I S R Incremental Sprawl Repair Working Group

A forum for urban designers, developers, builders, real estate professionals, architects, civil engineers, landscape architects, and citizens to create a tool box for converting commercial sprawl development into functionally balanced, humane, exciting, and uplifting neighborhoods.

Galina's Cul-de-Sac

Trying to respond to this venue rather than the listserv. I think I like the concept of Cottage Community on the corner lot as a viable solution. Those lots tend to be the largest in most Sacs that I see. Question: what is the average dimension for one of these lots and how big do the cottages end up being? Also are there intended to be SRO units in the support facility in the inside or assisted living? How big do the courtyards end up being? I like the parking resolution though it infers a roadway there, and frequently these are just pushed up against another cul-de-sac.

I have seen a good example of a 20' x 20' elderly cottage (might have been 24 x 24) , the front 10 x 20 was living with about 6' of kitchenette, the back contained a handicapped bath with shower and the bedroom, about 10' x 15'. Closet adjacent to the bathroom. This was a generic modular. The plumbing in the kitchen backed up to the bathroom. The kitchen had an apartment sized fridge, 18" dishwasher, sink, microwave. No stove, but she bought an electric frying pan and a toaster for occasional use.

Sara

From the Retrofit Listserv: Aging in Place on a Cul-de-Sac

Maybe we can start with just a small green in the cul-de-sac? One step at a a time. A building may come later. 

Attached is an example from the "original" cul-de-sacs in Welwyn. The buildings around are multifamily and the cul-de-sac is quite large but it is compatible with our current mega cul-de-sacs with the McMansions. A small building can be easily accommodated in the middle.

Welwyn_close5

 

Galina Tachieva | CNU LEED-AP AICP 

Partner 

DPZ | Architects and Town Planners 

 

Aging in Place on a Cul-de-Sac

This is the second installment on the topic of cul-de-sacs, the quintessential elements of sprawl. The first installment proposed a Micro Sprawl Repair using the Complete-the-Neighborhood Module. The Complete-the-Neighborhood Module could be applied to any two or three lots on a cul-de-sac in any subdivision where blighted or foreclosed properties exist, or where the community has decided to upgrade their quality of life by introducing new amenities.

This post discusses the use of the Supportive Living Module to create opportunities for senior living within a single-family subdivision. Aging in place - growing old and retiring in the community where a person lives - is an important issue for baby-boomers who want to lead longer and happier lives. Nursing homes are currently separated from neighborhoods because they are treated as commercial or medical land uses. They suffer from gigantism, similar to other non-residential uses in sprawl such as malls, big-box retailers, and educational, medical or even penitentiary facilities, and they tend to be concentrated in mega-structures. The isolation and large concentrations of patients in these places often lead to depression and alienation, while the long distances preclude regular visits by friends and family.

Cul-de-sacs have become easy targets for criticism and even ridicule by an up-and-coming generation of newly minted urbanites and activists. After all, cul-de-sacs are symbols of a past trend – sprawling far-fetched suburbs, isolated and boring. But do cul-de-sacs truly serve the older generations who were originally drawn to them? Once considered the safest place for children to play and for families to have peace and quiet, cul-de-sacs are becoming problems for the aging population. Far away from everything, they have become islands of isolation and loneliness when an older person can no longer drive. The choices are to move to an all-inclusive senior facility far from town or to a place in the city that is closer to daily needs. But will all seniors be able to afford these choices? Most likely not, as the demand for houses in the exurbs is decreasing. If they are not able to sell their large homes, millions of older suburban residents will be sequestered on their cul-de-sacs.

We must do something about these car-dependent residential subdivisions with cul-de-sacs, built on the metropolitan peripheries, so many of which have been affected by foreclosures and blight. The separation and isolation that once was considered a virtue has now become a problem. Communities must take control of their own destinies. They must challenge their fossilized governing regulations and rebalance their single uses, bringing more flexibility, adaptability, and enterprise to subdivisions and cul-de-sacs.

The Supportive Living Module is in the form of a traditional two- or three-story building where seniors can receive skilled, community-based assistance. The structure can be accommodated on two lots. Because the building is small in size, with six, seven units per floor, it is easy to manage, and its scale is appropriate for the residential subdivision. Its volume can easily blend with the surrounding single-family houses.

If the building is located at an entrance to a subdivision or next to an existing amenity, it is possible to assign its ground floor to mixed uses: a corner store, a daycare, a hairdresser, a post office, or a small diner with a kitchen that could also provide food to the senior residents. (These uses, by the way, are also accommodated in the first module). The upper one or two floors consist of bedrooms for the residents, with common living quarters as well as a caretaker’s suite. 

The second option includes attached single-story cottages for Semi-Independent Living The L-shaped structures form private courtyards, with the interior consisting of a bedroom, a spacious living room, and a kitchenette to be used by the residents or their visitors. A common facility building in the middle contains offices, rooms for medical exams and procedures, and potential living quarters for one or several caretakers, as well as a kitchen to supply meals to the residents. This central building may be connected to the cottages by a corridor to be used on rainy days. There is also common courtyard space between the cottages and the facility building.

 
This semi-independent module will be well integrated within the community and will provide the opportunity for intensive care and assisted living close to family and friends. The strategy is to transition from the mega scale of nursing homes in sprawl to a smaller neighborhood-based scale in which financing, construction, maintenance, and operation can happen in smaller increments, providing jobs close to home and allowing residents to age in place.

Credit: The drawings were developed together with Chris Ritter and Eusebio Azcue and are based on ideas and designs from DPZ’s Lifelong Communities charrette conducted for the Atlanta Regional Commission, in collaboration with Lew Oliver. For more on the topic of urbanism and senior living please read the new book, Livable Communities for Aging Populations: Urban Design for Longevity, by my DPZ colleague, Scott Ball.    

 

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ISR Prototype: Co-Trades Space

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Painter Jocelyn Rahm and furniture reclaimer Robert Rahm are the married partners behind Beam & Anchor, a new warehouse space in Portland that provides workshop space for craftsmen as well as a retail quarter for peddling their made goods.

As the more 'hands on' twin to the techie creative Co-working flex space, the workshop houses room for eight designers, from furniture makers to a leather artisan, an upholsterer, and soap makers. One common denominator is the hand-crafted element, which Jocelyn describes as "not crafty; good design is critical."

Although Beam & Anchor chose to rehab an existing dilapidated warehouse, the message is the same: these types of spaces and tenants are key to areas in transition desiring to become a PLACE. This unit type could be built inexpensively as it is predominately just a shell with a very open floor plan. The shell and open floor plan remain flexible for later improvements.

A Very Brief History of Where We've Been and Where We Are

[I was asked to contribute a guest post to EarthDayNWA showcasing some very simple DIY strategies that an everyday citizen could be involved with. Due to the simple DIY nature of these ideas, the following might lean more to the Tactical Urbanism side than the Incremental Sprawl Repair:]


A Very Brief History of Where We've Been and Where We Are

Today much of the built environment of Northwest Arkansas that we live and work in is a product of the policies and prevailing thoughts of previous generations. The majority of shopping and housing areas we experience have their beginnings in the ‘happy motoring’ days Post WWII, where the automobile became a symbol of individual freedom and success. This, coupled with inexpensive, factory replicable materials and low fuel costs saw the proliferation of single-use housing subdivisions designed with auto-convenience at the forefront. This trend has since continued.

Something happened along the way.  

The biking, walking, and casual socialization environments of the pre-auto days gave way to vast swaths of hot pavement and multi-lane high speed roads. Homes were continually constructed farther and farther away from the goods, services, and entertainment that people required on a weekly basis. This only resulted in further perpetuating the reliance on the automobile. 

After 70 years, this type of experimental development is ultimately proving to be a significant strain on our environmental, social, and economic well-being. It is also taxing on municipal coffers that must pay down the investments into, and maintain, the vast amounts of supporting infrastructure. 

A movement that began 30 years ago with the New Urbanists and Smart Growth advocates, whose design focus is centered around human scaled, pedestrian-friendly environments, has continued to gain traction with an ever widening audience resulting in a generation that now desires more sustainable and livable towns. 

In a time when money is limited and lending is tight, we must look to retrofit and repair that which has already been built. This can prove an unhurried process at the municipal level. Understandably so, the policies of many state highway and local planning / engineering departments can be entrenched in the old way of thinking as it has been the zeitgeist of the past five generations.
 

This has given rise to a new breed of urban thinker. Many community groups, urban activists, friends, and families not wanting to wait on the government to institute change have devised ingenious ways of converting their auto-dominated living and work environments into more safe, humane, beautiful, and sustainable ones.

The following small scale interventions can have a tremendous effect on the area around them and can be done inexpensively and by a small number of people:

Intersection Repair:

 What if all it took to build better neighborhoods was a little paint? Intersection repair reclaims an endlessly repeated but non-convivial fixture of a town and transforms it into a public gathering space.

Intersection_repair_img

Photo credit: grist.org

Guerrilla Crosswalk:

Individuals have taken it upon themselves to enhance pedestrian safety, where it has been neglected, by painting their own crosswalks. 

Guerrilla_crosswalk

Photo credit: weburbanist.com

Reclaim Setback:

Many times the front yard of a home in a subdivision is dominated by a boring utility easement. Simple gestures such as this ‘Little Free Library’ act as a gift to the street by providing interest along someone’s path as well as offering a chance for neighborly socialization.

Setback_library

Photo credit: Washington-Willow Neighborhood Association

Driveway Alternatives:

If a house must have a driveway, then why not like this? Reducing square footage of pavement is aesthetically pleasing and reduces the amount of stormwater runoff and excess heat.

Driveway_alternative

Photo credit: Incremental Sprawl Repair Working Group

 
Neil Heller is an urban designer, amateur astrophysicist, mobile vendor enthusiast, and co-founder of the Incremental Sprawl Repair blog. You can follow sprawl repair ideas on twitter: @incsprawlrepair

 

For additional DIY strategies and ideas:

Incremental Sprawl Repair

Tactical Urbanism 

Publications for an in depth look at the topic:

Sprawl Repair Manual
Retrofitting Suburbia

 

 

 

Sales Tax Revenue per Front Foot

Click here to download:
Sales Tax Revenue per Front Foot.pdf (1.58 MB)
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One of the most pernicious aspects of the sprawl development pattern is that it uses more civic infrastructure resources and transportation spending to accomplish less than that provided by traditional urbanism.  To put it simply, sprawl in incredibly inefficient.  It is the house with R2 walls or the SUV that gets 8 miles per gallon.  Our society must focus on the inherent nature of this inefficiency and work to reform it. It is a clear dollars and cents issue, both for the municipalities that have to find ways to pay for their far-flung infrastructure and for the citizens that pay more to drive through their vast and over-scaled city.

The following examples are from three pairs of businesses in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  The menus of each pair of businesses are identical, the amount of sales is comparable.  The most striking difference is the sales per front foot, or the sales taxes collected per front foot.  It is a clear indicator that the sprawl infrastructure is many times less less efficient than traditional urbanism.

 

Quonset Hut Facade

Frank,

I love the idea of the quonset hut commercial structure. Here is my
favorite quonset hut façade. The building is in Oklahoma City and is
concrete block with steel windows, which makes a very durable, tough, and
authentic building. It fits in very well with the more traditional brick
building beside it. If it had another building on the other side, there
would be no way for a person to know from the outside that the building is
basically a corrugated metal pipe!

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