Archinect - News

Framing Atlanta’s BeltLine as a font for gentrification

2023-02-03T13:22:00-05:00

Although the BeltLine was designed to connect Atlantans and improve their quality of life, it has driven up housing costs on nearby land and pushed low-income households out to suburbs with fewer services than downtown neighborhoods. The BeltLine has become a prime example of what urban scholars call “green gentrification” – a process in which restoring degraded urban areas by adding green features drives up housing prices and pushes out working-class residents.

Atlanta’s in-progress 22-mile-long urban greenway is often cited alongside New York’s High Line and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park as developments that spurred displacement in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a concern echoed by opponents of the LA River Master Plan in recent years.

Georgia State University Professor of Urban Studies Dan Immergluck points to the BeltLine’s under-delivery of affordable housing in areas where property values exploded after its TIF was adopted in 2005 as its main flaw. The “urban regime” initiative to lure tech and other high-paying companies using tax incentives is also a factor. Between 1990 and 2019, Atlanta lost one-fifth (receding from 67% to 48%) of its Black population due to gentrification.

New leadership is attempting to address the issue through inclusionary zoning. Meanwhile, the BeltLine's CEO Clyde Higgs has admitted to past oversights and says they are now tracking the problem proactively in order to identify areas that “may re...

The NYT asks: In a housing crisis, is building ‘bland’ better than the alternative?

2023-01-23T18:34:00-05:00

The new developments look startlingly alike, often in the form of boxy, mid-rise buildings with a ground-floor retail space, sans-serif fonts and vivid slabs of bright paneling. The bulky design is conspicuous, jutting out of downtown streets and overpowering its surroundings. Over time, it attracts a certain ecosystem — the craft breweries, the boutique coffee shops, the out-of-town young professionals. It’s anytown architecture, and it’s hard to know where you are from one city to the next.

The disappearance of America’s vernacular architecture and subsequent rise of what some call developer modernism is the product of necessity, reluctance towards artistry, and the monopolization of residential development across the country, according to the Times’ real estate reporter Anna Kodé.

The question of the kinds of structures (especially outside of large cities) they are replacing, if at all, is a potential counterargument in favor of their ubiquity. The larger question of whether drabness is a permanent condition of contemporary architecture, however, remains unanswered.

In a postscript with the Times’ Insider section, Kodé added: “I think one of the surprising things that came out of this story for me was finding out the number of people who defend these building types. I thought I would have to scrounge for those kinds of people. But a lot of people dee...

Balfron Tower apartments go up for sale; enter Oliver Wainwright

2022-07-26T17:28:00-04:00

Almost 60 years later, Balfron’s streets have been scrubbed up and the residents’ facilities turbo-charged, but the kind of community that Goldfinger imagined has long since been evicted [...] Where once Balfron looked out over declining docks, it now winks across the Thames at the towers of Canary Wharf, whose bankers are a target audience for the new flats, which went on sale this weekend.

A spokesperson for the developer told the Guardian critic that the prospective buyers have mostly been well-to-do architects and design-hip young professionals thus far. Up for grabs is the famed Bond villain namesake Goldfinger’s personal apartment on the top floor, along with the five other preserved "heritage" apartments. Fans of the brutalist icon will have to shell out a pretty (money)penny to get inside its Grade II-listed halls, however: Asking prices for each of the 139 total apartments start at £375,000, or about $451,000.

Related on Archinect: Stock bricks to Brutalism: housing design in Poplar

Wainwright lamented the material choices and functionality of windows included in Studio Egret West's suite of upgrades as well as the newfound lack of views caused by the installation of a concrete balustrade. He also delved into the story behind its sordid ownership transfer. To that score, one "decanted" former resident told him the sloppy turnover was the product of "a political...

Proposed development along Brooklyn's Broadway Junction faces pushback from local community

2022-03-31T15:24:00-04:00

Broadway Junction, the busy yet infamously underutilized area surrounding the Broadway Junction Subway station, may need to brace for a big change. The area, which sits between several neighborhoods including East New York, Bed-Stuy and Brownsville, has become the center of a private developer’s new vision for East Brooklyn.

At a virtual town hall held on March 22, Totem Group, a Brooklyn-based real estate development firm, shared preliminary plans to build a large mixed-use building next to the busy station complex. Totem’s proposal calls for the construction of four high-rise towers, with two including housing, one offering 400 units of senior housing and the other offering another 200 units. In addition, the development would include 1.1 million square feet of retail and commercial space and the removal of a block-long stretch of Herkimer Street that runs through the proposed space.

While planning for the development is still in the early stages, with Totem only having submitted a pre-application statement for the plan, elected officials and community activists have already begun voicing their concerns. In an area that has fallen into disrepair and blight, individuals, such as Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who represents the neighborhoods surrounding Broadway Junction, believe development should come t...