NextCity.org brings to light what many urban residents already realize. Planners need to be worrying about creating the most out of what a city has, instead of chasing after the next big thing. Some of this comes in the form of transportation efficient designs, some in re-purposed buildings similar to the loft conversions of industrial warehouses to high end residential units. It’s not shocking the charge for tactical urbanism is being led by millennials and age in place retirees, both being demographics sensitive to walkability and car-free living.
It’s not shocking the charge for tactical urbanism is being led by millennials and age in place retirees, both being demographics sensitive to walkability and car-free living. That same dynamic is what is driving much of redevelopment within Tysons and Arlington. It’s also logical considering city residents don’t gain much from mega-projects and often are more concerned about new parks, pedestrian access, and mixed use retrofits that provide their neighborhood with things to do.
Tactical urbanism combines forces with amateur gardening in this L.A. initiative as reported by HyperAllergic.com. Small bits of isolated lawn are being transformed into an organic form of public art by simply sowing wildflower seeds; simple, cheap, and easy for anyone to do.
I’m sure someone in the permits office might flip out if wildflowers were to begin popping up everywhere in Tysons, but the real question would be why? There was this incident between VDOT permits and guerrilla clean up citizens came to heads about something as simple as doing VDOT’s job for it, and maintaining Right of Way.
Who know that keeping children from getting Tetanus or avoiding property blight could be so controversial? I for one would like to see a few areas of Tysons planted with something more than shrub brush or grass, but if they start popping up… it wasn’t me.
An outrageous concept on theVerge.com by Oxo Architecture, proposes inverted high-rises utilizing the massive columns of the Autostrata’s many bridges. The concept is madness to put it lightly, because of the ability to simply build directly adjacent in the Calabrian countryside… after all country side real estate is still relatively affordable in this region of Italy. It is however a beautiful design which creates a discussion on the role of infrastructure and private development… literally.
The concept does accomplish one thing, it forces us to recognize the wasted money that goes into non-integrated design. In other words, when you create an expensive infrastructure for a singular purpose, you miss out on the opportunity to share the cost for multiple purposes. Whether it is a combined road and rail bridge, or using massive concrete piers as building components to reduce structural costs, the concept is as simple as “killing two birds with one stone”.
Unfortunately, by approaching it as a retrofit, as Oxo has done, the costs versus benefit is completely out of whack. In order for multi-purpose design to be cost effective and sensible, it needs to be incorporated early on, so that a minor increase in structural cost can be absorbed by the secondary use. Coming back through and upgrading a road bridge to carry rail traffic, for instance, costs nearly the same as building a new bridge all together.