An Austin, Texas shopping mall is now a satellite campus of a community college, served by a light rail line.
A former motel outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, serves as memory care housing.
Mizner Park, a mixed-used shopping, residential and entertainment district has now been around longer than the original mall that was built in Boca Raton, Florida.
Those are just a few examples of
“suburban retrofitting” but with thousands of strip malls across the country in nearly every community, there is “a lot of latent opportunity,” for more, according to
June Williamson, Professor and Director of Programs in Graduate Architecture at The City College of New York.
The author of
Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia, Williamson presented “Building Better Places: Urban Design Strategies for a Connected Region” at the July 8 meeting of the NJTPA Board of Trustees.
Williamson offered an array of case studies illustrating three urban design strategies for suburban retrofitting used alone or in combination:
- Redevelopment, urbanizing selected “nodes” by increasing density, walkability, transit readiness, and use mix;
- Reinhabitation, or adaptive reuse of existing buildings; and,
- Regreening, introducing small parks, plazas and greens to have a social or public space where there wasn’t any in suburban settings, restoring wetlands ecologies and wildlife corridors.
Among the urgent challenges of suburban retrofitting cited by Williamson are adding water and energy resilience and supporting an aging population that has already reared their children.
The larger goal is to promote progress toward “incremental metropolitanism.” She said these transformations can take time but offer a lot of benefits to communities that undertake them. Williamson said vacant and obsolete shopping malls, big box stores and office/industrial parks are prime locations to consider for retrofitting. Reimaging these sites can provide economic benefits and address a community’s housing or recreational needs.
“Broadly, I’m here to advocate for the idea that implementing a suburban retrofitting approach can lead to a better, more connected and vibrant region,” Williamson said.
Inspired by her work, the
Boston Metro Area Planning Commission mapped every strip mall in the region, assessing sites to determine which were most favorable because of their proximity to transit, Williamson said. The study concluded that redeveloping just 10 percent of the more than 3,000 sites into mixed-used projects would meet the entire new housing demand projected for the region, creating some 124,000 homes and increasing building values by $479 million in extra tax revenue for host communities.
There are issues to overcome, such as dealing with site owners and addressing land use concerns in communities, she said. It’s a significant finding and many communities can make similar strides.
A recording of her presentation is available on
our YouTube channel.