One of the basic tenets of new

One of the basic tenets of new urbanist planning is to establish an open street grid that promotes the free flow of pedestrian and automobile traffic. But what if a closed street has become a haven for pedestrians? Should the need for interconnectivity outweigh residents’ desire to have some car-free streets? The dilemma is creating controversy in downtown Sacramento, where Post Properties plans to build Capitol Park, a four-story apartment complex with 275 units. The property is located on a super block, which Post wants to make permeable by reopening a street. Residents in nearby highrise apartments have protested the plan, arguing that the pedestrian mews and green space make their homes livable. Art Lomenick, senior executive vice president in Post’s Dallas office, says the developer is meeting with residents and listening to their needs. “We recognize that residents would hate to see this street flooded with cars,” he says. Kevin Kelly, a developer who sold his share in Civano, a Tucson new urbanist project earlier this year, now has a new Arizona project north of Nogales, Arizona. Kelly was hired by developers Art Martori, Jerry Dixon and Al Wareing to revive a 5,200 acre conventional development called Kino Springs, the original developer of which went bankrupt. The new project will be called Estancia Yerba Buena. In the mountainous West, where land is plentiful and people scarce, the New Urbanism has found little application to date. In Idaho, however, the Village at Hidden Springs in Ada County outside Boise is the first attempt at building a walkable town center in a rural setting. Located on 40 acres of level valley land, the Village has an interconnected street grid, neighborhood retail and civic buildings, and about half of the 92 homes are serviced by alleys. The town center stands in contrast to the rest of the 1,700 acre Hidden Springs development, which is more conventionally designed. New urbanist ideas are also taking hold in Boise itself. The city has passed a comprehensive plan that makes experimenting with alternative development patterns easier for developers. New zoning ordinances allow modular lotting, so neighborhoods can be divided into smaller lots. The ordinances also permit buildings with a mix of residential and retail uses, as well as accessory units over garages. Landscape architect David Yocca and his firm Conservation Design Forum of Elmhurst, Illinois, have been hired to design a new urbanist community on an 831-acre site in the small town of Plano, about 50 miles from downtown Chicago. Yocca has previously worked on the TNDs Mill Creek Village in Geneva and Coffee Creek Center in Chesterton, Indiana. Plans call for 2,500 single-family homes, duplexes, and townhouses on the Plano property. Plans for Bloomfield Park have been formally submitted to the planning department in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. The township has a building height restriction of 32 feet in its master plan, but developer Harbor Cos. proposes to build office buildings as high as 20 stories. According to Planning Director David Payne, approval of the 80-acre new urbanist project may require changing the text of the township’s master plan. St. Joe Company broke ground in September on Southwood, a 3,200- acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) project near Tallahassee, Florida. David Weekly Homes is the latest builder to join neotraditional Avalon Park in east Orlando, Florida. Weekly purchased 90 home sites in the fast-selling project, and will offer homes ranging from $200,000 to $350,000. Weekly is already building in at least three new urbanist developments: Celebration, also in the Orlando region: Daniel Island in Charleston, South Carolina; and Clear Springs in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Another builder, Ryland Homes, recently started building townhomes, which will start at just under $100,000, in the town center of Avalon Park. The town center has 10,000 square feet of retail space built, and developer Beat Kahli reports that an additional 30,000 square feet of shops and restaurants will soon get underway. The third phase of Heritage at Freemason Harbour, an infill development in downtown Norfolk, Virginia, was recently completed. The project now has 184 apartments and a one-block main street, which includes a 3,000 square foot grocery store. Developed by the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, Heritage at Freemason Harbour is just a few minutes walk from downtown. The apartments take the visual form of townhomes, with entrances on the street. Parking is in the center of blocks. Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) has recently undertaken several new urbanist retrofits of conventional communities already under construction. In the firm’s first foray inside the Charlotte, North Carolina, city limits, DPZ conducted a charrette in September for a town center in the Steel Creek community. Developer Cambridge Partners had already begun building homes in accordance with a hybrid new urbanist plan. In Richland County, South Carolina, a town center and retrofitted neighborhood plans were designed in Lake Carolina, currently under construction as a 600-acre “quintessential, conventional planned unit development with homes separated into price point pods,” according to Tom Low of DPZ. A $115 million federal Hope VI project , the New East Capitol, is moving forward in Washington, DC. The project will consist of the demolition of 1,100 public housing units and construction of a mixed-income community of 555 units, a neighborhood retail center, and community and day-care facilities. The lead architects are Sorg and Associates, who have designed new urbanist infill projects in DC. Construction is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2002. Miramar, Florida, is planning a $130 million, 54-acre town center designed by Torti Gallas & Partners/CHK. The project includes a new city hall, cultural arts center, and library, in addition to 225 apartments, 290,000 square feet of office space and 115,000 square feet of shops. Ellen Dunham-Jones was hired to direct the architecture program at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Dunham-Jones, a charter member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, is leaving her position as associate professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of her goals is to involve Georgia Tech architecture students and faculty more directly in smart growth issues and projects. u