas Square is a great example of how a public square can be created without losing parking spaces simply by moving the parking below grade.

It doesn’t even have to be below in some cases. In the city of Suwon, South Korea, I came across a very imaginative parking structure that was in an area with slope. There was a pedestrian bridge the width of 4 lanes that started on the higher terrain and crossed a major street connecting on the lower side to a ‘parkade park’ (if you will). The parkade park was a two storey parking structure that fronted on to the next street over and was clad in stone to look like a castle base, but had a park on the top level which provided a respite from the noise and traffic two storeys down, creating a peaceful oasis in a very busy commercial area (too bad I didn’t have my camera.)

While some might scoff or complain about the expense of burying parking lots, the idea represents a win-win situation in the long term for cities as conversions like this offer the opportunity to build increased parking capacity by adding levels and increased parking space means increased parking revenue.

Public squares are pretty scarce in North America, but used frequently in most European cities. Most are from past eras when cities were not designed with private transportation in mind. Where we in the new world have the advantage is that we don’t need to reverse engineer parking into active public squares.  It is just a matter of converting a parking lot into a space that both enhances the city and provides more parking for those who would like to use their cars to get there.

European Style Public Square

Click here for the link to the Toronto Sun commentary.

Parking at the Department Store, Asian Style

A Walmart Store Containing its own Parking! OMG!

It has often been bemoaned by Cyclists, New Urbanists, Pedestrianists, and anyone else who isn’t in love with cars that parking lots and the sheer amount of space devoted to storing our vehicles when we are not using them is a huge detriment to our cities. Take a look at a map of most major downtown cores and you will see plenty of big grey dead zones that people create to take advantage of the need for suburbanites to find parking for their cars when they are working their 9-5.

While I was in Korea, I came across the largest Wal-Mart that I had ever seen in my life.  I actually spotted it one morning when I stumbled out of a friends apartment on my way to a ‘school staff picnic’ without having sobered up. As I stood on the side of the Ulsan River Road, I looked to my left and spotted the thing towering over the surrounding neighborhood like a monument to American capitalist imperialism.* I was flabbergasted and stunned by the size of the thing–a six story Wal-Mart? Seriously?

What I discovered days later when I actually went to said Wal-Mart as part of my search for sour cream, was that the Wal-Mart store was only levels 1 to B2 while levels 2-6 were actually parking. Can you imagine a big box store that is pedestrian friendly at street level and doesn’t have acres of parking in front of it? Well it would look a little like the photos you see here. Ever since I lived in Asia, I have felt that it is very important to have enough parking spaces for the number of tenants you have. Have you ever seen a parking lot where cars are parked 3 deep and left in neutral so that people can move them around when they need to get their own car out in the morning? I have also appreciated the made-in-Asia solutions to deal with storing cars in limited space. (Click here for an NYC adaptation) These park aids stacked on top of the stores that they service are not only space saving and pedestrian friendly, you don’t even have to worry about that long run across the parking lot when it rains.

While this style of parking came about in Asia due to sheer limitations on space (let’s face it when you have 43 million people in a country like Korea that is roughly the size of Nova Scotia you can’t really afford to take up huge amounts of space for cars), but that doesn’t mean that their solution couldn’t also be our solution.

* Wal-Mart has since pulled out of Korea, mostly because they didn’t understand the way a country like Korea shops. Well-to-do Koreans go to department stores, low income Koreans go to street markets, and Korean housewives know exactly what every thing – not just the top 200 things that Wal-Mart undercuts on – should cost.