Bad suburban and urban design

[Ted]

No description of a solution? The solution is simple, stop doing what we are doing and begin to rearrange the way we build our human environment. These solutions include:

1. Scrap the zoning codes and replace them with highly visual form-based documents that deal with the creation of the public realm, based on a human scale and not an automobile scale. This includes every aspect of the built environment, including the obligatory landscape and sign ordinances.

2. Build development in a compact, mixed-use, neighborhood-scaled pattern.

3. Begin an aggressive plan to protect viable farm land with some sort of a combination of PDRs, TDRs and coherent regional planning (which by the way does not seem possible with township government entitlements), and of course not running sewer and water to it.

4. Invest in transit....aggressively. That means reallocating funding and focusing on making this a prime objective - instead of building more highways and widening roads.

5. Stop running sewer and water to the hinterlands.

6. Start retrofitting the suburbs by removing single use zoning and wasteful land uses (amongst a whole slew of other things - including homeowners associations)

7. Read the charter for New Urbanism (www.cnu.org). And do what it says.

8. Start an aggressive campaign to reduce (by significant margins) the carbon emmissions by any means possible, including wind turbines, solar power, and any other techno-gizmo that comes along. Stop reliance on fossil fuels.

These are daunting tasks, that can not be done under our current system, especially at the political side. These will be hard and painful and there will be winners and losers, and that is unfortunate. But reality is hard and it will get harder. We can not continue to do what we are doing and we do not have 40 years to fix the problem, we maybe have 10.

[GRDadof3]

And here I was just going to post more photos of ugly buildings.

These are a few buildings in the newer Evergreen Lake office and condo development North of 3 Mile/E. Beltline. I actually had high hopes that this would be done pretty well with maintaining the natural feel of the heavily wooded areas around the lake, which in parts they did. But on a couple of parcels, they totally clear-cut all the trees and flattened it all out, including a vacant parcel right out at the East Beltline that still sits empty to this day (probably cut all the trees down before the tree ordinance went into affect).

This has got to be the blandest ugliest building I've seen in a long time. Was the developer surprised that it sat empty for about two years before finally getting a few tenants? Making something two-toned or three-toned in color does not = flair and style:

It's cousin down the road further into the development. At least on this site they kept many of the trees, to help hide the awful facade:

This setting is like a lot of the buildings on the South side of the lake. Nice preservation of some of the natural features.

This building is actually not bad. Has a lot of sweeping lines and open atrium space on the interior.

The rest are your typical small 90's era office buildings, but at least they are all set back in trees.

But on the earlier comments, let me be the first to say I am totally against mowing down and flattening acreage so that a neat grid pattern can be laid out. Sorry, you lost my vote on that one. I think if you polled most West Michiganians, they'd agree.

[d8alterego]

The original village of Jenison was located in the area between Main Street and I-196. The construction of I-196, its subsequent ramps destroyed some of the original buildings. The buildings that did survive eventually were torn down because of their declining conditions (most were made of wood), their poor location, and changes in the economy. The railroad tracks and Chicago Drive have also proven as barriers and deterrents to growth.

Jenison is more than likely doomed to be autocentric. Its development and layout is not condusive to any type of true urban developments. However, I do believe ordinances could be created to at least make the area as aesthetically pleasing as possible to provide at least some sense of identity.

[AlexPKeaton]

But on the earlier comments, let me be the first to say I am totally against mowing down and flattening acreage so that a neat grid pattern can be laid out. Sorry, you lost my vote on that one. I think if you polled most West Michiganians, they'd agree.

[torgo]

No description of a solution? The solution is simple, stop doing what we are doing and begin to rearrange the way we build our human environment. These solutions include:

1. Scrap the zoning codes and replace them with highly visual form-based documents that deal with the creation of the public realm, based on a human scale and not an automobile scale. This includes every aspect of the built environment, including the obligatory landscape and sign ordinances.

2. Build development in a compact, mixed-use, neighborhood-scaled pattern.

3. Begin an aggressive plan to protect viable farm land with some sort of a combination of PDRs, TDRs and coherent regional planning (which by the way does not seem possible with township government entitlements), and of course not running sewer and water to it.

4. Invest in transit....aggressively. That means reallocating funding and focusing on making this a prime objective - instead of building more highways and widening roads.

5. Stop running sewer and water to the hinterlands.

6. Start retrofitting the suburbs by removing single use zoning and wasteful land uses (amongst a whole slew of other things - including homeowners associations)

7. Read the charter for New Urbanism (www.cnu.org). And do what it says.

8. Start an aggressive campaign to reduce (by significant margins) the carbon emmissions by any means possible, including wind turbines, solar power, and any other techno-gizmo that comes along. Stop reliance on fossil fuels.

[Mark Miller]

And here I was just going to post more photos of ugly buildings.

These are a few buildings in the newer Evergreen Lake office and condo development North of 3 Mile/E. Beltline. I actually had high hopes that this would be done pretty well with maintaining the natural feel of the heavily wooded areas around the lake, which in parts they did. But on a couple of parcels, they totally clear-cut all the trees and flattened it all out, including a vacant parcel right out at the East Beltline that still sits empty to this day (probably cut all the trees down before the tree ordinance went into affect).

This has got to be the blandest ugliest building I've seen in a long time. Was the developer surprised that it sat empty for about two years before finally getting a few tenants? Making something two-toned or three-toned in color does not = flair and style:

It's cousin down the road further into the development. At least on this site they kept many of the trees, to help hide the awful facade:

This setting is like a lot of the buildings on the South side of the lake. Nice preservation of some of the natural features.

This building is actually not bad. Has a lot of sweeping lines and open atrium space on the interior.

The rest are your typical small 90's era office buildings, but at least they are all set back in trees.

But on the earlier comments, let me be the first to say I am totally against mowing down and flattening acreage so that a neat grid pattern can be laid out. Sorry, you lost my vote on that one. I think if you polled most West Michiganians, they'd agree.

[GRDadof3]

So do you advocate saying that it is OK to build crap as long as we simply mask the crap with trees? If we keep the trees it will all be good?

Keeping trees, or creating tree ordinances, or building berms to hide the inappropriate development doesn't change the fact that it is inappropriate and ultimately is not the root issue. It is only a band-aid and until we all come to grips with the real issue - that of inappropriate (unsustainable) development patterns - we are all missing the boat.

This is about not only inappropriate development patterns, but the total misunderstanding of what belongs where and why. It boils down to blurring the line between the rural and the urban, which results in the suburban contexts that people love to blast. The suburban developments are neither rural nor urban, they try to take the best of both worlds but instead achieve mediocrity, confusion and entropy. This is the fault of Americans and our thoughts about the idyllic "cottage in the woods" -- and making everything look like a cottage in the woods, whether it be an office building, a retail building, an apartment or a mcmansion, complete with stuck on field stone over wood stud walls. This thinking nets us what we got, which is kitsche.

We also simply can not blame the developers, as they are in fact only building to the standards that the general public has mandated through apathy, politics, and misinformation.

[Mark Miller]

The solution may be simple, but its execution is anything but. Form-based ordinances do not adapt themselves well to an environment that is a million miles away from the standards they contain. How do you apply a form-based code to, say, Plainfield Ave or 28th Street? Every single lot would become nonconforming, what with their crappy buildings and gigantic parking lots. How does one deal with the practical difficulties that brings up?

Every new development that is built cannot be a compact, mixed-use new urban paradise. It would be nice, but it is not going to happen. Surely, in your line of work, you have been to enough public hearings where the public flies off the handle about "density" to know that a drastic change such as this is not feasible. Furthermore, homes on two acre lots are always going to be around as long as you can easily and cheaply dig a fifty-foot hole and get all of the clean water you want. Eliminating the extension of public utilities into rural areas will not stop sprawl in Western Michigan.

Diverting money from new road or road-widening projects and funneling it into transit is another good idea that doesn't strike me as the least bit practical. Can you imagine the public outcry when the already lousy roads in Kent County are announced to become even worse because we are using it all to fund mass transit? There was a bunch of tightwad opposition to The Rapid asking for chump change last election, do you really think our elected officials (who are elected to represent their constituents) are going to be on board with that, at any level? Sure, all those people may be wrong, but that doesn't really matter.

I am not advocating sprawl, and I agree with pretty much everything you said. But the concept and vision of what you are saying, versus the nuts and bolts that go into implementing such a vision are very different. Criticize Townships and local governments all you want, but at least many of them are actually implementing feasible, enforceable policies that constitute an improvement over what was there before. You may be telling us we need to go to the moon, but at least they are trying to design an engine.

[Mark Miller]

Sorry, but I'm not giving the developers and the CAD jockeys who created these POS's a free pass, just because they are "victims of an auto-dominated society". Suburbs do play a role in modern society, whether we like it or not. Not everyone can and/or wants to live in urban areas, and most of the jobs that are being created in our modern society are being created in metro areas, so they are continuing to draw people out of the rural areas. Especially in Michigan where rural area jobs were supported by one or two manufacturing plants that are shutting down or are long gone. The family farm is pretty much gone. As populations grow in metro areas, people have to live somewhere. You can't relegate that people must live in the city of Grand Rapids, or in the city of Sparta, or in the city of Rockford. It's unrealistic.

I'd love to see some examples of what you are referring to GRTP, because I'm lost as to what your panacea would be.

And yes, I am saying it is OK to build crap as long as it is covered by trees (and no, I don't like fake berms with 3' Charlie Brown trees on them either). I understand that not every business and every builder can afford to build high-quality structures, but at least spare the rest of us from having to look at it. There is a lot of crap in the city too, spanning all the way back to the early 1900's. It's not all high-quality and attractive looking. Otherwise people would be buying it all up by the truckloads.

[NorthCoast]

I would love to see that happen. On my way to the mall for work, from GVSU, I'd pass through and I'd think about how awesome that town could be if it wanted to try. It has the potential to have some sort of identity and charm. My mother-in-law lives in Jenison and I know she'd love to see that happen and would support it.

By the way, it sounds like the feds had a complete disregard for the town when they planned I-196. Don't they usually construct highways farther from towns unless the towns want them closer? Or was that the policy back in the day? Or even worse, did the locals advocate for it? I bet if they did, they regret that dicision now.

[Floyd Z]

Does anyone have a picture of the new Baldwin interchange? Is this going to replace the Chicago Dr interchange?

[tamias6]

Does anyone have a picture of the new Baldwin interchange? Is this going to replace the Chicago Dr interchange?

[Floyd Z]

Hmmm that seems strange. Baldwin and Chicago Dr are so close together. Was this due to too much congestion on Chicago Dr? Seems like this would be a waste of money, maybe there are different reasons for building this.

[d8alterego]

Last I heard it's due to congestion. There have been one too many close calls for me, at least, when I was heading west on Chicago Dr and had to merge with off-ramping motorists to make a right on Main. Ontop of that, sometimes it's so congested that the line of traffic is backed up onto the highway. All in all, too dangerous to just make minor fixes so they're constructing an entirely new off-ramp. I wonder how many accidents happen at that off-ramp in a year. Anyone know?

[NorthCoast]

Hmmm that seems strange. Baldwin and Chicago Dr are so close together. Was this due to too much congestion on Chicago Dr? Seems like this would be a waste of money, maybe there are different reasons for building this.

[FilmMaker]

The concept and vision of what you are saying, versus the nuts and bolts that go into implementing such a vision are very different. Criticize Townships and local governments all you want, but at least many of them are actually implementing feasible, enforceable policies that constitute an improvement over what was there before. You may be telling us we need to go to the moon, but at least they are trying to design an engine.

[jas49503]

Sorry, but I'm not giving the developers and the CAD jockeys who created these POS's a free pass, just because they are "victims of an auto-dominated society". Suburbs do play a role in modern society, whether we like it or not. Not everyone can and/or wants to live in urban areas, and most of the jobs that are being created in our modern society are being created in metro areas, so they are continuing to draw people out of the rural areas. Especially in Michigan where rural area jobs were supported by one or two manufacturing plants that are shutting down or are long gone. The family farm is pretty much gone. As populations grow in metro areas, people have to live somewhere. You can't relegate that people must live in the city of Grand Rapids, or in the city of Sparta, or in the city of Rockford. It's unrealistic.

I'd love to see some examples of what you are referring to GRTP, because I'm lost as to what your panacea would be.

And yes, I am saying it is OK to build crap as long as it is covered by trees (and no, I don't like fake berms with 3' Charlie Brown trees on them either). I understand that not every business and every builder can afford to build high-quality structures, but at least spare the rest of us from having to look at it. There is a lot of crap in the city too, spanning all the way back to the early 1900's. It's not all high-quality and attractive looking. Otherwise people would be buying it all up by the truckloads.

[Raildudes dad]

I understand that not every business and every builder can afford to build high-quality structures, but at least spare the rest of us from having to look at it. There is a lot of crap in the city too, spanning all the way back to the early 1900's. It's not all high-quality and attractive looking.

[GRDadof3]

Part of the problem with urban centers stems from the unchecked developement of surburbia. There are far too many homes available than there are people to live in them. this creates abandoned homes, usually in the city centers leading to blight and all it's accoutrements. Developers chose to build huge subdivisions, where every home is spec with whatever cheap materials and design can be sold to the public. most people do not recognize good design, in both architecture and planning, and therfore just buy whatever looks good to them at that time. no matter if their decision was made on a total of maybe two trips to a model home before the place was even finished. it's like looking at a shiny vacation brochure only to get to the destination only to be disappointed. people have to live somewhere for years, or even decades, when they buy a house in a subdivision it is a superficial decision made out of context from an ignorant posistion.

[AlexPKeaton]

While they may be extreme, his ultimate point is that if we implement changes at the glacially slow pace we do now, it won't matter if we make any progress or not because it will be too late. What kind of general disorder do you think will happen when a gallon of gas costs $10? If that's the future then I'm buying a gun and moving to the UP.

Personally, I take a more optimistic point of view about the future, but I think some of you were missing GRTP's point.

[GRDadof3]

While they may be extreme, his ultimate point is that if we implement changes at the glacially slow pace we do now, it won't matter if we make any progress or not because it will be too late. What kind of general disorder do you think will happen when a gallon of gas costs $10? If that's the future then I'm buying a gun and moving to the UP.

Personally, I take a more optimistic point of view about the future, but I think some of you were missing GRTP's point.

[FilmMaker]

I'm also very optimistic about the future.

I am actually starting to think that the onset of "New Urbanist" thought is doing more bad then good, because no one understands it, it's impractical, and municipalities are trying to inject it in all the wrong places with wrong-headed ordinances.

[Mark Miller]

I am not sure how you can be optimistic about the future. What indicators are leading you to this optimism?

I think that there is good evidence to suggest that we will not be returning to the "robust" times of five or six years ago in regards to building suburban infrastructure....EVER. It isn't going to happen. We can all wish it will happen or stick our heads in the sand and hope and pray, but it still isn't going to happen. I am convinced of that, whether that is optimistic or pessimistic depends on your perspective. We can continue to micromanage landscape guidelines and cut our parking requirements and ask for brick facades on our Walmarts, but until we have the balls to face the real issues, we will continue to go down the path of diminishing returns.

Why am I so convinced? Everything, let me restate, EVERYTHING in this country is fabricated on a cheap fossil fuel platform. The food we eat, the job we work at, the buildings that we build, the homes that we heat, the hospitals that we need. Even the Honda hydrogen car, requires 1.5 times the amount of natural gas BTU's to create 1 BTU of hydrogen. We are now at a point, and even the conservative naysayers will agree (to some extent), where it appears that we have reached peak oil. The evidence is there. We have extracted half of the world's supply and the other half is going to be heavily contested by China, Russia, Europe and India and on top of that it resides mostly in places that don't like us, that are hostile environments and this last half is harder and more expensive to get. Without cheap oil, we will not be building anymore 300 unit subdivisions...those days are over and I for one am quite happy about that.

Another indicator is that we do not make anything here in the good old USofA anymore. I can not even find sash rope for my double hung windows made in the US. If we are not making anything, what in the hell are we doing? Well, I guess we are pushing paper. We created mortgages based on unsubstantiated income and the promise of future earnings. We created voodoo mortgages to keep the whole system afloat - $500,000 loan, variable rate, interest only for only $1000 per month. Now the bills are coming due and we can't pay them. China is now keeping our country afloat by buying all this worthless paper so we can keep buying their toxic goodies. And no one is questioning it.

Because we are America and we will make it through all this.

As far as your thought on New Urbanism making it worse, I could not agree more!!! New urbansim has been co-opted by everybody from the ill informed public, the dumb-ass developer, the misguided planner and designer and the absolutely clueless municipal agents. Traditional neighborhood developments have popped up everywhere, with their hardi-plank siding and overly stylized traditional homes with front porches, shutters and sidewalks. This movement is still the only way to make things work, but it needs to be done wholistically and not in a vacuum - and that is not happening. Even the great founders of the movement have come up short and currently are mired in stylistic arguments that mean nothing. New Urbanism is not about traditional architecture and the kind of crap that has been designed and built here (by the way, I am just as guilty as anyone else in regards to this). It is not about sidewalks in podded communities. This stuff is all just window dressing, just like the sign ordinances.

I appreciate Raildudes dad's comment: someone's good looking building may be someone else's POS. Yes. But you need to divorce yourself from stylistic issues and not be swayed by whether they planted 16 junipers (per code) at the base of the building. You need to look at the building's context and how it relates to it. Look at its typology, is it appropriate (hint retail and offices should not look like houses, unless of course you are talking about a rural country store (ie-Cannonsburg Inn or the Dixboro store on the other side of the state).

Finally I am not advocating for moving all the people in the metro area into high rise towers in the downtown core. That is just a blatant misunderstanding of urbanism. As I said earlier, urbanism comes in many shapes and sizes across a region. This basic misunderstanding is of great concern. How can we begin to build places worth caring about, without knowing even the basics of the DNA to produce them?????????

And if we don't understand the basics of urbanism, then we also fail in understanding the basics of ruralism. And it is no wonder that we get the crapstorm that we see today. The mixed up middle.

This all relates back to the original post on this. I have been working at this for 7 years and have grown disenchanted with the whole of it. We are no better than we were 10 years ago, and maybe worse. It is a failure. How many pages of discussion took place on the Cabelas site on this forum, which is an absolute waste and not worth any discussion. That project will do nothing good long term for this region, NOTHING - EVER.

In the original post the question was asked about why can't suburban design be better. The question should be why are we building office buildings on the East Beltline?

I have still not seen an argument as to why we shouldn't be talking about scraping he whole system. Except that it is hard or that we are working real hard at rearranging chairs on the titantic. Sorry guys, but that isn't good enough, not for me and particularly not for my kids.

[Mark Miller]

quote name='FilmMaker' date='Dec 19 2007, 11:03 AM' post='907582']

Some of the conflict in land use (and perhaps in this thread) comes from one formula or another being misapplied. We have urbanists arguing for the core as the only true answer - and we have others who are all too willing to compromise sustainability for the sake of "neo" convenience. I think the answer (and perhaps the only truly achievable short term?)

In other threads, we've celebrated the features and success of some of our outlying villages: Rockford, Ada, Lowell, etc. The real problem is that too many retail developers are trying to fill in all the spaces in between these villages and the urban core. If we can promote the self-contained health of these outlying villages as we focus the core on what makes it thrive - and simultaneously pursue sustainable transit solutions to connect these villages to the core - - then we have something meaningful for all of us to get behind.

[AlexPKeaton]

The reason I can be optimistic is that I'm a firm believer in the free market. While I do believe peak oil is real, I don't believe all the doom associated with it. Will it present problems? Yes. Will some people be really screwed? Yes. But, as oil prices rise people will make rational decisions about their lives and where they spend money, and one of those decisions will be to live closer to work and other amenities. It won't happen instantaneously, but I think the long-term trend has already begun.

The industrial revolution occurred without cheap oil and auto-centric infrastructure. I think we'll survive.

My bigger concern is that all this effort on making more fuel efficient cars is wasted because in the future cars won't be practical for most no matter how efficient they are. Hybrid cars and the like are just a vain attempt to keep extend the life of suburbia.