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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.
— The Conversation
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... View full entry
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 New York Times
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... View full entry
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.
— The Guardian
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... View full entry
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. — BK Reader
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... View full entry
