Development

Maybe they can build 'em like they used to

by David Alpert   •   December 9, 2007 11:40 pm

During the dark ages of urban planning (the 1960s and 70s), many old residential buildings were replaced with discredited the idea. Block after block of attractive row houses are gone forever, even though brownstones in places like Brooklyn, Boston, San Francisco, and DC sell for a million dollars or two, or more.

Can we ever go back? Most of today's urban developments are glassy high-rises, the better to capture the maximum possible revenue for the developer. They're better than 1970s concrete boxes, but is anyone building brightly colored townhouses with bay windows in front?

They are building them in one place, DC's "Capitol Quarter" development in Southeast DC near the new baseball stadium. Via JD Land, the Capper/Carrollsburg public housing complex is being redeveloped into townhomes, replacing the 700 public housing units with an equal number, while adding another 700 units divided equally between market-rate and "workforce-rate" (aka middle-class affordable housing).

These aren't Dupont's ornate Victorian row houses or Brooklyn's brick brownstones, but they look quite nice nonetheless. And with many people interested in living in the city but not craving the high rise apartment life, we need more townhouses in mixed-use areas. This district is near stores, offices, and the Metro.

Hopefully, mixing mixing low- and middle-income housing with market-rate, all next to one another in buildings of similar appearance, will avoid mistakes of the "housing projects" where concentrations of poverty create high-crime zones. And hopefully this project will look as good as it does in the drawing, encouraging more construction of new townhouses and creating new Park Slopes or Capitol Hills for future generations.

David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.