Sprawl Repair Manual

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SPRAWLREPAIR

MANUAL



The production of this book was made possible with support from the Center

for Applied Transect Studies. CATS promotes research, publication, tools, and

training for the design, coding, building, and documentation of transect-based

communities. The publishing program at CATS was funded with proceeds

from the Richard H. Driehaus Prize. www.transect.org

C E N T E R

A P P L I E D

T R A N S E C T

S T U D I E S

FO R

Published by Island Press

Copyright © 2010 Galina Tachieva

All images © 2010 Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this

book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the

publisher:

Island Press, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tachieva, Galina.

Sprawl repair manual / Galina Tachieva.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59726-731-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-59726-731-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-59726-732-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-59726-732-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Cities and towns--United States--Growth. 2. Sustainable

development--United States. 3. Social justice--United States. 4. Citizenship--United States. I. Title.

HT384.U5T33 2010

307.1’214--dc22

2010015762

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper

Design by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1



TABLE OF CONTENTS

xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER ONE : INTRODUCTION

1 FROM SPRAWL TO COMPLETE COMMUNITIES

CHOICES

SPRAWL REPAIR DEFINED

CHALLENGESOPPORTUNITIES

CHAPTER TWO

17 THE SPRAWL REPAIR METHOD

TWO MODELS

TECHNIQUES

CHAPTER THREE

33 REPAIR AT THE REGIONAL SCALE

SECTOR MAPPING

SPRAWL REPAIR ASSESSMENT TOOL

SPRAWL REPAIR VOID ANALYSIS

APPLICATION

CHAPTER FOUR

55 REPAIR AT THE COMMUNITY SCALE

RURAL SUBDIVISION

SINGLE FAMILY SUBDIVISIONMULTIFAMILY SUBDIVISION



SHOPPING CENTER

SHOPPING MALL

COMMERCIAL STRIP

BUSINESS PARK

EDGE CITY

SUBURBAN CAMPUS

SPRAWL TYPE OPEN SPACE

CHAPTER FIVE

217 REPAIR OF THOROUGHFARES AND PARKING

SPRAWL THOROUGHFARESFREEWAY

ARTERIAL

COLLECTOR

LOCAL

CUL DE SAC

PARKING STRATEGY

APPLICATION

CHAPTER SIX

235 REPAIR AT THE BLOCK SCALE

SUBURBAN MEGABLOCK

SLAB AND TOWER BLOCK

McMANSION BLOCK DENSIFICATION

RESIDENTIAL BLOCK DENSIFICATION

RESIDENTIAL BLOCK DE DENSIFICATION

RESIDENTIAL BLOCK WITH CUL DE SACS

APPLICATION



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This manual was created with a sense of urgency. Adesire to reform sprawl is in the air across the coun-try, from Long Island to Texas, from the southern tipof Florida all the way to Portland. A growing numberof initiatives are focused on solving the pressing eco-nomic, social, and environmental problems of sprawl. To aid those initiatives and take advantage of theunique opportunities that now exist, this book pro-vides a collection of sprawl repair tools and the lessonslearned from built retrot projects.

The inspiration for the book emerged in April2008 at the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)in Austin, where the Sprawl Retrot Initiative beganwith several dozen participants. We gathered to dis-cuss the urgency of repairing sprawl, our experienceswith retrot projects, and how to move forward. InJune 2009, at the Congress in Denver, we presenteda rst draft of the Sprawl Repair Manual . Since thenwe have been hard at work on the book, with inputfrom the CNU Sprawl Retrot Initiative. A sprawlrepair listserv has hosted widely ranging discussionson the topic (see below for details). Many of the ideasdebated in this correspondence have found places inthe manual, and its success as a practical guide will bedue in large part to the contributions of many expertsand practitioners.

Many of the techniques demonstrated in the bookare derived from the work and built projects of DuanyPlater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) over the last twentyyears. This effort would not have been possible if thebook had not been produced in our office. I was ableto dedicate consistent focus and attention because mypartners, especially Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and AndresDuany, were so generous, patient, and supportive.Judith I. Bell, Maria Elisa Mercer, and Rachel D. MersonZitofsky – a dedicated, talented, and savvy team –

worked closely with me, and we received invaluablecontributions from illustrators Eusebio Azcue and ChrisRitter. The team was supported and encouraged by theentire office.

Brian Falk at the Center for Applied Transect Studiewas a thoughtful and challenging advisor on all issuesrelated to writing, content, and publishing, and HeatherBoyer was an enthusiastic supporter and sponsoringeditor at Island Press.

While more deserve to be thanked for their con-tributions, I would like to specically mention theseindividuals, as each of them has contributed in a spe-cial way: John Anderson, Ellen Dunham-Jones, RoberGibbs, Sara Hines, Mike Lydon, Joshua Martin, MichaMehaffy, Leslie Pariseau, Daniel Slone, Sandy SorlieEmily Talen, Dhiru Thadani, June Williamson, and, frothe DPZ office, Torika Alonso-Burford, Alice Enz, Eardo A. Pardo Fernandez, Xavier Iglesias, Matt Lambert, Chien Nguyen, Atul Sharma, Shannon Tracy, MaZabala and our interns Marcos Bode, Scott DouglassScarleth Lazo, Megan Recher, and Laura Valla.

I am also very grateful to my family for their understanding and support.

This manual is intended to be a dynamic docu-ment, updated with new techniques and strategies asthey emerge. I hope that at some point it will becomeavailable electronically, so that supplemental informa-tion can be easily added and accessed.

With that in mind, I look forward to readers’ comments. Please send your feedback directly to me, [email protected]. If you would like to join the SprawRetrot Initiative listserv, please send an e-mail requesto [email protected].

I hope this manual will be helpful to all who areconcerned about the consequences of sprawl and aredriven to repair our sprawling state of affairs.

Galina TachievaMiami, 2010



This manual provides guidance for transform-ing fragmented and inefficient developmentinto complete communities that are livable androbust. Polemical as well as practical, the manualwill equip design professionals, developers, regu-lators, and citizens with strategies drawn fromsuccessful built projects.

Sprawl is a pattern of growth characterized byan abundance of congested highways, strip shop-ping centers, big boxes, office parks, and gated cul-de-sac subdivisions – all separated from each otherin isolated, single-use pods (gure 1-1). This land-usepattern is typically found in suburban areas, but alsoaffects our cities, and is central to our wasteful use ofwater, energy, land, and time spent in traffic. Sprawlhas been linked to increased air and water pollution,greenhouse gas emissions, loss of open space andnatural habitat, and the exponential increase in newinfrastructure costs. Social problems related to the lackof diversity have been attributed to sprawl, and health

problems such as obesity to its auto-dependence.In contrast, complete communities have a mix of

uses and are walkable, with many of a person’s dailyneeds – shops, offices, transit, civic and recreationalplaces – within a short distance of home. They are com-pact, so they consume less open space and enable mul-tiple modes of transportation, including bicycles, cars,and mass transit. A wide variety of building types pro-vides options to residents and businesses, encouragingdiversity in population. This mix of uses, public spaces,transportation, and population makes complete com-munities economically, socially, and environmentallysustainable (gure 1-2).

The promise of suburbia has been eroding fordecades, but reached a critical point with the mort-gage meltdown of 2008. A record number of homeswent into foreclosure and entire subdivisions andcommercial developments began to fail. Yet theexpanse of sprawl represents a vast investment, andcannot be simply abandoned or demolished. Prag-matism demands the reclamation of sprawl through

CHAPTER ONE : INTRODUCTION

FROM SPRAWL TO COMPLETE

COMMUNITIES

Sprawl: fragmented, car-dependent single uses1-1.

© 2 0 0 9 G o o g l e , M a p D a t a ©

2 0 0 9 T e l e A t l a s

Complete community: balanced, connected, compact1-2.



redevelopment that introduces mixed uses andtransportation options. It must be acknowledged,however, that portions of sprawl may remain in theircurrent state, while others may devolve, revertingto agriculture or nature. The design and regulatorystrategies and incentives shown here are intendedfor the places that are best suited to be urbanizedbecause of location or existing investment.

The history and consequences of suburbandevelopment, specically sprawl, are well docu-mented. Numerous books articulate the trajectory ofsprawl within its historical context – from the FederalHousing Administration’s mortgages for new con-struction, the subsidies of the interstate highwaysystem, and the tax laws allowing accelerated depre-ciation of commercial development, to the evolutionof Euclidean zoning’s separation of uses and the cul-tural mandate for separation by race. Recent publica-tions put forward the need to redevelop sprawl andwhat specically should be repaired; among these areGreyelds into Goldelds and Malls into Main Streets,reports by the Congress for the New Urbanism. Ret-rotting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesign-ing Suburbs, by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Wil-liamson, explains why we need to retrot sprawl anddocuments successful examples of retrots throughilluminating and comprehensive analysis.

The Sprawl Repair Manual seeks to expand theliterature as a guide that illustrates how to repair thefull range of suburban conditions, demonstrating astep-by-step design process for the creation of moresustainable communities. This is a framework fordesigning the interventions, incorporating them intothe regulatory system, and implementing them withpermitting strategies and nancial incentives.

The proposed approach addresses a range of scalesfrom the region down to the community, street, block,and building. The method identies deciencies in typi-cal elements of sprawl, and determines the best remedialtechniques for those deciencies. Also included are rec-ommendations for regulatory and economic incentives.

Lessons learned from history guide this methodol-ogy. Rather than the instant and total overhaul of com-munities, as promoted so destructively in Americancities half a century ago, this is a guide for incrementaland opportunistic improvement.

Most of the diagrams have been conceptualizedand generalized to make them applicable to a widerrange of situations. In some cases the real conditionswere simplied to make the components and their de-ciencies easily identiable, and the techniques explicit. Alltechniques are shown with two- and three-dimensionaldrawings and diagrams, in a declension from the mostgeneral to the most specic (gures 1-3 and 1-4).

Commercial sprawl1-3. Complete community1-4.



There are two primary options for growth: con-ventional sprawl development and completecommunities.

Sprawl abandoned the neighborhood structurein favor of car-dependent patterns. When driving ismandatory for almost all daily activities, carbon emis-sions are higher. With the price of gasoline rising, longcommutes to or from exurban locations become eco-nomic disadvantages. Because sprawl developmentsare not compact, they consume excessive amounts offarmland and valuable natural areas.

Studies have shown that sprawl is damaging toboth physical and social health, isolating people in car-dominated environments where they are deprived notonly of the physiological benets of walking, but alsoof the natural human interactions typical of completecommunities. 1 This is especially relevant to aging resi-dents, who lose their independence when they can nolonger drive, and need to leave their suburban housesfor retirement communities. Children and youngeradults are also vulnerable to the car-dependence ofsprawl. In 1969, 90 percent of all children walked toschool, as schools were part of complete neighbor-hoods, but in 2002 only 31 percent walked to school. 2

Sprawl developments, particularly in exurbanareas, suffered some of the highest foreclosure rates,and many have also seen dramatic increases in crime

rates, some greater than 30 percent. 3 Many homes,and even entire subdivisions, have been abandoned,creating the effect of sporadic and dispersed occu-pancy typical of the consequences of natural disas-ters. Christopher Leinberger, visiting fellow at theBrookings Institution, predicts that the suburbs onthe fringes, poorly served by public transport, willsuffer a very visible decline as low-income popula-tions move in and these areas become “magnets forpoverty, crime, and social dysfunction.” 4

Nonetheless, the development industry continuesto produce sprawl, with the support of the nancialindustry, planning practices, and government policies.Sprawl remains cheaper to plan, easier to nance, fasterto permit, and less complicated to build, primarily dueto the regulations governing development. It is simplerto attach the freestanding, isolated, single-use compo-nents of sprawl to the already subsidized and prolichighway system than to assemble these elements intoreal neighborhoods and towns. Sprawl is extremelyinexible and will not mature into vibrant urbanism onits own. Without precise design and policy interven-tions, sprawl might change – a strip shopping centermight be scrapped and replaced with a lifestyle centerwhen the next owner comes along – but it is unlikelyto produce walkable, sustainable urbanism.

In contrast to sprawl, complete communities areeconomically robust because they include a variety

CHOICES

Mashpee Commons, Massachusetts, 1960s shopping center1-5. Transformation into a town center in the 2000s1-6.

M a s h p e e C o m m o n s L P



of businesses that support daily needs, and nearby resi-dents work at and patronize those businesses. They aresocially healthy because many generations with diverseincomes and backgrounds live and interact withinthem. Complete communities are livable because oftheir comfortable human scale. They are environmen-tally superior because they are compact, saving landand natural resources. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT)are reduced by as much as 30 percent, resulting in lesspollution and less energy used. 5

Complete communities also support walkingand physical activity, which have been proven impor-tant to public health and general well-being. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the Universityof Miami has determined that communities with amix of uses and good connectivity, block structure,public spaces, and transit proximity have residents

who are more likely to walk, less likely to be over-weight, and have greater social and communityinteractions. 6 The researchers worked with the FloridaDepartment of Health to create evidence-based cri-teria for the Surgeon General’s Seal of Walkability sothe general public would know what to look for in acommunity.

The demand for complete communities is greaterthan the current supply. According to Todd Litman,founder of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, in2009 North-American households were evenly dividedin their preferences for sprawl or smart growth in theform of walkable, diverse neighborhoods. He predictsthat by 2030, more than two-thirds will prefer smartgrowth. 7 This manual shows one way to meet thegrowing needs for walkable environments by repair-ing sprawl into complete communities.



Sprawl repair transforms failing or potentially fail-ing, single-use, and car-dominated developmentsinto complete communities that have better eco-nomic, social, and environmental performance.

The objective of the sprawl repair strategy is to buildcommunities based on the neighborhood unit, similar tothe traditional fabric that was established in towns andcities prior to World War II. The primary tactic of sprawlrepair is to insert needed elements – buildings, density,public space, additional connections – to complete anddiversify the mono-cultural agglomerations of sprawl:residential subdivisions, strip shopping centers, officeparks, suburban campuses, malls, and edge cities. By sys-tematically modifying the reparable areas (turning subdi-visions into walkable neighborhoods, shopping centersand malls into town centers) and leaving to devolutionthose that are irreparable (abandonment or conversionto park, agricultural, or natural land), sprawl can be reor-ganized into complete communities.

To identify the proper targets for repair, it is essen-tial to understand the form and structure of sprawl inthe American built environment. Sprawl can take placein intensely urban areas, but most is found in suburbanareas. There are three generations of suburbia that varyin form as related to urbanity and walkability: pre-warsuburbs, post-war suburbs, and the late 20th-centuryexurbs. While the pre-war suburbs are often completecommunities, the latter two types abandoned thepedestrian-centered neighborhood structure in favorof auto-centric dispersion.

The pre-war suburbs include patterns of growththat can be dened as suburban, but are not sprawlper se (gure 1-7). In the U.S., the rst suburbs sprangup in the nineteenth century along the newly builtrailroad lines, as compact, middle-class communitiesassembled around stations (examples include LakeForest and Riverside in Illinois and Forest Hills in Queens,New York) (gure 1-8). These were modeled after thesuburbs built in England in the eighteenth century

SPRAWL REPAIR DEFINED

First-generation suburbs: traditional growth patterns formed streetcar1-7.and railroad communities outside the city limits

Forest Hills, New York 1-8.

Traditional urban core

First-generation suburbs

Railroad or streetcar lines

Undeveloped land



to serve the London bourgeoisie, and inspired devel-opment outside of cities in other parts of the world. 8 With the invention of the electric streetcar, anothergroup emerged closer to the city and accessible to amore diverse economic and social population than therailroad suburbs (examples include Cleveland Park inWashington, DC, the Country Club District in KansasCity, Missouri, and Brookline, outside of Boston, Mas-sachusetts). 9 These developments depended on theirproximity to rail stops, and maintained an urban struc-ture for pedestrian walkability and a mixture of dailyuses. In the beginning of the 20th century, yet anothertype of development joined the suburban echelons;communities such as Bloomeld Hills, Michigan, andCoral Gables, Florida, were designed to accommodatethe automobile, but still consisted primarily of mixed-use, compact, and diverse neighborhoods.

In stark contrast to the pre-war suburbs, the secondgeneration of suburbs was single-use, low-density devel-opment spurred by new incentives from the federalmortgage system and the increase in automotive infra-structure and use (gure 1-9). The second-generation

suburbs began to develop in the 1920s, but ourishedafter the end of World War II, when, under the auspicesof national defense, the federal government createdthe interstate highway system, the largest infrastructureproject the country had ever seen. Ironically, the mainachievements of this monumental effort were to facili-tate personal mobility and undermine the fundamentalwalkability of American urbanism.

Levittown, built on Long Island, New York, in 1948,was the preeminent example of a community depen-dent on the nation’s new commitment to the car (gure1-10). Conceived as an innovative and affordable master-planned community based on the mass production ofhousing, Levittown was the prototype of the post-warAmerican suburb, and ultimately became the symbol ofthe ascent and failure of sprawl. Levittown’s thousandsof identical houses on identical lots transmogriedthe American dream of the earlier suburbs by makingeverything within them subordinate to the automobile,including the residents.

Though Levittown had schools, shopping centers,and park areas, its master plan ignored the traditional

Second-generation suburbs: conventional suburban development cre-1-9.ated car-dependent sprawl along new highways

Levittown, New York1-10.

Decline in urban core

Second-generation suburbs

Highways and interchanges

Undeveloped land

© 2 0 0 9 G o o g l e , M a p D a t a © 2 0 0 9 T e l e A t l a s



neighborhood structure, and the community was cre-ated only for families who owned cars. The use of theautomobile eliminated the need for convenient prox-imity of the elements of everyday life, and the walk-able compactness of the pre-war suburb gave way tosprawl. In the wake of its 60th birthday in 2008, Levit-town adopted an environmental program, aimed “topersuade residents to upgrade their homes, improvingenergy efficiency and cutting fuel bills.”10 As logical andnoble as such efforts are, especially in this time of cli-mate change and amidst the (rst) great recession ofthe 21st century, Levittown and suburbs of its kind willneed more than the “greening” of individual buildings. They will need a major repair of the overall urban struc-ture, because even if buildings are made more efficient,driving is not reduced, and the environmental, societal,and economic burden of sprawl will remain.

The second generation of suburbs has been blightedby traffic, obsolete housing stock, and inadequate ame-nities, and has been leapfrogged by newer sprawl out inthe exurbs. These places are the urgent contenders forrepair, as their deciencies prohibit them from respond-

ing to the changing demographics of a fast-aging andmore diverse population. Mashpee Commons in CapeCod, Massachusetts, one of the rst redevelopments ofa greyeld (obsolete, underutilized land) in the country,represents the potential to revitalize this generation ofsuburbs. It is a retrot in which a dead shopping centerbuilt in the 1960s was transformed into a town center inthe 1980s (gures 1-13 and 1-14).

The last generation, or third-ring suburbs (gures1-11 and 1-12), ourished from the 1980s through theearly 2000s on the exurban edge. Until recently, thesesuburbs have been highly competitive and in goodphysical shape, due in part to potent owners’ associa-tions that enforced special standards and bylaws tomaintain quality within the developments. The devel-opments are often gated, single-use housing pods orcommercial agglomerations such as strip shoppingcenters, malls, corporate campuses, or entire edgecities, and all are reachable only by automobile.

Repairing these suburbs will require a proactive,visionary approach that anticipates the potential eco-nomic decline and devaluation of developments. Urban

Third-generation suburbs: the exurbs1-11.

Tyson’s Corner, Virginia1-12.

Decline in urban core

Third-generation suburbs

Highways and interchanges

Undeveloped land



planners, business owners, developers, and municipalgovernments must anticipate their failure and intercede.An example of a farsighted repair of a still-successfulmall and its surroundings is Downtown Kendall inMiami-Dade, Florida, where the county, chamber ofcommerce, and landowners worked together to out-line a long-term plan for the transformation of this edgecity into a transit-oriented, regional center (gures 1-15and 1-16).

Repair of some places will be physically and eco-nomically more feasible (e.g., the perfectly located mallwaiting to be connected to the surrounding suburbanfabric), while others will be more likely to wither thanevolve. These are the isolated, disconnected, exurbanfringes where the application of the neighborhood struc-ture will be least feasible. And if residents and businessesmigrate en masse from these fringes, because of unem-ployment, foreclosures, or social instability, these placesmay well be transformed back to agriculture or nature.Nationally and internationally, the “shrinking cities” ini-tiative (started by cities like Youngstown, Ohio) focuseson programs for managing the devolution (reduction ofthe physical infrastructure) of urban and suburban areasexperiencing economic and population decline. 11 Incomparison to other countries (mainly in Europe), wherea negative population change is the predominant reasonfor “shrinking cities,” the population in the U.S. is expectedto continue growing, creating the potential for repair andintensication of some areas. 12

This manual concentrates mainly on strategiesfor densication of sprawl, but acknowledges thatsome re-greening and de-densication initiatives are

Mashpee Commons, 1960: strip shopping center1-13.

Mashpee Commons, 2000s: transformed into a town center1-14.





Downtown Kendall, Florida: edge city in the process of1-15.sprawl repair

New street in Downtown Kendall1-16.

valid alternatives to blight and depopulation in thesuburbs. Examples are given for contracting cities andsuburbs at the regional scale (chapter three, “Repairat the Regional Scale”), as well as instructions for re-platting deserted properties to larger lots to be usedfor gardens or larger family compounds (chapter six,“Repair at the Block Scale”).

Areas where the crisis is most acute – where traf-c congestion, falling real estate values, outdatedinfrastructure, and lack of public amenities become

unbearable – as well as the places with regionalimportance and manageable ownership patterns,should be given priority for sprawl repair. As dis-cussed at greater length in chapter three, “Repairat the Regional Scale,” priorities for sprawl repair ordevolution must be set at the regional level. How-ever, the subject of devolution is sensitive and rela-tively new, and is best addressed at the communityscale, where residents, associations, property owners,and developers can make decisions locally.




Experience with retrot projects shows there arenumerous challenges to overcome in the pro-cess of sprawl repair. The rst challenge is nan-cial, as sprawl repair requires considerable initialinvestment. It becomes more nancially feasible,however, when analyzed from a long-term per-spective and when compared to conventionalsuburban development. The increased densityand mixed uses, for example, reduce the cost ofinfrastructure per capita.

Land-use segregation and imbalance in the formof single-use concentrations (shopping centers, resi-dential enclaves, and office parks) fragment the builtenvironment. In addition, economic and market dif-ferences cause further separation and the existingownership patterns are often disjointed. These fac-tors create the need for coordinated and expensiveland acquisitions, placing pressures on affordability ofhousing and further complicating the prospects forrepairing the existing fabric.

Transportation constraints include the lack of con-nectivity and permeability in existing suburban thor-oughfare patterns. There is rarely a continuous networkto allow for multiple choices of movement, only a sparsearrangement of highways, collectors, and cul-de-sacsconning the traffic stream to limited channels of highspeed and congestion. Interweaving the thoroughfarenetwork will be challenging, and in some cases impossi-ble. Many properties will need to be acquired, and manyrights-of-way will need to be modied before achievingany meaningful connectivity.

Open space management in sprawling areasusually does not amount to continuous and sig-nicant environmental preserves. Haphazard sprawldevelopment has disconnected natural areas, withthe result that neither the human nor natural habi-tat has retained its integrity. There is no hierarchy in

the treatment of open space; swales, berms, and wildvegetation are permitted in urbanized areas, whilemassive impervious surfaces encroach on sensitivenatural networks.

Excessive requirements for on-site parking reducethe potential for increasing density and varying build-ing types. Most conventional zoning codes requireon-site parking and do not allow shared parkingratios, thus limiting development to low structureswith parking lots or high-rises with parking decks. There is no incentive for mid-size buildings withlower parking ratios that will more evenly distributeconstruction through the suburban fabric.

Existing land-development regulations promotethe separation of uses. The regulatory emphasis isstill on the quantitative criteria, rather than physicaldesign. The result is sprawl that is neither urban norrural in character, but rather an ambiguous mixture inwhich roadways and parking lots have priority overthe buildings that form the public space. New codesare needed to allow the retrot of these elementsinto more sustainable communities.

In addition to municipal ordinances, many gatedcommunities, as found in the second- and third-ringsuburbs, are protected by homeowners’ association cov-enants, which leave few legal means for retrot. Togetherwith the overhaul of the regulatory framework that sup-ports sprawl, identifying the legal methods for sprawlrepair will be essential to its successful implementation.

However, the most important reason for the inef-ciency of suburban sprawl is the absence of neigh-borhood structure. The diverse and compact neigh-borhood unit, which is the building block of smartgrowth, has been abandoned and even outlawed,leading to the fractured and inefficient landscapeof suburbia. Establishing neighborhood structureand connecting it to the larger region is the greatestdesign challenge encountered in sprawl repair.

CHALLENGES



Greyfield site next to a train station1-17.

Overscaled parking and dispersed buildings underutilize the site1-18.

D r a w i n g b y M a x v o n T r o t t

Existing buildings Train station



Energy costs are rising, meaning long commutesare becoming unaffordable. A changing climatecompels us to pollute less. We need to increasephysical activity to overcome the epidemic ofobesity and chronic diseases. Entire residentialand commercial developments are failing. Theeconomics of sprawl are not working. These arethe obvious justications for sprawl repair. Butthere are other reasons that, while less obvious,are equally compelling.

The emergence of a new class of buyers – eco-nomically farsighted, environmentally conscious,and socially active – is creating a major shift in thehousing market. Baby Boomers (those born between1946 and 1964) and their Millennial progeny (bornbetween 1976 and 2000) represent more than 135million people, many of them with an orienta-tion toward diverse, compact urbanism – Boomersbecause they’re retiring and want the convenience,sociability, and stimuli of a complete community, andMillennials because they are young and want theexcitement and job opportunities of urban environ-ments. 13 Trends such as these, along with economicand environmental forces that make exurban devel-opment unsustainable, will lead builders, developers,and the private sector at large to pursue sprawl repairaggressively. Combined with public policy, such ashift would be very powerful. This manual addressesthese opportunities by showing techniques for thetransformation of sprawl into communities that areattractive to these buyers.

As Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamsonassert in Retrofitting Suburbia, the population of21st-century suburbia is very different from the ste-reotype of fty years ago that depicted the suburbsas predominantly white, middle-class families withchildren. Together with the quantitative and genera-tional shifts, the growing presence of ethnic minori-ties accustomed to less driving and living and work-ing in less space will contribute to new opportunitiesfor engaging different cultures. The sprawl repairtechniques provide a variety of ways to expand therange of public spaces and more affordable building

types to accommodate the housing and businessneeds of a diverse, multiethnic population.

The need to accommodate population growthis another obvious reason for sprawl repair. By 2025,the population of the U.S. is expected to increase by70 million – equal to the combined current popula-tions of California, New York, and Florida.14 Accord-ing to Arthur C. Nelson of the Metropolitan ResearchCenter at the University of Utah, the U.S. will reach400 million people in 2037. Of the next 100 millionpeople, only 12 percent will have children, as mostof the population will t into the categories of emptynesters or single-person households. He predicts adramatic shift in the market toward more urban envi-ronments, as the demand for single-family housingwill plummet. 15 According to Nelson, inner cities andrst-generation suburbs will not have sufficient hous-ing supplies to satisfy the need of the market, and“two-thirds or more of the next 100 million peopleand associated jobs are likely to locate in existingsecond-tier (1950–2000) suburbs.” The manual dem-onstrates how growing housing needs can be satis-ed by intensication of sprawling developments inthe second and third tiers of suburbs, especially nearplaces with potential for transit.

The required infrastructure for conventionaldevelopment is excessive – in most cases overscaled– and can be utilized in the redevelopment process.As an example, sprawl’s wide thoroughfares caneasily accommodate transit infrastructure and bicy-cle lanes as well as cars. Vast parcels of deterioratingcommercial buildings and parking lots are ready tobe urbanized and become centers for the adjacentsuburban communities. Furthermore, aging resi-dents will prefer to retire in their suburban homes,which are the largest personal investments for mostof these residents. If amenities and services are pro-vided through repair strategies, it may become possi-ble for millions of seniors to retire in place and investin their current communities instead of moving.

Hundreds of new communities that are com-pact, pedestrian-friendly, and mixed-use have beenbuilt in the last three decades and are ready to beused as models for sprawl repair. They differ from

OPPORTUNITIES



Final stage of greyfield repair with parking lot developed and buildings replaced1-20.

Transit-oriented urban core with a new square framing the train station1-19.

Existing buildings Proposed buildings Train station Parking garages

D r a w i n g b y M a x v o n T r o t t



sprawl in fundamental ways, among the most sig-nicant of which is their capacity for intensicationand incorporation of public transit. The experienceof building these communities has provided practi-cal tools that are applicable to sprawl repair and areexplained in this manual.

Sprawl repair is an economic necessity, but alsoprovides the opportunity for economic growth. Asobserved in a study by the Brookings Institution’s Met-ropolitan Policy Program, the employment decentral-ization that started in the 1960s became a substantialphenomenon for most metropolitan regions throughthe 1990s and 2000s, with the result that most busi-nesses were located outside of city limits. 16 Thismanual emphasizes the use of existing employmentand commercial hubs as anchors to be redevelopedinto complete communities with balanced uses and

transportation options. Many existing buildings canalso be rehabilitated for new businesses. Existing jobscan be saved, and new green jobs can be created inthe process of transforming sprawl.

Beginning in 2008, the retail industry experiencedunprecedented upheaval, creating an opportunityto reform the conventions of large-scale commer-cial overdevelopment. General Growth Properties,the second-largest mall owner in the U.S., led forbankruptcy in April 2009, but had recently started aprogram to retrot many of its megaretail hubs intomixed-use centers. This practice, together with theredevelopment of existing employment hubs, shouldbe supported and incentivized.

Proximity to agricultural land is one of the few advan-tages exurban developments have over urban centers.Some, therefore, have the potential to be retrotted for

Infill as repair of a corporate office park: Legacy Town Center, Plano, Texas1-21.



local food production. They have abundant open space,and they are close to the edges where they can easilyinterface with agriculture. It may be also easier to adaptthese areas for irrigation, whether natural or manmade,or introduce grey-water recycling. The next Americanrural village might not be designed from scratch; it maybe a model of repaired suburban sprawl.

The regulatory environment that supports sprawlhas already begun to change. Form-based codes havebeen approved in many municipalities around the U.S.More than 80 cities, such as Petaluma, California, Mont-gomery, Alabama, and Miami, Florida, have adopted orare currently adopting the SmartCode, a model, form-based comprehensive ordinance that replaces use- anddensity-based ordinances and enables the develop-ment of mixed-use, traditional neighborhoods. This shiftin the regulatory framework makes smart growth devel-opment legal again and assists sprawl repair initiatives.

Regional planning allows for the choice of sustain-able growth instead of sprawl, as it provides coordina-tion between municipalities and jurisdictions. Countiesacross the nation are adopting regional smart growthpolicies. In Sacramento, California, an association of localgovernments completed a “Blueprint of the Future” forthe six-county metropolitan region. The plan coversgrowth until 2050, and encourages compact devel-opments near mass transit, thus saving $8 billion inconstruction costs for freeways, utilities, and otherinfrastructure.17 In Florida, the Treasure Coast RegionalPlanning Council is a unique four-county collaborationon strategic regional planning that has been effectivein providing comprehensive planning assistance, urbandesign, town planning, and redevelopment initiatives,as well as model regulatory documents. 18

Statewide planning practices can provide disci-pline and coordination on a large scale. If an entire stateembraces policies that do not foster sprawl, the repair ofsuburbia will be more feasible, as state resources will bechanneled to incentivize sustainable growth. Projectssuch as Envision Utah and Louisiana Speaks endeavor tocreate coordinated solutions for their states’ growth andoutline opportunities for inll and repair.

At the federal level, agencies have cometogether to address growth in a holistic, multi-disci-plinary manner that should help with sprawl repair.In 2009, the U.S. Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment (HUD), the U.S. Department of Trans-portation (DOT), and the Environmental ProtectionAgency (EPA) announced an interagency partnershipfor sustainable communities. Their goal is to coordi-nate federal housing, transportation, and other infra-structure investments to protect the environment,promote equitable development, and help addressthe challenges of climate change. The growingawareness of climate change presents an opportu-nity to create complete and sustainable communi-ties through redevelopment, as new smart growthpolicies become the norm.

This is an opportunity for sprawl repair initiativesto be combined with federal funding, and possibly leg-islation. However, without the clear goals of physicalchange through sprawl repair, funding and legislationwill not be sufficient to achieve the repair of our unsus-tainable suburbs. Concrete, practical tools are needed,and this manual provides a full range – from the region,where federal and state incentives will be needed, tothe single structure, where private investments andindividual commitments will be required.



21 TWO MODELS23 NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT MODEL23 SPRAWL MODEL

26 TECHNIQUES26 URBAN DESIGN TECHNIQUES28 REGULATORY TECHNIQUES31 IMPLEMENTATION TECHNIQUES



CHAPTER TWO

THE SPRAWL REPAIR METHOD

Sprawl repair begins with analysis at the regionalscale (gure 2-1). Complete communities – cities,towns, villages – are identied for preservationand emulation, and unsustainable but salvage-able sprawl elements are identied for repair. Forsprawl elements that are beyond repair, the deci-sion must be made whether to leave them as theyare, convert them to farmland, or let them devolveinto open space.

The sprawl repair method is comprised of urbandesign, regulatory, and implementation techniques. The nal products of sprawl repair are communi-ties in which people live better, drive less, and, as

a result, save energy and resources, ultimately con-tributing to a healthier environment. Prioritizing theuse of resources, value engineering, demolition, andprocess modeling are focused on making sprawlrepair more economical. The process leading fromthe state of sprawl to the state of repaired, sustain-able urbanism is dependent on the specics of thetarget and its site – the physical boundaries, regionalcontext and connectivity, ownership pattern, demo-graphics, politics, and economic potential, as well asdifferent construction methods and available tech-nology, materials, and workforce. As a result, sprawlrepair strategies take a variety of paths – some moredirect and expeditious, while others may consist of

Sprawl repair targets: commercial, employment, and transportation nodes2-1.with the best potential for redevelopment

Repair in urban core

Communities for preservation and emulation

Sprawl development

Sprawl repair targets

Sprawl as is or devolution

Undeveloped land



gradual and slower steps. Regardless of its path, thenal state of the repaired sprawl element is a part ofa complete community that needs fewer resourcesand provides a better quality of life.

Figure 2-2 shows the transformation of a sprawlrepair target into a part of a complete community. Thechange of quality of life is represented along the hori-zontal axis, while the vertical axis shows the quantita-tive change in the reduction of energy, resources, andinfrastructure use per capita after the transformation. The process of transformation is shown in multiple

paths – direct (the straight line), phased (the steppedline), and indirect (the circuitous line). The direct pathrepresents a case in which economics and timing sup-port one big-effort, single-phase, radical repair. Thephased path includes several steps, with portions ofthe project developed at different times. The indirectpath represents a sequence of changes that bring theproject closer to the nal repaired state, but in a longer,incremental progression of trial and adjustment. Nomatter which path is chosen, the nal result is a positivequalitative change from sprawl to walkable urbanism.

Conceptual representation of possible paths of sprawl repair and their effects on resource use and quality of life2-2.

Direct process of sprawl repair1.

Phased process of sprawl repair2.

Indirect process of sprawl repair3.

I N F R A S T R U C T U R E / R E S O U R C E S / E N E R G Y C O N S U M P T I O N / P E R C A P I T A

QUALITY OF LIFE

2

1

3



Quantitative comparison of urban indicators in a single-family subdivision2-3.

SINGLE FAMILY SUBDIVISION

TRANSFORMATION CATEGORIES BEFORE AFTERIMPROVEMENT OF

URBAN INDICATORS

Site acreage, acres 58 58 1.00

Total built area, 1 sq. ft. 1,900,000 2,700,000 1.4

Total building footprint, 2 sq. ft. 380,000 530,000 1.4

Total building area, 3 sq. ft. 880,000 1,900,000 2.2

Total occupant load, occupants 4,400 8,400 1.9

Occupant density, occupants per acre 77 144 1.9

Parking area per capita, sq. ft. per occupant 75 65 0.9

Thoroughfare area per capita,sq. ft. per occupant 157 73 0.5

Thoroughfare length per capita,ft. per occupant 1.2 0.8 0.6

1 Total built area comprises all construction, including buildings, parking, and thoroughfares.2 Total building footprint comprises all building footprints, regardless of use.3 Total building area comprises all building square footage. Garages of single-family residences are included.

Figures 2-3, 2-4, and 2-5 compare selected urbanindicators before and after sprawl repair. They illustratethe redevelopment potential of sprawl as expressedby changes of urban indicators. In all cases the den-sity increases substantially, sufficient to support transit.It should be emphasized that transit works at a larger,regional scale, coordinated between retrotted nodes.For example, a minimum density of 15 units to the acrecan support a frequent local bus service. 1 The casesshown analyze occupant densities, rather than residentor employee densities, because the sprawl elementshad single uses. In all cases, the occupant density, mean-ing people residing and working in an area per acre,increases dramatically (more than doubles), showingthe redevelopment potential of these repair sites.

Two critical metrics shown in the gures are thelength and surface of thoroughfares per capita beforeand after sprawl repair. In all cases, these measure-ments decrease. Similar reductions can be expectedfor other infrastructure, meaning less infrastructure isrequired per capita when a sprawl element is repairedwith the demonstrated techniques. In the long run,such repair is less expensive and more efficient thanemploying methods that create sprawl.

It is important to note that in addition toincreased transit-supportive density and developablereal estate, these transformations add civic space, avariety of uses, and space for urban agriculture, ulti-mately improving the quality of life for residents andworkers.



BUSINESS PARK


URBAN I NDICATORS



Total building footprint, 2 sq. ft. 530,000 1,610,000 3.0

Total building area, 3 sq. ft. 1,450,000 5,440,000 3.8






1 Total built area comprises all construction, including buildings, parking, and thoroughfares.2 Total building footprint comprises all building footprints, regardless of use.3 Total building area comprises all building square footage. Parking decks are included.

SHOPPING MALL


URBAN INDICATORS



Total building footprint, 2 sq. ft. 1,290,000 3,770,000 2.9

Total building area, 3 sq. ft. 1,770,000 11,500,000 6.5






1 Total built area comprises all construction, including buildings, parking, and thoroughfares.2 Total building footprint comprises all building footprints, regardless of use.3 Total building area comprises all building square footage. Parking decks are included.

Quantitative comparison of urban indicators in a business park 2-4.

Quantitative comparison of urban indicators in a shopping mall2-5.



TWO MODELS

Complete communities consist of corridors, dis-tricts, and neighborhoods. These elements havedened edges and connect to form balancedurban and rural systems (gure 2-6).

Corridors are natural or manmade pathways suchas greenways, creeks, wetlands, boulevards, or rail lines.Corridors can serve as transportation infrastructure for aregion, linking neighborhoods, towns, and districts, or asa framework of continuous open space providing pro-tection for wildlife and environmental networks. With theascent of sprawl, manmade corridors such as highwaysand arterial roads have been overcome by strip commer-

cial development. At the same time, natural corridors inthe form of greenways and creeks have been obliteratedby leapfrogged development and pavement.

Districts are places where one predominant use isconcentrated, such as college campuses or medical facil-ities. Districts are necessary elements of healthy regionsand, while predominantly single-use, they can be orga-nized in an urban structure similar to a neighborhood tot within the surrounding context. The type of planningthat produced sprawl has affected districts as well, subur-banizing them into isolated and car-dependent enclaveslocated far away from urban cores and residential areas.New universities have become commuter hubs in the

Complete communities consist of distinct corridors, districts, and neighborhoods2-6.

Natural corridor

Manmade corridor

District

Neighborhood



far-ung exurbs where everyone needs a car and thecampuses have been overwhelmed by parking lots andgarage structures.

The pre-war planning methodology used the neigh-borhood as the primary unit of growth. All uses withina neighborhood were close to each other, as peopleneeded to reach them by foot. Streetcars connectedneighborhoods, while railroads connected towns andcities. Post-war development policies and practices dras-tically departed from this discipline, as the car providedlong-distance mobility. This liberated planning from therestrictions of walkable distances between destinations,and sprawl was born (gure 2-7).

The repair of sprawl is most effective when itis applied at all scales of development – from theregion, because transit should be handled at a largerscale, to the block and the building, because inter-ventions may start small for lack of resources. Nev-ertheless, the neighborhood is the essential incre-ment, because walkability and, most importantly,sustainable growth can be achieved only at thislevel. The traditional neighborhood model has manyadvantages over the conventional sprawl model ofplanning. The core principles and goals of the sprawlrepair process are inspired by and based on the attr i-butes of the neighborhood model.

Sprawl lacks structure, centers, and edges2-7.

Natural corridor

Manmade corridor

District

Sprawl



The neighborhood unit is a comprehensive planningincrement (gure 2-8). When combined with others ofits kind, it becomes a town or a city. When freestandingin the landscape, it is a village or a hamlet. The neigh-borhood unit model has the following attributes:

The physical size of the neighborhood is dened•

by a ve-minute walk from its geographiccenter to its edge, covering approximately aquarter of a square mile. The basic needs of daily life are available in•

close proximity. The neighborhood offerstransit, employment, and shopping, plus civicand leisure activities.Streets form a connected network, providing•

alternate routes that help to disperse traffic,and are equitable for vehicles, pedestrians, andbicyclists.Diversity in the type, size, and disposition of•

buildings, streets, and open spaces createsmany options in environments, experiences,functions, uses, prices, and populations. These attributes contribute to the conservation•

of energy, natural resources, farmland, openspaces, time, and money.

Sprawl development is not organized in a neighbor-hood structure (gure 2-9). Though conventional sub-urban subdivisions are often called “neighborhoods,”they do not have the characteristics traditionally foundin neighborhoods. In contrast to the neighborhoodmodel, sprawl has the following attributes:

Commercial, residential, and civic uses are•

separated from each other with no regard fordistance.Daily needs are accessible only by car.•

Roads are arranged in a discontinuous pattern•

that reduces the choice of route and mode oftransport, and creates congestion. The elements of sprawl are separate pods•

containing singular building types, sizes, anddispositions, leading to a limited range ofenvironments, experiences, functions, uses,prices, and populations. These attributes contribute to the less-efficient•

use of energy, natural resources, farmland, openspaces, time, and money.

NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT MODEL SPRAWL MODEL

Neighborhood model2-8. Sprawl model2-9.



Figure 2-10 demonstrates the mix of uses in a traditionalneighborhood – a main street and square lined withshops, apartments, and offices, with blocks of housesbehind the main street and a school on the edge. Thesprawl model includes the same uses, but they are seg-regated – the houses, offices, and stores form separatepods, each surrounded by parking. The school is onthe edge, as in the other model, but cannot be directlyaccessed from the residential area.

School1.

Houses2.

Shops3.

Civic building4.

Offices5.

1

22

1

4

4

3

3

5

5

Streets

Cul-de-sacs

Comparison of uses2-10.

Neighborhood Sprawl

Neighborhood Sprawl

Comparison of connectivity2-11.

Figure 2-11 illustrates the urban fabric of both models

– the street network in the traditional neighborhood iswell connected, with all uses mixed together and acces-sible to each other by car, bicycle, or on foot, while thesprawl model imposes isolation at every point with asequence of dead-end pods that are not accessible toone another except through the collector road.

Figures 2-10, 2-11, and 2-12 illustrate the differ-ences between two models of planning. The neigh-borhood unit model is on the left side of the dia-grams, while the sprawl model is on the right. Both

communities contain the same elements – houses,offices, a school, shopping, and open space – but theelements are organized differently.



Neighborhood Sprawl

Travel distance between home and work Comparison of trip lengths2-12.

Figure 2-12 shows the shorter travel distances in tradi-tional urbanism versus the redundant and longer tripsrequired in sprawl. The rst diagram demonstrates atrip from a house to the shops, the route kept withinthe neighborhood. In the sprawl example, the same

trip goes through the collector road, increasing traffic. This system not only requires driving, but also imposesdependence and isolation on people who are tooyoung, too old, too sick, or too poor to drive.

Without the clarity of the neighborhood structure,conventional suburban development blurs the bound-aries and characteristics of neighborhoods, corridors,and districts, and sprawls across the land. For example,strip commercial development often makes incursionsinto residential areas, and because the commercial andresidential building types (but not their uses) are incom-patible, the desire for separation grows ever stronger. The suburban edge is diluted in its interface with thenatural boundaries; sprawl leapfrogs other sprawl andencroaches in areas that need to be protected, such asproductive farmland and natural habitat. Sprawl repairidenties and enhances centers and edges; it takes theelements of sprawl and transforms them into completecommunities – neighborhood centers, town centers,regional urban cores, and transit corridors, connectedinto a healthy regional structure.

As sprawl has eroded the built environment, it hasalso corrupted common conceptions. Terms such as“neighborhood” and “center” once had clear and com-monly understood meaning. But developers of sprawlhave created so many single-use housing pods, andcalled them “neighborhoods,” and so many strip malls,and called them “town centers,” that the terms have lostmuch of their value. Another benet of sprawl repair

is to reclaim the meaning of terms such as these, andmake them useful again. A center is a focal point (andoften a gathering place), not necessarily a geographicmid-point, where a variety of housing and commer-cial and civic amenities are provided for surroundingsuburban developments. The sprawl repair methodidenties rural centers (hamlets that serve rural com-munities), neighborhood centers (repaired commer-cial and residential nodes with potential for transit,serving several suburban communities), town centers(repaired, larger-scale commercial nodes with poten-tial for transit, serving several suburban communities),and regional urban cores (repaired employment andcommercial hubs, serving a region). Sprawl repair tech-niques are dedicated to transforming:

Single-use residential and commercial devel-•

opments (nodes at important thoroughfares,which are concentrations with potential forhigher density, mixed use, and transit) into ruralcenters, neighborhood centers, town centers,and regional urban cores;Strip commercial corridors into transit corridors•

and networks; andCommuter-oriented districts into more walk-•

able and complete urbanism.



TECHNIQUES

The sprawl repair method is based on urban design,regulation, and implementation techniques.

These are the same instruments that have madesprawl the prevalent form of development. But whenfocused on retrot and redevelopment, these toolstransform the existing physical environment fromsprawl to complete communities.

URBAN DESIGN TECHNIQUES

Sprawl repair should be designed at all urban scales,including repair of a regional domain, transformingsprawl elements at the community scale, and re-conguration of conventional suburban blocks and thereuse, expansion, and adaptation of single structures.

The urban design method at the regional scale

The regional scale

The community scale

The block scale

The building scale

1 / 4 m i l e

These diagrams show interventions at the four scales of the sprawl repair method – region, community, block, and building2-13.



The sprawl repair method uses pedestrian sheds to delineate neighborhoods and town centers , which should be connected2-14.by transit

includes several steps that produce a documentmapping the structure of sprawl repair (gure 2-13). The steps determine the physical boundaries of theregional domain, delineate the areas to be preservedand reserved, prioritize the salvageable commercial andemployment nodes, determine the potential transit andinfrastructure networks, identify the sprawl repair targets,and, after the transfer of development rights, assemblethe nal sector map. Two additional tools, the SprawlRepair Assessment Tool and the Sprawl Repair Void Analy-sis, assist the urban design process at the regional scale.Chapter three, “Repair at the Regional Scale,” illustratesthese steps and tools.

Urban design at the community scale concentrateson restructuring sprawl into neighborhoods, transit cor-ridors, and well-balanced districts that have short walkingdistances to daily needs and provide healthier environ-ments to a multigenerational population. It has long beenestablished that most people will choose not to walk ifa destination is more than ve minutes away (roughly aquarter of a mile). The distance covered in this ve-min-ute walk is commonly called a pedestrian shed, and isusually represented (in planning documents) by a circlewith a quarter-mile radius (gure 2-14). Larger circles of ahalf-mile radius are used when the pedestrian sheds are

centered on a transit stop, as people are willing to walklonger to such destinations. Delineating the pedestriansheds for the potential neighborhoods and town centershappens at the regional scale (see chapter three, “Repairat the Regional Scale, Step Five: Identify the Sprawl Repair Targets”), but their detailing and urban design happenat the community scale. The pedestrian shed is a simplebut essential tool in the pursuit of order and walkability inauto-oriented suburban environments.

After the pedestrian sheds are determined, the neigh-borhoods and town centers are shaped using a range ofurban design techniques. They include introducing newbuilding types to allow a greater mix of uses, connect-ing and improving thoroughfares to be more pedestrianfriendly, and rationalizing parking to accommodate futureurbanization and eliminate underutilized parking.

Dening open and civic space is an essential urbandesign technique that involves the creation of a hierar-chy of well-dened spaces for common use. The integra-tion of local food production is becoming a predominanttrend and is recommended for all repair sites, as they caneasily accommodate gardens and allotments, even whiletheir urbanism is being redesigned.

The repair at the community scale is closely inter-related with the redesign of the full range of suburban



thoroughfares. Designed exclusively for cars, with onlyvelocity and capacity in mind, suburban thorough-fares must be repaired into complete streets, meaningthey safely and comfortably accommodate pedestri-ans, bicyclists, public transit, and vehicles. The urbandesign interventions are aimed to achieve speciccharacter – fast and dangerous suburban thorough-fares are redesigned into pedestrian- and bike-friendlystreets where vehicular traffic is accommodated with-out sacricing the built environment around it. In mostcases, the existing rights-of-way are kept the same,as well as the pavement width of the thoroughfares,because the proposed design changes are handledwithin the existing parameters. The conversion of sub-urban intersections into more urban and pedestrian-friendly types is also demonstrated.

Urban design at the block scale deals with tech-niques for transforming blocks into smaller urban incre-ments and preparing them to become part of a futurepedestrian-friendly urban fabric. Large suburban mega-blocks are broken down into a ner grain of smaller blocksby introducing new streets and passages, thereby estab-lishing a coherent pattern for further redevelopment.

Repair at the building scale complements the com-munity and block scales, as it deals with the main build-ing stereotypes that dene sprawl. These emblematicstructures, via modest urban design interventions, havethe potential to contribute to a more diverse, harmoni-ous, and walkable urban fabric. Rather than being demol-ished, existing suburban buildings are repurposed and/ or lined with new structures, often taking advantage ofsuburbia’s typically excessive setbacks (the distancesbetween buildings and property lines) and parking lots.

REGULATORY TECHNIQUES

Even though sprawl has proven low performance, it isstill difficult to approve and nance mixed-use, walk-able, and diverse projects. Furthermore, it is impossibleto repair sprawl using most existing zoning practicesand policies, as they are still suburban in nature. A totaloverhaul of current zoning practices is required for aneffective intervention in suburbia. As this is impossibleto do in a single, sweeping motion, new codes mustbe adopted one municipality, or even one project, at atime, as overlay districts, in parallel, or in place of exist-

ing codes. In all cases, these codes must powerfullyincentivize smart growth rather than sprawl.

To overcome the difficulties related to buildingand maintaining sprawl, a gradual process of adoptingform-based codes has been started by some munici-palities and cities. Form-based codes regulate the formof the built environment, allowing and encouraginggood place making. A model form-based code is theSmartCode, a comprehensive ordinance that enablessmart growth community patterns and the transfor-mation of sprawl into walkable urbanism. 2 The codeincludes a special sector (Sprawl Repair Sector G-5)that is assigned to areas that are currently single useand have disconnected conventional developmentpatterns, but have the potential to be completed orredeveloped into neighborhoods and urban centers.

The Sprawl Repair Module has been createdas a special “plug-in” to the SmartCode to activatethe technology for repair as a part of the code. Themodule presents a sequence of techniques for retro-tting the sprawl elements into complete communi-ties. It operates at the scale of the region, community,block, building, and thoroughfare.

Some of the sprawl areas will be up-zoned toaccommodate higher but well-designed density, andallow the introduction of mixed uses and transit. Thiscreates the regulatory basis for successional growthand the transformation of sprawl elements into viableneighborhoods with more transportation and housingchoices. Conventional suburban blocks may be recon-gured to receive higher densities and additional uses.

At the scale of the building, the most importantissues will be to allow exible uses within existingstructures (houses becoming live-work units, big-boxretail becoming office space or a civic building), andincreased density within existing parcels and lots (amansion turned into multifamily housing or an assistedliving facility, or the addition of accessory units).

Another important task is to create standards tocalm and repair dangerous thoroughfares and makethem safe for walking and bicycling while creatingconnections between residential areas, shops, work-places, schools, civic buildings, and recreation.

The SmartCode and the Sprawl Repair Moduleoperate according to the rural-to-urban transect (the Transect), an organizational framework and planning



T1 NATURAL ZONE consists of lands approximating or revert-ing to a wilderness condition, including lands unsuitable forsettlement due to topography, hydrology, or vegetation.

T2 RURAL ZONE consists of sparsely settled lands in open orcultivated states. These include woodland, agricultural land,grassland, and irrigable desert. Typical buildings are farmhouses,agricultural buildings, cabins, and villas.

T3 SUB URBAN ZONE consists of low-density residential areas,adjacent to higher zones that have some mixed use. Homeoffices and outbuildings are allowed. Planting is naturalistic and

setbacks are relatively deep. Blocks may be large and the roadsirregular to accommodate natural conditions.

T4 GENERAL URBAN ZONE consists of a mixed use but primar-ily residential urban fabric. It may have a wide range of buildingtypes: detached and sideyard houses, and townhouses. Setbacksand landscaping are variable.

T5 URBAN CENTER ZONE consists of higher-density, mixed-usebuildings that accommodate retail, offices, townhouses, andapartments. It has a tight network of streets, with wide side-walks, steady street tree planting, and buildings set close to thesidewalks.

T6 URBAN CORE ZONE consists of the highest density andheight, with the greatest variety of uses, and civic buildingsof regional importance. It may have larger blocks; streets havesteady street tree planting and buildings are set close to widesidewalks. Typically only large towns and cities have an UrbanCore zone.

SPECIAL DISTRICTS consist of areas with buildings that do notconform to one or more of the six normative Transect zones.

Note: Definitions adapted from SmartCode v9.2

RURAL FARMLAND RURAL SPRAWLSINGLE FAMILY

SUBDIVISION

MULTI FAMILY

SUBDIVISIONSHOPPING CENTER BUSINESS PARK EDGE CITY

S2S1 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7

T1 T2 T5T3 T6T4 SD

Comparison of the Transect in sprawl and in traditional urbanism, showing the lack of direct correlation between the two2-15.



Transect of traditional urbanism2-16. Transect of sprawl2-17.

methodology that enables the comprehensive andeffective redevelopment of our sprawling communi-ties into more sustainable patterns. The Transect is nota mandatory tool to be imposed on planners and localgovernments. A transect is a concept originally used byecologists to describe distinct natural habitats, but hasbeen extended to cover the human habitat. The Transect,

as it relates to the built environment, organizes structuralelements according to an increasing density and com-plexity, from the countryside to the urban core.

The lack of rural-to-urban logic in sprawl is one ofthe fundamental differences from traditional urbanism(gure 2-15). The Transect is broken into zones, each rep-resenting a complex habitat of different building types,

T6

T5

T4

T3

T2

T1

S6

S5

S4

S3

S2

S1



streetscapes, and public spaces (gure 2-16). This is incontrast to sprawl, in which each element is a single-use agglomeration, usually a monoculture of a singlebuilding type (gure 2-17). The Transect zones representzoning conditions that are similar to the ones adminis-tered by conventional zoning codes, except they includenot only the building use, density, height, and setbackrequirements, but also how buildings relate to each otherand how together they shape the public realm.

Sprawl elements cannot be repaired in isolation;they must always be considered in the context ofthe community scale. Single-use and typologicallymonotonous areas need to be balanced with otherrequired elements and uses to form the full rangeof Transect zones appropriate to complete com-munities. For example, a residential-only suburbanenclave, which accommodates only low-densityhousing (dened as T3, Sub-Urban zone) needs tobe rebalanced with other uses and building typesfound in T4, General Urban, and T5, Urban Centerzones. Commercial enclaves, such as malls and officeparks, which exemplify the intensity of T6, UrbanCore zone, need to be rebalanced with the lower-intensity Transect zones, like T3, T4, and T5. The dis-tribution and ratios of Transect zones within the planwill be dened by a process of local adjustment andcalibration of existing conditions and by the densitiesnecessary for transit.

The Sprawl Repair Module indicates the propor-tions of Transect zones that need to be added orrebalanced in order to transform the sprawl repairtarget into a mixed-use, diverse, and transit-readycommunity. 3 The zoning modications, togetherwith the urban design adjustments, such as connect-ing streets and creating public space, are reected inspecic regulating plans. Chapter four, “Repair at theCommunity Scale,” demonstrates several examples ofregulating plans of repaired sprawl elements.

IMPLEMENTATION TECHNIQUES

Sprawl has been encouraged for decades throughpolicies and legislation, and its repair must also beencouraged, even directly incentivized. The two maintechniques to encourage and incentivize the privatesector are easier permitting and infrastructure funding.

Permitting and incentivizing the repair of strate-gically located commercial nodes – malls, regionalshopping centers, employment hubs, edge cities(agglomerations of high-intensity uses in suburbanor exurban areas) – should be the rst on the list ofsprawl repair interventions. Repair of these elementsnot only promises maximum return on investmentbut has the potential to galvanize the transformationof vast swaths of nearby sprawl development. Thesenodes represent the largest monetary and real estateinvestments in suburbia, and in most cases they arestill under single ownership. If they are redevelopedas complete town centers, with residential and officecomponents to supplement the retail, transit betweenthese intensied nodes will become viable.

Smaller commercial entities are the next targets, andfailing residential subdivisions are last. The choices for thelatter will include: evolution into mixed-use neighbor-hood centers if they have potential for intensicationand transit, or devolution – abandonment or conversionto park or agricultural land.

A practical outline of incentives for implementa-tion is presented in chapter four, “Repair at the Com-munity Scale.” The strongest incentive for repair of com-mercial nodes is public money for infrastructure, but itshould be available for only the most environmentallyresponsible and well-designed projects, because thosewill have the greatest positive and far-reaching effect ontheir larger contexts. In addition, public-private partner-ships can be effective, and government-funding pro-grams are available for some projects (Tax IncrementFinancing, Business Improvement Districts, Energy Effi-ciency and Conservation Block Grants, etc.). Some ofthese have already been used in retrotting projectsand can be helpful in the transitional time when suchprojects are still the exception.

To change the entrenched sprawl system, it maybe necessary to introduce legislation. The “FloridaSprawl Repair Act,” developed for the Florida Depart-ment of Community Affairs, provides a list of incen-tives that can be implemented at different levels ofgovernment. 4 It has not yet been adopted into law,but it can be pursued as such and used as a templateby other states. The document contains protocol forrepairing malls and suggestions for funding, manage-ment, partnerships, phasing, and implementation.



35 SECTOR MAPPING

36 STEP ONE: DETERMINE SPRAWL REPAIR DOMAINS37 STEP TWO: DELINEATE PRESERVATION AND RESERVATION AREAS38 STEP THREE: PRIORITIZE THE COMMERCIAL AND EMPLOYMENT NODES40 STEP FOUR: PRIORITIZE THE POTENTIAL TRANSIT AND

INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORKS42 STEP FIVE: IDENTIFY THE SPRAWL REPAIR TARGETS43 STEP SIX: IMPLEMENT TRANSFER OF DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS44 STEP SEVEN: ASSEMBLE THE SECTOR MAP

45 SPRAWL REPAIR ASSESSMENT TOOL

46 SPRAWL REPAIR VOID ANALYSIS

46 NEIGHBORHOOD STRUCTURE47 VIABLE INFRASTRUCTURE AND UTILITIES47 ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE47 ROBUST BUILDING STOCK 47 FINANCIAL VIABILITY

49 APPLICATION



To be most effective, sprawl repair must begin atthe regional scale and consider the larger context– existing infrastructure, thoroughfare connectiv-ity, potential for transit, and goals for preservationand regeneration of natural systems. The objec-tive is to analyze transportation, other infrastruc-ture, and natural areas as a complete system andto identify the nodes best suited for repair.

Parts of suburban sprawl have the potential tobe transformed into desirable urban nodes becausethey contain employment concentrations and havepotential for economic growth. Ideal examples arelocated along thoroughfare networks that supporttransit or can be repaired to accommodate it.

Demographic and economic projections are criticalfactors when making decisions at the regional scale.

The analysis must cover two contradictory ten-dencies that make the case for sprawl repair. First,according to the U.S. Census, between 1999 and2009 most growth has happened in suburban areas,and the projections are that suburban expansionwill continue. Second is the convergence in thecoming decades of the two largest generations inU.S. history, the aging Baby Boomers and the Millen-nials, both of whom have very specic preferencesfor urban places. Many people are interested in themore diverse, sustainable lifestyles urban areas offer.But existing cities and downtowns may not have thecapacity to absorb the millions of people who will belooking for diversied living arrangements.

Sprawl repair as a regional strategy is the answerto the demographic challenges. The existence of jobswithin a suburbanized region is the driver behind any

REPAIR AT THE REGIONAL SCALE

CHAPTER THREE

Regional plan using natural boundaries to prevent continued sprawl development3-1.



such strategy, because retail and residential devel-opment are typically driven by the job market. Theredevelopment of sprawl reverses the process thatstarted sprawl in the post-war years – housing wasthe rst element to move out of the city, followedby shopping centers and malls, and nally joinedby offices and workplaces. The repair starts with theareas that hold the strongest potential for employ-ment and for supporting viable urban centers thatwill sustain economic growth and minimize the needfor long commuter trips.

Existing employment-only districts, such as Cali-fornia’s Silicon Valley and edge cities, are promisingyet challenging targets for urbanization. Edge citieswith high concentrations of Class A office space and/ or regional shopping destinations, such as Tyson’sCorner in Virginia, can be converted into urban coreswith higher-density living arrangements and newgreen jobs and technologies. In times of tightenedeconomic circumstances, such ambitious projectsmay not seem feasible, but the goals of sprawl repairshould be set high enough to satisfy the needs offuture generations. In the context of a promisingregional economy, social stability and political willfor such projects may attract incremental invest-ment over a longer span of time. The Millennials willbe attracted to such hubs, as will the Baby Boomers,who will be seeking opportunities for active retire-ment, lifelong learning, and social interaction.

Sprawl repair at the regional scale starts with thedelineation of the urbanized areas in conjunction withenvironmental evaluation of the region and projectionsof demographics, transportation needs, and economicgrowth. The urban boundary model, conceptualized byEbenezer Howard, uses statistical projection to delineatethe urbanized area. The rural or natural boundary model,developed by Benton MacKaye, uses cultural and eco-logical criteria to prioritize open space to be protectedfrom urbanization. 1 The two models are typically usedin combination, but for the sprawl repair process therural boundary approach is more practical, as the bor-ders between developed and undeveloped areas insprawl are already diluted, and the imposition of anurban boundary may be either redundant or politicallyimpossible. The rural boundary method allows for theidentication and reclamation of environmentally sen-sitive open-space networks that were damaged andobscured by sprawl. Such systems can be delineatedand mapped as areas to be repaired and preserved inperpetuity. One example is the reduction of imperviousparking lots of malls and strip shopping centers, whichresults in relief of stress on the watershed.

The repair at the regional scale identies forredevelopment existing commercial nodes basedon efficient spacing for transit. After their transfor-mation, these nodes will become mixed-use neigh-borhood centers, town centers, and regional urbancores, ideally in proximity to transit stops.



SECTOR MAPPING

To identify the logical places for retrot and repair,the mapping of the region should integrate anal-ysis of projected economic and demographicgrowth, existing transportation, infrastructure,commercial nodes, natural resources, housing,and job concentrations.

The resulting sector map, with identied targetsfor sprawl repair, can accompany the comprehensiveplan for a particular county or region and can be apowerful tool for metropolitan planning organiza-tions (MPOs) when setting goals for their long-rangetransportation plans (gure 3-2). The targets will bethe logical places for private development and publicinvestment in services, utilities, and green (open

space and natural elements) and grey infrastructure(manmade infrastructure), as well as nancial and per-mitting incentives from specic federal, state, or localsources. Adopting form-based codes at the commu-nity scale will help municipalities with the implemen-tation of sprawl repair at the regional scale.

Following is a step-by-step description of thesprawl repair process at the regional scale, usinga hypothetical portion of a region as an example.Depending on the conditions of a given region,some steps may be used out of sequence or omittedentirely, but when tailored to the needs of the region,they offer a useful repair protocol. The rst six stepsprovide the basis for the sector map, which is nal-ized in the last, seventh step.

Example of sector mapping of a suburbanized county3-2.

Multimodal connections Town centersNeighborhood centers Preservation areasExisting sprawl



STEP ONE: DETERMINE SPRAWL REPAIR DOMAINS

The process begins with the delineation of the vari-ous sprawl repair domains within a region. Thesemay or may not coincide with existing municipalboundaries, which are political constructs that donot always correspond to the geography or patternsof development. Mapping entire suburban regionsfor sprawl repair is possible but focusing on domains,or areas smaller than entire regions, is more practi-cal. The domains for sprawl repair are chosen for theirpotential to become mixed-use and transit-con-nected nodes for the larger region. These domainscan be larger than or coincide with the sprawl repairsectors, which are the specic areas where sprawlrepair will take place and where regulatory reformswill be focused.

Within a given domain, the areas identied assprawl repair sectors are individual agglomerations ofsingle-use, disconnected commercial and residentialenclaves, strip commercial corridors, and commuter-ori-ented districts that have the potential to be transformedinto neighborhood and town centers, regional urbancores, transit corridors, and well-balanced districts.

At this rst step, it is important to identify theexisting thoroughfare system, which is limited to a fewtypes carrying high volumes of traffic – freeways, arteri-als, collectors, locals, and cul-de-sacs (see chapter ve,“Repair of Thoroughfares and Parking,” for descriptionsand discussions of types of thoroughfares). Ideally, thisincomplete network will be repaired to support a multi-modal transportation network and walkable fabric.

Identify the regional domain with its geographical boundar-□

ies and its potential growth areas.

Identify the sprawl repair sector as a target for regional rede-□

velopment.

Freeway

Arterial

Collector

Local

Cul-de-sac

Step One: Determination of sprawl repair domains3-3.

1 M I L E



STEP TWO: DELINEATE PRESERVATION AND RESERVATION AREAS

Next in the process is the identication of open spaceto be preserved, reserved, or repaired. Some of theseenvironmentally and culturally signicant lands, suchas jurisdictional wetlands and those under conserva-tion easements, are already protected by law. Theseshould be mapped as preservation areas. Others, suchas oodplains and view corridors, should be, but arenot yet, protected from development, and are candi-

dates for transfer of development rights (discussed instep six). These are in the reservation areas.

The portions of open space networks thatshould have been preserved, but are damaged andin need of repair and restoration, will be allocated tothe reservation areas. Once the rehabilitation processbegins, the land will become a part of the preserva-tion areas.

Preservation Area

Reservation Area

Identify areas where development should not occur.□

Analyze open space for potential watershed restoration, day-□

lighting of bodies of water, and other retrotting strategies.

Step Two: Delineation of preservation and reservation areas3-4.

1 M I L E



STEP THREE: PRIORITIZE THE COMMERCIAL AND EMPLOYMENT NODES

Commercial nodes and employment clusters are identi-ed and prioritized according to their regional impor-tance, as they will become the town centers, the neigh-borhood centers, and regional urban cores. Parts of theU.S. retail market are overdeveloped, with a great surplusof commercial establishments ranging in size and servicearea from convenience stores to regional malls (gure3-5). Many of these service areas overlap, creating theconditions for retail oversaturation and mutual extinc-tion (for description of the retail types see chapter four,“Repair at the Community Scale: Shopping Center”). Inthis context, the choice of commercial targets for repairand redevelopment is of strategic importance to theregion, and needs to be carried out methodically.

The regional commercial nodes that have thebest locations for transit and job generation (malls,

employment hubs, regional power centers) andpotential for nancial incentives are assigned thehighest priority for retrot and will become regionalurban cores and town centers. The second tier ofcommercial nodes that serve smaller areas but havethe capacity to receive new uses, building types, andadded density – while connecting to the adjacentresidential enclaves – are assigned moderate prior-ity. These can be strip shopping centers or suburbanoffice parks. Low priority will be given to the smallcommercial establishments that typically occur atintersections at the entrances of residential subdivi-sions. These intersections can be transformed intoneighborhood centers that simultaneously serve sev-eral enclaves (see chapter four, “Repair at the Com-munity Scale: Single-Family Subdivision”).

RETAIL TYPESIZE

(square feet)SERVICE AREA

(radius)REPAIR PRIORITY

SYMBOL SPRAWL TYPE REPAIRED TYPE MINIMUM MAXIMUM MINIMUM MAXIMUM LOW MODERATE HIGH

Convenience Store Corner Store 1,500 2,500 1/4 mile 1 mile X

Convenience CenterMain Street /Neigh-borhood Center 10,000 30,000 1 mile 2 miles X

“NeighborhoodCenter” Town Center 60,000 120,000 2 miles 5 miles X

Community Center Town Center 150,000 500,000 4 miles 7 miles X

Regional Center Town Center 600,000 1.5 M 5 miles 15 miles X

Power Center Regional Urban Core 500,000 1.5 M 5 miles 15 miles + X

Employment Center Regional Urban Core N/A N/A 5 miles 15 miles X

Commercial types classified and prioritized for sprawl repair3-5.



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Analyze the existing system of commercial and employment□

nodes, including service areas.

Identify the high-priority targets for redevelopment and repair:□

employment hubs and regional shopping centers that can be

transformed into regional urban cores and town centers.

Identify the moderate-priority nodes for redevelopment and□

repair: strip shopping centers and office parks that can be

transformed into main streets and neighborhood centers.

Identify targets to be given low priority for redevelopment□

and repair: convenience stores, gas stations, subdivision

entrances that can be transformed into corner stores.

Service Area Radius (not to scale)

Convenience Store

Convenience Center“Neighborhood Center”

Community Center

Regional Center

Power Center

Employment Center

Step Three: Classification of retail types and ranking of priority for sprawl repair3-6.

1 M I L E



STEP FOUR: PRIORITIZE THE POTENTIAL TRANSIT AND INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORKS

Adapting auto-oriented thoroughfare networks torational, multi-modal transportation systems is funda-mental to sprawl repair at the regional scale. The poten-tial transit routes are identied as an overlay of scarceand disconnected, sprawling thoroughfare systems.New transit connections, as well as new streets androads, are added to form truly functional networks andcreate conditions to disperse traffic and reduce con-gestion. Improving street connectivity also improvesthe pedestrian experience.

The most logical locations for transit within themetropolitan region are the corridors that connect exist-ing urban cores (traditional cities and towns) with thepotential regional urban cores, town centers, and neigh-borhood centers (those repaired from sprawl elementsthat will accommodate high enough residential densi-ties to make transit viable). Transit-supportive densitiesvary according to the type of transit. For example, lightrail requires a minimum of nine dwelling units per acre,while frequent local bus systems require 15.

Public transportation strategies can include heavyrail alongside or within existing freeways. Light railshould be considered along arterials, where the com-mercial nodes with potential for retrot are located.

But before rail is chosen, bus transit should be ana-lyzed as a cheaper alternative, especially in the tran-sitional period of urban intensication while themixed-use nodes are being built. Rail may be consid-ered a better environmental choice, depending onthe source of power, but both rail and bus systemsshould be employed to create an extensive networkof mass transit. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) can happenalong arterials or collectors, later to be supplementedor replaced by light rail. BRT can be complementedby circulator bus networks to gather passengers fromthe future neighborhood centers that will be orga-nized around the medium-priority commercial nodes.When light rail arrives, it can share stops with the BRTand circulator buses, forming multi-modal hubs andsub-regional destinations.

This step also includes the analysis and prioriti-zation of other signicant infrastructure necessaryfor the conveyance of water, communications, andenergy, as well as additional transportation networkssuch as regional trails, canals, airports, and bridges. These networks are essential components in thesprawl repair process at the regional scale, and shouldbe coordinated and planned concurrently.

A shuttle bus can stopevery 1/8–1/4 mile

A tram/circulator buscan stop every 1/2mile

1 / 4 m

i l e

P e d e s t r i a n

S h e d

1 mile

Light rail can stop

every mile

Heavy rail can stopevery two miles

1 / 2 m

i l e

P e d e s t r i a n

S h e d

Pedestrian sheds and intervals of transit stops3-7.



Analyze the existing thoroughfare and transit network.□

Propose new connections and new thoroughfares that would□

help to complete the sparse network and accommodate BRTand circulator buses.

Propose possible routes for heavy and light rail system based□

on density and destinations.

Propose possible routes for biking and pedestrian trail net-□

works.

Analyze and prioritize other operational infrastructure net-□

works.

Heavy Rail Line

Light Rail Line

Rail StopIntramodal Facility

Bus Rapid Transit Route (BRT)

Tram / Circulator Bus Route

Tram / Circulator Bus Stop / Walk-up Station

Shared Stop / Sub-Regional Destination

Trail System / Pedestrian and Bike Paths

Step Four: Future transit and infrastructure networks prioritized3-8.

1 M I L E



STEP FIVE: IDENTIFY THE SPRAWL REPAIR TARGETS

The next action identies the specic locations for inter-vention and repair. These locations were determined inprevious steps to be the best prospects for transit stopsand job generation. Not all commercial nodes coincidewith the spacing for transit, and not all transit stops willbecome full-edged town centers. Some stops, for exam-

ple, may become park-and-ride stations to serve the sub-urban population. The targets selected for sprawl repairare the ones where transit and job potential overlap, withthe possibility for achieving residential density to sup-port transit. They will be transformed into neighborhoodcenters, town centers, and regional urban cores.

Identify locations for sprawl repair targets in the form of□

neighborhood centers, town centers, and regional urban

cores to coincide with commercial and transit nodes.

Neighborhood Center

Town Center

Regional Urban Core

Commercial Node

Employment Hub

1 M I L E

Step Five: Sprawl repair targets identified3-9.



STEP SIX: IMPLEMENT TRANSFER OF DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS

The transfer of development rights (TDR) is a govern-mental mechanism that assigns the legal developmentpotential allowed under zoning ordinances from anarea to be protected to a property in an area slated forgrowth or redevelopment. In the case of sprawl repairat the regional scale, TDR could be used to transfer theright to develop land in the reservation areas to an areaidentied for high development priority. TDR is one toolthat can be used to help ensure that the reserved areasare not developed and will join the preservation areasin perpetuity. Other tools include Purchase of Develop-ment Rights (PDRs) (in which a land bank is establishedto purchase development rights and hold or transferthem to designated receiving areas), and conservation

easements acquired by not-for-prot organizations orother entities.

After lands have been set aside from develop-ment, they should be assessed to see if repair is needed. These lands should receive the highest priority for repair,employing state-of-the-art principles of watershed resto-ration and stormwater practices. Where feasible, bodiesof water should be daylighted, and impervious asphaltreplaced with pervious surfaces. Stormwater facilitiesshould be added in the form of rain gardens, depressedsquares, manmade canals and lakes, and green roofs. These are all part of a green network at the commu-nity scale, but contribute to a comprehensive, regionalsystem of environmental repair.

Transfer development rights from the reservation areas to□

the sprawl repair sector – specically to the town centers and

regional urban cores.

Reservation areas become preservation areas once they are□

protected.

1 M I L E

Step Six: Transfer of development rights3-10.

Preservation and Reservation Areas



SPRAWL REPAIR ASSESSMENT TOOL

As detailed in the seven steps of sprawl repair at theregional scale, the potential for repair is determined inthe sector map, based on location, transit possibilities,and a variety of demographic, economic, and environ-mental factors.

However, the designated area or target should be fur-ther analyzed for its feasibility for successful repair. TheSprawl Repair Assessment Tool can be used to deter-mine the potential for transformation into a completecommunity.

EVOLUTION OR DEVOLUTION

POTENTIAL FOR: YES NO

Neighborhood Structure

Viable Infrastructure and Utilities

Environmental Performance

Robust Housing Stock

Financial Viability

SCORE THREE OR MORE? THREE OR MORE?

DECISION EVOLUTION DEVOLUTION

OUTCOMENeighborhood center

Town centerRegional urban core

Remain as isReplace with agricultural landRevert to natural open space

Assessment tool3-12.



SPRAWL REPAIR VOID ANALYSIS

The Sprawl Repair Void Analysis facilitates theidentication of the characteristics and amenitiesthat are needed to transform sprawling placesinto complete communities.

The targets for sprawl repair as dened in thesector map should be vested or permitted administra-tively, by right. Vesting is a strong incentive for repairof sprawl. This system, however, is vulnerable to abuseby creating hybrid or incomplete neighborhoods. Achecklist of criteria or void analysis can address thisproblem by forming a basis for acceptance. Planningofficials can use it to determine whether submittedplans are likely to provide the social and environmentalbenets associated with complete communities andwhether they qualify for increased density allocationand other incentives such as deferral of assessmentfees and vesting.

The Sprawl Repair Void Analysis can also servedevelopers, allowing them to analyze the deciencies ofsprawling enclaves and determine what elements needto be added and whether a retrot is nancially viable.

A target for sprawl repair has the potential formost of the following:

NEIGHBORHOOD STRUCTURE

An area targeted for repair should have a frameworkwithin which a viable neighborhood unit can be cre-ated. There should be a discernible center, with a tran-sit stop, that can be transformed into a plaza, square,green, or memorable intersection. This center may ormay not be the geographic mid-point of the neighbor-hood as mixed use works better at the edge if sharedwith other neighborhoods.

New buildings can be introduced at the center, orexisting buildings can be retrotted to be close to thesidewalk and to each other, creating a sense of spatialdenition. Most other buildings in the community canretain larger setbacks and be farther apart from eachother, maintaining the suburban character.

The area within a ve-to-seven-minute walk fromthe center can be repaired by adding new buildingsand repurposing existing ones.

A variety of dwelling types can be introduced, orexisting buildings can be retrotted into live-work units,duplexes, townhouses, and apartments, such that a mul-tigenerational, diverse population can nd places to live.

New businesses can be incubated and new orretrotted workplaces can be provided in the form ofoffice buildings or live-work units.

Sufficiently varied shops and services can beplanned to supply the ordinary needs of a household.A convenience store, a post office, a teller machine,daycare, and a gym are the most important amongthem. It is challenging to attract shops and servicesto repaired enclaves; however, it will be an easier taskthan attracting them to brand new developments,because existing developments already have thedensity that will be multiplied to support transit andwill be able to support shops and services.

Houses can be expanded to reduce the deep,suburban-style front setbacks to make the streetsmore pedestrian friendly, to introduce a mix of uses,and to provide additional density to support transit.Ancillary buildings can be permitted within the frontor back yard of each house. These may be used asrental apartments or home offices. Some lots can bedivided to form duplex arrangements.

An elementary school should exist or be planned,close enough that most children can walk or bikefrom their dwellings. This distance should not bemore than one mile.

Playgrounds can be created near every dwelling. The distance from a dwelling to a playground shouldnot be more than one-eighth of a mile. Vacant lots orleftover open space can be utilized for this purpose.

Certain prominent sites can be reserved for publicbuildings. A space should be provided for neighbor-hood meetings and civic activities.

Local food production can be introduced utiliz-ing deep suburban-style setbacks, empty lots, defunctgolf courses, and other sprawling open space. Urbanagriculture should be integrated on all scales: smalland large farmsteads along the edges of the neighbor-hood, allotment and community gardens within thecommunity, and roof, balcony, and kitchen gardenswithin private lots.



It is possible, through sprawl repair, to provideindependent and assisted living housing for the agingto create lifelong communities.

The community and property owners should beorganized and involved in decisions relating to sprawlrepair and physical evolution or devolution, mainte-nance, and security.

VIABLE INFRASTRUCTURE AND UTILITIES

It should be feasible to preserve and reuse most ofthe existing grey infrastructure and utilities, and toupgrade and expand them for higher urban intensity.Water, sewer, electricity, and communications shouldbe upgradable to handle higher densities, as well asto incorporate new energy-saving and energy-gener-ating technologies.

There is a potential for recovery and the creationof connections to nature and green infrastructure,such as pedestrian and biking trails, and sustainablestormwater networks.

The existing thoroughfares within the target areacan be connected to form a network, providing a vari-ety of routes and dispersing traffic. The thoroughfaresshould connect to those of adjacent developments asoften as possible.

The existing thoroughfares can be retrotted tocalm traffic and create a comfortable environment forpedestrians and bicyclists by introducing on-street park-ing, wider sidewalks, medians, access lanes, and streettrees, among other elements.

Open parking lots and garages can be con-cealed with liner buildings (thin, masking structures)or landscape. Parking lots can be reorganized andrelegated to the rear of buildings, and some blockscan be retrotted to add alleys or lanes.

ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE

Sprawl repair strategies improve the environmentalperformance of suburban communities. The Transectmethodology can be used to provide choices ofurban and rural environments and improve the over-all socio-economic and natural diversity within anarea (see chapter two, “The Sprawl Repair Method:Regulatory Techniques”). Allowing denser building

types and mixed uses within the Transect zones willimprove the total environmental performance ofthe place, as people will drive less, save energy, andreduce carbon emissions.

Introducing sustainable stormwater managementpractices calibrated along the Transect contributes topreservation and repair of regional watersheds. Storm-water should be treated on the site in the more ruralzones, and off-site in urban zones. Sustainable toolssuch as pervious paving, channeling, storage, and l-tration should be selected according to their locationalong the Transect. (Also see The Light Imprint Handbook by Thomas Low, which provides a range of sustainablealternatives to conventional stormwater practices). 2

Open space should be connected to form net-works, and environmentally sensitive areas should beprotected and restored.

Additional modes of transportation can be intro-duced to reduce car dependence, air pollution, andenergy use.

ROBUST BUILDING STOCK

Technologies for renewable and efficient energy use canbe incorporated within the existing and the new buildingstock. Some of the techniques include retrotting strate-gies to provide for natural cooling, ventilation, and day-lighting, reducing the surface-to-volume ratio, addingpassive solar systems, re-using grey water, and treatingand recycling solid waste. Green building standards suchas the ones established by the U.S. Green Building Coun-cil (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design orLEED), Energy Star, Southface Institute, and the FloridaGreen Building Coalition should be integrated in the pro-cess of sprawl repair at the building scale.

FINANCIAL VIABILITY

The repair target is selected at the regional scalebecause it demonstrates potential for job generationand economic growth. The redevelopment should alsomake nancial sense for the private sector. Below aresome necessary conditions for economic viability of therepair (for nancing sources see chapter four, “Repair atthe Community Scale, Step Four: Secure Incentives forImplementation”).



It should be possible to achieve the repair incre-mentally, in manageable phases, with smaller invest-ments required at each stage.

In the case of multiple property owners, some par-cels should be aggregated, facilitating faster and moreextensive repair. The process is more feasible with com-mercial properties where ownership is concentrated infewer hands, while acquisitions within residential sub-divisions will be more difficult and gradual becausethere are multiple owners.

The higher densities and diversied uses shouldbe adequate to expect healthy prot margins. Smartgrowth and New Urbanist projects in the form of com-plete communities have demonstrated higher realestate values and market premiums. If sprawl repairprojects reach the high standards of these models, theyshould be able to achieve similar economic success.

Affordable housing should be included, whetherthrough the adaptive reuse of existing structures (sin-gle-family houses converted into duplexes and multi-family units, or commercial buildings converted intoresidential) or in new inll buildings such as ancillaryunits and garage apartments.



Complete communities defined by agricultural greenbelts3-13.

D r a w i n g b y L a w r e n c e Q a m a r a n d G a l i n a T a c h i e v a

Repair of a neighborhood by contraction and densification3-14.

APPLICATION: REPAIR BY DEVOLUTION

Detroit, which has experienced economic and popula-tion decline for decades, has long been the target ofideas for “shrinking” and devolution. A study from 1993

shows the reduction of the physical infrastructure ofthe city and its immediate suburbs into compact, eco-logically sustainable communities (gure 3-13).

The main transportation corridors (railroads andhighways) are transformed into linear greenbelts fornatural drainage, habitat corridors, and local foodproduction, but keep their mobility function. Organicgardens and open space are easily accessible from thenewly restored urban fabric (gure 3-14). The denser,better preserved neighborhoods are repaired aroundexisting clusters of civic structures, while the least

populated ones are converted into low-density, agri-cultural settlements.



The aerial photograph shows the existing conditions ofa coastal sector dominated by sprawling development(gure 3-15). A major thoroughfare runs along the inlandedge of a subdivision that is surrounded by land that haspotential for inll. The predominantly single-family devel-opment is along canals, which preclude a connectedthoroughfare network. Commercial uses are located insegregated pods along the main thoroughfares.

After delineating the natural zones that will be pre-served using available environmental data, a neighbor-hood structure overlay plan is assembled (gure 3-16).It allocates the quarter-square-mile pedestrian sheds ofthe neighborhoods and the ten-minute center-to-edgesprawl repair sectors that will be the future town centers. The locations of the neighborhoods are selected whereexisting natural and manmade conditions coincide for

Neighborhood

Town centerSector mapped with pedestrian sheds for neighborhoods and town centers3-16.

APPLICATION: COASTAL SECTOR REPAIR AND INFILL

Sprawl at the scale of a regional sector3-15.




Pedestrian sheds and connected urban fabric3-17.

Transect-zoning overlay3-18.

T1 - Natural zone

T3 - Sub-Urban zone

T4 - General Urban zone

T5 - Urban Center zone

T6 - Urban Core zone

CS - Civic Space

best connectivity and proximity, while the town centersare retrots of existing commercial nodes into mixed-use cores serving several neighborhoods and locatedon projected public transportation routes.

The pedestrian sheds are further developed intourban fabric of connected, multi-modal streets (gure3-17). The inll sector is connected to the existingsuburban development across the transit corridor by

multiple vehicular and pedestrian links. The Transect-based zoning overlay shows the neighborhood cen-ters and the higher intensity town centers, in darkercolors (gure 3-18). This overlay allows for a variety ofbuilding types and uses that will rebalance the collec-tion of existing residential and commercial pods intoa regional domain of connected, complete neighbor-hoods and town centers.



Scenario one: Full rebuilding after flooding3-19.

Scenario two: Partial rebuilding within smaller area3-20.

APPLICATION: REPAIR AFTER FLOODING



Scenario one (gure 3-19) shows full rebuild-ing of a suburban parish ooded from a lakelocated to the north. A system of stormwa-ter management ponds is created along theedge of the lake for protection from futureooding.

Scenario two (gure 3-20) shows partialrebuilding within a smaller area, condensingthe majority of the development below oneof the major east-west thoroughfares in theparish. This will create a more compact devel-opment compared to the rst scenario andwill avoid scattered rebuilding that would bemore difficult to service, maintain, and police.

Open spaceDeveloped area

Civic space

Water bodies



63 RURAL SUBDIVISION64 DEFICIENCIES

65 TRANSFORMATION INTO A HAMLET71 IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL72 APPLICATION

75 SINGLE FAMILY SUBDIVISION77 DEFICIENCIES80 TRANSFORMATION INTO A NEIGHBORHOOD

CENTER87 REZONING88 PHASING

89 IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL90 APPLICATION

93 MULTIFAMILY SUBDIVISION94 DEFICIENCIES95 TRANSFORMATION INTO A TOWN CENTER103 REZONING104 IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL105 APPLICATION

111 SHOPPING CENTER113 DEFICIENCIES114 TRANSFORMATION INTO A TOWN CENTER121 REZONING122 PHASING123 IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL124 APPLICATION

129 SHOPPING MALL131 DEFICIENCIES132 TRANSFORMATION INTO A TOWN CENTER

140 REZONING141 PHASING147 IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL149 APPLICATION

151 COMMERCIAL STRIP153 DEFICIENCIES

154 TRANSFORMATION INTO A NODAL TRANSITBOULEVARD

158 IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL159 APPLICATION

163 BUSINESS PARK 164 DEFICIENCIES165 TRANSFORMATION INTO A TOWN CENTER172 REZONING173 IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL

174 APPLICATION

179 EDGE CITY181 DEFICIENCIES182 TRANSFORMATION INTO A REGIONAL URBAN

CORE189 APPLICATION

191 SUBURBAN CAMPUS193 DEFICIENCIES194 TRANSFORMATION INTO A TRADITIONAL

URBAN CAMPUS202 APPLICATION

205 SPRAWL TYPE OPEN SPACE205 UNDERPERFORMING GOLF COURSE206 DEFICIENCIES207 TRANSFORMATION INTO A NEIGHBORHOOD

CENTER213 APPLICATION



CHAPTER FOUR

REPAIR AT THE COMMUNITY SCALE

Sprawl repair at the community scale concentrateson the specic techniques used to transform thedisjointed individual elements of sprawl and com-bine them to create complete communities thatare walkable, based on the human scale, and con-tain a mix of uses and multi-modal transportation. The community scale is the most important inthe process of sprawl repair because it makes theconnection between the big picture of the regionand the narrow focus of the individual street andbuilding. It is at this scale that the crucial elementsof sprawl repair – walkability and the public realm– are achieved.

The design techniques include connecting andtransforming thoroughfares, creating a fabric of urbanblocks, forming a variety of civic spaces, mixing usesboth vertically and horizontally, introducing a variety ofbuilding types, restructuring parking, and many others.As pointed out in chapter two, “The Sprawl RepairMethod,” these techniques are used to create types ofcommunities – hamlets (small villages or rural centers),neighborhood centers, town centers, and regionalurban cores – that are very different from sprawl in theirphysical form. Strip commercial corridors are also trans-formed into transit corridors and commuter-orienteddistricts, and campuses are improved into more walk-able and balanced urbanism. Sprawl-type open space isalso analyzed and retrotted at the community scale.

This chapter explains the transformation of the fol-lowing typical sprawl elements:

Rural subdivision into a hamlet,•

Single-family subdivision into a neighbor-•

hood center,Multifamily subdivision into a town center,•

Shopping center into a town center,•

Shopping mall into a town center,•

Commercial strip into a nodal, transit boulevard,•

Business park into a town center,•

Edge city into a regional urban core,•

Suburban campus into a traditional urban•

campus,Sprawl-type open space into various types of•

inll. Throughout the country, a good number of these

sprawling types of development have begun to fail.Whether because they are old and decrepit, no longerfashionable, or even brand new (sometimes not yet n-ished) but too far from jobs and the needs of daily life,these residential developments began to fail in recordnumbers in 2007–2008, and the trend is expected tocontinue. This is the reason such places need to berepaired, and it is important to keep this fact in mindwhen considering some of the radical interventionsthat sprawl repair entails.

Foreclosures and falling home values in failingresidential subdivisions have created desperate con-ditions that have spread to the commercial centersthe subdivisions were intended to support. Residentsmay react emotionally to the idea of selling or replac-ing their family homes, and business owners may bereluctant to lose business property, but in some casesthere may be no other choice. In fact, sprawl repairoffers deteriorating areas the second chance of rede-velopment. In addition, none of the repair measureswill be forced on communities. Ideally the goal ofrevitalization will foster consensus in support of themethod among municipalities, property owners, andtheir organizations to achieve the repair.

Sprawl repair will have wide socio-economicbenets for the failing developments. The transfor-mation of these single-use enclaves into vibrant,walkable, mixed-use communities will make themattractive for the upcoming market segments (BabyBoomers and Millennials), which may stop and evenreverse the declining real estate values. Adding den-sity will support the existing businesses, create thebasis for new ones, and support mass transit.



The urbanization strategies will create affordableand varied housing options for diverse populations. The mix of uses will encourage walking, and thereduction in driving will reduce pollution and saveenergy and resources. The process of repair itself willsupport a new, green, and progressive industry thatwill create jobs and keep the talent in existing com-munities while attracting newcomers.

Another major benet of sprawl repair projects atthe community scale is the recovery of land that waspreviously wasted on parking lots and overscaled infra-structure but can be used to create better communi-ties. This land is a potential tax generator for municipal-ities and a prot source for the private sector, and canstimulate redevelopment in adjacent sprawling areas.

Not all sprawl elements lend themselves to thesame degree of repair. Residential enclaves may be themost difficult to retrot, as they are not easily accessi-ble and are extremely and thinly dispersed. The cost ofrepair – improving infrastructure or bringing in services,mixed uses, civic institutions, and the other ingredientsof real neighborhoods – may be too high. Landown-ers may obstruct the process, and there might be nopolitical will. As discussed in chapter three, “Repair atthe Regional Scale,” some areas will be left unrepaired,perhaps in hopes that they will survive as they are, orperhaps designated for devolution into agriculturalor natural areas. The methodology of selective sprawlrepair at the community scale will ensure that publicresources will incentivize only those areas that havethe potential to benet the region.

The repair targets are identied by following pri-orities as dened at the regional scale. The examplesanalyzed in this chapter have been pre-selected fortheir repair potential by the public sector (munici-pal governments, metropolitan planning organiza-tions, regional councils) through collaboration withthe private sector (local community organizationsand other bodies such as owners’ associations). Useof the sector mapping sequence, the Sprawl RepairAssessment Tool, and the Void Analysis (see chapterthree, “Repair at the Regional Scale”) will facilitate andstreamline the selection process.

Sprawl repair at the community scale includes arange of measures that are both analytical and practical,and can be performed sequentially or simultaneously.

The steps are:Step One: Analyze site feasibility,•

Step Two: Apply urban design techniques,•

Step Three: Introduce regulatory and manage-•

ment techniques,Step Four: Secure incentives for implementation.•

STEP ONE: ANALYZE SITE FEASIBILITY

Analysis of existing conditions is done concurrently atseveral levels.

A survey of the ownership structure and thecurrent tenants and their lease requirements (inthe case of commercial properties) determines theextent, timing, and phasing of the repair. The lengthof the tenants’ leases and the viability of the busi-nesses determine the possible ownership variants forthe parcel to be repaired. The ideal scenario will be asingle-owner purchase of the site for full control andmanagement of the repair process, but this is rarelyachievable. Additional ownership structures caninclude purchase by multiple partners, lease, private-public partnership, co-operative ownership, or landtrust. Eminent domain (the seizing of blighted prop-erty by a government entity) can be considered as anextreme measure if the location of the sprawl repairtarget is of regional importance and no other owner-ship transaction can be achieved.

Demographic analyses and other marketing stud-ies provide projections for future population growth inthe area and inform the mix of residential building typesto include in the site. The marketing study predicts thedemographic segments most likely to be attracted tothe future neighborhood or town center.

A void analysis of the local and regional commer-cial market identies the uses required to rebalancethe existing ones – if retail is already available, office,hotel, and civic uses must be added. A void analysisalso helps answer questions about the potential foradditional retail in a commercial location, or for newretail in a residential area. The ideal mix will includea balance of national tenants and smaller local busi-nesses to support the regional economy.

The potential for new job creatio n must beanalyzed, including the need for affordable incuba-tor space for start-up businesses. A survey of existing



employment hubs and projections for job genera-tion will inform future proposals for locations of newbusinesses.

Analysis of the existing building stock includesdetermining which buildings will be retained, reno-vated, and re-purposed, and which will be partiallyor entirely demolished. The goal should be a rangeof exible and affordable building types that caneasily adapt to a variety of uses and activities as themarket changes. The large commercial boxes withsturdy metal structures may be easily retrotted intocivic buildings such as galleries, schools, daycares,and wellness and senior centers, while many of therepetitive, short-lifespan commercial structures maybe more suitable for demolition. Residential buildingsare analyzed for potential improvements in energyefficiency and possible transformation into moreurban types (e.g., a McMansion transformed into mul-tifamily) or other uses (a ranch house transformedinto a live-work unit).

Thoroughfare connectivity and traffic patternsare also analyzed. Existing and potential connectionswill affect how a new neighborhood or town centerwill be created.

The available parking and the potential reductionof suburban parking requirements form the foundationfor a new parking strategy . It will be a long time beforeeverybody is walking or using public transit; therefore,parking needs to be provided in the meantime. It canbe secured by utilizing on-street spaces, restriping andreorganizing the existing supply, reducing the park-ing requirements by applying shared parking ratios, orbuilding parking structures.

Most suburban commercial sites were built underthe inadequate stormwater and conservation stan-dards of past decades. The excessive parking lots androads create considerable impervious areas that alterthe natural hydrologic and drainage patterns. Thestormwater runoff from roads and parking lots car-ries contaminants downstream and pollutes nearbybodies of water. The repair of these sites requiresimproving the ability to handle and treat stormwa-ter, both on-site and within the larger drainage basin. The introduction of rain gardens, depressed greensquares, daylighting of buried creeks, pervious pave-ment, and other sustainable stormwater techniques

reduce the impact of impervious areas on watershedhydrology and provide best management practicesfor better water quality downstream.

Suburban commercial sites usually fall underthe denition of greyeld redevelopment and donot require extensive environmental remediation.However, in the case of landll sites, gas stations, golfcourses, or industrial uses involving hazardous mate-rials,decontamination and remediation proceduresare required. These sites are classied as brownelds,and state or federal programs may be available tosupport their remediation.

STEP TWO: APPLY URBAN DESIGN TECHNIQUES

The appropriate locations for the targets of sprawlrepair, as well as the neighborhood structure (basedon pedestrian sheds), are dened at the regional scale.Sprawl repair at the community scale deals with thecapacity and dimensions of fabric, blocks, thorough-fares, and public space.

Places exhibiting a range of shared defects – suchas car dependence, lack of neighborhood structureand mixed use, lack of connectivity and block orga-nization, dendritic and overscaled thoroughfares, andscarcity of dened public realm – are characterized assprawl development.

Below is a summary of the main deciencies andthe remedial urban-design techniques applied fortheir repair.

Deciency: Single building type and useRemedial technique: Introduce new building

types to accommodate a mix of uses The rst step is to identify problems with the way

the land is used in sprawl developments. The lack ofmixed uses leads to car dependence and wastedenergy and resources, as people are required to driveto all of their daily activities and needs. This deciencyis repaired by introducing new building types that willallow different uses to exist in close proximity withinthe pedestrian sheds. The precise numbers and distri-bution of these new buildings will vary for each site,depending on factors such as demographic growthand necessary density to support transit. Ideally suchquantitative directives will come from larger regional



planning efforts, with the understanding that exibilityof use will be essential to a successful repair.

The strategies for urbanization include a widevariety of types of buildings that are rarely used insprawl. For example, large, underused parking lotscan be replaced with buildings that wrap aroundparking garages and form perimeter blocks, creat-ing walkable structure from the formless space andsupporting the density that will sustain transit. Blankwalls and parking lots can be screened with build-ings that have thin footprints (liner buildings), tocreate pedestrian-friendly environments. These linerbuildings can be used as small-business incubators.Live-work units and lofts can be added as new build-ing types to appeal to younger buyers and perhapsactive Baby Boomers. Townhouses, which in conven-tional suburbia are merely attached residential build-ings in the middle of parking lots, can become usefulinll elements of new urban streets.

Along with adding new buildings in sprawl devel-opments, preserving, expanding, and/or reusingexisting structures play an important role in introduc-ing new uses when necessary and reusing existingmaterials for environmental purposes. For example,abandoned big boxes can be converted into schools,community college satellite campuses, grocery stores,offices, wellness facilities, senior centers, galleries, andother civic amenities that are often missing in sprawl.Some of the big boxes can also be used as parkinggarages, as they are located deep within the proper-ties, leaving the front parking lots for redevelopmentand inll. Some of these techniques are illustrated inchapter seven, “Repair at the Building Scale.”

Providing workforce/affordable housing is anotherimportant aspect of sprawl repair at the communityscale. Converting existing single-family houses intoduplexes and multifamily buildings, and adding acces-sory units and apartments above shops, can increasethe number of affordable units in the repaired commu-nities (see chapter six, “Repair at the Block Scale,” andchapter seven, “Repair at the Building Scale”).

Deciency: Lack of walkable block structureRemedial technique: Connect and repair thor-

oughfaresSprawl developments typically have large, uncon-

nected block structures. Large blocks should be brokendown into ner-grain fabric to make walking and bikingsafe and easy. An internal walkable network of blocksmust be knit together utilizing parking lots, driveways,and dead-end streets, and connections opened to thesurrounding area. Introducing pedestrian streets andpassages, as well as alleys, lanes, and mews (narrowback streets with smaller dwellings) in the back ofbuildings where possible, creates additional con-nectivity. Connecting cul-de-sacs is another tool thatshould be employed; the rst step might include onlypedestrian and bike paths, and vehicular connectionscan be added later. In addition, the pedestrian charac-ter and speed of movement of existing thoroughfaresand intersections must be improved (see chapter ve,“Repair of Thoroughfares and Parking”).

Deciency: Dispersed and exposed parkingRemedial technique: Rationalize parkingUnderutilized and exposed parking is a universal

defect in sprawl. These vast, paved areas make pedes-trian movement unpleasant and unlikely, but they havegreat potential for inll and redevelopment. The park-ing lots should be reorganized within newly formedblocks, with on-street parking spaces added along thestreets and garages inserted wherever possible. Theseparking options might be supported with subsidies bypublic-private entities or stimulus money for infrastruc-ture. Local residents often resist the construction ofparking garages, but they support the higher densityneeded to sustain transit and reduce impervious areasof surface parking lots. One way to reduce resistance tobuilding and subsidizing parking garages is to designthem for future conversion into office, loft, or civicuse. This requires horizontal oor plates, because thesloped oors of parking garages cannot be reused ashabitable space. Surface parking lots can be reservedor designated as “land banks” for future buildings afterpublic transit becomes available (see chapter ve,“Repair of Thoroughfares and Parking”).

Deciency: Residual open space/Lack of civicspace

Remedial technique : Dene open and civic spacesSuburban sprawl provides a high quality and great

quantity of private space in the form of spacious resi-



Thoroughfare standards will be needed for therepair of existing and proposed thoroughfares, con-nections, and intersections. These standards will becalibrated locally according to the principles of con-text-sensitive design. 1

Main street management is crucial for sprawlrepair projects. It is best to have a single managingentity that can ensure the proper operation, mix, andmaintenance of retail establishments. The tenant mixshould include anchors (national or regional retail-ers) as well as smaller local businesses. The designand maintenance of shopfronts, interiors of shops,parking, and streetscape should be coordinated in away that is benecial to all businesses. Signage, land-scape, furnishings, and lighting are fundamental for asuccessful main street retail strategy; these elementsshould not distract from the stores.

Marketing is a necessary tool for successful sprawlrepair projects. A marketing team, hired by a devel-oper, a municipality, or a public-private partnership,should design a program emphasizing the image ofa complete and healthy community and the “sense ofplace” that is missing from sprawl developments. Suchmarketing efforts can easily incorporate the numerousretrot projects that have demonstrated high qualityand economic success. By showing attractive optionsfor repair, such programs educate the population andhelp developers and municipalities make the case forthe mix of uses and higher densities needed in sprawlrepair projects.

While the LEED Green Building Rating Systemencourages energy efficiency at the building level,LEED Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND)encourages sustainable development beyond thebuilding, at the scale of the community. 2 Until an over-haul of the suburban regulatory system is complete,the LEED-ND standards can be used to promote tar-geted sprawl repair as an important option for sustain-able growth. LEED-ND certications can help develop-ers and municipalities gain private and public supportand investment for repair projects.

There are other performance criteria available forsustainable practices, and these can be used to providemetrics of the benets of repairing sprawl. For example,various tools for exploring climate change mitigationstrategies have been developed in recent years. 3 They

can be directly applied to sprawl repair site analysis anddesign by using scenario modeling. Together with thequalitative urban design tools proposed in this manual,these quantitative tools can make a powerful case forpolicy changes to incentivize sprawl repair.

STEP FOUR: SECURE INCENTIVES FORIMPLEMENTATION

A range of incentives, both regulatory and nancial,should be used to make the implementation of sprawlrepair faster and economically feasible. Regulatoryincentives may include density bonuses, up-zoning,and fast permitting, while nancial incentives can bedirect infusions of public funding or indirect nancialbenets such as tax deferrals, right to use tax moneyfor improvements, and exemptions from fees. All ofthese are easier to enact or obtain when the project isa public-private partnership.

Permitting by right means a project identied asa target for sprawl repair would be approved adminis-tratively and would not need to go through a lengthypublic process, saving time and money. It usuallyrequires enabling legislation from the state.

State and federal funding for the design andconstruction of parking structures and transit infra-structure is one of the most useful and importantincentives for the repair of large commercial sitessuch as regional shopping centers and malls, whichwill be possible only if the underutilized parking lotsare urbanized to support higher-intensity, mixed-usedevelopment. Structured parking will be needed, andthe investment for it can be considerable, making gov-ernmental nancial support essential.

TDR (Transfer of Development Rights) See chap-ter three, “Repair at the Regional Scale, Step Six: Imple-ment Transfer of Development Rights.”

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) 4 is a tool tounderwrite redevelopment projects. Applied to adistrict, TIF is typically used to pay for on-site and off-site infrastructure improvements. Bonds are issuedbased on the projected future increase of local taxeswithin a certain redevelopment area. A TIF districtmay be initiated by the private or the public sectorand may cover several projects. The district may fea-ture revenue sharing of generated funds so money



can be distributed to the centers that most needurban intensication.

BID (Business Improvement District) , also calledBIA (Business Improvement Area), is an overlay areathat can be funded through special assessments col-lected from the commercial property owners withinthe district or area. The funds will pay for infrastructureimprovements in the process of sprawl repair. Theyrequire legislative authorization.

State and Federal Grants can be available for theredevelopment and improvement of blighted areas.

Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)may be available from the U.S. Department of Housingand Urban Development through the NeighborhoodStabilization Program (NSP), which was establishedfor the purpose of stabilizing, through purchase andredevelopment, communities that have suffered fromforeclosures and abandonment. 5 Block grants aresubstantial funds given by the federal government toregional governments to use at their discretion with ageneral purpose for the funds’ allocation. Entities eli-gible for the NSP funds are states, local governments,non-prots, businesses, or consortiums of organiza-tions.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation BlockGrant (EECBG) Program is funded under the AmericanRecovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and adminis-tered by the U.S. Department of Energy. This programprovides funds to local and state governments todevelop and implement projects to improve energyefficiency and reduce energy use and fossil fuel emis-sions in their communities.

Sprawl repair tax credits should be consideredby municipalities, which could offer the credits forprojects in designated " Sprawl Repair Districts." Themunicipalities could keep property taxes for these dis-tricts at pre-development rates for a given number ofyears.

Special-Purpose Sales Taxes can be used toenable sprawl repair. In the state of Georgia, for exam-ple, any county can establish a special-purpose, local-

option sales tax (SPLOST). Georgia's state sales tax iscurrently four percent, with the counties allowed toadd up to two percent more for SPLOSTs. A SPLOSTis passed by a county commission and voted up ordown by residents in a referendum every ve years. 6 Another technique is to allow the developer to keepthe sales taxes generated on the site of the repair untilthe infrastructure costs are paid off, as was the casewith Belmar mall redevelopment, in Lakewood, Colo-rado. 7

State tax credits for workforce housing can begranted to a developer of a sprawl repair target if atleast 20 percent of the units on site provide workforcehousing.

Bonuses for public space creation can be givenwhen repairing large parcels. Multiple properties maybecome a challenge to the coordinated master plan-ning of a sprawl repair target. Developers can be givensome incentives such as faster permitting or allowed ahigher density to assemble their required open spacein a specic location in order to create a larger andmore meaningful public space. 8

Federal grants for regional planning should becreated. They could be given to local governments tofund planning studies, mapping processes, and masterplans for sprawl repair at the regional level.

This chapter also includes protocols to assistdevelopers with the implementation of sprawl repair. The protocols address the typical issues developersencounter on repair projects, and list practical steps fortheir organization and execution. 9 Certain elements ofsprawl, such as the suburban campus, the edge city,and open space, exhibit idiosyncrasies related to thespecics of their type. In some cases, such as withcampuses, there are differences when the implement-ing institution is public or private. But the main guide-lines can be extrapolated from the protocols providedfor the other elements. For example, the edge cityimplementation protocols include a combination ofthose used for office parks and shopping malls, asedge cities contain these elements.



Preservation of farmland through clustering and a variety of tract sizes4-1.

RURAL SUBDIVISION

Rural sprawl occurs when natural or agriculturalland is speculatively subdivided along thorough-fares. This raises real estate values along the roads,while leaving the interior properties virtuallyworthless. Sporadic selling off of the road front-age of large parcels leads to the systematic lossof farmland and other valuable natural resources. These resources are replaced by low-densityresidential development and sprawling, randominfrastructure, contributing to automobile depen-dence and providing no civic or community ame-nities.

Clustering is a method of re-assembling disperseddevelopment into smaller areas. It is often used as away to enable a more compact form of growth fornew development, but this method can also facili-tate the repair of already sprawling rural subdivisions. The clustering into a hamlet or a village concentratesdevelopment into a fraction of the land otherwiseconsumed by residential sprawl, thus preserving farm-land, woodland, and wetlands, and conserving energyand resources.

Clustering can be accomplished through the Trans-fer of Development Rights (TDR) or the Purchase ofDevelopment Rights (PDR), where a land bank is estab-lished to buy development rights and hold or transferthem to designated areas. The PDR can be modied sothat a non-prot organization or developer purchasesonly a layer (approximately 400 feet) of land along theroads as a conservation easement or “legacy” view cor-ridor. This is an important and possibly less expensiveapproach for the preservation of agricultural land.

A county or a municipality can incentivize clus-tered development by permitting by right and byup-zoning to a higher density, as well as by allowingfor deferred taxation in which the up-zoned propertiesare taxed when the houses are built.

Another tool to be employed is a packagedsewer service within small, strategically located areas.A municipality can approve sewer districts to supportsmall-package sewer plants servicing land less thanone-quarter of a mile from certain intersections. Waterand sewer services are difficult to secure for rural areasof low densities, but this strategy allows for the concen-tration of such services, thus incentivizing clustering.



The following diagrams illustrate the evident defectsof rural sprawl. Figure 4-2 demonstrates the largeparcels platted and sold speculatively, exclusively forresidential use. Figure 4-3 shows the sparse thorough-

fare system, with the overscaled rural thoroughfaresand the numerous vehicular driveways leading to thehouses. Figure 4-4 highlights the public space, which islimited along the thoroughfares.

Large parcels platted and sold speculatively4-2. Sprawling and sporadic infrastructure4-3.

Lack of civic space and amenities4-4.

DEFICIENCIES



The transformation of rural sprawl into a hamlet isachieved through the repair technique of re-plattingand clustering. The black footprints in gure 4-5 areexisting buildings, and the red in gure 4-6 are pro-posed buildings.

Existing rural sprawl4-5.

Rural sprawl repaired into a hamlet4-6.

TRANSFORMATION INTO A HAMLET

Proposed buildings

Existing buildings

Existing buildings

Out of 16 existing parcels, nine are subdivided intosmaller lots, while only two houses need to be pur-chased and removed to achieve this new arrange-ment into a hamlet. Fifty-two new units are added,making the total number 66. This density will be ableto support a hamlet (a clustered rural developmentwith limited commercial uses) that later can grow intoa village (a freestanding, complete neighborhood pro-viding the basic daily needs).



Low-density rural sprawl consuming farmland and open space4-7.

Re-platting and clustering at a rural intersection4-8.



Figures 4-7, 4-8, and 4-9 demonstrate the process ofintensication and clustering. The existing condition,though quite attractive with its bucolic landscape,represents the wasteful type of land platting typicalof rural sprawl.

The proposed solution shows the new green,achieved with minimal disruption of the existing pat-tern and structures. Only two of the houses need tobe removed, while the rest are incorporated within thefabric of the hamlet. The green will be the main focalpoint space of the new community.

A farmers’ market, small shops, businesses, or civicbuildings such as a meeting hall or a chapel can belocated along the edges of the green or directly withinits space. Some of the preserved existing buildings canbe expanded into live-work compounds by addingadditional structures within the deep front setbacks.

Rural green framed by smaller lots and a corner farmers’ market4-9.



Concentrate infrastructure: Rural subdivisions requireextensive infrastructure to service limited numbers oflarge lots located far away from urbanized areas. Theroad system is overscaled in most cases, with indi-vidual driveways adding to the expanse of asphalt. Bysubdividing lots and clustering only around impor-tant intersections, wasteful infrastructure will be lim-

ited and concentrated into smaller areas. The cost ofinfrastructure per capita also will be reduced. Limitednumbers of rural roads are added to create a publicfrontage for the rural green. Introducing back lanes(rural alleys) will help create smaller lots with build-ings closer to the green and eliminate the need fordriveways at the front.

Add new roads

Eliminate some frontdriveways

Deficiency: Sprawling andsporadic infrastructure

Outcome: Conservation of energyand resources

Remedial Techniques: Concentrate infrastructure, usepackaged sewer service

Introduce back lanes



Create a rural green: Sprawling rural subdivisionstypically provide few public amenities or civic space.Long-distance commutes are required for every dailyneed. If the large lots are subdivided into smaller onesat an intersection to form a hamlet, some communityamenities become viable. A farmers’ market can beheld on the green, for example, and live-work units

may provide services such as a small corner store orrestaurant. The hamlet green should be designed asa simple square on one side of the intersection, withdenser surrounding lots accessed by lanes in the back. The hamlet can grow into a village the size of a pedes-trian shed or a quarter of a square mile.

Deficiency: Lack of civic spaceand amenities

Remedial Techniques: Create arural green; introduce live-works,farmers' market

Outcome: A hamlet with avariety of building types and mixof uses

Add live-work units

Expand a house intoa farmers’ marketor build a market

structure on the green

Create a rural green



Analyze the rural subdivision within its regional1.context according to the Sprawl Repair Assessment Tool and Void Analysis (see chapter three, “Repair atthe Regional Scale”). If there is potential for successfulrepair, proceed to the next step.

Reach out to the appropriate regional entity (a2.council or the county) in the area. Formulate a regionalstrategy for the transformation of the rural subdivi-sion, focusing on its potential for redevelopment intoa hamlet that will benet several nearby subdivisionsand has the potential to grow into a complete neigh-borhood or village. Public support and potential invest-ment will be more easily obtained if the developer candemonstrate that the project has regional signicanceand can contribute to long-term sustainability.

Initiate and facilitate the adoption of a new form-3.based code that will legalize the transformation ofthe rural subdivision into a clustered development orhamlet (see chapter four, ”Repair at the CommunityScale, Step Three: Introduce Regulatory and Manage-ment Techniques”). This can be done through a com-prehensive rezoning ordinance that replaces the exist-ing municipal code and allows clustering and repair ofrural subdivisions, or through an overlay district appliedspecically to one or a group of rural subdivisions.

Evaluate the needs of the surrounding rural com-4.munity in relation to services, and consider how thoseneeds might be met. For example, explore the potential

for reuse of some existing single-family houses to incu-bate a farmers’ market or other local businesses.

Explore public incentives for infrastructure5.improvements at the clustering location (see chapterfour, “Repair at the Community Scale, Step Four: SecureIncentives for Implementation”).

Select a strategy for partial or complete acquisi-6.tion of the rural subdivision. Secure contracts and/oroptions to purchase (with extendable contract limits)from individual owners. During due diligence, startdiscussions with county government and key decisionmakers about the feasibility of the project. If the feed-back is positive, proceed to the next step.

Start preparations for a public process and a7.possible collaborative design and planning session(charrette). Engage the regional government as well asadjacent subdivisions and their associations. Ideally aregional planning strategy will be created to allocatethe locations for hamlets while assessing their effecton the preservation of agricultural and natural land.

Complete a charrette (public or private). Engage8.decision makers and stakeholders to explore variousscenarios and phasing options. Results must be basedon consensus.

Start the entitlement process for the project. By9.this time the hamlet should be permitted under anew ordinance.

Start construction.10.

IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL



Rural sprawl at one unit per five acres shown in one square4-10.mile; 128 units total

One square mile with a variety of tract sizes including clus-4-11.tering

One square mile clustering into a hamlet of 128 units4-12.

These drawings illustrate a clustering technique ona square mile of land. The rst drawing shows ruralsprawl of 128 units at a density of one unit per veacres (gure 4-10). The second option clusters the unitsinto a variety of tracts and small hamlets (gure 4-11),while the third concentrates all development into a vil-lage occupying only a quarter of the total square mileof land (gure 4-12).

This is a technique for the preservation of farm-land outside of the urban boundary. Later in themanual, the retrots of other sprawl elements will beaddressed such as the introduction of food productionwithin the urban boundary and its integration into theexisting fabric.

APPLICATION: PRESERVATION OF AGRICULTURAL AND NATURAL LAND THROUGH CLUSTERING



A visitors' center with buildings supporting agricultural activities: a market, a school, and machinery storage4-14.

Clustering at a rural intersection as a repair technique4-13.



SINGLE FAMILY SUBDIVISION

The typical single-family subdivision built in the sub-urbs is the antithesis of sustainable development. It is aresidential-only enclave that consists of a single buildingtype, the detached, one-family house. The layout is typi-cally arbitrary and repetitive, with no block structure tohelp pedestrians orient themselves, few connections toprovide convenient routes, and nothing worth going towithin a walking distance. This discourages any mode oftransportation other than the car.

Thoroughfares in these subdivisions are usuallydendritic, over engineered, and limited to cul-de-sacsand local streets that feed into collectors. The publicspace is not well dened: most often it is cobbledfrom residual land near backyards and thoroughfares.Although many of these suburban residential develop-ments are close to the rural edge, they do not engagein local food production. Instead, vast areas of land areused for lawns, landscaped buffers, and golf courses.

The objective of the repair of such enclaves is tore-balance their structure, land use, and composition,creating diverse and complete neighborhoods that are

based on a walkable block and thoroughfare networkand open and civic space hierarchy.

These goals can be achieved by a series of inter-ventions, some of which are radical. The introductionof new building types and uses, such as row-houses,live-work units, apartments, and offices above shops,makes the community diverse; the redesign and con-nection of thoroughfares, and the addition of sidewalksand bike paths, make the community pedestrian- andbike-friendly. The entrance to the enclave is transformedinto a square with a meeting hall and a transit stop. Por-tions of the residual open space are retrotted intocommunity gardens and allotment gardens (tendedindividually or by families) for local food production.

Existing incentives to tackle such a substantial trans-formation may be quite weak, unless there is a dramaticcircumstance such as the collapse of property valueswithin the single-family subdivision. The 2007 – 2008crisis of the mortgage system created incentives due tothe massive decline in real estate prices and a delugeof foreclosures, not only in aging, deteriorating subdivi-

Suburban residential fabric repaired with new connections and mixed-use public spaces4-15.



sions, but also in brand new ones, some of which werestill under construction.

In the best-case scenario, the homeowners’ asso-ciations will initiate the retrotting process, but in allcases they should be engaged from the beginning. The association may decide to sell off certain portionsof the subdivision or negotiate the entire redevelop-ment with interested parties. It is the responsibilityof this governing body to convince the individualproperty owners that the retrotting efforts, whichmay even include the removal or relocation of theirhomes, will be for the larger good, for the establish-ment of a more livable, sustainable neighborhood.Landowners affected by a retrot need to be fairlycompensated, perhaps by receiving comparableproperty in the redeveloped project. The acquisitionof foreclosed properties should happen more easily,particularly with the consensus of the association andthe community at large.

Incentives for the developers who would under-take such retrots include the possibility for fasterpermitting, vesting of higher density, and additionaldevelopable space in the form of new commercial and

mixed-use buildings. Some incentives for infrastructureimprovements may be possible if the location of theneighborhood is of regional importance, particularlyif together with adjacent developments they achievesufficient density to support a transit stop (see chapterfour, “Repair at the Community Scale, Step Four: SecureIncentives for Implementation”).

Where the repair of a residential enclave (blightedor not) affects a wider area, but recalcitrant propertyowners resist the repair, the tools of eminent domaincan be applied, though condemnation of propertyshould be the last option. This can be justied in thecase of large-scale blight in a community or if the loca-tion is appropriate for a transit-oriented development. The wider community should be engaged in a publicprocess to explore the most feasible scenarios andbuild consensus. Physical and nancial factors such asthe number and locations of foreclosures, delinquenttaxes, vacancies, potential sellers, and decrease in valueshould be carefully analyzed. Several levels of repair –from a minimal intervention to a comprehensive re-structuring – should be organized in a phasing planand form the basis for the decision-making process.



Single building type and use4-16. Lack of walkable block structure4-17.

Residual open space4-18.

The following diagrams highlight the key deciencies ofthe single-family subdivision. These are the features thatneed to be repaired to create complete communities.

Figure 4-16 shows the monotony of the existinghouses. The lots are similar in size, as are the deep set-backs in front of the buildings. There is only one type

of building, and only one use. Figure 4-17 outlines therandom pattern of the streets, with dead ends andlimited connectivity. Figure 4-18 demonstrates theunstructured, ambiguous, and unusable character ofthe open space.

DEFICIENCIES



1 / 4 m i l e

Suburban residential developments areplanned without consideration of pedes-trians. The circle overlaid on gure 4-19represents a pedestrian shed and showsthat there are no destinations, other thanother residences, within walking distancein this development. The circle also showsthe potential location of the mixed-usesquare proposed for the repair of the sub-division. After the retrot, certain areasof this enclave will remain outside of thepedestrian shed. However, there will besecondary public spaces reachable on footor by bike, with the potential to provideadditional neighborhood amenities suchas playgrounds, live-work units, and com-munity gardens.

The highlighted areas in gure 4-20 showthe lots and structures affected by the ret-rot. This is a case of radical intervention,where almost half of the properties in thedevelopment will participate in the repairprocess. This intervention is deliberatelyamplied to demonstrate that transform-ing a single-family residential pod into acomplete neighborhood will require sub-stantial efforts and resources. In the largerregional context, repairing existing sprawl-ing subdivisions, even if ambitious in scope,will be more sustainable than expandingthe suburban infrastructure for new sprawldevelopments.

Existing subdivision4-19.

Areas of intervention4-20.



The most important interventions include a new,mixed-use square and multiple new connections tothe arterial, which is converted into a boulevard. (Thesquare can be replicated on the other side of the bou-levard to activate the repair of the other subdivision.)

The main spine of the subdivision, a former col-lector, has been made into an avenue with a tree-lined median leading to the square. A secondary roadhas also been made over by adding density to it andhaving it lead to a new green that connects the neigh-borhood to the existing school.

Outcome4-21.

1

2

3

3

4 4 4

5

New square1.

Green2.

Main spine3.

New connections4.

Arterial repaired into boulevard5.



Existing single-family subdivision enclave4-22.

Subdivision repaired into a neighborhood center4-23.

Figure 4-22 shows the existing condition of a portion ofthe residential enclave and gure 4-23 is its proposedtransformation into a diverse and balanced neighbor-hood, which will become the center for other subur-ban enclaves adjacent to the subdivision. The existingstructures are shown in black, the new inll in red.

Increasing density signicantly, combined with otheractions at the larger regional context, is requiredto make transit viable for this area. Houses that areremoved are replaced with denser building types suchas townhouses, live-work units, and those that willaccommodate apartments or offices above shops. Theprecise location and number of these inll buildingswill depend on the local market projections for boththe residential and commercial uses. The intention ofthis repair is not only to transform the developmentinto a neighborhood, but also to provide amenities andcreate a center for the surrounding developments.

TRANSFORMATION INTO A NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER

Proposed buildings

Existing buildings

Existing buildings



Repetitive pattern of single-family houses and cul-de-sacs4-24.

A new neighborhood center for the surrounding residential sprawl4-25.



Entry square with a bus stop, defined by mixed-use buildings and townhouses4-26.

The existing conditions of the single-family subdivision(gure 4-24) differ greatly from the nal result, wherethe suburban structure has been substantially modi-ed (gure 4-25). Where a repetitive cul-de-sac pat-tern existed before, there are now blocks with denedfrontages. The meandering collector bisecting thesubdivision that was a channel for speeding cars istransformed into a pedestrian-friendly avenue leadingfrom the new square to the existing school. It becomesthe main organizational spine of the community, withnumerous new connections.

The detail in gure 4-26 focuses on the mostimportant sprawl repair intervention in the residentialsubdivision – the entry square. It creates a gateway tothe neighborhood and serves as an amenity – a gath-ering place that provides goods and services for resi-dents of this neighborhood and nearby subdivisions.A small formal plaza marks the entrance, followed bya green square with a market structure. A meetinghall or a church can also be embedded in the fabricsurrounding the square.



Add market structure

Add townhouses

Adapt houses intoduplexes or multifamily

Add mews units

Add apartment villasAdd office buildings

Add mixed-usebuildings

Remove single-familyhouses

Introduce new building types and mixed uses: A portion of the single-family subdivision is trans-formed into a neighborhood center. The houses in theexisting cluster are similar in size and lot conguration. The platting follows the logic of maximum numberof lots within an area, without consideration of publicspace or mix of uses. The diagram of the remedialtechnique shows newly proposed buildings super-

imposed over the existing condition. Townhouses,apartments, live-work units, and shops are intro-duced, and a substantial number of the single-familyhouses are preserved. Some of them are adapted tomultifamily units (see chapter seven, “Repair at theBuilding Scale”). A civic structure that can be used asa farmers’ market or community hall is proposed forthe square.

Deficiency: Single building typeand use

Outcome: Variety of buildingtypes and mix of uses to supportneighborhood center

Remedial Techniques: Introduce new building typesand mix of uses: retail, office, andcivic



Deficiency: Lack of walkable blockstructure

Remedial Techniques: Connectand repair thoroughfares

Outcome: Walkable network andblock structure

Connect streets

Connect cul-de-sacs(see chapter five)

Introduce mews lanes

Introduce alleys

Introduce mid-blockpedestrian passages

Repair thoroughfares(see chapter five)

Create externalconnections

Connect and repair thoroughfares: One of the moreserious inadequacies of suburban subdivisions is theabsence of connectivity and block structure. A groupof typical cul-de-sacs are hooked onto a local road,which then adjoins a collector. The technique requiresthe removal of several houses and the connectionof the existing streets to form a network. The collec-

tor is retrotted into an avenue, and the arterial intoa boulevard, by widening sidewalks, reducing pave-ment widths, and introducing parallel parking. Thenal result is a repaired sector of the subdivision, witha clear block structure that provides multiple routes forpedestrians and bicyclists as well as drivers.



Dene open and civic space: The underused openspace of the single-family subdivision is transformedinto a hierarchy of civic spaces. The entrance of thecommunity, which consists of a wide intersectionand a gate, is recongured into a formal square, witha transit stop at the edge. Extending the newly formed

space across the arterial creates a point of arrival and adestination at this intersection. The outcome is a spa-tial denition of the square, which is complementedby additional civic spaces, such as attached greensand playgrounds, formed by the new connectionsbetween streets.

Deficiency: Residual open space

Outcome: Hierarchy and spatialdefinition of public realm

Remedial Techniques: Defineopen and civic space Create a

neighborhoodgreen/playground

Repair the collectorinto an avenue

Create a market square

Locate a bus stopcoordinated with

municipality



Deficiency: Lack of local foodproduction

Outcome: A variety of local foodproduction options

Remedial Techniques: Integratelocal food production spaces in allurban scales

Integrate local food production: A layer of urbanagriculture is superimposed over the existing subdivi-sion. The leftover space in the middle of the blocks issubdivided into allotment gardens that can be leasedto residents or managed by one custodian. This sce-

nario is possible for land between lots that is notenvironmentally sensitive. Community gardens canbe located within public squares or attached greens,and can successfully contribute to the formation of thecivic realm of the newly repaired neighborhood.

Introduce gardens onprivate lots

Create communitygardens in public

spaces

Create communitygardens within blocks

Create allotmentgardens in residual

spaces



Conventional single-use zoning4-27.

REZONING

Open SpaceR1 - Single-family Residential

Existing buildings

There is a sharp contrast between the conventionalzoning map of an existing subdivision (gure 4-27) andthe proposed Transect-based regulating plan (gure4-28), which is part of a form-based code. The existingzoning shows only one color, as there is only one useallowed – the single-family residence on a dened mini-mum lot size. This is an outdated, coarse, and inexibletype of zoning.

The proposed zoning diagram is based on differentprinciples – maximum exibility, mix of uses, and inclu-sion of the full range of human environments, from ruralto the most urban. Transect-based zoning allows for dif-ferent uses to co-exist within walking distance from eachother and be accommodated in building types that formharmonious street frontages. The new regulating plan

shows several Transect zones that include a range/hier-archy of building types according to their urban qualities. The most urban buildings – shops, apartments, lofts, andoffices – are in T5, the Urban Center zone. Townhouses,live-work units and smaller houses are in T4, the GeneralUrban zone, and the larger houses, together with theexisting ones, form the T3, or Sub-Urban zone.

The newly created public spaces are organizedunder CS (Civic Space), while the existing green spaces,together with the newly introduced agricultural lands,are grouped within the T2, Rural zone.

The designation of Transect zones within the planwill be dened by a process of local adjustment basedon an understanding of existing conditions and theneed to reach densities necessary for transit.

T1 - Natural zone T3 - Sub-Urban zone



CS - Civic SpaceCB- Civic Building

Existing and proposed buildings

Transect-based zoning4-28.



Existing single-family subdivision4-29.

Short-term repair: Creating an entry square4-30.

Medium-term repair: Adding mixed-use blocks4-31.

Long-term repair: Completing the urban fabric4-32.

This sequence of diagrams (gures 4-30, 4-31, and4-32) shows a proposed phasing process for repairinga single-family subdivision.

Phase one is limited to the entrance, where a newsquare is proposed (gure 4-30). Only a few existingbuildings are affected in the process of creating front-ages along the entry road. This phase presents a rapidrepair opportunity in which, with minimal means, asmall-scale change can be introduced to improve thequality of life in the community by providing some ofthe daily needs within walking distance.

Phase two gradually adds new buildings and con-nections, forming the rst urban, mixed-use blocks inthe neighborhood (gure 4-31). The collector at theperiphery of these blocks is retrotted with accesslanes and transformed into a boulevard with medians.

Phase three expands the interventions to theedges of the subdivision, adding more new connec-tions, buildings, and public spaces, as well as redevel-opment in the adjacent subdivision across the arterialroad (gure 4-32).

Each of the initial two phases can also be consid-ered possible nal scenarios with no further steps takentoward repair. In this case the repair will be limited inscope, adding only the entry square and some mixeduses. The process of phasing and timing will depend ona variety of factors, the most important of which will bethe regional signicance of the repaired subdivision, itsproximity to employment, and its potential – togetherwith other adjacent subdivisions – to support transit. The local government, if the area is incorporated, willneed to facilitate rezoning for mixed uses.

In addition, the homeowners’ association will needto understand and embrace the repair of the residentialenclave and dramatically change its bylaws to encour-age mixed uses, new building types, shallower setbacks,and civic spaces and buildings, among other things.

PHASING




Analyze the single-family subdivision within1.its regional context according to the Sprawl RepairAssessment Tool and Void Analysis (see chapter three,“Repair at the Regional Scale”). If there is potential forsuccessful repair, proceed to the next step.

Analyze the site feasibility (see chapter four,2.“Repair at the Community Scale, Step One: Analyze SiteFeasibility”).

Reach out to the appropriate regional entity3.(a council or the county) in the area. Formulate aregional strategy for the repair of the single-familysubdivision, focusing on its potential for transforma-tion into a neighborhood center, shared by severalsubdivisions. Transit should be provided betweenthe subdivisions, connecting them to a regionalemployment destination. Public support and poten-tial investment will be more easily obtained if thedeveloper can demonstrate that the project hasregional signicance and can contribute to long-term sustainability.

Initiate and facilitate the adoption of a new form-4.based code that will legalize the transformation of thesingle-family subdivision into a neighborhood center.(See chapter four, ”Repair at the Community Scale,Step Three: Introduce Regulatory and Management Techniques.”) This can be done through a compre-hensive rezoning ordinance that replaces the exist-ing municipal code and allows repair of single-familysubdivisions, or through an overlay district appliedspecically to one or a group of subdivisions.

Evaluate the needs of the surrounding commu-5.nity in relation to existing retail, office, and residentialspace. If the market is weak, explore the potential forreuse of some existing single-family houses to incu-bate local businesses.

Evaluate the possibilities of converting existing6.single-family houses into senior or student housing ormultifamily units.

Explore the possibility of locating a civic build-7.ing in the subdivision to serve as a catalyst for placemaking and provide community identity. A library, amarket, or a meeting hall can serve this role. A day-care or a senior living facility can also become stronganchors for the redevelopment.

Explore public incentives for infrastructure8.improvements along adjoining thoroughfares andwithin the subdivision (see chapter four, “Repair at theCommunity Scale, Step Four: Secure Incentives forImplementation”).

Select a strategy for partial or complete acqui-9.sition of the subdivision. Secure contracts and/oroptions to purchase (with extendable contract limits)from individual owners. During due diligence, startdiscussions with county government and key decisionmakers about the feasibility of the project. If the feed-back is positive, proceed to the next step.

Start preparations for a public process and a10.possible collaborative design and planning session(charrette). Engage the regional government as well asadjacent subdivisions and their associations, the localbusiness community, chamber of commerce, schoolboard, and not-for-prot organizations.

Complete a public charrette, preferably at the11.project site. Engage decision makers and stakehold-ers to explore various scenarios and phasing options.Results must be based on consensus.

Start the entitlement process for the project. By12.this time the new neighborhood center should be per-mitted under a new ordinance.




Figure 4-36 shows an example of a third-generationsuburb on the rural fringe of a big city transformedinto a mixed-use town center for the surroundingcommunities. The area has a historic intersection witha church, baseball eld, and some empty land thathas potential for inll development. These elements

formed the armature for a new, mixed-use fabric ofsmall, walkable blocks that were connected to theexisting cul-de-sacs by pedestrian and bike lanes. The town’s government used creative approaches toobtain stimulus money to implement elements of itsmaster plan.

Repaired suburban town center4-36.

APPLICATION: REWEAVING AND INFILLING THE SUBURBAN FABRIC

Mixed-use buildings Existing buildings New residential lots Civic buildings



MULTIFAMILY SUBDIVISION

Similar to single-family subdivisions, multifam-ily enclaves consist of a limited number of build-ing types – townhouses, garden apartments, andmulti-story apartment or condominium buildings.

These types of buildings are essential as residentialchoices, but they are typically built in isolated, gatedpods, lacking diversity of uses and walkability. Ratherthan using a rational block structure, they are com-posed of dead-end streets and cul-de-sacs, oversizedand underutilized parking lots in front of randomlyplaced buildings.

The tools for transforming a multifamily subdivi-sion into a complete and diverse neighborhood aresimilar to the ones used in the repair of single-familyenclaves. They include the introduction of additionalbuilding types: shops, live-work units, offices, and pos-sibly hotel and civic uses. The streets and cul-de-sacsneed to be connected, and the surface parking lotsbetter utilized through the addition of garage struc-

tures, to allow greater exibility, density, and mixeduses. A gathering place that adds to communityidentity must also be created.

These developments are often located at theintersections of arterials, which make ideal locationsfor urban squares and regional transit stops. Thesquares can also reverse the odd way in which thesedevelopments presently turn their backs to the sur-rounding community. By allowing the repaired com-munity to face the arterials with useful shops, cafés,and offices, the square provides visibility to pass-ing traffic and announces the existence of the newmixed-use village.

A developer who chooses to repair a multifam-ily suburban pod will need a series of incentives. Theyinclude, but are not limited to, additional developmentpotential, permitting by right, and nancial incentivesfor transit infrastructure and garage structures (seechapter four, “Repair at the Community Scale, StepFour: Secure Incentives for Implementation”).

Apartment villas as infill buildings for multifamily subdivisions4-37.



Existing multifamily subdivision4-42.

Multifamily subdivision repaired into a town center4-43.

Figures 4-42 and 4-43 show a typical multifamily sub-division before and after repair. Its transformation intoa mixed-use and transit-ready town center requires aradical intervention.

TRANSFORMATION INTO A TOWN CENTER

Proposed buildings

Existing buildings

Existing buildings

The overall urban structure of the subdivision is reor-ganized. A new square is formed at the intersectionof the bordering arterial roads, and a main street iscreated, leading from the square to the existing lake,which becomes a public amenity. Four- and ve-storybuildings are added (new buildings are shown in red,existing in black) to support mixed uses.



Dispersed and unstructured disposition of buildings in a multifamily subdivision4-44.

The transit-oriented, high-density town center will be used by the surrounding communities4-45.



Existing lake as a private amenity to only a few4-46. Lake transformed into an amenity for the whole community4-47.

Figures 4-44 and 4-45 show the comprehensive trans-formation of the multifamily subdivision into a towncenter. A number of the existing apartments are pre-served and embedded within the new fabric of neigh-borhood blocks. Wide sidewalks and spaces for cafés,restaurants, and stores replace the leftover, underuti-lized space in the backs of the apartment buildings,spurring a new urban vitality. As a town center, theneighborhood offers the surrounding area a place forworking, shopping, and socializing.

Figures 4-46 and 4-47 highlight the relationship ofa lake to the existing and proposed buildings. Beforethe repair, the lake was an amenity to only a few,hidden behind apartment buildings. The repair opensaccess to the lake, creating a main street that leads to itand making it an amenity for the whole community.



Add mixed-use,perimeter-block

buildings

Add liner buildings

Expand somebuildings

Remove some buildings

Preserve some buildings

Introduce new building types and mixed uses: Thelimitations of the garden apartment subdivision includeincoherent fabric and restricted, singular use. The repairtechniques include the removal of some buildings (themost outdated ones), expansion of others (to accom-modate additional uses), and additions of liner build-ings. The nal goal is to create a balance of uses andbuilding types. The monoculture of garden apartments

is diversied by developing perimeter-block buildingsthat can accommodate shops, live-work units, andoffices (when the zoning is changed to allow it). Thisexpands the housing options, with residential unitssuch as lofts, condominiums, and apartments on theupper oors, and allows greater density, making tran-sit viable. Liner buildings supply affordable units andsmall business incubators.


Outcome: Variety of buildingtypes and mix of uses to supporta town center

Remedial Techniques: Introduce new building typesand mix of uses: residential, retail,office, lodging, and civic




Remedial Techniques: Connectand repair thoroughfares


Connect and repair thoroughfares: The streets ina multifamily subdivision are typically overscaled andnon-hierarchical. The irrational layout is confusing anddisorienting, and leads to congestion along the collec-tor. The remedy requires removal of some buildings toconnect thoroughfares and create a walkable blockstructure. Where the streets are retained, traffic calm-

ing is used to contribute to a comfortable pedestrianenvironment. Parallel parking and bike lanes are intro-duced, and pavement widths are reduced to providewider sidewalks. The nal result is a network that accom-modates existing and new buildings and allows for mul-tiple pedestrian and vehicular routes, reducing conges-tion and providing a better pedestrian environment.

Connect existingthoroughfares

Create externalconnections

Create a main street

Repair existingthoroughfares

(see chapter five)



Add parking garages

Reorganize oreliminate dispersed

parking lots

Introduce on-streetparking

Rationalize parking: The parking lot is the ubiquitouselement in multifamily suburban complexes. The lotsare exposed along the building frontages, making thearea less appealing and safe for pedestrians becausethe buildings’ windows are too far from the street forresidents to monitor activity. The repair includes reor-ganizing the parking lots in the backs of buildingswhere possible, providing on-street, parallel parking,

and replacing some of the surface lots with parkingstructures. Adding garages may seem to be a radicalapproach, but it is often necessary because the rede-velopment of a multifamily enclave makes economicsense only when replaced by higher density and a mixof uses. The parking garages allow the replacementof the parking lots with buildings that accommodateother uses.

Deficiency: Dispersed andexposed parking

Outcome: Parking strategyto support higher density andmixed use

Remedial Techniques: Rationalize parking; add garages



Deficiency: Residual open space

Remedial Techniques: Defineopen and civic spaces

Create a main street

Create an entry square

Define semi-publicinterior block spaces

Dene open and civic spaces: The typical multifam-ily subdivision has a surplus of unstructured spacebetween buildings, yet no usable public realm. Devel-opers often try to create park-like settings by placingthe buildings randomly for a “picturesque” effect, butthey don’t provide actual parks or greens. The develop-ment needs a center to provide a gathering space. Theideal location for the center is at the corner of the two

arterials, where a new square can be created and con-nected with a new main street. This replaces the arbi-trary building dispositions with a strong public space.Another important function of the square is to reversethe relationship of the development to the exteriorthoroughfares by creating useful frontages that canbe lled with shops and cafés visible to the passingpedestrian and car traffic.




REZONING

Conventional zoning for multifamily subdivisions allowsonly one type of building and use: apartments clusteredin an enclave. To transform these subdivisions into com-plete communities, this zoning must be changed toallow a variety of building types and uses.

Similar to the single-family zoning map, the mapfor the multifamily development shows only one type ofbuilding allowed (gure 4-48). The proposed Transect-based map shows several different zones of the rural-to-urban Transect (gure 4-49). The Transect is used asan organizational method to incorporate maximumexibility, mix of uses, and inclusion of a wider rangeof human environments, from rural to urban. Transect-based zoning allows for different uses to co-exist withinwalking distance of each other and be accommodatedin buildings that form harmonious environments.

In the case of the multifamily subdivision, rezoningallows denser urban ranges to transform the enclave

into a transit-ready town center. The T6, or Urban Corezone, includes perimeter-block buildings with structuredparking, which can signicantly increase the densitywhile creating a high-quality public space. These blockscan accommodate shops, apartments, lofts, and offices. The T5, or Urban Center zone, includes new smallerapartment buildings, townhouses, and live-work units,while T4, or General Urban zone, incorporates some ofthe existing buildings and their expansions. The newlycreated public places are labeled under CS, Civic Space,including the park around the lake, which becomes animportant public amenity.

The designation of Transect zones within the planwill be dened by a process of local adjustment basedon an understanding of existing conditions and theneed to reach necessary densities for transit. The ratiosof Transect zones vary according to the location of thesubdivision within its regional context.

Conventional single-use zoning4-48. Transect-based zoning4-49.

Open SpaceR3 - Multifamily Residential

Existing buildings

T3 - Sub-Urban zone

T4 - General Urban zone T5 - Urban Center zone

CS - Civic Space

CB - Civic Building





Analyze the multifamily subdivision within its1.regional context according to the Sprawl RepairAssessment Tool and Void Analysis (see chapter three,“Repair at the Regional Scale”). If there is potential forsuccessful repair, proceed to the next step.

Analyze the site feasibility (see chapter four,2.“Repair at the Community Scale, Step One: AnalyzeSite Feasibility”).

Reach out to the appropriate regional entity3.(a council or the county) in the area. Formulate aregional strategy for the repair of the multifamilysubdivision, focusing on its potential for transforma-tion into a town center, shared by several subdivi-sions. Transit should be provided between the newtown center and other nodes, connecting them to aregional employment destination. Public support andpotential investment will be more easily obtained ifthe developer can demonstrate that the project hasregional signicance and can contribute to long-termsustainability.

Initiate and facilitate the adoption of a new4.form-based code that will legalize the transformationof the multifamily subdivision into a town center (seechapter four, ”Repair at the Community Scale, Step Three: Introduce Regulatory and Management Tech-niques”). This can be done through a comprehensiverezoning ordinance that replaces the existing munici-pal code and allows repair of multifamily subdivisions,or through an overlay district applied specically toone or a group of subdivisions.

Evaluate the needs of the surrounding commu-5.nity in relation to existing retail, office, and residentialspace. If the market is weak, explore the potential forreuse of some existing multifamily buildings to incu-bate local businesses.

Evaluate the possibilities of preserving and6.expanding some buildings, removing others, addingmixed-use perimeter-block and liner buildings.

Explore the possibility of locating a civic build-7.ing in the subdivision to serve as a catalyst for placemaking and provide community identity. A library,a market, a religious building, or a meeting hall canserve this role. A daycare or a senior living facility canalso become strong anchors for the redevelopment.

Explore public incentives for infrastructure8.improvements along adjoining thoroughfares andwithin the subdivision (see chapter four, “Repair atthe Community Scale, Step Four: Secure Incentivesfor Implementation”).

Select a strategy for partial or complete acqui-9.sition of the subdivision. Secure contracts and/oroptions to purchase (with extendable contract limits)from individual owners. During due diligence, startdiscussions with county government and key deci-sion makers about the feasibility of the project. If thefeedback is positive, proceed to the next step.

Start preparations for a public process and a10.possible collaborative design and planning session(charrette). Engage the regional government as wellas adjacent subdivisions and their associations, thelocal business community, chamber of commerce,school board, and not-for-prot organizations.


Start the entitlement process for the project. By12.this time the new town center should be permittedunder a new ordinance.




This illustrative case study shows the repair of a 1960s,age-restricted apartment complex. The site containsa park, a recently built library, and a lifelong learningcenter, and is embedded in a larger area that is des-ignated by the municipality to become a mixed-usetown center for the surrounding older, single-familyneighborhoods (gure 4-50).

The site is close to a university and a hospital, which– because of their amenities and the potential for con-nectivity, convenience, and transit – makes it an ideallocation for a lifelong community where seniors willwant to live, even without specic age requirements.

The new plan removes most of the inadequateapartment buildings and replaces them with a varietyof townhouses, small apartment villas, and courtyardblocks, as well as buildings that can house retail andoffices, creating the intensity of urbanism necessary tosupport the evolving town center (gure 4-51).

A new hierarchy of streets is superimposed on thesuburban megablocks, creating a porous and walk-able network that results in views of and public accessto the park. A new square organizes several existingand new civic structures and connects to the repairedapartment complex and shopping centers.

Suburban multifamily subdivision with outdated housing stock 4-50.

Repair of the subdivision and its vicinity into a town center4-51.

APPLICATION: TRANSFORMING AN AGE RESTRICTED COMPLEX INTO A LIFELONG COMMUNITY

Existing buildings Proposed buildings Park Civic buildings



Redevelopment of a multifamily subdivision preserving existing trees4-52.

This is an example of repair of a multifamily enclave ona sloping site in a forest of mature trees. New construc-tion is largely limited to existing foundations in orderto preserve the trees and to craft a more completeneighborhood out of a repetitive and arbitrary layoutof apartment slabs. Additional streets and pedestrianpaths are introduced for better connectivity, but their

location is carefully selected for minimal disturbanceof vegetation. The detail on gure 4-53 shows the newplan superimposed with the existing layout. The newand remodeled buildings are arranged in a campus-like fashion with a picturesque sequence of betterdened quadrangles, squares, greens, and pathways(gure 4-54).

APPLICATION: REDEVELOPMENT OF APARTMENTS AND PRESERVATION OF EXISTING VEGETATION

Existing buildings Proposed buildings Civic buildings

D r a w i n g i n c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h D o v e r K o h l a n d P a r t n e r s



Superimposing of existing and proposed buildings4-53.

New buildings forming urban blocks and new public spaces4-54.

Existing buildings

Proposed buildings



APPLICATION: TOWNHOUSE ENCLAVE REDEVELOPMENT

Townhouse development in the U.S. typicallyconsists of attached building clusters in park-ing lots. The example shown is in a British New Town, where townhouses have sizable privateyards and a certain mix of uses. Parking lots aremostly associated with commercial uses. Mostof the fabric consists of dead-end streets form-ing megablocks that encourage car speedingand discourage walking (gure 4-55). The exist-ing commercial center, which the townhousessurround, consists of a one-story dilapidatedstructure fronted by a large, under-landscapedpedestrian plaza and a parking lot. A stand-alone building blocks views of the retail fromthe street, contributing to its blight. A churchoccupies one end of the plaza, but lacks civicpresence (gure 4-57).

The proposed plan is to redevelop the site withnew townhouses and mixed-use buildings butwithin a better-connected, more pedestrian-friendly fabric (gure 4-56). The dead-endstreets are connected, alleys are introduced inthe backs of lots, and the buildings are pushedto the front of the lots to better dene thestreet frontage. Paved cul-de-sacs are trans-formed into rational and useful green pock-ets. The square is redesigned with three-storymixed-use buildings, vehicular circulation closeto the new shops, and a civic green in front ofthe church, which is architecturally improvedwith a detached bell tower (gure 4-58).

Existing enclave of townhouses, shopping center, and cul-de-sacs4-55.

Cul-de-sacs transformed into green closes and parking lots trans-4-56.formed into public space



Lack of walkable block structure and public space4-57.

Introduction of blocks, alleys, and hierarchy of public spaces4-58.



“Shopping center” is a generic term for a groupof commercial establishments that are devel-oped, owned, and managed as one entity andare related to the trade area in location, size, andtypes of shops

On-site parking is provided at the front of build-ings, as required by suburban parking regulations. The shopping center has evolved into several types;there are multiple denitions and classications ofthese types, including those by the Urban Land Insti-tute and the International Council of Shopping Cen-ters (ICSC). Some of the most frequently used termsare: convenience store, convenience center, neigh-borhood center, community center, regional center,power center, and lifestyle center. These range in sizefrom 1,500 square feet to more than 800,000 squarefeet, and in service areas from a quarter-mile radius tomore than 15 miles.

Convenience stores are usually located at the inter-sections of local and collector roads, and consist of a gasstation or a store like 7-Eleven offering food and everydayitems.10 In a sprawl repair scenario, a convenience store

can be transformed into a corner store in a repairedneighborhood (see chapter seven, “Repair at the Build-ing Scale: Drive-through and Gas Station”).

Convenience centers are usually anchored by asmall food market, and offer a limited range of foodand personal services. If located adjacent to residen-tial enclaves at intersections of collectors and arterialroads, a convenience center can be retrotted into amixed-use neighborhood center.

Neighborhood centers are anchored by a full-size supermarket and/or a pharmacy, and offer amore complete range of goods and services than theconvenience centers.

Community centers have multiple anchors andoften include discount department stores, apparelstores, bookstores, supermarkets, and restaurants.Within the metropolitan region, “neighborhood cen-ters” and community centers can be repaired intotransit-oriented town centers (see chapter three,“Repair at the Regional Scale”).

Regional centers usually take the form ofenclosed shopping malls anchored by multipledepartment stores. In this chapter, malls are reviewed

SHOPPING CENTER

Liner buildings masking a shopping strip to create a main street4-59.



as a separate type, following this one, as they repre-sent a unique opportunity for sprawl repair, especiallyin light of their current blight.

Power centers are even larger agglomerations ofcategory-dominant anchors, usually a collection of“big-box” retailers. Power centers sometimes exceed amillion square feet in gross leasable area (GLA).

Lifestyle centers are the trendiest retail type, offer-ing upscale fashion and home furnishings in an open-air setting that the developers hope will make shop-pers think of a main-street environment. This type istoo new and well managed to become a target forsprawl repair, especially when office and residentialuses are incorporated in these centers, making themrelatively self-sufficient.

Stores are necessary and valuable componentsof neighborhoods and cities when they are woveninto the urban fabric and easily accessible. Indeed,shopfronts are among the most interesting elementsof a street. But when they are conceived in high con-centrations, isolated from residences and workplaces,they contribute to sprawl. The repair of such sprawlelements remediates the lack of block structure andconnectivity to the surrounding context, the over-scaled parking lots at the fronts of buildings, the lackof civic and green space, and, most importantly, thefull dominance of a single use.

Following the exodus of residents from urbanareas, shopping centers multiplied and ourished, pri-marily in the decades of federal incentives between1954 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In hopes of stim-ulating the economy, the federal government grantedtax breaks to cheap, new construction through accel-erated depreciation. Most commercial developmentin suburbia was nanced as a seven- to 15-year assetclass, meaning that developers built cheaply and withno concern for the long-term viability of their projects.Shopping centers appeared at almost every inter-section and along endless strips, cannibalizing eachother, while fast becoming prone to obsolescence anddecay. These were abandoned as replacements werebuilt farther out. Today we are faced with hundreds of

thousands of square feet of such shopping centers inneed of demolition, renovation, or reuse.

According to the ICSC, there are 23.1 square feetof retail space per person in the U.S., amounting to 7billion square feet of gross leasable area. 11 It is difficultto imagine the retail industry growing any time soon,especially after the meltdown of 2007–2009, whenthe largest players in the business suffered tremen-dous losses and bankruptcies. The image of boarded-up, dilapidated storefronts in shopping centers hasbecome a common sight in the suburbs.

On the other hand, Bulmash Real Estate Advisorspredicts the end of the mega-projects; they say therewill be more activity in existing places, as lenders requiremore equity and tighter standards. Public subsidies willbecome very important as real estate investment trusts(REITs) continue to deleverage, Bulmash asserts. 12 Dis-tressed retail properties have potential for redevelop-ment for less than the cost of new construction, andif they have good location, at important intersections,relative integration within communities, and not toomuch competition in close vicinity, such repairs can besuccessful. Crucial factors are current job availability andthe prospect for incubating new businesses within theretrot. The repair of shopping centers should employstrategies for offering cheap workspace by using theexisting structures, temporary structures, inexpensiveliner buildings, or outdoor space for farmers’ markets.

The repair of shopping centers has a range ofsocial benets. By introducing apartments above com-mercial premises, it provides affordable housing forworkers and for senior citizens, who will be able to walkto their daily needs and continue living independently. The area will be inhabited 24 hours a day, which willincrease safety through continuous informal supervi-sion. Less parking will be necessary because parkingwill serve commercial and residential uses at differenttimes. Less driving will be required because more tripswill be taken on foot.

For incentives, see chapter four, “Repair at the Com-munity Scale, Step Four: Secure Incentives for Imple-mentation.”



Parking lots dominating the public realm4-66.

Parking lots redeveloped into mixed-use, walkable fabric4-67.



The repair of this agglomeration of strip shopping cen-ters will ideally happen on all corners of the existingsuburban intersection. However, the same approachcan be applied to only one or two of the corners, if nec-essary because of the ownership pattern and growthdynamics of the area. The critical task is the retrot ofthe intersection, which currently is confusing, com-pletely car oriented, and prone to accidents. Repair-ing it into a square will calm the traffic, create a realfocus and landmark for the surrounding community,and add developable real estate for new mixed-usebuildings (gure 4-68).

This repair case study demonstrates how mostof the existing buildings can be preserved andembedded in the future town center, includingsome of the smaller structures in the outparcels. Theurban fabric forms a retail loop, which connects themain clusters of shops, including the grocery storeat the top of gure 4-67. The existing buildings canbe renovated and used for retail, or they can be re-purposed into civic institutions (schools, galleries,libraries), office space, or senior or wellness facilities.

In some cases the structures may be converted intogarages, creating the conditions for development ofthe fronting parking lots without the need to buildnew parking garages.

Dangerous and complicated intersection repaired into a new, urban square4-68.



Add liner buildings forincubating businesses

Add live-work units

Introduce mixed-use,perimeter-block buildingswith parking garages

Preserve viablebuildings

Eliminatedysfunctional

buildings

Convert existingbuildings for civic uses

Introduce new building types and mixed uses: Thisshopping center consists of several big boxes, includinga grocery store. The buildings are surrounded by parkinglots and outparcels with drive-through establishments. The repair starts with the introduction of other buildingtypes such as liner structures for incubator businesses

and perimeter block buildings for residential and officeuses. The intensication of the site also requires parkingstructures. The big boxes are embedded in new fabricand remain as shopping anchors. If the retail fails, theycan be converted to other uses such as galleries, muse-ums, senior centers, or college satellite campuses.


Outcome: Variety of building typesand mix of uses to support a towncenter

Remedial Techniques: Introduce new building typesand mixed uses: residential,office, lodging, and civic




(see chapter five)


Add streets in front ofstores

Improve complicatedintersection with a

square

Connect big boxes witha pedestrian-friendly

retail loop

Connect and repair thoroughfares: Shopping cen-ters rarely have block structure. Most of the surface infront of the stores is paved for parking lots. The repairstarts with adding streets in front of the stores and con-necting them with a pedestrian-friendly retail loop. Thenewly formed blocks should have perimeters no longer

than 1,200 to 1,500 feet to make walking pleasant. Thelarger blocks need to be broken up by pedestrian pas-sages. Complicated intersections should be simplied,avoiding extensive pavement. A square easily connectsa multitude of intersecting streets and creates substan-tial developable real estate along its perimeter.

Deficiency: Lack of walkableblock structure

Outcome: Walkable networkand block structure

Remedial Techniques: Connectand repair thoroughfares; addstreets in front of stores



Add parking garages

Add on-street parking

Organize parking inbacks of buildings

Rationalize parking: Parking lots are the most promi-nent feature of suburban shopping centers. In most casesthey are overscaled; with the exception of one or twoholidays each year, they are vastly underutilized. Theseparking lots have great potential to be urbanized with

new, mixed-use buildings. The introduction of parkinggarages allows the replacement of the parking lots withbuildings that accommodate other uses, such as high-density housing, office space, and civic use. Additionalparking is provided along new and repaired streets.

Deficiency: Underutilized andexposed parking

Outcome: Parking strategy tosupport higher density and mixof uses




Create a square toimprove intersection

Create a variety of civicspaces

Define semi-publicinterior block space

Dene open and civic space: Suburban shopping cen-ters rarely have civic space because they are intended fora single use. In recent years some have been designed tomimic main streets with restaurants and entertainment,but the majority lack any dened or useful public realm.By adding buildings that accommodate housing, office,and civic uses, these places become main streets, neigh-

borhood centers, or even town centers that are active24 hours a day. The excessive, undened space is to bereorganized into a range of public spaces. The focus is anew square that improves the awkward traffic intersec-tion, creates a landmark and a sense of arrival, slowsthe traffic, and distributes the car ow to the streetsleading to the shops.

Deficiency: Lack of civic space






REZONING

Open SpaceR1 - Single-family Residential

C1 - Commercial

Existing buildings

The existing zoning of shopping centers is usually lim-ited to commercial use. The goal of the rezoning pro-cess is to allow a wide variety of mixed uses and trans-form the shopping center into a town center.

Transect-based zoning creates the conditions fordifferent building types to co-exist along harmoniousstreetscapes. The uses are exible and interchangeable,and parking requirements are based on shared use. Forexample, the newly added office space can share park-ing with the new residential inll and some civic usesbecause they need parking at different times. Parkingneeds will be further reduced because the local mix ofuses induces fewer car trips.

The proposed regulating plan (gure 4-70) showsseveral different zones of the Transect. The T6, or Urban

Core zone, includes perimeter-block buildings withstructured parking, radically increasing the urbanintensity. These perimeter blocks can accommodateshops, apartments, lofts, and offices. The T6 zone delin-eates the new square, creating a high-quality publicrealm. The T5, or Urban Center zone, adds live-worksand incorporates some of the existing buildings. The T4, or General Urban zone, creates the possibility forthe existing buildings at the perimeter (mostly single-family housing) to be up-zoned for better transition tothe new town center. The newly created public spacesare organized under CS, Civic Space, including the newsquare and the plaza in front of the existing big boxes.

T1 - Natural zone T3 - Sub-Urban zone



T6 - Urban Core zoneCB - Civic Building

CS - Civic Space





Analyze the shopping center within its regional1.context according to the Sprawl Repair Assessment Tool and Void Analysis (see chapter three, “Repair at theRegional Scale”). If there is potential for successful repair,proceed to the next step.

Analyze the site feasibility (see chapter four, “Repair2.at the Community Scale, Step One: Analyze Site Feasibil-ity”).

Reach out to the appropriate regional entity (a3.council or the county) in the area. Formulate a regionalstrategy for the repair of the shopping center, focusingon its potential for transformation into a town center. Transit should be provided between the new towncenter and other nodes, connecting them to a regionalemployment destination. Public support and potentialinvestment will be more easily obtained if the developercan demonstrate that the project has regional signi-cance and can contribute to long-term sustainability.

Initiate and facilitate the adoption of a new form-4.based code that will legalize the transformation of theshopping center into a town center (see chapter four,”Repair at the Community Scale, Step Four: IntroduceRegulatory and Management Techniques”). This can bedone through a comprehensive rezoning ordinance thatreplaces the existing municipal code and allows repair ofshopping centers, or through an overlay district appliedspecically to one or a group of shopping centers.

Explore public incentives for infrastructure improve-5.ments along adjoining thoroughfares and within theshopping center (see chapter four, “Repair at the Com-munity Scale, Step Four: Secure Incentives for Imple-mentation”).

Select a strategy for partial or complete acquisition6.of the shopping center. Secure contracts and/or optionsto purchase (with extendable contract limits) from indi-vidual owners. During due diligence, start discussionswith county government and key decision makersabout the feasibility of the project. If the feedback ispositive, proceed to the next step.

Prepare a tenant-mix strategy that optimizes7.national, regional, and local retailers.

Create a strategy to manage the main street. Orga-8.nize a single entity to coordinate tenants and propertyowners to ensure proper operation, balance, and main-

tenance of shopfronts, as well as simplicity and econ-omy of streetscape.

Introduce a marketing program designed to9.emphasize the new town center’s “sense of place.”

Analyze the jurisdiction of the main thorough-10.fares adjacent to or within the shopping center, and ifthey are under the state DOT, work to have them relin-quished to the local municipality if possible. State thor-oughfare standards are more challenging to modify tocreate pedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented environ-ments. Local jurisdictions are able to work directly withcommunities affected by sprawl.

Evaluate the needs of the community in rela-11.tion to existing retail, office, and residential space. If themarket is weak, explore the potential for reuse of theexisting commercial buildings to incubate local busi-nesses. Identify and attract struggling businesses thatcannot afford the rents in more expensive locations butthat provide essential services to a community – a coffeeshop, dry cleaner, hairdresser, and so forth.

Evaluate the possibilities for preserving viable12.buildings, eliminating dysfunctional buildings, addingliner buildings for incubating businesses, adding live-work units, and introducing mixed-use perimeter-blockbuildings with parking garages.

Explore the possibility of locating a civic building13.in the transformed shopping center to serve as a catalystfor place making and to provide community identity. Apost office, a library, a market, a religious building, or ameeting hall can serve this role.







Car-oriented environment of a blighted shopping center4-75. Public square as a traffic-calming and place-making device4-76.

Parking lots transformed into a town center4-77.

Located in fairly urban conditions on both sides of adiagonal avenue, this shopping center exhibits all thecharacteristics of its suburban counterparts. The build-ings are set back deeply in the parcels, leaving thefrontages to large parking lots. The few existing streetsmeet the diagonal at odd angles, creating confusingand wasteful geometries (gure 4-75).

The proposal is to keep the location of the exist-ing buildings (that can be gradually replaced by newones), but to reorganize the space in front of them intoa square, channeling the circulation close to the store-fronts and creating a memorable civic space (gures4-76 and 4-77).

D r a w i n g b y J a m e s D o u g h e r t y / D o v e r K o h l a n d P a r t n e r s

D r a w i n g b y J a m e s D o u g h e r t y / D o v e r K o h l a n d P a r t n e r s

APPLICATION: RECLAIMING A SQUARE OUT OF PARKING LOTS



Defunct shopping center retrofitted with pedestrian pas-4-78.sages and new thoroughfares

Primary (black) and secondary network (grey) of streets4-79.

Final repair of the shopping center into a town center, adjacent to new, mixed-use neighborhoods4-80.

Conceived more than twenty years ago, MashpeeCommons in Massachusetts is a pioneering transfor-mation of a strip shopping center into a town centerserving the surrounding 23 square miles of suburbia.It debuted several urban design techniques, includ-ing puncturing pedestrian passages through, andreusing, existing structures (gure 4-78), using linerbuildings to mask parking lots and accommodatelocal tenants, and creating primary and second-ary street networks (A and B streets). The A/B streettechnique (gure 4-79) designates the external,

vehicular-oriented thoroughfares, where the pedes-trian experience is of lesser quality, as secondary, orB streets. The internal streets of excellent pedestrianquality are designated as primary, or A streets, andare required by code to maintain high standards(such as continuous, safe, and interesting buildingfrontage). This technique has subsequently beenutilized in downtown redevelopments, allowing forthe inclusion of parking lots, gas stations, and othernecessary elements of urban life while preserving avibrant pedestrian network.

APPLICATION: TRANSFORMING A GREYFIELD INTO A TOWN CENTER



Drive-through structures, visible from the highway, are embedded into a main street4-85.

View of the new main street incorporating the existing big boxes4-86.



Malls are the most promising contenders forsprawl repair. Because of their location, parcel size,ownership structure, and opportunities for tran-sit and mixed uses, they have great potential tobe transformed into town centers or transit-readyurban cores.

Malls are usually located at major arterial inter-sections, along the paths of growth, in the vicinity ofnumerous residential subdivisions. This makes themideal as centers along an integrated regional bus rapidtransit network, light rail line, or other mode of publictransportation. The overabundant retail space in mallscan be rebalanced or replaced by complementaryuses such as office, residential, hotel, civic, or institu-tional buildings. Because of these advantages, mallshave been the most frequent targets for sprawl repair.

Examples include Mizner Park in Boca Raton, Florida;Paseo Colorado in Pasadena, California; and Belmar inLakewood, Colorado.

To reach the full potential of the repair of a mall,it is necessary to understand its regional context – itslocation and its relationship to the other centers in theregion. As very large structures and agglomerationsof retail use, malls have the capacity to inuence theirsurroundings – if a mall is ourishing, the surround-ing strip shopping, fast food restaurants, banks, andentertainment venues also thrive. Conversely, if a mallstarts to decline, it can take businesses in the regiondown with it. But not all malls are alike. For example,a mall embedded in suburban residential fabric maybe repaired more swiftly into a town center than amall located in the exurban fringes, where it is entirelydependent on the prospect of future growth.

SHOPPING MALL

Three-phase transformation of a shopping mall keeping the main structure4-87.



To make the critical distinctions between locationand type, a site analysis must be performed, and fromthere the nature and feasibility of the repair can bedetermined. When the mall is still successful, the repairshould be forward looking – visionary and proactive incharacter – and the process of the retrot started whilethe mall is still economically vital. When the shoppingmall has already lost its economic momentum, the ret-rot becomes post-factum or retroactive.

The repair of a mall can be achieved through aseries of interventions executed as one major rede-velopment or in phases implemented over the courseof decades. The main structure of the mall can rst bepreserved and embedded in fabric, and then piecescan be disassembled step-by-step, keeping only theanchors, and creating a main street. The nal stage mayinclude the full demolition of the mall if the remainingstructures become obsolete. These are separate strate-gies that can be employed sequentially, as phases, orpartially, depending on the circumstances.

The introduction of mixed uses, together with thereconnection of thoroughfares into urban blocks, arelogical steps of the transformation. However, the mostimportant intervention will be the rationalization of

parking and the addition of parking garages, becausethat will facilitate the high density and mixed uses nec-essary for a town center.

The incentives for repairing malls need to be strong,as the nancial commitments of the private sectorrequired for such redevelopments are very high. Whendead or dying malls are redeveloped and intensied ascomplete town centers, with residential and office com-ponents to supplement the retail, transit between theseintensied nodes becomes viable. Just as the federal gov-ernment subsidizes the interstate highway system thatadvances sprawl, federal, state, and local governmentsshould support the creation of a network of repairedcommercial nodes to support regional transit.

The incentives and implementation techniquesmay include a range of the following: permittingby right, which requires state enabling legislation,exemption from state and federal assessments, stateand federal funding for parking structures and tran-sit, Transfer of Development Rights and Purchase ofDevelopment Rights mechanisms, Tax IncrementFinancing, Business Improvement Districts, and others(see chapter four, “Repair at the Community Scale,Step Four: Secure Incentives for Implementation”).



The deciencies of the mall are similar to those of theother commercial sprawl elements, but some of themare more extreme: the footprint is excessively large fora single-use building (gure 4-88), pedestrian circula-tion is hampered by the vast areas of underutilized sur-face parking (gures 4-89 and 4-90), and the only well-

dened public space is inside the mall (gure 4-91).However, these deciencies also present opportunitiesfor the repair of the mall. For instance, the large park-ing lots can easily accommodate a new urban fabric aswell as a range of public spaces, including urban gar-dens for local food production.


Overscaled and exposed parking4-90. Lack of civic space4-91.

DEFICIENCIES



Existing suburban mall4-92.

Repaired town center4-93.


The two dominant elements within the existing siteare the massive footprint of the mall structure and theoverwhelming surface parking surrounding it (gure4-92). Smaller commercial establishments mainly inthe form of drive-through buildings are located alongthe perimeter of the parcel.

Figure 4-93 shows a hypothetical inll of the parkinglots with urban fabric of perimeter blocks, some ofwhich contain parking garages. The high percentageof red color highlighting the proposed inll structuresshows the dramatic nature of this remediation. Thisradical intervention is justied, and required, becauseof the importance the repaired mall will have for there-structuring and revitalization of the region.

Proposed buildings

Existing buildings

Existing buildings



Public realm dominated by parking lots and a megastructure4-94.

One strategy for mall repair is retaining the main structure and redeveloping the parking lots4-95.



Keep the mallstructure

Convert portions ofstructure into civic use

Urbanize parking lotswith perimeter mixed-

use blocksAdd live-work units,

townhouses, lofts,apartments, hotels,and civic buildings



Remedial Techniques: Introduce new building typesand mixed use: residential, retail,office, lodging, and civic

Introduce new building types and mixed uses: Themain characteristic of the mall is the single megastruc-ture that contains large concentrations of retail use. The rst type of repair keeps the building intact andembeds it in mixed-use fabric. This is the case whenthe shops and anchors are still viable or they can be

adapted for other purposes. The building of the mallis preserved and treated as a grand “galleria,” with newblocks forming a framework of streets, plazas, andsquares around it. The large amount of retail use is bal-anced with apartments, lofts, townhouses, live-workunits, offices, and hotels.



Connectthoroughfares to form

new urban blocks


(see chapter five)

Add pedestrianpassages and streets


Outcome: Walkable networkand block structure

Remedial Techniques: Connectand repair thoroughfares; createurban blocks

Connect and repair thoroughfares: A mall usuallyoccupies a central location, “oating” in a mega parcelas large as 50 to 100 acres and surrounded by surfaceparking lots. Usually positioned on one corner of a high-volume intersection, a mall site has a limited number ofentrances accessed from a loop road. These diagrams

show a simple technique of keeping the loop road as anorganizational element and extending and connectingall existing streets into a radial fabric oriented toward themall. The blocks formed are large enough to accommo-date parking structures, but for pedestrian convenienceand permeability do not exceed 1,500 feet in length.



Add parking garages

Mask existing parkinglots with liner

buildings



Rationalize parking: The vast parking lots of subur-ban malls are usually overscaled and therefore under-utilized, with the rare exceptions of one or two timeseach year. These parking lots have great potential forhigh-intensity development. These diagrams show adetail of the mall parking lot and how it can be trans-

formed into a piece of urban fabric. The surface lots arereplaced by garages, allowing hundreds of thousandsof square feet of housing, offices, hotels, and civic usesto be created. Parking garages are crucial elements inthe redevelopment of malls, and should therefore beincentivized as important public infrastructure.





Create squares andplazas

Define semi-public

spaces in blockinteriors

Create a canal as acivic and infrastructure

amenity


Dene open and civic spaces: Mall interiors areoften the only public gathering spaces for suburbanresidents. One way to provide civic space is to addfabric around the existing structure, weaving plazas,playgrounds, and squares throughout. The new

blocks contain semi-public spaces that are part ofthe pedestrian network. A canal is also added parallelto the loop road. It becomes not only a stormwater-management device, but also a civic amenity for thenew community.





Introduce communitygardens into block

interiors

Create rooftopgardens

Integrate communitygardens into public

spaces


Remedial Techniques: Introduce local food productionspaces

Integrate local food production: The newly cre-ated public spaces in this repaired mall site – thesquares, attached green spaces, and the interiors ofthe mixed-use blocks – are potential sites for com-munity gardens. Private gardens can be introduced

on the roofs of buildings and parking garages. Thenew canal will be an ideal source for irrigation of thecommunity gardens. Integration of urban agriculturein the new town center should be calibrated to thepreferences of the market.

Outcome: A variety of local foodproduction options




REZONING

The conventional zoning of malls allows for a very highconcentration of retail use (gure 4-98). While the largesquare footage of shops is not problematic in itself, thelack of any other use contributes to a monoculturalenvironment, which can blight the surrounding areaif the mall fails. The goal of the rezoning process is toallow a wide variety of uses so the mall can be trans-formed into a town center.

The densication of the site will be accomplishedby introducing perimeter-block buildings, which arevery exible urban types and can accommodate shops,

offices, lofts, and apartments in various combinations. These building types fall under the T6 Urban Corezoning.

The proposed regulating plan (gure 4-99) showsseveral zones of the Transect. The T6, or Urban Core zone,includes perimeter blocks; the T5, or Urban Center zone,includes live-work units and townhouses, and incorpo-rates some of the existing buildings. The T4, or GeneralUrban zone, includes apartment villas. The new publicspaces are organized under CS, Civic Space, includingsquares and plazas in front of the existing mall.

Open Space

C - Commercial

Existing buildings




CS - Civic SpaceCB - Civic Building




Option Two: Evolution of the mall, keeping the anchors and creating a main street between them4-105.

The second strategy shows the evolution of the mallinto a main street reusing the anchors. Multiple streetsforming the new fabric feed the main street. The

anchors may retain retail use or become civic destina-tions. Senior centers may also be accommodated, withcourtyards carved out of the footprints.

The main street is fed by multiple new streets4-106.



Diagram of pedestrian sheds of the town center4-107.

Diagram of transit organization of the new town center4-108.

Five-minute walk pedestrian shed

Light rail Light rail stop Circulator Circulator stop

Ten-minute walk transit shed



Existing intersections

Existing thoroughfares

Proposed intersections

Proposed thoroughfares

Diagram of thoroughfares showing the newly connected network 4-109.

Diagram of intersection density, doubled by new plan4-110.



The densest part of the village is within the canal loop around the civic green4-112.

Option Three: Devolution of the mall into an agricultural village4-111.

The third strategy is the polemic devolution of the mallinto an agricultural village. The assumption is that thesurrounding region has lost population and the mall

is transformed into a rural settlement where gardensreplace parking lots. For comparison, the plaza has thedimensions of Piazza Del Campo in Sienna, Italy.



Passive solar technologies, solar panels, and rooftop4-113.gardens

Canal as stormwater and irrigation infrastructure, as well4-114.as civic amenity

Civic green used for a community garden and improved stormwater performance4-115.

Environmental elements are incorporated into theexisting mall buildings and the new inll infrastruc-ture. The new buildings provide for natural ventilationand daylighting. Passive solar systems and gardens areintroduced on existing and new roofs (gure 4-113).

The canal, which is a feature of all repair options,becomes an attractive amenity, while serving as storm-water retention and irrigation source (gure 4-114). The civic green can be used as a community garden(gure 4-115).



Analyze the mall within its regional context, and1.according to the Sprawl Repair Assessment Tool andVoid Analysis (see chapter three, “Repair at the RegionalScale”). If there is potential for successful repair, pro-ceed to the next step.


Assess the leasing structure of the mall – iden-3.tify anchors (department stores), junior anchors andaggregated national credit tenants (The Limited, TheGAP, or companies that control 40,000 to 50,000 squarefeet of combined stores in malls or power centers),individual national credit tenants (national chains witha store or two in a given mall or power center), andlocal mom-and-pop tenants (typically pay high rentsand require more management attention from theproperty owner). Identify the co-tenancy clauses typi-cally in place for the national credit tenants (they canleave or not pay rent if any of the anchors leave).

Identify the type of mall repair and phasing. There4.are several variations of sprawl repair for malls:

Incorporation of the existing buildings while the•

mall is still prosperous. This is a proactive repair,anticipating the decline of the mall and the needfor transit-oriented, mixed-use town centers.Partial incorporation of existing structures,•

keeping some of the anchors and/or existingparking garages. This approach is appropriatewhen the mall is in a process of deterioration,but has not yet closed. A main street can bedelineated where the central spine of the mallwas before.Full replacement of the mall, or retroactive•

repair. This is a strategy to use when the mallhas failed, the existing buildings have deterio-rated beyond repair, and the parcel should befully redeveloped.Devolution. If the area loses population for•

socio-economic reasons, a full or partial rever-sion to agricultural land is possible, in the formof individual and community parcels. Someof the infrastructure is utilized for streets andplazas. The mall is replaced with small-scale

buildings that form an agricultural village.Reach out to the appropriate regional entity (a5.

council or the county) in the area. Formulate a regionalstrategy for the repair of the shopping mall, focusing onits potential for transformation into a town center. Tran-sit should be provided between the new town centerand other nodes, connecting them to other regionaldestinations. Public support and potential investmentwill be more easily obtained if the developer can dem-onstrate that the project has regional signicance andcan contribute to long-term sustainability.

Initiate and facilitate the adoption of a new form-6.based code that will legalize the transformation of themall into a town center (see chapter four, ”Repair atthe Community Scale, Step Three: Introduce Regula-tory and Management Techniques”). This can be donethrough a comprehensive rezoning ordinance thatreplaces the existing municipal code and allows repairof shopping malls, or through an overlay district of themall parcel.

Explore public incentives for infrastructure7.improvements along adjoining thoroughfares andwithin the shopping mall (see chapter four, “Repair atthe Community Scale, Step Four: Secure Incentives forImplementation”).

Select a strategy for partial or complete acquisition8.of the shopping mall. Secure contracts and/or optionsto purchase (with extendable contract limits). Duringdue diligence, start discussions with county govern-ment and key decision makers about the feasibility ofthe project. If the feedback is positive, proceed to thenext step.

Prepare a tenant-mix strategy that optimizes9.national, regional, and local retailers.

Create a strategy to manage the main street.10.Organize a single entity to coordinate tenants andproperty owners to ensure proper operation, balance,and maintenance of shopfronts, as well as simplicityand economy of the streetscape.

Introduce a marketing program designed to11.emphasize the new town center’s “sense of place.”

Analyze the jurisdiction of the main thorough-12.fares adjacent to the shopping mall, and if they areunder the state DOT, work to have them relinquished




to the local municipality if possible. State thoroughfarestandards are more challenging to modify to createpedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented environments.Local jurisdictions are able to work directly with com-munities affected by sprawl.

Explore the possibility of locating civic insti-13.tutions within the mall (if the building is reused) orwithin the new fabric to serve as a catalyst for placemaking and provide community identity. A post office,a library, a market, or a religious building can servethis role. Similarly, when large portions of the mall arerepurposed, college satellite campuses, senior facilities,meeting halls, and theaters can also become stronganchors for the redevelopment.







Existing mall to be repaired into a town center keeping one4-116.anchor building

A main street of mixed-use buildings organizes the urban structure of the new town center4-117.

APPLICATION: CREATING A MAIN STREET BY KEEPING AN ANCHOR

Existing anchor New mixed-use buildings New townhouses, live-works, and single-family units

This case study of the re-urbanization of an obsoletemall into a main street and a town center uses oneof the anchors, a Macy’s store, as a termination and alandmark (gures 4-116 and 4-117).

The strategy is to create multiple internal andexternal connections and a full range of environments,transitioning from an urban core to the surroundingsuburban community. The creek, covered by a parkinglot, is daylighted and transformed into a linear park.

© 2 0 0 9 G o o g l e , M a p D a t a ©

2 0 0 9 T e l e A t l a s




COMMERCIAL STRIP

Commercial strips began as rural roads connect-ing cities and towns, but later became the mainspines for suburban growth. They became explic-itly commercial in the late 1950s and early ‘60s tosupport the nearby residential developments.

These corridors consist predominantly of car-ori-ented retail uses, shopping centers, big boxes, drive-through restaurants, banks, and occasional places ofworship. Their relentless similarity is due to their cheapdesign and construction. Businesses invest as little aspossible in these properties because most expect tomove to a farther location in only a few years (15 yearsor less). Because they are all identical, and because there

is always more land to develop farther out, commercialstrips are viewed as disposable commodities and there-fore susceptible to overdevelopment and wastefulness.

One of the primary deciencies of the commercialstrip is the lack of a walkable, compact, neighborhoodstructure. This precludes the efficient use of transit,which works only when stops are in walkable environ-ments. The remedy is to identify important intersec-tions along the corridor and create mixed-use, com-pact, well-connected neighborhoods at those sites.

Repair of a commercial strip begins only afterregional analysis identies the corridor as having poten-tial for new or expanded transit. The strip is then desig-nated as a transit boulevard to be gradually redeveloped

Lack of spatial definition along a commercial strip4-118.

C i t y o f M i a m i P l a n n i n g D e p a r t m e n t

C i t y o f M i a m i P l a n n i n g D e p a r t m e n t

Sprawl repair of the strip into a walkable street4-119.



into a string of transit-oriented, high-density, mixed-usenodes. A transit-oriented node has a nucleus of higher-intensity development covering a ve-minute walkfrom the center to the edge. That pedestrian shed canbe extended to a half-mile radius, if desired, as peopleare willing to walk farther to a transit stop.

The techniques for repair include the introduc-tion of a variety of building types, the most versatileof which is the perimeter urban block. Consisting ofbuildings at the reasonable heights of four or ve sto-ries, the perimeter urban block can accommodatetransit-supportive urban densities of more than 50units per acre and accommodate a variety of uses.

As with all elements in sprawl, the commercial stripis characterized by underutilized space. These expansesof parking lots, landscaped buffers, and driveways are

ideal real estate for inll development. Civic spacesshould also be included as part of the repair strategy,and existing streets should be connected to providemore choices for pedestrian and vehicular movement.

Incentives for repair projects along commercialstrips are similar to those for regional shopping cen-ters and malls, including permitting by right (whichwill require state enabling legislation), exemptionfrom state and federal assessments, state and federalfunding for parking structures and transit, Transferof Development Rights and Purchase of Develop-ment Rights, Tax Increment Financing, BusinessImprovement Districts, and state and federal grantsfor improvement of blighted areas (see chapter four,“Repair at the Community Scale, Step Four: SecureIncentives for Implementation”).



Lack of neighborhood structure and transit4-120.

Lack of urban building types and mixed uses4-121.

Underutilized open space4-122.

The three most important deficienci es of a st ri pcorridor are the lack of neighborhood structure(figure 4-120), no variety of uses (figure 4-121),

and underutilized open space (figure 4-122). Theinefficient use of the land makes redevelopmentefforts challenging.

DEFICIENCIES



TRANSFORMATION INTO A NODAL TRANSIT BOULEVARD

Existing strip commercial corridor4-123.

Interventions along the commercial strip. The circles show the transit nodes, located every mile, with quarter-mile pedestrian4-124.sheds

The goal for the repair of the strip corridor is to transformit into an urban thoroughfare that supports transit. Thedistances between the transit nodes will depend on thetype of transportation: light rail, bus, or trolley. This par-

ticular repair demonstrates the introduction of light rail. The interventions occur at every mile, each encompass-ing an area centered on a pedestrian shed, which is veto ten minutes' walking distance from center to edge.

1 / 4 m i l e 1 / 2 m i l e



Deficiency: Lack ofurban building typesand mixed uses

Outcome: Variety ofbuilding types andmix of uses to supporttransit

Remedial Techniques: Introduce urban buildingtypes and mixeduse: office, lodging,residential, civic

Introduce urban building types and mixed uses: The predominant building types along the strip arerepetitive, single-use, freestanding building types. Theysupport the daily needs of suburban residents butthese buildings are not welcome in close proximityto residential areas because of their appearance and

overwhelming parking lots. Repair includes the intro-duction of parking garages to support density and avariety of building types accommodating a mix ofuses: residential, hotel, office, with shops and restau-rants along the ground oors.

Keep viable existing buildings

Introduce perimeter mixed-useblocks

Introduce parking garages

Add new fabric around existingbuildings

Remove dysfunctional buildings



Deficiency: Underutilized openspace

Outcome: Mixed-usecorridor of urban nodesand a variety of civicspaces

Remedial Techniques: Define open and civicspaces

Dene open and civic space: Public space alongcommercial strips is dominated by parking lots. Anexplicit network of public spaces, including squares,transit plazas, playgrounds, and smaller greens, shouldbe designed at locations designated as transit nodes. Transit stops should be comfortable, shielded from

the elements, and ideally in the vicinity of cafés,corner stores, or newsstands. Light rail stops shouldbe more prominent than bus stops, perhaps requir-ing separate structures in the medians, while busstops can be incorporated in the wide sidewalks infront of the mixed-use buildings.

Create small civic spaces,greens, and playgrounds

Create transit stop plazas

Create squares

Define semi-public space inblock interiors



Analyze the business park within its regional1.context according to the Sprawl Repair Assessment Tool and Void Analysis (see chapter three, “Repair atthe Regional Scale”). If there is potential for successfulrepair, proceed to the next step.


Reach out to the appropriate regional entity (a3.council or the county) in the area. Formulate a regionalstrategy for the repair of the strip commercial corri-dor, focusing on its potential for transformation into atransit boulevard. Transit should be provided betweenthe nodes, connecting them to other regional destina-tions. Public support and potential investment will bemore easily obtained if the developer can demonstratethat the project has regional signicance and can con-tribute to long-term sustainability.

Initiate and facilitate the adoption of a new form-4.based code that will legalize the transformation of thestrip commercial corridor into a transit boulevard (seechapter four, ”Repair at the Community Scale, Step Three: Introduce Regulatory and Management Tech-niques”). This can be done through a comprehensiverezoning ordinance that replaces the existing munici-pal code and allows repair of strip commercial corri-dors, or through an overlay district along the corridor.

Analyze the jurisdiction of the corridor, and if it5.is under the state DOT, work to have it relinquished tothe local municipality if possible. State thoroughfarestandards are more challenging to modify to createpedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented environments.Local jurisdictions are able to work directly with com-munities affected by sprawl.

Evaluate the needs of the community in relation to6.existing retail, office, and residential space. If the marketis weak, explore the potential for reuse of the existingcommercial buildings to incubate local businesses.

Identify and attract struggling businesses that cannotafford the rents in more expensive locations but thatprovide essential services to a community – a coffeeshop, dry cleaner, hairdresser, and so forth.

Explore the possibility of locating a civic building7.at one or more of the nodes along the corridor to serveas a catalyst for place making and provide communityidentity. A post office, a library, a market, a religiousbuilding, or a meeting hall can serve this role. A collegesatellite campus, a school, or a senior living facility canalso become strong anchors for the redevelopment.

Explore public incentives for infrastructure8.improvements along the corridor (see chapter four,“Repair at the Community Scale, Step Four: SecureIncentives for Implementation”).

Select some parcels and secure contracts and/or9.options to purchase (with extendable contract limits)from individual owners. During due diligence, startdiscussions with county government and key decisionmakers about the feasibility of the project. If the feed-back is positive, proceed to the next step.



Start the entitlement process for the project. By12.this time the new transit boulevard should be permit-ted under a new ordinance. A simultaneous process isalso possible, using a specic project as a model for therest of the nodes. As a pilot project, it should be per-mitted in an expedited manner.





APPLICATION: PREPARING THE CORRIDOR FOR SUCCESSIONAL GROWTH

Historic conditions: Commercial and residential develop-4-128.ment are adjacent

Existing conditions: Commercial development encroach-4-129.es into residential fabric, with garages facing houses

Phase One: The initial stage of repair includes townhouses4-130.lining parking structures for a gradual transition

Phase Two: Townhouses on both sides of the street ease4-131.the transition to denser redevelopment

The existing commercial corridor has unpredictabledevelopment and improper parking arrangements.Growth requires parking accommodations that nega-tively affect adjacent residential neighborhoods, espe-cially if denser buildings such as mid- and high-rise

with parking garages are introduced. Remediationstrategies include the introduction of alleys for park-ing access, liner buildings to mask the parking lots andgarages, and transitional building types to be harmoni-ous with the residential fabric.



Rebuilding according to the previous model4-132.

Rebuilding with better aesthetics4-133.

Rebuilding scenario as a transit corridor4-134.

D r a w i n g b y J a m e s W a s s e l l


APPLICATION: REBUILDING THE COMMERCIAL STRIP

This is a case study of a typical suburban highwayin need of rebuilding after a natural disaster. Threedifferent scenarios are possible. The rst is to rebuildthe roadside strip developments as they had beenbefore, with new buildings following the same pat-tern (gure 4-132). The second is to rebuild a moreaesthetically pleasing commercial strip in a hybrid

manner, following tighter design regulations, includ-ing landscape and signage. The look will improve,but the overall neighborhood structure will not(gure 4-133). The third scenario is to rebuild into atransit corridor with mixed-use buildings shieldingrows of parking. Extra space is designed into squaresand greenways (gure 4-134).



The business park is the predominant type ofworkplace in suburbia. Heavy manufacturing hasdeclined in the past ve decades and has beenreplaced by clean technologies and knowledge-based industries. Today the greatest workforceconcentrations in suburbia can be found in cor-porate campuses in “edge cities.”

The typical suburban business park contains clus-ters of freestanding buildings dedicated exclusivelyto office and/or warehouse use. The arrangement ofbuildings tends to be arbitrary, without an identi-able block structure or connectivity to the surround-ings. The parking lots are underutilized and overscaled,dominating the building frontages. The business parktypically includes only a single use, requiring officeworkers to drive to other places for lunch and errands.

When business parks have multiple tenants, repairefforts are more difficult. Repair is most feasible whena business park is located close to dense residentialdevelopment or concentrations of retail and othercommercial space. Rebalancing it with mixed uses andincreased density can transform it into a town centerthat combines offices, housing, shopping, and civicactivities. This is a practical possibility when large con-centrations of office space are available in one place,thus attracting a portion of the workforce to live there.

According to retail expert Robert Gibbs, two hundredsquare feet of office space can support ve square feetof restaurants and four square feet of retail. 13 This sym-biosis between office and other commercial space cansustain a variety of uses within a walkable network andblock structure. The parking lots can be reorganized andmasked by liner buildings, with garages inserted wherepossible. Existing buildings, especially Class A officespace, should be retained and included in the newlyconnected fabric of blocks and civic spaces.

The conditions for retrotting office parks may notbe good, particularly for the small pockets of officesdispersed along highways and interchanges. How-ever, in cases where more substantial concentrationsof good-quality office buildings exist close to transithubs or corridors, or have the potential for futuretransit, their repair makes sense for the long run. Themain incentive for such repair is the extra develop-ment potential for inll of the underutilized parkinglots. Municipalities can create additional incentivessuch as permitting of office park repair by right, and Tax Increment Financing or Business ImprovementDistrict tax credits for workforce housing, if possible.At the state and federal level, funding may be avail-able for public parking and transit infrastructure (seechapter four, “Repair at the Community Scale, StepFour: Secure Incentives for Implementation”).

BUSINESS PARK

Office park repair incorporating green technologies4-135.

D r a w i n g b y D a v i d C a r r i c o



The diagrams below show the deciencies of a typicalsuburban office park: limited, segregated uses in free-standing buildings (gure 4-136), the lack of walkablestreets and block structure (gure 4-137), the large,

exposed parking lots that discourage walking (gure4-138), and the lack of structured civic space and well-dened public realm (gure 4-139).


Dispersed and exposed parking4-138. Lack of civic space4-139.

DEFICIENCIES



Business park repaired into a town center4-141.

Existing suburban business park 4-140.


Figure 4-140 shows a typical suburban office parkconsisting of clusters of office buildings and someadjacent warehouse structures surrounded by park-ing lots. These are located on both sides of an arterial,in segregated pods, not easily accessible for pedestri-ans and drivers.

The plan for repair includes an aggressive inll andtransformation into a transit-ready town center. Thehigher-intensity urbanism will support the light rail lineproposed along the arterial. The new town center willbecome a regional generator of economic activity.

Proposed buildings

Existing buildings

Existing buildings



Dispersed building and parking layout in existing office park 4-142.

Office park repaired into a transit-oriented town center4-143.



New square organized around a transit stop, incorporating mixed-use buildings and a community garden4-144.

These illustrations show an ambitious intervention cov-ering two office parks, the adjoining arterial, and thewarehouses across from it (gures 4-142 and 4-143).

The existing buildings are embedded seamlesslywithin the newly created fabric; liner buildings arebuilt around some and others are incorporated withina courtyard. Another strategy is to replace the dead-end drop offs of the office buildings with useful publicspaces delineated by new structures.

The new fabric consists mainly of perimeter blockswith structured parking. The assumption is that thisintersection will become the transit hub for the sur-rounding area. The square accommodates a light railstop, as well as a generous public green that can beused for a community garden (gure 4-144).



Introduce parkinggarages

Embed existingbuildings in perimeter

blocks

Introduce civicstructures

Add liner buildings

Introduce new building types and mixed use: Thepredominant – often only – building type in a busi-ness park is the freestanding office building. Buildingsare clustered, but they do not form dened blocks orfabric. Parking usually surrounds them on all sides. The

repair of an office park starts with the re-balance ofuses. Housing, shopping, and lodging are inserted tocreate a place that is occupied 24 hours a day. Togetherwith the other interventions the radical inll of dense,mixed-use blocks makes transit viable.



Remedial Techniques: Introduce new building typesand mix of uses: residential, retail,lodging, and civic




Add new streets


(see chapter five)

Connect and repair thoroughfares: The businesspark has a sporadic thoroughfare network and lackspedestrian-friendly block structure. The oversizedblocks can easily accommodate parking garages withresidential and retail buildings wrapped around theirperimeters. Creating a denser network of streets will

calm the traffic and encourage pedestrian circulation.Additional repair techniques include the reduction oflane widths by adding parallel parking and sidewalks,reducing curb radii for easier pedestrian crossings, andadding medians and access lanes.



Remedial Techniques: Connectand repair thoroughfares; createurban blocks





Rationalize parking: The suburban parking require-ments for office uses are extreme, in the range of three tofour cars per 1,000 square feet. This requirement producesvast parking lots that are empty after business hours. Theintroduction of parking garages allows the replacementof the parking lots with buildings that accommodateother uses. Concurrently, a portion of the parking spaces

can become shared. Offices can share parking withhousing. Additional parking will be available on and offthe streets. The garages can be built every other block, asone garage serves two blocks (when the average build-ing height is four stories). The total number of parkingspaces is increased, but there is additional density, andthese spaces support new buildings.






Create a civic squarewith a transit stop

Redefine drop-offareas as civic spaces

Define semi-publicspace within blocks

Dene open and civic space: Suburban businessparks, like shopping centers and housing subdivisions,are devoid of meaningful civic space. The assembly ofa new block structure allows for the design and con-scious, hierarchical allocation of civic spaces. A largesquare, which will accommodate a future transit stop,

becomes a focal point. It consists of two parts – onedelineated by streets, and the other attached to thefabric, forming a small plaza for outdoor cafés. It willbe the landmark of the community, its gateway, as wellas its gathering place. Smaller civic spaces are added,such as plazas and greens.



Remedial Techniques: Defineopen and civic space




REZONING

The conventional zoning of a business park is exclu-sively for offices, with the occasional addition of ware-houses (gure 4-145). Transect-based zoning createsthe exibility needed to transform a business park intoa mixed-use environment.

The existing office use and the main square willbe zoned under T6, or Urban Core zone, with parkinggarages added to support high-density residential inlland retail (gure 4-146). T5, Urban Center zone, will

include the next tier of urban intensity that will incor-porate live-work units, lofts, and townhouses.

A variety of civic spaces will be zoned CS toaccommodate civic structures such as a transit stopand farmers’ market. The mix of uses can also beaccomplished vertically, in the new buildings, as theground oors can be used for shops, daycare facili-ties, and so forth, with the upper oors used for resi-dences and offices.

Open Space

C - Commercial

Existing buildings




CS - Civic SpaceCB - Civic Building





Analyze the business park within its regional1.context according to the Sprawl Repair Assessment Tool and Void Analysis (see chapter three, “Repair atthe Regional Scale”). If there is potential for successfulrepair, proceed to the next step.


Reach out to the appropriate regional entity (a3.council or the county) in the area. Formulate a regionalstrategy for the repair of the business park, focusing onits potential for transformation into a town center. Tran-sit should be provided between the new town centerand other nodes, connecting them to other regionaldestinations. Public support and potential investmentwill be more easily obtained if the developer can dem-onstrate that the project has regional signicance andcan contribute to long-term sustainability.

Initiate and facilitate the adoption of a new form-4.based code that will legalize the transformation of thebusiness park into a town center (see chapter four,”Repair at the Community Scale, Step Three: IntroduceRegulatory and Management Techniques”). This can bedone through a comprehensive rezoning ordinancethat replaces the existing municipal code and allowsrepair of office parks, or through an overlay district ofthe office park and its vicinity.

Analyze the jurisdiction of the main thorough-5.fares adjacent to the business park, and if they areunder the state DOT, work to have it relinquished tothe local municipality if possible. State thoroughfarestandards are more challenging to modify to createpedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented environments.Local jurisdictions are able to work directly with com-munities affected by sprawl.

Evaluate the needs of the community in rela-6.tion to existing retail, lodging, and residential space. Ifthe market is weak for new construction, explore thepotential for reuse of the existing office buildings to

convert into residential lofts and live-work units.Evaluate the possibilities for preserving viable7.

buildings, eliminating dysfunctional buildings, addingliner buildings for incubating businesses, adding live-work units, and introducing mixed-use perimeter-block buildings with parking garages.

Explore the possibility of locating a civic building8.in the transformed shopping center to serve as a cata-lyst for place making and provide community identity.A post office, a library, a market, a religious building,or a meeting hall can serve this role. A college satel-lite campus, a school, or a senior living facility can alsobecome strong anchors for the redevelopment.

Explore public incentives for infrastructure9.improvements along adjoining thoroughfares andwithin the business park (see chapter four, “Repair atthe Community Scale, Step Four: Secure Incentives forImplementation”).

Select a strategy for partial or complete acqui-10.sition of the business park. Secure contracts and/ or options to purchase (with extendable contractlimits). During due diligence, start discussions withcounty government and key decision makers aboutthe feasibility of the project. If the feedback is positive,proceed to the next step.



Start the entitlement process for the project.13.By this time the new town center should be permit-ted under a new ordinance.




A master plan was prepared with two detailed alterna-tives for the rst phase of the redevelopment (gures4-147 and 4-148). In both schemes, the existing officebuildings are seamlessly integrated into new blocksand lined by smaller structures that form pedestrian-

scale civic spaces, including a covered market. Bothembrace techniques of green architecture, such as roofgardens, energy-producing sound walls, solar collectors,and wind harvesters. Both support varied uses such aslofts, live-work buildings, affordable retail, moderately

APPLICATION: OFFICE PARK REPAIR INTO A TRANSIT ORIENTED CORE USING GREEN TECHNIQUES

Existing buildings in the office park 4-147.

Green buildings and green urbanism in the new town center4-148.

I m a g e b y S t e v e P r i c e




Option One: The first phase with orthogonal fabric4-149. Option Two: The first phase with organic fabric4-150.Existing buildings Proposed buildings Future transit way (light rail line)

priced dwellings, and senior housing. But they differ intheir approach to urban pattern, exploring block struc-ture, spatial denition, and climatic response in differentways. The rst has an orthogonal grid of more angularlydened buildings, streets, and squares, while the second

emphasizes the environmental benets of urban design.It employs the historically tested techniques of a uid,medieval fabric and organic geometry to facilitate aircirculation and natural ventilation, while also incorpo-rating the modern technologies.

Energy-producing sound wall viewed from the highway4-151. Section of wall through garage4-152.

D r a w i n g b y D a v i d C a r r i c o



Existing office buildings and parking lots4-153.

Parking lot converted into a pedestrian-friendly street with buildings on both sides, parallel parking, and wide sidewalks4-155.

Office buildings converted into lofts4-154.






The edge city is an American phenomenon of high-intensity, auto-dependent development outsideof the traditional urban core. Conceived as newdowntowns for polycentric metropolises, edgecities never fullled their great expectations.

Most started as agglomerations of high-intensityoffice use, mainly Class A office towers, and later were joined by additional commercial establishments, high-density residences, and hotels. Edge cities containthe individual components of traditional urban cores,including high concentrations of retail, offices, hospi-tality, entertainment, and in some cases, residentialuses, but all are located in separate enclaves, keepingthe edge cities from becoming functional equals toreal downtowns. Offices, condominium towers, hotels,and malls are surrounded by vast parking lots, reach-able by overscaled collectors and arterials, and a webof interchanges. Insufficient block structure, pedestrianconvenience, and civic space are typical decienciesfound in other sprawl elements, but in edge cities theyachieve the most intense manifestation.

Based on the vast nancial, real estate, and infra-structure investments already poured into them, andthe fact that they are employment hubs for hundredsof thousands of people, edge cities should be repairedinto more balanced places. On the other hand, theirunderlying framework is so dramatically suburbanand car-dominated that their retrot may requireprohibitive amounts of resources and coordination. These retrots will likely depend on public-privateinitiatives and political leadership to implement suchambitious plans.

In most cases additional inll, in the form ofsmaller-scale building types such as townhouses,mixed-use perimeter block buildings, and live-workunits, will be necessary. Structured parking should beintroduced to utilize the vast elds of asphalt, to sup-port the added density, and create a walkable networkand block structure. The street network should includethe full variety of complete, context-sensitive roads

and streets, and possibly a main street and a hierarchyof civic spaces.

The incentives for the repair of an edge city mustbe very strong, as the nancial commitments to rede-velop it into a true, mixed-use urban core are veryhigh. The rationalizing of overscaled infrastructureand underutilized space will open acres of additionalreal estate for new development and inll, which canattract the attention of developers and investors whilecreating leverage for municipal governments. Theformation of public-private partnerships, in combina-

EDGE CITY

Freestanding buildings incorporated into high-density4-158.urban fabric



tion with incentives crafted to benet and expeditethese specic retrots, will be crucial for repair on aregional scale. The benets for the surrounding sub-urban communities will be substantial, as the newlyenhanced urban cores will provide them with a widerange of amenities such as increased housing options,community gathering places, and the basis for publictransportation. Transit will become viable between(and around) the regional urban cores, which for manypeople will shorten or even eliminate their commutes,reduce air pollution, and improve the overall environ-

mental and sustainability performance of the region.Similar to the mall redevelopments, the incentives

and implementation techniques for retrotting edgecities may include permitting by right (requiring stateenabling legislation), exemption from state and federalassessments, state and federal funding for parking struc-tures and transit, Transfer of Development Rights andPurchase of Development Rights mechanisms, Tax Incre-ment Financing, Business Improvement Districts, andothers (see chapter four, “Repair at the Community Scale,Step Four: Secure Incentives for Implementation”).



The deciencies of the edge city are similar to thoseof other commercial sprawl elements, but they areamplied by the extensive infrastructure and the mil-lions of square feet of development in segregatedagglomerations (gure 4-159). The formation of walk-able block structure and the shaping of public space

are especially challenging, as the spatial connectionsrequire tremendous redevelopment and investment.Yet the challenges also present opportunities to reusesome of the existing infrastructure and ll the parkinglots with mixed-use fabric incorporating the existingmegastructures and a range of public spaces.

Agglomerations of high-intensity segregated uses4-159. Lack of walkable block structure4-160.

Dispersed and exposed parking4-161. Lack of civic space4-162.

DEFICIENCIES



Existing edge city4-163.

Repaired regional urban core4-164.

TRANSFORMATION INTO A REGIONAL URBAN CORE

Proposed buildings

Existing buildings

Existing buildings

Figures 4-163 and 4-164 show the existing conditionsand the retrot of an edge city. Only a portion of thedevelopment is shown, but the techniques and therepair should apply to the entire edge city. Most of theexisting buildings are preserved and embedded in afabric of perimeter blocks that hide interior surfaceparking and garages.

The most substantial intervention is the eliminationof the highway interchange, which currently discon-nects the elements of this suburban enclave. Theinterchange is replaced by a parkway roundabout,which, along with the new street network, pullstogether all parts of this sector and opens up a sub-stantial amount of land for new development. Theroundabout becomes a landmark civic space, whichcan be used for a monument and/or energy-produc-ing technologies such as windmills.



View dominated by highway interchange and parking lots4-165.

Edge city repaired into a regional urban core4-166.



Introduce new building types and mixed uses: Aner fabric of smaller buildings is introduced to delineatepublic spaces and a street network. The perimeter blockbuilding is appropriate for lling in the expansive park-ing lots common to edge cities, as it can easily accom-

modate the irregular geometries. Liner buildings can beused to mask undesirable blank walls and parking lots. The existing buildings are seamlessly inserted within anew urban fabric that organizes the disconnected podsinto a walkable and better-connected environment.

Add civic structures

Mitigate geometrieswith liner buildings

and perimeter mixed-use blocks

Keep most existingbuildings

Deficiency: Agglomerations ofhigh-intensity segregated uses

Outcome: Variety of buildingtypes and mix of uses to supporta regional urban core

Remedial Techniques: Introduce new building typesand mix of uses: residential, retail,office, lodging, and civic



Connect and repair thoroughfares: Land use in edgecities is wasteful and unstructured. By rationalizing park-ing and connecting thoroughfares, a new block struc-ture can be established. The re-conguration of theinterchange into an urban roundabout in the traditionof Place De L'Etoile in Paris or Dupont Circle in Wash-ington, DC, creates additional real estate as an incentive

for such a radical intervention. The roundabout handlesthe vehicular ow and also creates a memorable urbanspace at the pedestrian level, where buildings locatedclose to the street help calm traffic. The building facadesdene the public space of the roundabout, which hasa presence as a landmark and a gateway, even whenshared by cars along its periphery.


(see chapter five)

Eliminate interchangeand create urban

roundabout

Connectthoroughfares to form

urban blocks

Create new streetsalong existing

buildings



Remedial Techniques: Connectthoroughfares; create urban blocks



Rationalize parking: The edge city has an overwhelm-ing amount of parking. With parking on all sides, frontsand backs of buildings are indistinguishable, whichfurther discourages walking. The diagrams show howparking garages are embedded within the newly

delineated perimeter blocks and unnecessary park-ing lots are redeveloped. The garages accommodatethe parking requirements of the existing buildings andprovide sufficient capacity for new development, bothresidential and commercial.








Located between three major thoroughfares, this edge city includes a still viable mall and a regional transit hub; the repair4-168.incorporates walkable, mixed-use fabric and public spaces coordinated by a new code

Edge city surrounded by suburban fabric4-169.

D r a w i n g b y D o v e r K o h l & P a r t n e r s / J a m e s D o u g h e r t y

D i l l o n - R e y n o l d s A e r i a l P h o t o g r a p h y , I n c .

Transformation into a transit-oriented, regional urban4-170.core

APPLICATION: REPAIRING AN EDGE CITY BY URBANIZATION AROUND A FUNCTIONING MALL

D r a w i n g b y D o v e r K o h l & P a r t n e r s



The American university campus has not beenspared from suburbanization. Though it is anassembly of academic, institutional, or civic build-ings, the suburban campus exhibits the same spa-tial, social, and environmental deciencies as therest of sprawl.

Historically, campuses were part of the urban fabric,embedded within towns and cities or clustered asindependent, self-sustaining entities. They were eitheranchors within the city cores or destinations of strongcivic presence along the edges. Formally or informallycomposed, academic campuses consistently exhibitedsynergy with their context.

The designs conceived by Thomas Jefferson for theUniversity of Virginia and later by Frederick Law Olmstedfor Stanford University became exemplars of order and

balance in campus building. Detached buildings wereunited in larger compositions – by colonnades, balus-trades, and landscaping – forming main axes or mallsand cross axes. The campus could grow organically bymultiplying the sequences of quadrangles and courts,but always supporting “interrelation, balance, and sym-metry” between buildings. 14

The competence of university campus design,which was considered one of the most importantAmerican contributions to the history of urbanism,was stied with the ascent of suburbia. Campusesbecame dependent on the car as sprawl became themain pattern of growth. Campuses morphed intosegregated enclaves, with their fabric distorted bythe fashion of “landmark” buildings and overscaledparking lots to accommodate commuting studentsand faculty.

SUBURBAN CAMPUS

Transformation of a suburban campus into balanced, walkable urbanism4-171.



A low-grade physical environment typies aca-demic campus design of the 1960s and ‘70s. Thecampus is disconnected from its surrounding commu-nity, and its layout is arbitrary, consisting of freestandingstructures lacking the discipline of the traditional axialrelationships. The landscape may be lush, but vast areasof the campus are dominated by surface parking lots.Although many have pedestrian-only environmentswithin their boundaries, they have lost the clarity ofcomposition, the hierarchy of public space, and thecompactness typical of the classical American campus.

The main goal for the retrot of a typical sub-urban academic campus is to establish an orderingsystem of rst-rate spaces. This new structure seeksprincipal axes that visually and physically connectimportant buildings on the campus, as well as relatethe campus to its surroundings. Gaps are lled withnew buildings, combining with existing ones to formcourtyards; liner buildings are introduced to denepedestrian-friendly frontages; structured parking isembedded within blocks; and lots are hidden behindbuildings or relegated to the edges.



Freestanding building layout4-172. Lack of walkable block structure4-173.

Dispersed and exposed parking4-174. Unstructured civic space4-175.

These diagrams illustrate the most evident decienciesof the suburban campus. Freestanding buildings followno hierarchy or pattern (gure 4-172). The pedestrianexperience is downgraded by megablocks, large gaps

between buildings, and excessive, exposed parkinglots (gures 4-173 and 4-174). There are no strong axialrelationships to organize the expanse of open space(gure 4-175).

DEFICIENCIES



Underutilized land and parking lots dominate the campus4-178.

New organization of campus with enhanced principal axes4-179.



Some buildings are renovated and new buildings, arcades, and landscape are added to complete the campus4-180.

The illustrations in gures 4-178, 4-179, and 4-180 fur-ther demonstrate the process of repairing a suburbancollege campus. The existing conditions show the lackof spatial organization and axial relationships on thecampus.

The proposed repair reconstructs the fabric in thetradition of the classical American university campus. The main axes are recovered and strengthened byadding new buildings along their edges and at theirends. The residual open space has been restructuredalong the axes and/or utilized for campus gardens.Along the eastern boundaries of the campus, whereit interfaces with an existing residential development,U-shaped and L-shaped student residences are pro-posed, with courtyards facing the single-family hous-ing without overwhelming it.



Insert new academicbuildings at special

locations

Add liner buildings tomask parking

Add arcades to definefrontages and axes

Insert student housingas infill strategy

Renovate buildings

Introduce new buildings: The locations of the build-ings in the suburban university campus are arbitraryand dispersed. The buildings are objects in green spaceor parking lots rather than elements of a community.New buildings are needed to delineate clear publicspaces and pedestrian networks, and to provide space

for academics, administration, or student housing. Linerbuildings mask unsightly facades and parking lots. Thecontinuous frontage of arcades becomes a unifyingelement across the campus and provides shelter fromsun and rain. The remediation can also include renova-tions and additions to existing buildings.

Deficiency: Freestanding buildinglayout

Outcome: Traditional urbancampus

Remedial Techniques: Introducenew buildings, liners, and arcades



Add new pedestrianconnections

Connect existingstreets

Extend existingpathways


Outcome: Connected networkand walkable block structure

Remedial Techniques: Connectthoroughfares; create blocks

Connect thoroughfares: The block structure of theuniversity campus is oversized, unwalkable, and wastesdevelopable space. These large blocks can easily beoverlaid with a ner-grain pedestrian network toachieve better connectivity and pedestrian quality.

Dividing the megablocks into smaller ones also pro-vides additional spaces for new buildings. The inter-vention rebalances the fabric. Multiple new choices forall forms of transportation are created in both north-south and east-west directions.



Eliminate parking lotsat fronts of buildings

Insert parking garagesat strategic locations

Designate primarythoroughfares

Designate secondarythoroughfares


Deficiency: Dispersed and exposedparking

Outcome: Parking strategy tosupport campus growth andpedestrian-friendly environment

Remedial Techniques: Rationalizeparking; add garages

Rationalize parking: Suburban academic cam-puses have excessive parking. These large, under-utilized patches can be efficiently reorganized alongthe edges of the campus or concentrated in a fewstrategically located parking garages. New parkingstructures are embedded in perimeter blocks whileexisting lots are restriped and lined with masking

structures. The main axes of movement and organiza-tion on campus will be designed as primary routes ofexcellent pedestrian quality, while the ones accom-modating service and parking will be secondary. Ana-lyzing existing building fronts to designate primaryand secondary roads will help determine locationsfor parking.



Deficiency: Unstructured civicspace

Outcome: Hierarchy of civicspaces

Remedial Techniques: Defineaxial relationships

Dene axial relationships: The deciency of unstruc-tured civic space stems from the combination ofrandom building placement, the lack of a walkableblock structure, and dispersed and exposed parking. The academic buildings are indiscriminately dispersed,with parking along their fronts. As shown here, axial

relationships are recovered and dened, and the mainaxes are designated as primary frontages. This createsa hierarchy for the entire campus including buildings,street network, and parking strategy. New academicbuildings strengthen the civic axes, serving as termi-nated vistas and landmarks.

Define the two mainaxes on campus

Define fronts andbacks of buildings

Coordinate newbuilding sites along

main axes



Utilize existing openspace for community

gardens

Add rooftop gardens

Create new,dedicated spaces

for urban agriculturethroughout campus


Outcome: Create educationalopportunities with food production

Remedial Techniques: Convertexisting open spaces into organicgardens

Integrate local food production: There is a lot ofwasted space on academic campuses. As urban agri-culture becomes widespread along the full spectrum ofrural-to-urban environments, academic campuses canbecome laboratories for local food production at differ-ent scales. Many of the newly created public spaces –

along the cross axes, on rooftops, and in the large medi-ans, for example – can be used for student communitygardens. The University of Virginia in Charlottesville and Texas A&M University in College Station are among theinstitutions that have already begun experimentingwith community gardens on their campuses.



Aerial view of completed first phase amidst land zoned for urban core uses4-185.

hub, can be incorporated into a dynamic and diversefabric. This strategy combines the dedication to heal-ing and wellness with the benets of a healthy, walk-able community. Adding residential, retail, hotel, andcivic uses to a medical campus creates opportunitiesfor hundreds or thousands of workers to also live,shop, and play there.

The transformation of a medical campus into anurban core can be applied in different contexts: whenthe campus is located in an extensively developed sub-urban area, and when it is on a relatively undevelopedsite that has potential for growth. In the rst case, repairincludes creating as many connections as possible andintensifying the campus to become the urban core ofthe surrounding region. A main street is introduced tolink and organize the multiple medical destinationsand accommodate a variety of shops, lofts, offices, andhotels (gures 4-182 and 4-183).

In the second case, repair addresses the immediateexpansion plans of a medical center in an area wheregrowth is expected to happen, while also developinga long-range vision for a new, mixed-use town center(gures 4-184 and 4-185). Demographic projections,possible transit connectivity, and the natural context ofthe region determine the potential intensity of devel-opment around the campus. Healthcare organizationswilling to take visionary steps can broaden the scopeof hospital expansions to include the creation of com-plete town centers with a balance of institutional, resi-dential, commercial, and civic functions.First phase of the campus incorporating existing buildings4-184.

Proposed buildingsExisting buildings



SPRAWL TYPE OPEN SPACE

UNDERPERFORMING GOLF COURSE

This series of examples explores the possibilitiesof re-conceptualizing and restructuring under-utilized open space in suburbia. Similar to theother land types in sprawl development, openspace, both public and private, has frequentlybeen handled with a generous but wastefulapproach.

Underperforming golf courses are among thebest sources of land for inll and urban intensica-tion. After environmental mitigation, golf courses canalso be used for organic farming and local food pro-duction.

Other leftover suburban space can be reshaped asparks, squares, playgrounds, and rain gardens for waterretention. Other techniques to consider are the creationof bio-swales and the transformation of lawn strips, park-way edges, and wide suburban medians into ediblelandscapes, or at least planting less-damaging groundcover.

The sports eld is another element that in subur-bia is usually segregated and reachable only by car. Itcan be successfully embedded in urban fabric and usedas a neighborhood anchor or destination, especially ifpaired with buildings of civic importance, as well asshops, restaurants, and cafés.

Rising land prices, environmental concerns, and eco-nomic insolvency cause scores of golf courses to closeevery year. According to the National Golf Foundation,golf course closings in the U.S. outnumbered open-ings from 2006 to 2008, with one hundred and sixgolf courses folding in 2008 alone. 15 The vast swathsof land they leave behind can be attractive targets formixed-use inll or community open space.

The case study analyzed in the following pagesshows how a defunct golf course can be transformedinto a neighborhood center that will include a mix ofresidential and commercial uses and a strong civiccomponent. A school, a library, a swimming pool, andvarious public spaces such as parks and greens punc-tuate the development’s fabric. The golf course shownis typical of many others in that it is bounded by sub-urban residential subdivisions, giving it great poten-

tial to become a walkable, mixed-use center for thesurrounding area. Though in its heyday it might havelooked as good as shown in gure 4-191, after severalidle years its maintenance will become a burden, theland will go fallow, and the large, unsupervised spacemay become susceptible to crime.

Golf courses frequently have elevated levels ofarsenic or other pollutants in the soil due to pesticideuse. This can lead to groundwater contamination, butinll with clean soil can mitigate this damage andreduce the risk of further contamination. If the soilcomposition and water table allow, the ll can beobtained locally by digging new lakes or canals thatwill not only capture the stormwater runoff, but alsooffer amenities for the entire community and com-pensate adjacent residents for the loss of their golfcourse views.



Underutilized golf course4-186. Lack of block structure4-187.

Unstructured open space4-188.

The deciencies of the defunct golf course are illustratedin gures 4-186, 4-187, and 4-188. Underutilized sub-urban spaces are often surrounded by single buildingtypes with single uses, usually residential, making good

use of the space difficult. Large open grounds like theseinterrupt the urban fabric, making connectivity andblock structure challenging. Golf courses are also typi-cally private, with no public access along their edges.

DEFICIENCIES



Existing golf course4-189.

Golf course repurposed into a neighborhood center4-190.

TRANSFORMATION INTO A NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER

This defunct suburban golf course occupies approxi-mately one quarter of a square mile, which is an idealsize for a new neighborhood to serve as an anchor forthe surrounding area (gure 4-189).

The golf course is converted into a mixed-use neigh-borhood center. There are four new connections to theexisting single-family and condominium communities,and a main street runs longitudinally through the newcommunity. A canal running along the periphery pro-vides stormwater management and irrigation, as wellas a civic amenity that is part of the overall open spacenetwork.

Proposed buildings

Existing buildings

Existing buildings



Non-functioning golf course surrounded by suburban residential development4-191.

The new neighborhood center offers a variety of public spaces, community amenities, and housing choices4-192.



The new village, which resembles an island with thecanal around it, has a compact and dense structure toaccommodate all the functions that are missing fromthe surrounding single-use suburban development(gure 4-192). The blocks are much smaller than theadjacent ones, and they hold smaller lots, which createadditional choices for younger residents or seniors whowant to scale down. Various public spaces are framedby apartments, townhouses, and live-work units.

The view of the canal around the neighborhood center is shared by new and existing residents4-193.



Introduce live-workunits

Introduce mixed-use perimeter-block

buildings

Introduce townhouses

Introduce a varietyof housing

Deficiency: Underutilized golfcourse

Outcome: Variety of buildingtypes and mix of uses to supporta village center

Remedial Techniques: Urbanizegolf course

Urbanize the golf course: The condition along theedges of a suburban golf course includes a limitedvariety of building types precluding the active useof the space by the larger community. This condi-tion is exacerbated by the practice of putting backsof buildings along the golf course in contrast to the

traditional golf courses, which had parkways alongthe edges. The remediation of this condition, in com-bination with the dysfunctional golf course, requiresurbanization of the site by establishing a compactblock structure lled with a variety of building typesand spaces to accommodate public amenities.

Introduce civicbuildings



Connect newstreets to existing

thoroughfares

Create a network ofstreets

Introduce alleys andlanes in backs of lots

Introduce pedestrianpassages and

pathways



Remedial Techniques: Connect existing thoroughfaresand add new ones

Connect existing thoroughfares and add new ones: The vast expanse of the golf course disconnects thetwo sides of the surrounding community. Introducinga network of connected streets and urban-size blockson the site creates the possibility of cross movementfor pedestrians and cars. This movement will supportthe mixed uses that are clustered along the new main

street and around the square in the upper portion of thesite. A retail loop is formed between the two entrancesfrom the north to provide access to the mixed use bypassing traffic and will activate the square. A varietyof streets and a secondary network of pedestrian pas-sages, pathways, alleys, and lanes further enrich theconnectivity of the neighborhood center.



Dene open and civic spaces: The underutilizedopen space of the golf course is transformed into apattern of useful public and private spaces. The emptysite is overlaid with a layer of public spaces that aredesigned simultaneously with the urban fabric. A parkaround an existing body of water is the largest openspace, followed by a school and its playgrounds. A

main square is complemented by a series of smallercivic spaces such as attached greens, plazas, and play-grounds. A short (two-and-a-half-minute) pedestrianshed determines their location. The canal, incorporat-ing a continuous jogging and bicycling path aroundthe village center, is also an important component ofthe civic space network.

Deficiency: Unstructured openspace


Remedial Techniques: Define open and civic spaces

Create a canalfor stormwater

management andcivic amenity

Create squares andplazas

Create attachedgreens and

playgrounds

Preserve existingbodies of water



Existing suburban playfields next to a highway4-194.

Playfields embedded in a new town center4-195.

APPLICATION: TRANSFORMING SUBURBAN PLAYFIELDS INTO TOWN CENTERS

Playelds and sports facilities exemplify the wastefuluse of space in sprawl developments. They are similarto schools, which used to anchor neighborhoods, butlater were consolidated, grew in size, and migrated tothe edges, where they could occupy vast parcels ofland. The neighborhood ball eld became an aggrega-tion of multiple elds, a mega facility located outsideof communities, accessible only by car, and thereforerequiring massive parking lots.

One strategy to repair such large, regional facili-ties is to transform them into neighborhood or towncenters, anchored by the open space. As shown ingure 4-195, existing playelds can be reorganized andclustered to better utilize the available land. The elds areembedded in the urban fabric, forming a town centerand connecting to the existing suburban context. Thetown center includes a series of civic buildings, includ-ing a town hall, a theater, and an indoor recreational

Proposed lotsProposed buildings

Existing buildings




facility for after-school care and community events. Con-ventional commercial businesses usually located on theperiphery are brought into a main street, which includesa hotel and mixed-use buildings with shops, apartments,and offices. Denser office buildings along the frontinginterstate shield the town center from the noise.

Families coming from farther away for competi-tions and regional events at the facilities can walk toshops, cafés, and restaurants at the new square andmay be enticed to spend more time in the area.

While regional recreational facilities can be retrot-ted into town centers, smaller surgical interventions canbe considered in suburban communities. Many subur-banized towns across the country can use repair tech-niques for their existing ballparks and other elds.

Figures 4-198 and 4-199 demonstrate an inter-vention around an existing baseball eld that is acivic amenity and an important gathering placefor a suburban community. A strong urban front-age is introduced along three of the sides of theeld, emphasizing the prominence of the location.A new city hall is placed at the corner of the ball-park, extending into mixed-use wings along the twostreets. Live-work units and apartment buildingscomplete the streetscape.

A repair project of this type can dramatically affectthe rest of a suburban community by showing thetown’s commitment to smart growth principles, andencouraging further densication and other redevel-opment initiatives.

View of new town center with playfields integrated within its fabric; the playfields are a short walk from public spaces and4-196.community amenities



Existing baseball fields in a suburban town4-197. Transformation of the baseball field into a community4-198.center

Baseball field with urbanized edges and a new, two-story city hall located at the corner4-199.




219 SPRAWL THOROUGHFARES

220 FREEWAY

222 ARTERIAL

224 COLLECTOR

226 LOCAL

228 CUL DE SAC

229 PARKING STRATEGY

231 APPLICATION



expanded to a full assortment of complete streets,from rural roads to urban avenues that provide com-fortable, interesting, and safe environments.

Thoroughfares will ideally be repaired concur-rently with the other elements of sprawl – buildings,open space, etc. – but they can also be used to start

the process. For example, the repair of a strip shop-ping center can begin with improving the adjacentthoroughfares and creating a new fabric of streetswithin the parking lot. The next step can be to inllthe fabric with buildings, and later replace the existingstructures with new ones.

Types of sprawl thoroughfares5-1. Level-of-service5-2. Thoroughfare transformations5-3.

FREEWAYPARKWAY,

BOULEVARD

ARTERIALBOULEVARD,

AVENUE

COLLECTORAVENUE,

MAIN STREET

LOCALROAD,STREET

CUL DE SACROAD,CLOSE

MOBILITY

LAND ACCESS

Freeway

ArterialCollector

Local

Cul-de-sac



Sprawl intersection5-4.

SPRAWL THOROUGHFARES

The ve major types of thoroughfares found insprawl are freeways, arterials, collectors, locals,and cul-de-sacs. Figure 5-1 shows these ve typesin an emblematic portion of suburbia. It is basedon an approximate square-mile grid, though inreal life the distances between thoroughfaresare likely to be larger and the connectivity evenworse.

The level-of-service diagram (gure 5-2) explainsthat the freeway has the most capacity and speed(mobility) and the fewest points of entry (land access).Capacity is reduced as points of entry increase, sothat the cul-de-sac has the least capacity and themost points of entry. The standards assigned to thesesprawl thoroughfares relate only to vehicular capacity,without consideration of character, walkability, or alter-nate forms of transportation.

Figure 5-3 shows the types of sprawl thorough-fares and some of the corresponding traditional thor-oughfares. The former are limited in type, while thelatter exhibit a wide variety and offer more choicedepending on character and location within therural-to-urban context. For example, the local, whichis the typical wide street in suburban subdivisions,

can be “translated” into several traditional thorough-fares, such as a road, drive, street, and yield street, anda cul-de-sac translates into a road or a close.

As discussed in chapter three, “Repair at theRegional Scale,” repair of the thoroughfare networkshould be conceived at the scale of the region, whichmay encompass one or many counties, several munici-palities, or even a whole state. The decisions aboutwhere to locate public transportation will be basedon a multitude of factors, the most important of whichwill be the locations of employment and commercialconcentrations that have potential to become neigh-borhood centers, town centers, and regional urbancores for their suburban surroundings.

Because the thoroughfare network will becomethe armature for future transit and walkable fabric, itis essential that a toolkit of repair techniques is madeavailable to planners, engineers, officials, and com-munities. These techniques are offered as the basis fordiscussion, local calibration, and implementation. Thefollowing “existing” and “proposed” drawings showthe basic principles and the step-by-step process ofhow to transform a sprawl thoroughfare into a com-ponent of the public realm that is pedestrian- andbicycle-friendly and ready to accommodate transit.

Neighborhood center intersection5-5.



Outcome One: Boulevard

Outcome Two: Avenue withtransit

Arterials are heavily congested because they chan-nel traffic coming from the collectors, locals, andcul-de-sacs. Some are laid out in one-mile grids, butconnectivity is often interrupted. Arterials are moreprone to strip development than freeways, as theyhave more points of access. Transforming arterials intourbanized thoroughfares is feasible only in the con-

text of regional public transit. The two options show asix-lane arterial repaired as a boulevard and an avenue. The boulevard will have one-way access lanes andparallel parking, while the avenue will include a widemedian for future light rail or BRT. Both streetscapesrequire sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, bicycle lanes,planting, and on-street parking.

ARTERIAL

Introduce transit: light railor bus rapid transit

Reduce lane widths

Reduce lane widths

Accommodate bicycles

Introduce parallel parking


Introduce medians

Introduce medians

Introduce access lanes

Introduce sidewalks andplanting strips


Remedial Techniques:

Deficiency: Sprawl thoroughfare

No parallel parking

Excessive number of lanes

Excessive lane widths



Outcome One: Boulevardintersection

Outcome Two: Avenueintersection

Intersection: It is essential to provide urbanizedalternatives to the conventional arterial intersec-tions, as these are the locations of regional commer-cial nodes and employment hubs that will becomethe future urban centers. The ideal scenario is tourbanize all four corners of these intersections atthe same time, but if not feasible the transforma-

tion can happen in phases, as the rst step will bethe streetscape transformation, with the buildingscoming later. The two options for urban intersec-tions correspond to the boulevard and avenue alter-natives. In both cases the lane widths are reducedand parallel parking is introduced, as well as medi-ans and access lanes.

Introduce transit: lightrail or bus rapid transit

Reduce curb radii

Reduce curb radii


Introduce crosswalks

Introduce crosswalks

Replace pavement withtraffic-calming material

Replace pavement withtraffic-calming material

Deficiency: Sprawl intersection

No crosswalks

Excessive paved surface

Excessive curb radii



Collectors are the thoroughfares that accumulate traf-c from suburban enclaves and deliver it to the arte-rials. Like arterials, they often have heavy congestion,lack of connectivity, and haphazard strip development.Repairing a collector requires a comprehensive strat-

egy, including reorganizing the fabric to create front-age along the collector and well-dened public spaceat important intersections. The rst proposal shows atypical collector repaired into an avenue with a largemedian, and the second a main street.

COLLECTOR

Introduce medians

Introduce wide sidewalksand street trees in grates

Reduce lane widths

Reduce lane widths

Accommodate bicycles



Outcome Two: Main street

Outcome One: Avenue Remedial Techniques:



No parallel parking

Excessive number of lanes




Introduce planting stripsand street trees

Introduce wide sidewalksand street trees in grates

Intersection: Intersections along collectors are oftendeveloped with commercial establishments such asgas stations, convenience stores, and strip shoppingcenters. Repair of these intersections should be coor-dinated with the repair of these sprawl elements and

the surrounding area. These two proposals corre-spond to the avenue and main street retrots. In bothcases the lane widths and curb radii are reduced, andparallel parking, medians, and sidewalks with plant-ings are introduced.

Outcome Two: Main streetintersection

Outcome One: Avenueintersection


Reduce curb radii

Reduce pavementsurface

Reduce curb radii


No crosswalks





Outcome One: Road

Outcome Two: Street

Local thoroughfares in suburban sprawl usually serveresidential or commercial enclaves and feed collectors. They are often dead-ends or loops, and in rare casesconnect with another collector. Local thoroughfaresusually have two oversized lanes, and rarely includesidewalks or parallel parking. The goal of this repair is

to create a pedestrian-friendly street with sidewalks,parallel parking, and bicycle routes. These two optionscover a rural road and an urban street. In the rst, largeplanting strips with informally arranged trees can serveas swales for stormwater management, while thesecond has wider sidewalks and trees planted in rows.

LOCAL

Reduce lane widths

Reduce lane widths

Introduce un-stripedparallel parking

Introduce parallel parkingon one side



Introduce sidewalks and

planting strips


No parallel parking




Outcome One: Roadintersection

Outcome Two: Streetintersection

Intersection: The intersection of a local and a collec-tor often contains a gated entrance to a residential orcommercial enclave. Removing that gate should beincluded when repairing such an intersection becauseit will create connectivity between suburban pods and

reduce traffic congestion. These two options for thetransformation of local intersections correspond to theroad and street repairs. In both alternatives the lanewidths and curb radii are reduced, and parallel parking,sidewalks, and continuous planters are introduced.

Reduce curb radii

Reduce curb radii





No crosswalks





Parking plays a critical role in the functionality andquality of urbanism. In sprawl, driving is a neces-sity and cars are preeminent even when stationary.Parking lots overwhelm the fronts of buildings, dis-couraging walking and inhibiting the mix of usesand compactness required for good urbanism.

Cars must be accommodated, however, and aproper parking strategy is essential to sprawl repair. Ithelps the urbanization of oversized parking lots, therebyimproving the pedestrian experience and supportingmixed uses and transit. The strategy also can be used toincentivize redevelopment, and to deal with the chang-ing parking conditions that come with sprawl repair.

In sprawl, parking distorts, and even determines,the urban form. Because land in the suburbs has beeninexpensive, surface parking lots have been easier andcheaper to build. Readily available parking is one of themain advantages that suburban development has overtraditional urbanism. The overscaling of parking lots hasbeen exacerbated by municipal parking requirements,which, more than any other code restraint, determinethe size and shape of buildings. As a result, buildingsin sprawl are usually freestanding, with large distancesbetween them, which discourages walking.

A parking strategy should be a part of any sprawlrepair project. Sprawl repair typically modies the loca-tion, capacity, and form of parking facilities, and a parkingstrategy will help organize and optimize these changes. The urbanization of parking lots is among the primarytechniques of sprawl repair. A strategy that ensures theadequate provision and utilization of parking encour-ages the redevelopment of those empty lots.

Sprawl repair often involves radical change of a site. This includes the concentration of surface parking intovertical structures on smaller plots, and the addition ofon-street parking, resulting in an increase in the rawnumber of parking spots. Density, and therefore popula-tion, is also increased, but the mixed uses in proximityallow multiple options for transportation. The mixed usesalso need the parking at different times (day/night, week-day/weekend), allowing it to be shared. This means thenecessary parking per capita is reduced, and municipalparking requirements should be reduced accordingly.

Reuse of these parking lots creates large amountsof developable real estate. To enhance the value ofthis real estate and incentivize its redevelopment,municipalities (or even states) should consider sub-sidizing the construction of parking structures insprawl repair projects. This will ensure the creationof a civic parking reserve, spur redevelopment, andachieve transit-supportive densities.

The parking strategy presented here consists ofseveral interconnected policy recommendations anddesign techniques. Similar to strategies that have previ-ously been used to repair suburbanized downtowns, itbegins with the creation of a parking reserve to ease anx-iety during sprawl repair. (Because of parking’s economicimplications, some property owners will consider newparking controls to be downzoning.) This strategy targetspredominantly commercial areas, but can be modiedfor single-use residential and office enclaves. Whethera private or public-private venture, each sprawl repairproject should include a management entity appointedto develop and implement a long-range parking policy.Following are suggestions for a parking strategy: 2

Form a parking reserve. This is created from all1.sources of existing parking under municipal or privatemanagement. The parking reserve will be managed toenable the most efficient and exible use of the supply.Parking from the reserve should be leased or sold on arst-come, rst-served basis to encourage fast redevel-opment. The parking reserve should include:

All on-street parking along commercial front-•

ages;All new on-street parking created by the repair•

of thoroughfares and traffic-calming practices(access lanes, medians, parallel and diagonalparking, etc.);All municipal parking garages and parking lots•

All parking associated with leases of commer-•

cial properties;Use of all private commercial parking garages•

and lots during their off hours (this may be con-troversial).

Transfer ownership of high-speed, suburban2.arterials and collector roads from DOT to the localmunicipality for complete-street design.

PARKING STRATEGY



Allow on-street parking to count toward parking3.requirements, and introduce shared parking ratios formixed uses. The more intense the mix of uses, the lessparking should be required.

Reserve the most conveniently located parking4.places for short-term uses such as shopping, doc-tors’ appointments, and business meetings. The lowerspaces of parking garages should be reserved for cus-tomers, and the rest should be longer-term parking foremployees and residents. On-street parking in front ofstores should have short meter settings.

Analyze the feasibility of converting failed big5.boxes into parking garages to free the original frontparking lots for redevelopment.

Provide showers and lockers in parking facilities6.and transit stops that connect with bike routes.

Before building vertical parking structures, reor-7.ganize the existing on-street and off-street parking.(Restripe spaces; install smart parking meters, streettrees, access lanes, boulevard medians; employ tech-niques to calm traffic; and make sidewalk improve-ments such as widening them and installing benchesand planters.) Some of the improvements can be paidfor using a “point-of-sale” tax, meaning that the streetfrontage repairs will be paid for, or the repairs them-

selves will be deferred, until a property is sold.Screen open parking lots with liner buildings or8.

temporary buildings. Use pervious, pedestrian-friendlymaterials such as grass pavers in lots that have seasonaldemand for parking and can be transformed into civicspaces at other times of the year.

Designate locations for future parking garages9.on the regulating plans. The construction of parkinggarages should be considered civic infrastructure,seeking similar public funding that is dedicated to utili-ties and thoroughfares.

Provide retail- or service-oriented frontages10.(community markets, tness centers) at the groundlevel of parking garages that are on primary streets.

Design garages, when practical, for later conver-11.sion into habitable space (offices, lofts, or civic use),meaning horizontal oor plates and oor-to-ceilingheights feasible for later habitation. Accommodatevehicles powered by non-petroleum (electric and bio-diesel) sources with dedicated parking, power plugs,and bio-fueling stations.

Design parking signage to clearly show where12.the parking is. Pedestrian passages connectingstreets to parking should be well lit and, ideally, linedby habitable space.



APPLICATION: COLLECTOR REPAIR

Figures 5-9, 5-10, and 5-11 show the phasedtransformation of a suburban collector. Thecollector (running east to west) has fourlanes and intersects another suburban

thoroughfare. The intersection is hostile topedestrians and bicyclists, with overscaledturning radii and limited landscaping. Out-dated and underutilized parking lots domi-nate the streetscape.

The rst phase of the repair includes onlystreetscape changes – reducing lanewidths, adding parallel parking, installingsidewalks, planting strips, and visible pedes-trian crossings. This sets the stage for thebuilding replacement and inll.

The last phase includes the redevelopmentof the suburban commercial structures toform a continuous, properly scaled front-age along the new main street and therepaired intersection.

Existing collector with car-dominated character5-9.

First phase of repair includes streetscape improvements5-10.

Final phase includes repair of the intersection and building redevelopment5-11.



Figures 5-12, 5-13, and 5-14 illustrate thetransformation of a six-lane suburban arte-rial into a transit corridor. The existing con-ditions have excessive pavement in the

lanes and parking lots, and are unfriendlyto pedestrians and bicyclists. The wideright-of-way has the potential for addingpublic transit.

The rst phase includes the addition of par-allel parking, wider sidewalks, landscaping,and a generous median, which will lateraccommodate a light rail line. The collec-tor intersecting the arterial receives accesslanes and medians on both sides, trans-forming it into an urban boulevard.

The nal phase incorporates the light railline along the avenue, as well as the rede-velopment of the buildings along its edges. The avenue becomes a pedestrian-friendly,sustainable avenue.

APPLICATION: ARTERIAL REPAIR

Existing arterial with car-dominated character5-12.

First phase of repair includes streetscape improvements such as a wide5-13.median for future transit

Final phase includes the addition of light rail and building redevelopment5-14.



236 SUBURBAN MEGABLOCK

238 SLAB AND TOWER BLOCK

241 McMANSION BLOCK DENSIFICATION242 INFILL WITH MEWS

244 INFILL WITH TOWNHOUSES

246 INFILL WITH APARTMENT VILLAS

248 RESIDENTIAL BLOCK DENSIFICATION250 RESIDENTIAL BLOCK DE DENSIFICATION

252 RESIDENTIAL BLOCK WITH CUL DE SACS253 PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLE CONNECTIVITY

254 ONE WAY VEHICULAR CONNECTIVITY

255 APPLICATION



This chapter explores techniques for transformingblocks and smaller urban increments, preparingthem to become part of a future urban fabric. Largesuburban megablocks can be broken down into aner grain of smaller blocks by introducing newstreets through their parking lots, thereby estab-lishing a coherent pattern for future incrementaldevelopment.

As the retrotted increment grows, the surfaceparking, which is already organized into streets andblocks, can be lled in with structured parking andnew construction. The transformation at the blockscale can happen gradually, piece by piece, withoutrequiring an unrealistic level of agreement and coor-dination between multiple property owners, and with-out entailing impractical amounts of public and privateinvestment all at once.

The rst case study is the megablock, which maybe located in suburban sprawl or part of an urban fabricdamaged by suburbanization. The tools for repair-ing such conditions are similar in both suburban andurban settings – a walkable block structure is createdor reinstated, and the parking lots are lled with new,mixed-use construction at a higher urban intensity.

The slab and tower block is another essential casestudy of sprawl repair at this scale. In the U.S., slabs andtowers were employed as the main tools of the urbanrenewal movement in the 1960s, when whole neigh-borhoods were razed and replaced by public housing. The concept of the megastructure in the park was alsopopular in Western and Eastern Europe during the rstdecades after World War II, when the demand for hous-ing was high and modernist planning dismantled thetraditional urban patterns. The result was that vastareas in the U.S. and Europe, within cities and ontheir peripheries, became desolate landscapes of tall

buildings amidst undened open space and asphalt. The tools for repair of such blocks incorporate re-platting, building new streets and connections, form-ing smaller blocks, and introducing building types toaccommodate a mix of uses and make the streetscapemore pedestrian friendly.

A critical remediation at the block scale is thetransformation of McMansion-lined suburban blocksinto more balanced environments. Most optionsinvolve the insertion of new building types such astownhouses, mews units, live-work units, and apart-ments into the suburban framework, achieving higherdensity and more pedestrian-friendly streetscapes. These techniques have previously been used in thesuccessional redevelopment of the American city. Forexample, townhouses inserted behind mansions canbe observed in Boston, Massachusetts. The mansionsare converted into multifamily housing, with suchinterventions often tripling the existing density.

The next intervention is in the typical suburbanresidential block, where the deeper lots allow theintroduction of back alleys and lanes and the addi-tion of outbuildings to be used as granny ats oraffordable rental housing. Further densication canbe achieved by adding back buildings (structuresbetween the main houses and the outbuildings).

The block scale also includes the most typicalcondition in sprawl development: residential blocksconsisting entirely of cul-de-sacs. The most egregiousdeciency in these subdivisions is a lack of connec-tivity. Opening the cul-de-sacs into streets may notbe a feasible solution while the subdivision has highproperty values, but this tool should be consideredfor more radical repair when the appropriate con-ditions exist. With millions of properties foreclosedupon in 2007–2009, opportunities for retrot at alarger scale materialized.

CHAPTER SIX

REPAIR AT THE BLOCK SCALE



Existing commercial megablock 6-1.

Repaired urban fabric with mix of uses and civic spaces6-2.



Deficiency: Oversized megablock

Outcome: Walkable urban fabric

SLAB AND TOWER BLOCK

Freestanding tower

Underutilized open space

Undefined public frontage

Introduce new street,creating smaller blocks

Exposed and excessiveparking

Slab building

Introduce liner buildingsto mask parking and

create forecourtsIntroduce live-works and

townhouses

Introduce mixed-use,mid-rise buildings for

transition from towersand slabs

Define public spaces

Slabs and towers have become symbolic of disas-trous public housing experimentation.

The vast, unassigned spaces between buildingsdeteriorate fast, becoming unpleasant and dangerous towalk through. The goal is to transform the underutilized

gaps between the structures into pedestrian-friendly,smaller-scale urban fabric. Privatizing some of the land,platting it into lots, and forming smaller blocks are themain remedial techniques used in this transformation. The process is applicable both when the buildings arepreserved and when they are demolished.




Existing slab and tower block 6-3.

Repaired block with townhouses and mixed-use buildings6-4.



A typical modernist megablock includes slab build-ings and towers surrounded by excessive public spaceconsisting mainly of surface parking lots. It is decidedlyunfriendly to pedestrians (gure 6-5).

In the rst phase (gure 6-6), mixed-use buildingsare used to create courtyards in front of the slabs andthe tower. The existing parking lots along the edges ofthe block are reorganized as on-street parking. Groundoors of the new buildings can be used for shops,offices, and cafés, as well as daycare facilities, meetingspaces, or other civic uses.

In phase two (gure 6-7), additional streets areintroduced perpendicular to the length of the mega-block, breaking it up into smaller increments. Onestreet bisects the large parking lot and is framed byliner buildings. Townhouses and live-work units areinserted in the leftover space, fronting the surroundingstreets. The newly created private ownership of smallerlots and buildings claries the relationship betweenprivate and public space.

In phase three (gure 6-8), a new street bisectsthe large parking lot between the slabs. The streetis framed by liner buildings, which accommodateaffordable lofts and live-work units. The nal outcomeof the sprawl repair of this oversized block is a nergrain of ve smaller blocks, which reduce the scaleand impact of the towers and slabs.

Existing conditions: A block of slab buildings and a tower6-5.

Phase One: Adding mixed-use buildings to create courtyards6-6.

Phase Two: Adding townhouses and live-work units to create6-7.smaller increment of ownership

Phase Three: Completing the fabric with liner buildings to6-8.mask parking lots and create affordable spaces



McMANSION BLOCK DENSIFICATION

The purpose of this case study is to analyzethe possibilities for intensication of oversizedMcMansion lots in suburban conditions. At theirminimum, McMansions’ lots are 100 feet wide by120 feet or more in depth, and can easily acceptmore density.

There are examples, specically in urban environ-ments, where this intensication has happened as aresult of rising property values. In such cases, evenunderground parking for the additional units hasbeen nancially feasible. In suburban sprawl, espe-cially during times of falling property values, urbanintensication may be difficult to achieve on a block-by-block basis, and should therefore be applied incombination with community-scale techniques forsprawl repair, such as the introduction of mixed usesand thoroughfare transformation. However, the toolsat the block scale are available to smaller developersand entrepreneurs who can purchase several McMan-sion lots, convert them into a dense cluster, and sellor rent the units. The regulatory mechanism to enable

such interventions can include a form-based codeoverlay if whole neighborhoods are retrotted andmade denser, or a PUD (Planned Unit Development)overlay in the case of smaller-scale up-zoning.

The examples shown illustrate densication byadding townhouses, mews units, and apartment villasto the backs of lots. These techniques can be com-bined with the conversion of the large houses intosenior or student housing or apartments. By applyingboth methods, the average density can be substan-tially increased, in some cases even tripled. Even withthe higher density, the character of the neighbor-hood is preserved because the detached, large housesremain.

The common technique used for this densicationis the introduction of alleys, either parallel to the longsides of the blocks or intersecting them. The new unitsface the existing streets, visible between the existingMcMansions. Parking is handled either undergroundor, in the case of the mews buildings, in a frontloadedgarage as part of the unit, or in small pockets of surfaceparking in the example with the apartment villas. 1

McMansions on large lots6-9. McMansions combined with other building types6-10.



The mews unit is a compact building type that is idealto be used for inll of the McMansion block. Originatingfrom the dense urban fabric of British towns, these build-ings are small in size, two or three stories tall, and locatedalong a back alley or lane (mews). McMansion garages

are typically accessed from the front, so back alleys openthe lots for another layer of housing. The mews lane canrun perpendicular or parallel to the block. In the rstcase, fewer lots are affected but density is not increasedas much as in the second outcome.

INFILL WITH MEWS

Deficiency: Oversized lots; 12dwellings at 3 units per acre

Outcome Two: Mews parallelto the block; 52 dwellings at 13units per acre

Outcome One: Mewsperpendicular to the block; 28dwellings at 7 units per acre

Introduce mews units

Large lots

Introduce mews lanes

Single building type

Introduce mews lanesIntroduce pedestrian

paths

Introduce mews units


Deep setbacks



Existing block of McMansions6-11.

In outcome two, the McMansion block is made denser with mews6-12.



Introduce cross-block pedestrian paths

Introduce undergroundparking access


Deficiency: Oversized lots; 12dwellings at 3 units per acre

Outcome One: Townhousesperpendicular to the block; 32dwellings at 8 units per acre

Outcome Two: Townhousesparallel to the block; 48 dwellingsat 12 units per acre

Introduce parking courts

Introduce cross-block pedestrian paths


Deep setbacks

Large lots


Inlling the McMansion block with townhouses isa more radical intervention because they typicallyfront on a vehicular or pedestrian thoroughfarerather than an alley. Townhouses can be built per-

pendicular to the block, facing a narrow pedestrianstreet, or they can be built parallel to the block, withunderground parking if the new density achievessufficient returns.

INFILL WITH TOWNHOUSES




Existing block of McMansions6-13.

In outcome one, the McMansion block is made denser with townhouses6-14.



Deficiency: OversizedMcMansions and lots; 12dwellings at 3 units per acre

Outcome Two: Apartmentvillas fronting side streets andMcMansions converted tomultifamily; 48 units per block at12 units per acre

Outcome One: Infill withapartment villas and McMansionsconverted to multifamily; 84dwellings at 21 units per acre

Convert McMansions tomultifamily

Convert McMansions tomultifamily

Introduce pedestrianpaths

Introduce apartment villasfronting side streets

Introduce alleys

Introduce an alley

Introduce apartment villas

Provide parking in middleof block

Provide parking in the rear

The apartment villa is a building type that can beinserted among existing McMansions with little dis-ruption, as the two types are similar in size. Apart-ment villas are two or three stories tall, with four tosix units in total. They can be inserted along alleys

perpendicular to the McMansion block, or can belocated at the two edges of the block, with parkingclustered in a court in the middle. Conversion of allor some McMansions into multifamily housing is sug-gested, if possible.

INFILL WITH APARTMENT VILLAS

Deep setbacks

Large lots





RESIDENTIAL BLOCK DENSIFICATION

Most suburban residential blocks are deep (between100 and 150 feet), and have the potential for increaseddensity. This phased repair begins with the addition ofalleys and lanes in the back to increase connectivity and

allow outbuildings (for rentals, granny ats, or studios). The next phase can include the addition of backbuild-ings, further increasing the density. The corner lots canbe converted to live-work units or corner stores.

Deficiency: Single buildingtype and use. Suburban houses;oversized lots; 14 dwellings at 3.5units per acre

Phase Two: Outbuildingsalong alley and corner stores; 38dwellings at 9.5 units per acre

Phase One: Alleys andoutbuildings along cross-blockalley; 28 dwellings at 7 units peracre

Introduce alley

Introduce outbuildings

Transform corner unitsinto corner stores or

live-work units

Infill with backbuildings


Deep setbacks




Existing condition: Typical suburban residential block6-17.

Phase One: New alleys and outbuildings6-18.

Phase Two: Backbuildings6-19.



RESIDENTIAL BLOCK DE DENSIFICATION

Density at the block and lot scale can be reducedin places where deserted and blighted propertieshave become prevalent. Lots can be re-platted intolarger parcels to be used for community gardens,

stormwater-retention greens, or family compounds.Maintenance of such places will be best managed ona block-by-block basis.

Deficiency: Deserted, blightedproperties; 14 dwellings at 3.5units per acre

Outcome Two: Civic green forstormwater management orcommunity garden

Acquire lots andestablish community

garden or stormwater-retention greens

Deep setbacks

Deserted houses

Remedial Techniques:Outcome One: Agricultural lots;6 dwellings at 1.5 unit per acre

Re-plat lots into largerparcels and allow family

compounds

Remove deserted housesAllow urban agriculture



Existing condition: Typical suburban residential block6-20.

Outcome One: Agricultural lots and family compounds6-21.

Outcome Two: Civic green as a community garden6-22.



RESIDENTIAL BLOCK WITH CUL DE SACS

The most emblematic and challenging element ofsprawl is the suburban subdivision with disconnectedcul-de-sacs. Repair begins with an analysis of the rea-sons for the disconnection. If there are no topographi-cal impediments, the feasibility of opening the cul-de-sacs and connecting the streets is determined. Someproperties may need to be purchased by the future

developer, or even be subject to eminent domain,depending on the importance of their locations.

VEHICULAR CONNECTIVITY

If the open space in the back of lots is underutilized, thecul-de-sacs can be connected parallel to the blocks,creating additional frontage to subdivide into lots.

Deficiency: Suburban fabricwith cul-de-sacs

Outcome: Connected fabric

Purchase houses at tipof cul-de-sac

Create lots and housesfronting the new street

Connect street throughcul-de-sac

Create a green to calmtraffic

Residual open space

Disconnected streetnetwork

Cul-de-sac

Remedial Techniques: Connectcul-de-sacs parallel to blocks



PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLE CONNECTIVITY

Remedial Techniques: Connectcul-de-sacs with pedestrian andbicycle networks

Where there is an environmental easement in theback of the lots, the strategy for connectivity intro-duces pedestrian and bicycle pathways rather thanvehicular thoroughfares. They are also delineatedparallel to the blocks, as a narrow easement (eight

to ten feet) that can be acquired from two adja-cent properties. A more comprehensive pedestrianand bicycle network can be established within thegreenway in the back, if the environmental assess-ment allows it.


Outcome: Pedestrian and bikepaths

Residual open space


Cul-de-sac

Add pedestrian andbicycle paths for

connectivity

Create, wherever possible,pedestrian and bicycletrails in residual space

Create a green toreduce pavement

surface



When it is not possible to acquire properties for con-nectivity, an alternative is to connect the cul-de-sacs perpendicular to the blocks. In this case, ease-ments can be purchased from two adjacent property

owners facing one of the cul-de-sacs and the samecan be repeated for the adjacent cul-de-sac. The newstreet can be one-way if a larger easement cannot besecured.


Outcome: Connected fabric

Purchase right-of-wayfor new connections

Connect street throughcul-de-sac

Create a green to calmtraffic

Cul-de-sac


Remedial Techniques: Connectcul-de-sacs perpendicular toblocks

ONE WAY VEHICULAR CONNECTIVITY



This sequence demonstrates the gradual urbanizationof a typical megablock containing a defunct mall andseveral outparcels. The mall is repurposed into a high-tech hosting space, while its parking lot is transformedinto a mixed-use urban square.

The rst phase creates the square and a main streetconnecting to an adjacent property. The second phaseadds to the liner buildings surrounding the square, cre-ating urban blocks.

APPLICATION: COMMERCIAL BLOCK REPAIR PHASING

Existing conditions: The mall, its parking lots, and outpar-6-23.cels

Phase One: Add a public square and a main street; the first buildings can be used as “billboards“ for visibility from the highway6-24.

Phase Two: Completion of the blocks around the square and the main street6-25.



258 M CMANSION

260 SUBURBAN RANCH HOUSE

262 DRIVE THROUGH

264 GAS STATION

266 PARKING GARAGE

268 STRIP CENTER

270 BIG BOX

272 RELIGIOUS BUILDING

274 APPLICATION



The goal for this set of remediation techniques isto retrot the primary building prototypes thatdene suburbia. These iconic, detached struc-tures and their parcels have the potential, aftermodest interventions, to contribute to a morediverse, cohesive urban fabric.

The existing suburban buildings are repur-posed and/or joined by new structures, often takingadvantage of suburbia’s typically excessive setbacksand parking lots. Some buildings, such as the drive-through restaurant, corner gas station, and the stripcenter, are more vulnerable than others. Because oftheir short life spans and large lots, demolition couldbe the rst option or the eventual outcome of aphased repair.

Starting at the level of the single structure givesindividual business owners and smaller investors thechance to participate in the transformation of sprawl.Structurally viable buildings are preserved, modied,expanded, and reused within a more sustainable urbancontext. Neighbors can replicate these small interven-tions and gradually redevelop more properties to formmixed-use and diverse environments. Requiring fewerresources, such projects can be the seeds of changenecessary to start initiatives on the larger scale.

To be effective, the repair at the building scalemust be combined with a regulatory framework atthe scale of the community and the region that allowsmix of uses and higher densities. Parking requirementsmust also be reduced and shared parking allowedbetween compatible uses.

REPAIR AT THE BUILDING SCALE

CHAPTER SEVEN

Existing suburban houses7-1. Repair by infill with outbuildings and backbuildings7-2.



M C MANSION

Deficiency: Oversized low-density building

Outcome One: Senior or studenthousing

Outcome Two: Multifamilyhousing

The McMansion is the building type most often associ-ated with residential sprawl. Once the symbol of successand achievement, the McMansion has become a liabilityfor suburbanites who are strapped with upside-downmortgages and long commutes. As a result, thousands ofMcMansions have been subjected to foreclosure, aban-

donment, and even demolition. Sprawl repair can beaccomplished at the block scale (see chapter six ,“Repairat the Block Scale”), or at the scale of a lot. One way toreuse McMansion structures is to transform them intosenior or student housing or apartments. Parking movesto the rear, and the garage can be used as living space.

Oversized low-densityresidential building

Driveway dominating thepublic frontage

Subdivide mansion intomultiple bedrooms

Design a common area:living, dining, kitchen

Organize parking behindthe building

Organize parking behindthe building

Subdivide mansion into

several apartments




Existing McMansion:7-3.First and second floor: five bedrooms,five bathrooms, and three-car garage

Outcome One:7-4. McMansionconverted into senior or studenthousing. First and second floor: tenbedrooms, nine bathrooms, and asuite for a caretaker

Outcome Two:7-5. McMansion con-verted into multifamily housing.First floor: one 1-bedroom and one2-bedroom apartmentSecond floor: two 2-bedroom apart-ments

Existing walls New walls



The existing condition is an excessive front setback domi-7-6.nated by a driveway and a parking garage D

r a w i n g b y J a m e s W a s s e l l

D r a w

i n g b y J a m e s W a s s e l l


A new wing is added, creating an entry courtyard and pre-7-8.venting the garage and driveway from dominating the streetview

The existing garage is converted into additional living space7-7.as a two-story structure built over the existing driveway

A detached outbuilding is built in the front yard, creating a7-9.private interior courtyard and preventing the garage and drive-way from dominating the street view

The garage is removed altogether. In its place sits a one-7-10.story addition delineating the street. A garden is in the backyard



DRIVE THROUGH

Deficiency: Car-orientedbuilding type

Outcome One: Liner buildings

Outcome Two: Denseredevelopment

The deep setbacks, exposed parking, and under-utilized lots of the ever-present drive-through dis-courage walking and homogenize the streetscape.Figures 7-11 and 7-12 depict the phased transfor-mation of a drive-through property into a contrib-

uting element of a community. In outcome one,liner buildings are added along the street fronts.In outcome two, the restaurant is replaced with aparking garage. In some situations, this might bethe rst option.

Detached restaurant pad

Frontage not pedestrianfriendly

Exposed surface parking

Keep drive-through

Replace drive-through withperimeter mixed-use block

Replace surface parkinglot with a parking

structure

Add liner buildings tomask parking structure

Keep an opening forvisibility from street

Add liners alongfrontages




Suburban drive-through7-11.

Liner buildings on a main street7-12.



GAS STATION


Outcome One: Corner store

Outcome Two: Corner storewith front plaza

These drawings show two simple options for repair-ing a typical corner gas station. In the rst, a two-storycorner store is added to improve the intersectionand screen the gas station (gure 7-14). The secondoption includes a larger store with two wings wrap-ping both corners and creating a plaza. In this case,

the pumps are expanded in size while the originalbuilding is removed. Both options are viable whenthe location of the underground fuel storage doesnot interfere with the new construction. If the pumpsare moved or eliminated, environmental remediationmust be considered.

Detached building inthe rear

Connect shed structure

to new building

Eliminate existingbuilding

Keep existing pumps andadd new ones

Build a corner store at theintersection

Build a corner store at theintersection

Create a plaza for outdoorsitting

Pumps dominate thepublic frontage




Existing suburban gas station7-13.

Corner store addition7-14.



PARKING GARAGE


Outcome One: Mixed-use linerbuildings

Outcome Two: Buildingconversion into a new use

Parking structures are elements of good urbanism onlywhen they are well incorporated into the urban fabric. This is not the case with sprawl. One option for retrot isto wrap the garage with mixed-use liner buildings (gure7-16). These buildings will be single-loaded, 25 and 35

feet deep. Lofts or offices can be 45–50 feet deep. If thestructure is not needed for parking, and its oors arehorizontal, it can be converted into lofts or offices, withan atrium space in the middle. In all cases, it is essentialto introduce streets and a block structure.

Freestanding parkingstructure surrounded by

surface parking

Create pedestrian-friendlyfrontages with wide

sidewalks and shopfronts

Create pedestrian-friendlyfrontages with wide

sidewalks and shopfronts

Wrap the garage withliner buildings

Convert the garage intolofts or offices

Reorganize parking

Reorganize parking in theback of buildings

Introduce streets withparallel parking

Introduce streets withparallel parking




Existing parking garage7-15.

Repaired mixed-use urban building7-16.



STRIP CENTER


Outcome One: Building reuseand additions

Outcome Two: Building reuseand new liner buildings

Following are two options for re-purposing a stripcenter. The rst is to add two side wings that improvethe street face by reaching the sidewalk and framing acourtyard. The center could be adapted for new uses,

such as a recycling center (gure 7-18). The secondoption also improves the frontage by adding linerbuildings, and divides the existing building to housemultiple businesses.

Stand-alone, single-usestructure

Excessive surface parking

Poor public frontage

Add side wings

Introduce sidewalks andon-street parking

Create a public courtyardfor outdoor sitting

Introduce sidewalks andparallel parking

Reorganize parking

Reorganize parking

Adapt building for a newuse

Divide the buildingto house multiple

businesses

Introduce liners alongthe front




Conversion into a recycling center7-18.

Existing strip center7-17.



BIG BOX


Outcome One: Liner buildings

Outcome Two: Convertedstructure and complete urbanblocks

Big-box retailers often abandon buildings for new onesfarther out. With so many going out of business, evenmore are available for redevelopment. These propos-als offer different levels of intervention. The rst keepsthe building as is, with liner buildings in front. Its usemay remain retail, or it can be converted for large

occupants such as a satellite college campus, or evena parking garage. A more radical approach (gure7-20) densely develops the entire site. Perimeter build-ings and garages are added in front, and the buildingis renovated. The creation of new streets and a blockstructure is crucial to both options.

Stand-alone, single-usestructure

Convert building for anew use

Convert building for anew use

Excessive surface parking

Create block structure,with a main streetterminating on building

Create block structure,with a main street

terminating on building

Introduce high-densityperimeter buildings

Introduce high-densityperimeter buildings with

parking garages




Existing big box7-19.

Renovated and reused big box terminating a new main street7-20.



RELIGIOUS BUILDING

Deficiency: Civic structurewith oversized, underutilizedparking lot

Outcome One: Senior housinginfill

Outcome Two: Liner buildingsand public space

Religious institutions can create additional revenueand improve their surrounding neighborhoods byurbanizing their underutilized parking lots with hous-ing or mixed-use buildings. The rst example proposesan inll with senior courtyard housing. Small, L-shaped

buildings share walls and pedestrian passages (gure7-22). The buildings can be used for independent orassisted living. The second option introduces mixed-use liner buildings that form a civic space terminatingon the religious building.

Infill the front parkinglot with senior courtyard

housing

Introduce pedestrian paths

Stand-alone buildingsurrounded by parking

Excessive parkingdominating the public

frontage

Introduce liner buildingsto form a civic space that

terminates on religiousbuilding

Rationalize parking

Rationalize parking




Existing suburban religious building7-21.

Parking lot developed with courtyard senior housing7-22.



APPLICATION: REPAIR OF OUTDATED MULTIFAMILY HOUSING

Outdated multifamily housing7-23.

Outdated terrace housing7-25.

Detached building additions7-24.

Attached, two-story building additions7-26.

Instead of demolishing out-of-date multifamily struc-tures, they can be renovated and expanded to formbetter street frontages. The examples in gures 7-23and 7-25 show British New Towns’ terrace housing withdeep, paved setbacks and nondescript, aging architec-

ture. The proposal is to build attached or detached addi-tions, in the form of extra rooms or studios, at the build-ings’ fronts, improving the proportions, size, and overallquality of the buildings while making their streets morepedestrian friendly (gures 7-24 and 7-26).



APPLICATION: REPAIR OF A SUPERMARKET

Existing supermarket with excessive surface parking lots7-27.

Redevelopment of the supermarket and its parking lots into mixed-use fabric7-28.

Grocery stores and supermarkets are frequent con-tenders for sprawl repair. The example shows a rede-velopment of a supermarket in the suburban fringesof a European town. The underutilized parking lots areurbanized with new apartment buildings and multi-story parking garages “masked” with offices and afford-

able residences. The structure and the main entranceof the supermarket are preserved. The building canretain its retail use or if it is failing, it can be repurposedinto a civic or office use. In either case, liner, mixed-usebuildings are attached along its frontages to frame thenew streets and public spaces.



POSTSCRIPT

Despite the severity of the building industry meltdown, the development ofsprawl has not stopped. In the rst months of 2009, the State of Florida pro-cessed an unprecedented number of proposals for new residential and com-mercial development. Megaprojects that were approved, pending, or proposedby the Department of Community Affairs included more than 470 million squarefeet of commercial space and more than 600,000 residential units on more than430,000 acres across the state. 1 It is urgent that such efforts be redirected tothe available places for redevelopment – defunct malls and empty parking lots– rather than build more unsustainable sprawl, replacing open space and pro-ductive farmland.

One of the goals for this manual is to demonstrate that there is good news. The tools presented here offer hope to those who recognize that sprawl mustbe and can be xed. Suburban residents should not be worried – sprawl repairnot only proposes ideas for regenerating their failing surroundings, but prom-ises to enhance rather than obliterate their way of life. Most places will remainsuburban in nature, but they will offer expanded choices for living, working, andsocializing. Sprawl repair creates places for those who want to tend a garden ina quiet village and for those who are drawn to the liveliness of a town center.

The promise of a better life is more compelling than predictions of doom. The success of Dr. Dean Ornish, founder of the Preventive Medicine ResearchInstitute, is a good example. Rather than scare heart patients with the “fear ofdeath,” he inspires them with a vision, the “joy of living.” 2 Our approach to sprawlrepair should be the same. Rather than threaten suburban residents with thedemise of our way of life – or worse, blame them for it – we should entice themwith the vision of thriving communities and the better life they provide.



ENDNOTES

CHAPTER ONE: FROM SPRAWL TO COMPLETE COMMUNITIES

1. Joel S. Hirschhorn. Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health, and Money (New York: Sterling & Ross Publishers, 2005).

2. Jessica L. Furey. “Travel and Environmental Implications of School Siting,” United States Environmental Protection Agency (2003)via EPA, <http://www.epa.gov/dced/pdf/school_travel.pdf> (19 February 2010).

3. Liz Chandler and Stella M. Hopkins. “Suburban Decay Stuns City Leaders,”The Charlotte Observer , December 12, 2007.

4. Christopher B. Leinberger. “The Next Slum?”The Atlantic , March 2008. <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime> (19February 2010).

5. Reid Ewing et al.Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change (Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute,

2008).

6. “State Surgeon General Seal of Walkability,” Promoting Health One Step at a Time. University of Miami School of Medicine, via CFS,

November 18, 2009. <http://cfs.med.miami.edu/SG_Walkability_Criteria_Instructional_Slides.pdf> (19 February 2010).

7. Todd Litman. “Where We Want to Be: Home Location Preferences and Their Implications for Smart Growth,” Victoria TransportPolicy Institute (2010), via VTPI, <http://www.vtpi.org/sgcp.pdf> (19 February 2010).

8. Robert Fishman. Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1987).

9. Kenneth T. Jackson. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1985).

10. Bryan Walsh. “A New Blueprint for Levittown,”Time Magazine, 17 January 2008, 36.

11. Brentin Mock. “Can They Save Youngstown?”Next American City (fall 2008), 6.

12. Karina Pallagst et al.Cities Growing Smaller(Kent State, Ohio: Kent State, 2008).

13. Volk Zimmerman. “Final presentation at the Lifelong Communities Charrette for the Atlanta Regional Commission,” Atlanta,

Georgia, February 17, 2009.

14. David Brooks. “A Nation of Villages,”New York Times, 19 January 2006, Opinion section.

15. Arthur C. Nelson. “The Next 100 Million,”Making Great Communities Happen (2003). American Planning Association, via MI,

<http://www.mi.vt.edu/uploads/The%20Next%20100%20Million.pdf> (19 February 2010).

16. Elizabeth Kneebone. “Job Sprawl Revisited: The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Employment,” The Brookings Institution(2009), <http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2009/0406_job_sprawl_kneebone.aspx> (19 February 2010).

17. Dean Murphy. “California Looks Ahead and Doesn’t Like What It Sees,”New York Times, 29 May 2005, sec. 4, Final late ed.

18. Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council. “Bringing Communities Together Since 1976,” <http://www.tcrpc.org/index.html.(February 19, 2010)>.

CHAPTER TWO: THE SPRAWL REPAIR METHOD

1. Douglas Farr. Sustainable Urbanism : Urban Design with Nature (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 111.

2. Andres Duany, Sandy Sorlien, and William Wright. “SmartCode Version 9 and Manual” (New York: New Urban News Publications,

2009).

3. Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company. “Sprawl Repair Smart Growth Module,” Transect, <http://www.transect.org/docs/SPRAWL_REPAIR.pdf> (19 February 2010).

4. PlaceShakers and NewsMakers. “DPZ Promotes Mall Makeovers,” Placeshakers, <http://placeshakers.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/

dpz-promotes-mall-makeovers/> (19 April 2009).

CHAPTER THREE: REPAIR AT THE REGIONAL SCALE

1. “The Lexicon of The New Urbanism Version 3.2,” Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, 2002. <http://www.dpz.com/pdf/LEXICON.PDF> (19 February 2010).

2. Thomas Low. Light Imprint Handbook: Integrating Sustainability and Community Design (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, distributor,

2008).



CHAPTER FOUR: REPAIR AT THE COMMUNITY SCALE

1. Institute of Transportation Engineers. “Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communi-

ties.” ITE, 2010. <http://www.ite.org/css/> (19 February 2010).

2. U.S. Green Building Council. “LEED for Neighborhood Development,” U.S. Green Building Council, November 9, 2009. <www.usgbc.

org/leed/nd/> (19 February 2010).3. Patrick M. Condon, Duncan Cavens, and Nicole Miller. Urban Planning Tools for Climate Change Mitigation (Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2009).

4. For more on TIF districts see: <www.lincolninstitute.edu/pubs/1078_Tax-Increment-Financing> (19 February 2010).

5. Homes and Communities, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Neighborhood Stabilization Program Grants,” Hous-ing and Urban Development, <http://hud.gov/offices/cpd/communitydevelopment/programs/neighborhoodspg/> (30 January 2010).

6. Wikipedia World Encyclopedia. “Special-purpose local-option sales tax,” Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_

local-option_sales_tax> (2 January 2010).

7. Belmar is one of the case studies in Ellen Dunham-Jones’ and June Williamson’s book, Retrotting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for

Redesigning Suburbs (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), 159.

8. Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson review bonuses for public space as applied in Downtown Kendall, Florida, in their book,

Retrotting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), 196.

9. Some of the steps in the protocols were discussed with the members of the Retrot–Repair listserv (November 2009). John Anderson

contributed in an e-mail message and phone conversation to the author, January 29, 2010.

10. The descriptions of retail types are adapted from “A Primer on Retail Types and Urban Centers,” by Robert Gibbs in Robert Steutevilleand Philip Langdon’s book, New Urbanism Best Practices Guide, Fourth Edition (New York: New Urban News Publication, 2009), 79–80.

11. ICSC Serving the Global Retail Real Estate, “Frequently Asked Questions,” ICSC, <http://www.icsc.org/srch/faq_category.php?cat_

type=research&cat_id=3> (20 February 2010).

12. Mark Bulmash. “The Retail Development Crisis. What Now?” (presented by the Bulmash Real Estate Advisors, Congress for the New

Urbanism VII, Denver, Colorado, 2009).

13. Robert Gibbs. “Retail Principles for New Urban Communities, Historic Downtowns, and Suburban Retrotting” (presented at the

Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Executive Education, July 10, 2009).

14. Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets. The American Vitruvius: An Architect’s Handbook of Civic Art . (New York: Princeton Architectural

Press, 1988), 115.

15. Mlive.com. “Pending sales of Sunnybrook, Railside offer hope for future of local private golf clubs,” Mlive, <http://www.mlive.com/

golf/index.ssf/2009/10/pending_sales_of_sunnybrook_ra.html> (29 October 2009).

CHAPTER FIVE: REPAIR OF THOROUGHFARES AND PARKING

1. The descriptions of thoroughfares are adapted from “The Lexicon of The New Urbanism Version 3.2,” Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company,2002 <http://www.dpz.com/pdf/LEXICON.pdf> (10 February 2010)

2. The parking strategy was discussed and articulated with members of the Retrot–Repair listserv, October 2009.

CHAPTER SIX: REPAIR AT THE BLOCK SCALE

1. Townhouse development as inll behind mansions was discussed by Sara Hines in an e-mail message to the author, June 15, 2009.

POSTSCRIPT

1. Florida Department of Community Affairs. “Florida Builders Poised to Pounce,” Department of Community Affairs <http://www.dca.

state..us/News/Praises/Article3.cfm> (17 April 2009).

2. Alan Deutschman. “Change or Die,” Fast Company , May 2005 <http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/open_change-or-die.html?page=0,0> (1 May 2005).



Christensen, Julia. Big Box Reuse. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.

Congress for the New Urbanism. “Malls into Mainstreets: An In-Depth Guide to Transforming Dead Malls into Communities.” Chicago:

Congress for the New Urbanism, 2006.Dittmar, Hank, and Gloria Ohland, eds. The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development . Washington, D.C.: Island

Press, 2004.

Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Robert Alminana. The New Civic Art: Elements of Town Planning. New York: Rizzoli, 2003.

Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Death of the American Dream. NewYork: North Point Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

Duany, Andres, Jeff Speck, and Mike Lydon. The Smart Growth Manual . N.p.: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Dunham-Jones, Ellen, and June Williamson. Retrotting Suburbia. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.

Ewing, Reid, et al.Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 2008.Farr, Douglas. Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.

Fishman, Robert. Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1987.

Frumkin, Howard, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson. Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy

Communities. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2004.Garreau, Joel. Edge City: Life on the Frontier . New York: Anchor, 1992.

Gillham, Oliver.The Limitless City: A Primer on the Urban Sprawl Debate. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002.

Hayden, Dolores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Hayden, Dolores. A Field Guide to Sprawl. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Hegemann, Werner, and Elbert Peets. The American Vitruvius: An Architect’s Handbook of Civic Art . New York: Princeton Architectural Press,1988.

Hirschhorn, Joel S. Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health, and Money . New York: Sterling and Ross, 2005.

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Krier, Leon.The Architecture of Community . Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2009.Kunstler, James H. The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century . New York: Atlantic Monthly

Press, 2005.

Lang, Robert E. Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003.

Lang, Robert E. Boomburbs: The Rise of America’s Accidental Cities. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2007.Leinberger, Christopher B. The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2007.

“The Lexicon of the New Urbanism. Version 3.2.” Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, 2002.

Low, Thomas. Light Imprint Handbook: Integrating Sustainability and Community Design. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2007 (distributor).

Lucy, William H., and David L. Phillips.Tomorrow’s Cities, Tomorrow’s Suburbs. Chicago: American Planning Association, 2006.Lukez, Paul.Suburban Transformations . New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.

MacLean, Alex S., and Bill McKibben.Over: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point . New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2008.

Pallagst, Karina, et al.Cities Growing Smaller . Kent, OH: Kent State University, 2008.

Pulleyblank, Sarah. “Civilizing Downtown Highways: Putting New Urbanism to Work on California’s Highways.” Chicago: Congress forthe New Urbanism, 2002.

Smiley, David J.Sprawl and Public Space: Redressing the Mall . New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.

Sobel, Lee S., and Steven Bodzin. Greyelds into Goldelds: Dead Malls Become Living Neighborhoods. Chicago: Congress for the New

Urbanism, 2002.Stanilov, Kiril, and Brenda Case Sheer, eds. Suburban Form: An International Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Steuteville, Robert, and Philip Langdon. New Urbanism Best Practices Guide, Fourth Edition. New York: New Urban News Publication, 2009.

Wasik, John F. The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream. New York: Bloomberg Press, 2009.

RECOMMENDED READING



building types and uses in, 164f, 168deciencies of, 164

implementation incentives for repair, 163

implementation protocol for repair, 173

inll for, 165f, 168open and civic spaces denition in repair, 171

parking, 164f, 170

redevelopment options, 175f

repair, 163f transformed into town centers, 165–71, 165f–166f, 174

urban indicators, quantitative comparison of, 20f

zoning for, 172, 172f

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). See TransitBus transit. See Transit

Campuses

corporate, 14f, 177, 177f

university, 191–92, 196urban, 195f–196f

See also Medical campuses; Suburban campuses

Civic spaces, 59, 146f

See also specic scales of repair

Climate change, and smart growth policies, 15

Clustering, 63, 66f, 68, 72–73, 72f Coastal sector repair and inll application, 50–51, 51f

Collectors, 224–25, 232, 232f

Commercial blocks, 255, 255f

Commercial corridors, 159f, 160, 160f Commercial megablocks, 236–37, 237f

Commercial nodes, 38–39

Commercial overdevelopment, 14

Commercial sprawl, 2f Commercial strips, 151–61

overview, 151–52

building types and uses in, 153f, 156

deciencies of, 151, 153existing vs. interventions, 154f

implementation incentives for repair, 152


nodal development patterns in, 159rebuilding scenarios, 161, 161f

repair, 151f

transformation into nodal transit boulevard, 154–57

Commercial types, 38f Communities and community-scale repair, 55–62

overview, 55–56

architectural standards, 59

building types and uses, 57–58

implementation incentives for, 60–61implementation protocols for, 61

lifelong, 105

management techniques, 59–60

marketing, 60site feasibility analysis in, 56–57

sprawl repair method for, 26f

sprawl vs. complete, 1f

stormwater and conservation standards, 57

urban design, 27–28

See also Business parks; Commercial strips; Complete

communities; Edge cities; Multifamily subdivisions; Ruralsubdivisions; Shopping centers; Single-family subdivisions;

Suburban campuses

Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), 61

Community gardens, 59, 86, 102, 139, 146f, 167f, 201

Complete communitiesBaby Boomers and demand for, 12

benets of and demand for, 3–4

community-scale repair and, 55

dened by agricultural greenbelts, 49f elements of, 21, 21f

in regional-scale sprawl repair, 17

sprawl compared to, 1, 1f, 2f

transformation to, 18Connectivity, 24f, 57, 84, 252–54

Conservation easements, 63

Convenience centers, 111

Convenience stores, 111Corporate campuses, 14f, 177, 177f

Cul-de-sacs, 228, 252–54

Decontamination and remediation procedures, 57Demographic analyses, in site feasibility analysis, 56

Demographic and economic projections, 33–34

Detroit, 49

Development, new, vs. redevelopment, 277Devolution, 9, 45f, 49, 49f

Direct process of sprawl repair, 18, 18f

Domains of sprawl repair, 36, 36f

Downtown Kendall, Miami-Dade, Florida, 8, 9f

Drive-through structures, 126f–127f, 262–63, 263f

Edge cities, 179–91



overview, 179benets of repair, 180

building types and uses, 185

deciencies, 181

implementation incentives for repair, 179–80land use in, 186

parking structures in, 187

public spaces in repair, 188

repair around a functioning mall, 189, 189f roundabouts, 184, 184f, 186

sprawl repair in, 9f

as targets for urbanization, 34

transformation into portion of complete community, 184transformation into regional urban core, 182–89, 182f–183f

transformation into transit-oriented regional center, 8

Eminent domain, 56, 76

Employment decentralization, 14Energy costs, and economics of sprawl, 12

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG), 61

Environmental performance, in void analysis, 47

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 15Exurban developments, 14–15

Farmland preservation, 49f, 63f, 72–73, 72f

Federal government, and sprawl repair, 15

Federal grants, as implementation incentive, 61Financial viability, in void analysis, 47–48

Flag lots, 68

Florida Sprawl Repair Act, 31

Food production, local, 27


Forest Hills, New York, 5f

Form-based codes, 15, 28See also specic scales of repair

Freeways, 220–21

Garden apartment subdivisions, 98

Gas stations, 264–65, 265f Gated communities, 10

General Growth Properties, 14

Georgia, special-purpose local-option sales tax (SPLOST), 61

Golf coursesdeciencies of, 206

defunct, 206f

inll for, 205

transformation into neighborhood center, 207–9, 207f–209f

urbanization of, 210Green buildings and green urbanism in new town center, 174f

Green building standards, 47

Green networks, 43

Greyelds, 7, 11f, 13f, 57, 125Growth options, 3–4

Hamlets, 65–70, 65f, 70f, 72f

Homeowners’ associations, 76, 88Housing market shifts, 12

Implementation protocols, 61


Implementation techniques, in sprawl repair method, 31

Indirect process of sprawl repair, 18, 18f Inll

with apartment villas, 93f, 246–47, 247f

in coastal sector repair, 50–51, 50f

for corporate campuses, 177, 177f for edge cities, 179

for golf courses, 205

in Legacy Town Center, 14f

for medical campuses, 202with mews, 242–43, 243f

with outbuildings and backbuildings, 257f

with senior courtyard housing, 272, 272f–273f

in shopping mall repair, 132, 132f for suburban business parks, 165f, 168

with townhouses, 58, 244–45, 245f

Infrastructure

cost savings with sprawl repair, 18, 19, 69f costs of, 1

future networks, prioritized, 41f

implementation incentives for repair, 31, 60–61

and regional-scale repair, 33in rural subdivision repair, 69

shrinking cities initiative and, 8

in sprawl developments, 12, 64f

sprawl repair priorities, 40–41in void analysis, 47

Interchanges, 221

Intersections

arterial, 223collector, 225

density of, in new town center, 144f

local, 227



in neighborhood centers, 219f in rural subdivisions, 66f, 68, 73f

Interstate highway system, 6–7

Job creation potential, in site feasibility analysis, 56–57Jobs, as driver behind sprawl repair, 33–34

Lakes, as private vs. public amenity, 97f

Land banks, 58

Land-development regulations, and sprawl, 10Land uses

in edge cities, 186

in neighborhood vs. sprawl model, 24f

in sprawl areas, 10

See also Underutilized land and parking lotsLEED Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND), 60

Legacy Town Center, Plano, Texas, 14f

Legacy view corridors, 63

Levittown, New York, 6–7, 6f Lifelong communities, 105

Lifestyle centers, 112

Light rail. See Transit

Liner buildings, 58, 98f, 117f, 168f, 185, 185f, 197f, 263f Live-work units, 58

Main streets

creation of, at shopping mall, 149incorporation of existing big boxes on, 127f

management of, in community-scale repair, 60

new, on urban campuses, 202f

repair, 231, 231f Marketing studies, in site feasibility analysis, 56

Mashpee Commons, Massachusetts, 3f, 7, 8f, 125

McMansion block densication, 241–47

overview, 241, 241f

apartment villa inll, 246–47, 247f mews unit inll, 242–43, 243f

townhouse inll, 244–45, 245f

McMansions, 258–59, 259f

Medical campuses, 202–3, 202f–203f Megablocks, suburban, 236–37, 237f

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), 35

Mews units, 242

Millennials, 12, 33–34Model ordinances, in community-scale repair, 59

Mortgage meltdown of 2008, 1

Multifamily housing, 274, 274f

Multifamily subdivisions, 93–109

age-restricted complex, transformation into lifelongcommunity, 105–6, 105f

building types and uses in, 98, 98f

deciencies, 94

implementation incentives for repair, 93implementation protocols for repair, 104

layout of, 99

parking structures in, 100

redevelopment of, 106–7, 106f–107f townhouse enclave redevelopment, 108–9, 108f

transformation into town center, 95f–96f, 97, 97f

underutilized land and parking lots in, 102

zoning for, 103f

Natural boundaries, in regional-scale repair, 33f, 34

Neighborhood centers

dened, 25intersections in, 219f

public squares as entry to, 82f

as shopping center, 111

transformation of defunct golf course into, 207–9, 207f–209f

transformation of single-family subdivision into, 80–86, 80f–81f Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), 61

Neighborhood structure

absence of, in suburbia, 10

in coastal sector repair, 50–51repair by contraction and densication, 49f

in void analysis, 46–47

Neighborhood unit model, 22–23, 23f, 24f–25f

New Urbanist projects, 48Nodal development patterns, 159

Nodal transit boulevards, 154–57

Occupant densities, 19Office building conversions, 176f

Office parks. See Business parks

Open spaces

dened,58- 59management of, in sprawl areas, 10

in multifamily subdivisions, 94f

in shopping center repair, 120

sprawl type, 205–15Ownership structure survey, in site feasibility analysis, 56

Ownership transfers, roads, 229



Packaged sewer service, as clustering tool, 63Parking, on-site requirements in sprawl areas, 10

Parking lots

conversion to pedestrian-friendly streets, 176f

as land banks, 58reclaiming a public square from, 124

strategies for, in sprawl repair, 57


Parking strategies for sprawl repair, 229–30

Parking structuresdesign of, for future conversion, 58

as parking strategy in sprawl repair, 230

state and federal funding for, 60


Pedestrian and bicycle connectivity, 253Pedestrian sheds

in coastal sector repair, 50–51, 50f

and connected urban fabric, 51f

dened, 27for neighborhoods and town centers, 50f

in sprawl repair method, 27f

and transit stops, 40f, 152

Performance criteria, 60Permitting by right, 60, 63

Phasing sprawl repair, 18, 18f


Playelds, suburban, in new town center, 213–15, 213f–215f

Population growth, and need for sprawl repair, 12Post-war American suburbs, 6–7

Post-war development policies, 22

Power centers, 112

Preservation areas, delineation of, 37, 37f

Pre-war planning methodology, 22Pre-war suburbs, 5

Public spaces

implementation incentives for creation of, 61

See also Civic spaces; Open spaces

Public squares, reclaimed from parking lots, 124f Public transportation strategies, 40

See also Transit

Purchase of Development Rights (PDRs), 43, 63

Railroads, and pre-war suburbs, 5–6Ranch houses, suburban, 260–61, 261f

Real estate investment trusts (REITs), 112

Recycling centers, 269f

Redevelopment vs. new development, 277Regional centers, 111–12

Regional planning, and sustainable growth, 15

Regional-scale repair

public transportation strategies, 40sprawl repair method and, 17, 26f

urban design, 26–27

See also Infrastructure; Sector maps and mapping

Regional-scale sprawl, 50f

Regional-scale sprawl repair, 33–53overview, 33–34

affordable housing in, 48

agricultural land preservation in, 49f

coastal sector repair and inll, 50–51, 51f commercial nodes and employment clusters, 38–39

demographic and economic projections, 33–34

domains of sprawl repair, 36, 36f

implementation incentives, 43infrastructure and, 33

natural boundaries in, 33f, 34

Sprawl Repair Assessment Tool, 45, 45f

sprawl repair priorities, 38-39, 40–41sprawl repair targets, 42, 42f, 46

Transect-based zoning, 47, 51, 51f

Regional urban cores

dened, 25medical campus transformation into, 202f–203f

transformation of edge cities into, 182–89, 182f–183f

Regulatory framework, shifts in, 15

Regulatory techniques, in sprawl repair method, 28–31Religious buildings, 272–73, 273f

Reservation areas, delineation of, 37, 37f

Residential blocks

with cul-de-sacs, 252–54

de-densication, 250–51, 251f densication, 248–49, 249f

Retail industry, and large-scale commercial overdevelopment, 14

Retail types, classied and prioritized for sprawl repair, 39f

Rooftop gardens, 102f, 139f, 146f, 201f, 139f Roundabouts, 184, 184f, 186

Rural boundary model, 34

Rural centers, dened, 25

Rural sprawl, 63–64, 64f, 66f, 72f Rural subdivisions, 63–73

agricultural land preservation, 63f, 72–73, 72f

clustering in repair, 63, 65, 66f, 68, 72f–73f



deciencies, 64greens in repair, 67, 67f, 70


infrastructure in repair, 69, 69f

transformation into hamlet, 65–70, 65f, 70f Rural-to-urban transect, 28–30

Sector maps and mapping, 35–44

assembly of, 44, 44f domains of sprawl repair, 36, 36f, 37, 37f

green networks, 43

and metropolitan planning organizations, 35

sprawl repair targets, 42, 42f of suburbanized county, 35f

Senior courtyard housing, 272, 272f, 273f

Sewer service, packaged, as clustering tool, 63

Shopping centers, 111–27

overview, 111–12benets of repair, 112

big boxes in repair, 117f, 118, 118f, 125

building types and uses, new, 117

deciencies, 113, 113f implementation protocol for repair, 123

intersection repair in, 116f

Mashpee Commons, 3f

open and civic spaces denition in repair, 120parking lots, existing vs. redeveloped, 115f

parking structures in repair, 119

phasing of sprawl repair, 122

transformation into town center, 114, 114f, 124f–125f zoning for, 121, 121f

See also Shopping malls; Strip shopping centers

Shopping malls, 129–49building types and uses, 131f, 135

civic amenities in transformation of, 138, 146f

deciencies, 131

implementation incentives for repair, 130implementation protocol for repair, 147–48

main street creation, 149, 149f

phasing repair, 129f, 141, 141f

public realms in, 133f regional context, 129

repair strategies, 134–35, 134f, 142–46, 142f, 145f

transformation into town center, 132, 132f

underutilized land and parking lots in, 137, 137f urban indicators, quantitative comparison of, 20f

zoning for, 140, 140f

Shrinking cities initiative, 8

Single-family houses, 90

Single-family subdivisions, 75–91overview of, 75

building types and uses, new, 83

civic spaces in repair, 87

connectivity in, 84deciencies of, 77–80, 77f

food production, local, in repair, 86

implementation incentives for repair, 75–76


intervention areas, 78f, 90f intervention outcomes, 79f

open and civic spaces denition in repair, 85

pedestrian sheds in, 78

phasing in repair, 88public spaces in, 79, 82, 82f

replacement of single-family houses with attached

buildings, 90–91

thoroughfares in, 79 Transect-based zoning in, 87

transformation into mixed-use town center, 91, 91f

transformation into neighborhood center, 80–86, 80f–81f

urban indicators, quantitative comparison of, 19f Site feasibility analysis, in community-scale repair, 56–57

Slab and tower blocks, 238–40, 239f–240f

SmartCode, 15, 28–30

Smart growth and New Urbanist projects, economic successof, 48

Solar technologies, in shopping mall transformation, 146f

Sound walls, energy-producing, 175f

Special-purpose sales taxes, 61Sprawl

characteristics of, 1, 57

deciencies of, 22f

reclamation of, through redevelopment, 1–2Sprawl model

commercial strips in, 25

compared to neighborhood unit model, 23, 23f–24f, 25f

Sprawl repairbenets of, 25, 55–56

challenges to, 10–11

dened, 5–9

domain determination, 36, 36f implementation incentives for, 31, 61



intervention scales, 22, 26f opportunities presented by, 12–15

priorities for, 9

and quality of life, 18f

target identication, 17f See also specic scales of repair

Sprawl Repair Assessment Tool, 27, 45, 45f

Sprawl Repair Districts, 61

Sprawl repair methodology, 17, 25, 56

Sprawl repair models, 12–14Sprawl Repair Module, SmartCode, 28–31

Sprawl repair sectors, 36

Sprawl repair strategies, 17–18

Sprawl repair targets, 42, 42f, 46, 57Sprawl Repair Void Analysis, 27, 46–48, 56

State grants, as implementation incentive, 61

State tax credits for workforce housing, 61

Statewide planning practices, 15Stormwater and conservation standards, in community-scale

repair, 57

Stormwater practices, 43

Streetcars, and pre-war suburbs, 5–6Strip shopping centers

in building-scale repair, 268–69, 269f

Mashpee Commons, 8f

thoroughfare repair, 218urbanization of highway-facing, 126–27, 126f–127f

Suburban business parks. See Business parks

Suburban campuses, 191–203

axial relationships in, 192, 194, 194f, 196f, 200, 200f in community-scale repair, 191–92, 191f

deciencies, 193, 193f

food production, local, in repair, 201

medical, 202–3, 202f–203f parking rationalization, 199

thoroughfare connection, 198

transformation into urban campus, 194–97

underutilized land and parking lots, 195f

Suburban playelds, in new town center, 213–15, 213f–215f Suburbs

expansion of, in demographic and economic projections, 33

generations of, 5

history and consequences of, 2neighborhood structure lacking in, 10

population of, in 21st-century, 12

post-war, 6–7, 6f

pre-war, 5–6, 5f third-generation, 7–8, 7f

Supermarket repair, 275, 275f

Tax Increment Financing (TIF), 60–61

Tax reform Act of 1986, 112 Thoroughfares and parking repair, 217–33

overview, 217–18

in American urban planning, 217

community-scale repair standards, 60connectivity and traffic pattern analysis, 57

local, 226–27

in new town center, 144f

regional-scale conception of, 219in regional-scale sprawl repair, 36

in sprawl model, 219

transformation of, 218f

See also Parking lots; specic scales of repair

Town centersdened, 25

green buildings and green urbanism in, 174f

greyelds transformed into, 125

inll in, 14f intersections, density of, 144f

main street of mixed-use buildings, 149f

parking lots transformed into, 124f

transit-oriented, 96f, 143f, 165f–166f, 174


Townhousesin community-scale repair, 58

enclaves, 108–9, 108f

inll with, 244–45, 245f

Traffic pattern analysis, 57 Transect, the (rural-to-urban transect), 28–31

in assessing environmental performance, 47

in traditional urbanism vs. sprawl, 29f–30f

zones, 29–31 Transect-based zoning, 51, 51f, 87


Transfer of Development Rights (TDR), 43, 43f, 60, 63

Transit

business park repair and, 174–76, 174f and new town center organization, 143f

prioritized for sprawl repair, 40–41, 41f

public squares organized around, 167f

at regional scale, 19



state and federal funding for, 60town centers and, 165f–166f, 174


Transit-oriented nodes, 152, 154–57

Transit-oriented regional centers, 8 Transit-oriented urban cores, 13f, 189f

Transportation, in sprawl areas, 10

Travel distances, in neighborhood vs. sprawl model, 25f

Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, Florida, 15 Trip length, in neighborhood vs. sprawl model, 24f

Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, 7f

Underutilized land and parking lots

business parks, 163commercial strips, 152–53, 153f, 157f

drive-throughs, 262

edge cities, 179

golf courses, 206, 206f, 210f, 212greyelds, 11f

religious buildings, 272, 272f

residential blocks with cul-de-sacs, 252

shopping centers, 113, 113f, 119shopping malls, 131, 131f, 137, 137f

slab and tower blocks, 238, 238f

suburban campuses, 195f, 199, 199f

suburban collectors, 232supermarkets, 275, 275f

as universal defect in sprawl, 58

University campus design, 191–92

Up-zoning, 28, 63Urban agriculture, 27

See also Food production, local; specic scales of repair

Urban boundary model, 34Urban campuses, 195f, 196, 196f

Urban design techniques in sprawl repair method, 26–28

Urban fabric

connected, pedestrian sheds in, 51f in neighborhood model vs. sprawl model, 24f

Urban indicators, before and after sprawl repair, 19

Urbanism, traditional, 29f, 30, 30f

Urbanization strategies. See specic scales of repair

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 15U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), 15

Utilities, in void analysis, 47

Vesting, of sprawl repair targets, 46

Village, rural, 15

Villages, agricultural, 145Villages, dened, 65

Void analysis, 27, 46–48, 56

Walkable environments, 58, 221Watershed restoration, 43

Workforce housing, 48, 58, 61

Sprawl Repair Manual

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