Appreciate this take. All too often we're arguing over a single, correct, right answer. The reality is there's various different versions of right answers, some that are complementary, some that are contradictory. Rather than waste the effort, it would be better to run lots of experiments and see what works.
Entirely new towns have a bit of a tendency to be soulless and kind of crap, but they don't need to always be like that. And new neighbourhoods / districts can be really good, maybe not always raising the ceiling but at least raising the floor. One of the better examples for that is Docklands in London. It's now about to go through a regeneration of itself.
It would be great if the concept of "co-working" could be expanded to "co-living" (i.e. sleep, work, eat, workout in one small efficient space). I could actually see living in a space like Bell Works in Holmdel NJ, or an office building in lower Manhattan.
My vote is to keep trying to make the existing office space into living/office space. We have proven we can make our homes into offices, is it so inconceivable to imagine our offices being homes? So many NYC high-rises would suddenly become occupied!
During the debate between the only build infill proponents and the advocates of build infill _and_ greenfield I noticed that the only infill folks were assuming that greenfield development would be stopped or at least significantly limited. An assumption any developer worth their salt would consider very naive. For the most part the only infill folks were planner, designers, academics, and policy advocates were not actually building anything.
The claim that it will be more efficient to build on existing infrastructure does not hold up when you are in the middle of renovation aged existing sewer, water, and electrical systems while your neighbors are still connected to them.
The celebrated growth boundaries getting filled in with the segregated sprawl pattern are particularly annoying to me.
The pattern we build in for infill or greenfield and the ways in which we manage places we build/rebuild are worthy of rigor and focused attention.
Appreciate this take. All too often we're arguing over a single, correct, right answer. The reality is there's various different versions of right answers, some that are complementary, some that are contradictory. Rather than waste the effort, it would be better to run lots of experiments and see what works.
Entirely new towns have a bit of a tendency to be soulless and kind of crap, but they don't need to always be like that. And new neighbourhoods / districts can be really good, maybe not always raising the ceiling but at least raising the floor. One of the better examples for that is Docklands in London. It's now about to go through a regeneration of itself.
It would be great if the concept of "co-working" could be expanded to "co-living" (i.e. sleep, work, eat, workout in one small efficient space). I could actually see living in a space like Bell Works in Holmdel NJ, or an office building in lower Manhattan.
My vote is to keep trying to make the existing office space into living/office space. We have proven we can make our homes into offices, is it so inconceivable to imagine our offices being homes? So many NYC high-rises would suddenly become occupied!
During the debate between the only build infill proponents and the advocates of build infill _and_ greenfield I noticed that the only infill folks were assuming that greenfield development would be stopped or at least significantly limited. An assumption any developer worth their salt would consider very naive. For the most part the only infill folks were planner, designers, academics, and policy advocates were not actually building anything.
The claim that it will be more efficient to build on existing infrastructure does not hold up when you are in the middle of renovation aged existing sewer, water, and electrical systems while your neighbors are still connected to them.
The celebrated growth boundaries getting filled in with the segregated sprawl pattern are particularly annoying to me.
The pattern we build in for infill or greenfield and the ways in which we manage places we build/rebuild are worthy of rigor and focused attention.
Yes indeed, there’s a whole lot of wishful thinking in then”only build infill” world.
I think it is like continuing to believe in the tooth fairy, but never getting any money in the exchange.