Urban Sprawl Repair Kit

[Neo]

I absolutely love this. It is so elegantly simple and easy to do that I think all cities should adopt this as a requirement. Proper design should be done in the first place, but considering how much of suburbia is littered with this type of development, I would love to see everything retrofitted in this manner.

http://www.re-burbia.com/2009/08/04/sprawl...repair-toolkit/

[krazeeboi]

Some great examples can be found here also.

[cloudship]

Great ideas for aesthetics, but from a business owners perspective, or someone actually trying to find an address or business, it's doom. Last thing business owners want is their location and product to be hidden or blend in with everything else. That is what promoted all those big signs and non-comformisty designs in the first place - everything else just starts to look the same once it no longer is all shiny and new.

[suburban george3]

I could see the small strip center conversion happening, but I'm going to have to agree with cloudship. The restaurant and gas station owner would probably not want their business' visibility blocked by the additions. But it's good to start thinking differently on how our cities function!

[Gard]

I'm going to have to go with George and Clouship on this one. Great idea for the strip malls (and something that does happen in some places), but stand-alone store would likely not like it, being it would take away the visibility that comes with being a stand-alone, which is sometimes the entire purpose of being that way. Also, many of the lots for a stand-alone aren't large enough to add buildings onto. I've never seen a gas station, drugstore, etc. have enough room on a lot for much else.

[go_vertical]

I really like the idea of this. Sure, "repairs" like these couldn't work in every circumstance, but after looking at these examples I immediately thought about a dozen locations around my area where something like this would work.