Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Lifestyle centers have been a favorite of high end developers since the turn of the 21st century. A respectable answer to America’s dying mall problem. However what I have noticed is recently many have evolved into more grand mixed-use projects far beyond just shopping. The more ambitious centers now feature blocks of walkable communities with large gathering spaces, grocery stores, dining, high end apartments, for-sale town homes, and yes, some have even introduced public transit. These projects have become what I refer to as simulated urbanism in suburbia. A few examples include:
Santana Row in San Jose, CA
Mercato in Naples, FL
Arsenal Yards in Watertown, MA
The Avalon in Alpharetta, GA
King of Prussia Town Center in King of Prussia, PA
CF Shops at Don Mills in Toronto, ON
Perhaps the most ambitious example I can think of is the Reston Town Center in Northern Virginia. This project 40 minutes outside of Washington, D.C. was constructed from literally nothing. Empty undeveloped land near Dulles Airport is now the site of everything I referenced above, as well as multiple mid-rise office buildings, hotels and a line on the D.C. Metro set to open imminently. All serving a permanent population of over 20,000. This suburban development has morphed into a small city in its own right. Quite impressive.
So what does all of this mean? I propose the following questions:
Does the success of these developments suggest Americans genuinely do prefer the convenience of an urban lifestyle or are they more of a novelty?
If the former, why do demographic trends still overwhelmingly favor more sprawl and outward migration towards suburbia for the foreseeable future?
Are our major cities too doomed by crime, homelessness, pollution, affordability and other negative social factors to win the urban vs. suburban culture war?
Will more of these simulated urban centers continue to be built and at the expense of their nearest downtown core?
My conclusion is that most Americans would actually prefer to live in more historic, denser, walkable, eclectic city neighborhoods, but are overwhelmingly deterred from doing so by socioeconomic factors.
Reston Town Center has been around since 1990. Reston itself was founded in the early 1960s at about the same time as Columbia in Maryland (actually a couple years earlier). Both were planned communities that aimed to merge residential and commercial growth in the same area.
I am not sure why San Jose is included in this group. It’s the 10th largest city in the US and the largest city in the Bay Area, so I don’t think you can call it a suburb. It’s also insanely expensive and conveniently located near tons of employers, so yeah, people are going to live there. SR is also right next to Valley Fair and not like a totally separate destination as you have in other areas.
I have never considered a true city just to be the downtown core. I’m in Chicagoland and these days there is more of what I want to see in Lincoln park than elsewhere, which is not downtown. It’s a good one-stop area for furniture shopping and for some other trendier brands that are more online than in brick and mortar- Outdoor Voices, Lively, Allbirds, Rothy’s, etc… The suburban equivalent is Oak Brook, which is continuing to grow. It recently got a fancy Lifetime gym, already has several hotels, and it seems like it has gotten more apartment options since I moved into the general area 4.5 years ago. When I was in Jacksonville, the Town Center, which was more in the outskirts near my office, was still growing like crazy.
I am not sure why San Jose is included in this group. It’s the 10th largest city in the US and the largest city in the Bay Area, so I don’t think you can call it a suburb. It’s also insanely expensive and conveniently located near tons of employers, so yeah, people are going to live there. SR is also right next to Valley Fair and not like a totally separate destination as you have in other areas.
I have never considered a true city just to be the downtown core. I’m in Chicagoland and these days there is more of what I want to see in Lincoln park than elsewhere, which is not downtown. It’s a good one-stop area for furniture shopping and for some other trendier brands that are more online than in brick and mortar- Outdoor Voices, Lively, Allbirds, Rothy’s, etc… The suburban equivalent is Oak Brook, which is continuing to grow. It recently got a fancy Lifetime gym, already has several hotels, and it seems like it has gotten more apartment options since I moved into the general area 4.5 years ago. When I was in Jacksonville, the Town Center, which was more in the outskirts near my office, was still growing like crazy.
I think that most cities over a certain size have suburban areas within city limits. I think that it's better to evaluate an area's characteristics rather than what government demarcation it may exist within.
... Current obstacles to a mixed use urban / suburban format is usually the government, via SFH zoning, and building codes. Throw in financial obstacles from lenders unwilling to underwrite "unusual" construction, and you wind up with dichotomy between sprawl and super dense construction.
... Frankly, if the "conspiracy" had not eradicated most of America's urban and interurban rail, those "old fashioned" compact towns and cities, served by rail, with mixed use development would have not been abandoned, in favor of land greedy automobile centric development.
... Ex: My old hometown had an "odd" street width - as if they had one extra lane. Only later did I learn that the middle of the road was reserved for a single streetcar track.
I think that most cities over a certain size have suburban areas within city limits. I think that it's better to evaluate an area's characteristics rather than what government demarcation it may exist within.
This was my take as well. I thought about not including San Jose, but that part of the city west of I-880 is very low density with a 6 lane boulevard cutting through before you’re suddenly in this urban oasis at Santana Row.
The other poster made a good point about Reston Town Center being a planned community, although most of the very urban-minded development occurred in the last 10-15 years or so. When I first visited the area in 2007 it was a minuscule compared to today. The surface lot that I parked in is now a high rise. It’s kind of amazing how fast they built out the center.
I’m sure there are many more of these developments nationwide that I haven’t heard of. I know Tysons’s Corner has a version. It seems the higher end suburban communities of today are hungry for walkable density.
I use the term "Instant Urbanism" to describe the phenomenon you're talking about — and frankly, King of Prussia Town Center is an outstanding example of the "urban" part of Instant Urbanism, as its residential component consists overwhelmingly of mid-rise, 8- to 12-story apartment buildings.
Santana Row represents the dusting-off of one of those lessons we learned way back at the dawn of the Auto Age but discarded after World War II: it's the physical descendant of Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, the nation's oldest planned shopping center (begun in 1921). (BTW, Joel Garreau, the former Washington Post reporter who coined the phrase "edge city," classes the Country Club Plaza area in KC — which lies within the pre-World War II city limits — as an edge city.)
I think the reason many still consider San Jose a "suburb" is because it came to its status as the third "core city" of the San Francisco Bay Area only recently, after Silicon Valley became the epicenter of the U.S. computing industry. Recall that the 1960s pop song about the city referred to it as a more tranquil alternative to California's big cities, especially LA.
And yes, I do think that, despite the continued dominance of autocentric, monocultural sprawl, I think there is a growing desire among suburbanites for living in places that are a little less "sub" and a little more "urban." However, those cities whose suburbs grew along railroad lines, like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston, already have many such communities consisting of walkable small-townish downtowns clustered around the train station and a zone of pedestrian-friendly residential development either wholly or partly surrounding them.
Reston Town Center has been around since 1990. Reston itself was founded in the early 1960s at about the same time as Columbia in Maryland (actually a couple years earlier). Both were planned communities that aimed to merge residential and commercial growth in the same area.
Yeah, but funny that Columbia stays quite suburban. Maybe they should tear down the mall and put grid pattern in to make that "Town Center" truly simulated urban (The mall itself is doing good, though, so I don't see that happening).
Quote:
Originally Posted by 585WNY
This was my take as well. I thought about not including San Jose, but that part of the city west of I-880 is very low density with a 6 lane boulevard cutting through before you’re suddenly in this urban oasis at Santana Row.
The other poster made a good point about Reston Town Center being a planned community, although most of the very urban-minded development occurred in the last 10-15 years or so. When I first visited the area in 2007 it was a minuscule compared to today. The surface lot that I parked in is now a high rise. It’s kind of amazing how fast they built out the center.
I’m sure there are many more of these developments nationwide that I haven’t heard of. I know Tysons’s Corner has a version. It seems the higher end suburban communities of today are hungry for walkable density.
Tysons itself is trying to "urbanize" itself to be more walkable, and the area west of Tysons Galleria east of Greensboro Station is being built to be more mixed-use. Most of Tysons is still not all that walkable, though...
Either way, DMV definitely love those mixed-use development. Just in NOVA:
- Mosaic District in Merrifield, near Tysons
- The aforementioned Reston
- "One Loudoun" development in Ashburn
MoCo is similar, you have areas like Bethesda Row, Pike & Rose, and Rockville Town Center all along MD-355 (which itself from around "North Bethesda" to Rockville is nothing but a gajillion strip malls), and the newer part of Gaithersburg (Kentlands/Lakelands or even Crown) are definitely built with simulated urban living in mind - i.e. an area with shops with apartments above them, follow by a bunch of townhouses and small lot SFHs (again, to simulate "urbanity").
Even within DC they loves these microdistrict - The Wharf and DC CityCenter comes to mind, and well, National Harbor also which is just outside DC line.
=================================
As for popularity - much like how malls were popular back in the days, many of these mixed-use developments are essentially "modern malls" anyway much like how open-air centers replace malls in other part of suburbia. And I do believe that they will stay somewhat popular as long as those developments are far enough from those "undesirable" people. One thing that's hard to tell is whether mixed-use developments like this will truly make an area more desirable (or, well, gentrify the area). In DMV, for example, it remains to be seen whether developments like Largo Town Center (located in PGC just outside the beltway, but surrounding areas is...well...not that great) will be really successful or just have lots of commercial areas seats empty.
I think its just trendy. Developers can get funding.
Younger people loved malls in the 80s. Now they love these things.
Who knows what will be next? Or how long the trend will last. Malls started in the 50s and didn't really start declining until the 90s.
People like convenience and affordability. Most people don't like living on top of other people. So these developments only offer 1 of 3-convenience.
Multifamily housing may be a minority preference, but a minority of 330 million people is still a huge market. 10% of that figure is still more people than live in a number of nations. It's nearly as many people as live in all of Canada.
Apartment buildings — mostly smaller 3- and 4-over-1s (the "1" is a street floor with retail or commercial space) — are going up like crazy in my Philadelphia neighborhood, and Bisnow (one of the leading real estate news publications) reports that demand for rental housing is outstripping supply in Philadelphia right now.
Proximity to other people can be a form of convenience too. That's how ideas get transformed into reality. Most great performances aren't solo efforts. Cities offer serendipity, which the suburbs simply aren't as good at providing, and younger people in particular, I think, understand the value of that quality.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
(The mall itself is doing good, though, so I don't see that happening).
