Tag: smart growth
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Yes, Virginia, the Millennials’ Shift from Burbs to Downtowns is Real
by James A. Bacon The debate still rages over the extent to which young Americans, especially members of the Millennial generation, are moving back to the urban core. Data published by Luke Juday on the StatChat blog should settle that question once and for all. The only questions worth pondering is why they are moving,…
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Malleable
This story was originally published in Henrico Monthly. Willow Lawn returned to its roots. Cloverleaf was torn down. So what will become of Regency Square? By James A. Bacon As a teenager growing up in rural Hanover County, Andrew Moore remembers Regency Square Mall in Henrico as the place to go. He played the trumpet in…
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A Radical Notion: Paying for Onstreet Parking in Cville
Irony time: Virginia soon may get a test in market-based parking in… the People’s Republic of Charlottesville. The city would start charging for 800 on-street parking spaces downtown, now free, and install a system of smart traffic meters under a proposal advanced by Mark Brown, new owner of the Charlottesville Parking Center (CPC). The city reverted to a…
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Potomac Yard Metro: a Financing Model for Mass Transit
by James A. Bacon The state will help finance a new Metro station in Alexandria through a $50 million loan from the Virginia Transportation Infrastructure Bank approved by the Commonwealth Transportation Board earlier this week. The loan is a key piece of financing for the station, which is expected to cost between $209 million and $268…
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Henrico Still Building Schlock
by James A. Bacon The developer of the West Broad Marketplace, which will bring a Wegmans grocery store and outdoor gear retailer Cabela’s to western Henrico County, promises Richmonders a shopping treat that “I don’t think you’ve experienced before.” That may be true. Unfortunately, Jack Waghorn, president of Vienna-based NVRetail, will replicate the experience of driving…
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No Wegmans for Tysons… Too Bad for Wegmans
Can Tysons have its cake and eat it, too? Perhaps not, at least if the cake is baked in a Wegmans Food Market bakery. Discussions to bring the Rochester, N.Y.-based grocery chain to a transit-oriented development around the McLean Metro station have ended in frustration, reports the Washington Post. CityLine Partners, developer of Scotts Run Station…
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The Market Speaks, and It Likes Reston Town Center
Reston Town Center got a half-century head start in creating the kind of community where enterprises want to do business in the 21st-century knowledge economy. The original developers were planning for and building walkable, mixed-use development before walkable, mixed-use development was cool. And today property owners are reaping the benefits. According to Cushman/Wakefield, offices in…
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Which Calls for More Regulation, Sprawl or Smart Growth?
by James A. Bacon One of the more potent criticisms of the Smart Growth movement is that smart growthers implement policies that restrict development, create housing shortages and make housing unaffordable for the poor and working class. The critics present ample evidence that metro regions with the tightest restrictions on development and re-development have higher…
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Loudoun’s Broken Development Model
by James A. Bacon Office workers need less space than they once did. Over the years businesses’ space needs per office employee have shrunk from approximately 250 square feet to less than 190 square feet, says Ben Keddie, vice president of Coldwell Banker Commercial Elite, as quoted in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star. Office space is expensive, and…
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Burbs Beware: Office Jobs Moving Back to D.C.
Not only are Millennials migrating to the Washington metropolitan region’s urban core, it seems that businesses are, too, in a reversal of the decades-long trend of businesses moving out of the central city to outlying counties. Vacancy rates have risen in Washington, D.C., due to the contraction of legal services and government contracting tied to federal…
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Building Connectivity in Suburbia
Sunnyvale, Calif., wants to reinvent a 60’s-era industrial office park as an innovation district. It’s making progress but suburban sprawl is not an easy habit to break.
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The Chuck and Joe Traveling Municipal Salvation Show
Chuck Marohn and Joe Minicozzi, principals with Strong Towns and Urban3 respectively, travel the country telling cities, towns and counties how to build better communities while remaining fiscally solvent. I have borrowed heavily from both Chuck and Joe in my writing about land use, transportation and community building, and it’s reassuring to see that as their own thinking…
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The Movement Grows
Political and philosophical conservatives in the United States are far more likely to live in rural areas or suburbs than in the city — and that augurs ill for the conservative movement and for America, observes Michael Hendrix, in the inaugural guest blog post in a new blog, “New Urbs.” Cities are the centers of wealth…
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How Planners Can Rescue Virginia from the Fiscal Abyss
This is a copy of a speech that I presented to the Virginia Chapter of the American Planners Association Monday, with extemporaneous amendments and digressions deleted. — JAB Thank you very much, it’s a pleasure to be here. Urban planning is a fascinating discipline. As my old friend Ed Risse likes to say, urban planning isn’t…
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How Charlotte Stays Economically Competitive
Envision Charlotte, a public-private partnership in Charlotte, N.C., has set the goal of reducing energy consumption in the city center by 20%. The initiative has achieved 8.4% savings so far, saving businesses in the central business district an estimated $10 million or more, Envision Charlotte and Duke Energy announced last week. “We have cracked the…