Posts about Superblocks

Development

Video shows plans for Crystal City redevelopment

by Jamie Scott   •   July 25, 2011 2:09 pm

Arlington County produced a video to explore its plan to redevelop Crystal City over the next 40 years.

Board chairman Zimmerman walks around Crystal City and discusses some of the county's goals, which include encouraging higher density development, introducing streetcars, improving open space and protecting affordable housing.

Development

Crystal City plans to repair its superblocks

by Anthony Fusarelli   •   January 21, 2011 11:07 am

In the 1960s, Crystal City began to develop into a high-density, mixed-use neighborhood. One developer's grand vision for this area included a collection of superblocks, east of Jefferson Davis Highway.

As the name implies, a superblock is generally a type of city block that is much larger than a traditional city block. The area where Crystal City would continue to rise included few streets to provide a framework for the placement and organization of new buildings. As such, this was an ideal spot for the builder to realize his grand superblock vision of the area.

Many city plans conceived over the past century are well known for their application of superblocks, with mixed results of the successful or unsuccessful kind. Superblocks have been used in a wide variety of project types in urban locations, such as college campuses, major transit nodes, convention centers, and other institutional uses, to name a few.

While a typical objective of creating superblocks is to make a place more pedestrian-friendly, often the superblock's focus on separating vehicles and pedestrians actually can create a place that on the whole lacks cohesion and is not very pedestrian friendly. Current thinking in many planning circles generally supports the idea of now bringing vehicles and pedestrians together as shared users of complete streets, rather than having them exist in isolation.

A leisurely stroll through Crystal City today would introduce one to distinct examples of both.

The "Underground"

The first wave of development in Crystal City included both a legible superblock pattern of development and an interior pedestrian concourse (locally referred to as the Underground) connecting many of the superblocks together.

With the construction of each superblock, multi-lane arterial streets were incrementally built to provide local access to Crystal City's buildings. These streets were often one-way and not exactly pedestrian-friendly, largely due to the limited and meager sidewalk facilities and expansive blank walls at ground level that accompanied the first generation of redevelopment in many places.

The Underground is Crystal City's answer to a less-than-cohesive external pedestrian network. An interior, pedestrian-only network that is climate controlled, traffic free, and sometimes lined by retail, the Underground provides a safe, convenient travel option for pedestrians in Crystal City.

In fact, most buildings in the core of Crystal City provide their tenants with direct access to the Underground via their main building elevators. In some locations, the Underground is complemented by a series of pedestrian skywalks that link together superblocks above grade (although most of these have gradually been taken down in recent years).

Anecdotal evidence suggests the Underground has more than its fair share of users and can be a very active corridor during peak commuting hours. But does this necessarily make for a great urban place? And in an area studied for potential revitalization and redevelopment in the face of pending impacts from BRAC, what challenges or opportunities will Crystal City's superblock form and Underground provide in the quest to make Crystal City a better urban place?

Reshaping Crystal City's neighborhood form

Among other things, the recently-adopted Crystal City Sector Plan generally proposes to guide future redevelopment in Crystal City to break down the superblocks into a more traditional neighborhood development pattern. But how can this be achieved?

One-way streets can be converted to two-way traffic, as is already being done in some Crystal City locations, and new streets can be created wherever possible with redevelopment to provide a more refined urban street grid complete with safe and attractive sidewalks, streetscapes, and pedestrian facilities. Given the community's value placed on the Underground, it is an element embraced by the plan to be maintained, though modifications to its alignment are possible.

Plan view comparison of existing and proposed conditions.

In addition to street improvements, key land use and urban design changes in vertical building form can also play a role. For instance, instead of the "towers in the park" typology that characterizes much of Crystal City today, more mid- and high-rise buildings can be placed at the back of the sidewalk and oriented to have their building facades (on at least two sides) help to frame and create the urban spaces that comprise the neighborhood's streets, parks, and plazas.

Even in instances where new streets aren't being created to technically break down the superblock pattern, the introduction of new infill buildings at strategic locations should help to at least create the perception of breaking down the superblock.

In many instances, multi-family residential buildings comprise slender and flexible building forms and are well-suited to smaller or challenged sites. As such, they often can be designed to help define block edges in a more urban manner. Nevertheless, if situated correctly, hotel and office buildings can offer similar opportunities to help break down the perception of superblocks in Crystal City as well.

This type of infill and redevelopment envisioned in the Crystal City Sector Plan has the potential to break down the apparent pattern of superblocks, and provide a more consistent, cohesive, and amenable outdoor pedestrian network at the same time.

Existing and proposed plan comparison of Crystal City's block pattern.

Cross-posted at Under One Roof, Arlington County's housing blog.

Development

Superblocks near Metro, Part 1: Prince George's

by Dave Murphy   •   January 28, 2010 3:01 pm

Sprawl development comes with many impersonal, mobility-limiting, traffic inducing accouterments. Seven lane roads, grass berms, curb cuts, enormous setbacks, corporate drive-thru fast food restaurants, strip malls... the list is long and ugly. But perhaps the most basic symptom of poorly thought-out suburban planning is in the street grid: the superblock.

Superblocks in Montreal. Photo by Joel Mann.

Superblocks destroy the permeability of the street networks, force large amounts of traffic onto arterial highways and virtually destroying the pedestrian environment. They breed excessive setbacks, and are often fronted by the omnipresent berm. Many of them house big box stores. They are often served by wide culs-de-sac that lead to acres of surface parking. And there are a surprising number of them adjacent to Metro.

When superblocks are present near Metro stations, they are veritable barriers to safe and consistent access. Though they may contain inroads, by definition the do not contain a tangible public route through them. This forces circuitous routes to the station or unsafe cut-throughs that may not be safe or legal.

I expected to find them in Prince George's County. It is known for poor development around train stations. I did not expect to find them strung along entire routes, almost like an anti-transit-oriented development. But along the Orange and Blue Lines, such is the case.

The maps below show all the self-contained superblocks within approximately one mile of Metro stations.

Parking

Brunch links: Foolishness in Maryland

by David Alpert   •   December 14, 2008 11:45 am

Proposed "superblock" development in Baltimore's West Side.

77 spaces for 48 condos in Bethesda? Apparently not taking the OLO report to heart, the Planning Board approved the Holladay at Edgemoor project, just three blocks from the Bethesda Metro, with 1.6 parking spaces for each unit. Apartment-dwellers right in downtown Bethesda really need more than one car per household? The Planning Board must not have been paying attention during their recent sustainability workshops.

Is it still the '60s in Baltimore? The Baltimore Sun reports on opposition to the Lexington Square development, nicknamed "superblock". The name is apt, since the project would close a block of Marion Street to create a 28 stories of apartments and hotel rooms over retail and 1,000 underground parking spaces. Of course, this not actually being the '60s, the developers also plan street-facing retail with smaller stores on the street and larger stores above. But closing a street? DC is restoring the street grid in large projects like the old convention center site or (possibly) Hine Junior High. Via Planetizen.

Drink, speed, and kill someone, just get a ticket: Prince George's County prosecutors have decided they can't go after the county police officer who struck and killed a UMD student in his cruiser after drinking. County officials want to change the law to add a lower and easier-to-prove offense below vehicular manslaughter.

And: Connetiquette Ave discovers that Metro is renaming some southbound weekday rush hour 42 buses as a new route, the 43, but has decided not to tell anyone yet what they're actually planning; homebuyers want walkable locations more than exurban sprawl, reports the AIA (tip: Louise).

Go round twice if you're happy: A few new signs recently popped up around Dubai. Via How We Drive.

Development

Save Our Superblock

by David Alpert   •   June 1, 2006 11:49 am

One of the travesties of 1950s-era urban planning was the "superblock", where cities disrupted the regular street grid to build large towers surrounded by windswept plazas. Most of these superblocks are now recognized as mistakes, such as Boston's City Hall Plaza, a huge barren space nearly empty all year round, and the World Trade Center superblock, where part of the old grid has already been restored including a little park.

But up at Park West Village, a residential superblock originally built by Robert Moses as an "urban renewal" project (replacing 4,212 apartments in lower height buildings with 2,662 apartments in large, impersonal towers), residents opposed to new development actually cite the superblock as an argument against change. The owner of the property wants to redevelop some retail space, and recently kicked out a C-Town, a low-cost supermarket, to build nicer, shinier retail spaces and a tall residential tower.

I certainly think this community group has many valid points. The zoning ought to require a significant amount of low- and middle-income housing on the site, and discourage replacing affordable supermarkets with smaller, upscale ones. I don't know enough about the plan to be able to judge the issue of cutting off access to Columbus, but a superblock is not something to be preserved, and the drawing here looks nice, from an architectural standpoint - it creates a continuous street wall with retail exposure, encouraging street activity.

Much of this construction will replace a parking lot, and parking lots neither build a sense of community, nor provide trees, nor generate more affordable housing. A tall tower could provide affordable housing, though the city needs to make sure it does. The residents surely have many valid concerns, and should be listened to in the planning process. I just wish that just because they live in an example of urban planning's least glorious ideas, that they wouldn't argue that everything that makes urban renewal projects awful is actually a great, important asset to the community that must be preserved.

Architecture

Don't play SimCity (Classic)

by David Alpert   •   July 23, 2004 8:37 am

Like many people my age, I grew up playing SimCity, the 80s classic video game of city planning. The player lays out transportation infrastructure, parks, and residential, commercial, or industrial zones into which the Sims build their own buildings. All the zones are square and exactly the same size. (There have since been two sequels, SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000, which are more sophisticated.)

SimCity players quickly learn, or read in a strategy guide, that the optimal layout for the city is the "donut block", a square ring of eight zones with a park or other civic structure in the center. It's also most advantageous to create distinct areas of industrial, commercial, and residential property separate from each other.

In other words, this simulation encourages 60s style "urban renewal" designs. The planners of that era believed in segregating different uses, putting jobs in one area, shopping in another area, and keeping residential areas purely residential. They also believed in "superblocks", larger blocks the size of several smaller blocks ideally separated by large high-speed roads rather than the small winding streets of older cities. The World Trade Center is a classic example of a superblock, as are many Robert Moses era housing projects.

So SimCity is just a video game. What does it matter if it oversimplifies city planning? Actually, it does matter. SimCity perpetuates many of the myths from the bad old days, representing long straight roads and segregated uses as an ideal. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs writes of urban planners in Boston who saw the North End as a slum because it had high housing density and "too many" streets, even though it was a thriving neighborhood and "urban renewal" projects were failing. Professionals in this field had been deceived by the aesthetic appeal of clean, straight lines and simple, single-use, planned areas, and bolstered by the economic interests of the automobile, road-building and building-building industries that benefited from these policies.

I remember reading a book as a child which showed a picture of the "city of the future" composed of hundreds of very tall towers, thousands of stories high, separated by acres of open space, and personal flying vehicles zipping from tower to tower and floor to floor This is actually based on Le Corbusier's Radiant City, a proposal to "improve" cities which sounds lovely but is actually a terrible idea. Clean lines and well-planned spaces sound very appealing, and I can understand why the architects even today cling to it.

SimCity reinforces the impulse in young budding urban planners, and budding armchair urban planners, to see this simplicity as an ideal. Even today people make fun of Boston's confusing street grid or tell me, as a car service driver did on Wednesday, that Brooklyn needs more highways. Superblock-style urban design permeated the mass consciousness in myriad ways such as in SimCity, so much that even today, when we know that mixed uses and smaller streets make for healthier, safer cities, most people still see segregated uses with high-speed car-oriented streets as the ideal.