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A new report published by the Brookings Institution is offering potential solutions for developers, architects, and urban planners engaged in office-to-residential conversions in the hopes of remedying the spate of downtown declines that are beginning to plague cities across the country... View full entry
Provencher_Roy has released photos of their recently completed pedestrian redevelopment along a six-block stretch of Montreal’s heavily-trafficked Sainte-Catherine St. West commercial district just north of Ville-Marie. The project entailed the reimagining of a busy former four-lane street into... View full entry
According to a new study by storage space marketplace StorageCafe, four of the top five most active downtown areas for new apartment construction are in the South, with Atlanta, Georgia ranking first for built downtown apartments over the past ten years. The city yielded over... View full entry
Even if the office were to go the way of the horse-drawn carriage, the neighborhoods we refer to today as downtowns would endure. Downtowns and the cities they anchor are the most adaptive and resilient of human creations
The rise of remote work today won’t kill off our downtowns, but they will be forced to change once again. And with smart strategies and perseverance on the part of city leaders, real estate developers and the civic community, they can become even better than they were.
— Bloomberg
Writer Richard Florida is back with a new look at the “basic reason” behind his predicted rebound of central business districts, which he claims is an inevitability based on the historic evolution of such areas and recent building trends to convert hotels and office buildings into residential... View full entry
The National Landing Business Improvement District (BID) in Northern Virginia has outlined plans for creating what it says will be the most “well-connected downtown in the country,” following its selection as home to Amazon HQ2. — Smart Cities Dive
According to Smart Cities Dive, National Landing BID has presented "several public-private partnership projects, with costs totaling $4 billion, that will improve transit in National Landing, outside of Washington, D.C., which encompasses parts of Virginia’s Crystal City, Pentagon City... View full entry
Was Postmodernism ever popular? In 1986, at the height of the Po-Mo era, Newsweek's art and architecture critic Douglas Davis wrote a scathing review of Austin's newly built-up skyline, pinpointing his "disgust" towards the “riot of wretched excess” symbolized by the new Postmodern style... View full entry
virtually all of downtown’s brokers and landlords had clamored to attract the tech giant. Only a handful of locations were said to be seriously in the running, all historic sites on Broadway.
“Apple is known to do things that are outside-of-the-box and unorthodox,” said broker Gabe Kadosh of Colliers International. “It creates a bigger splash by going in a historic building.” [...]
“When it becomes fully known, the pricing is going to skyrocket,” said Kadosh.
— labusinessjournal.com
Related on Archinect:A critical look at Downtown L.A.'s ambitious plans for two new public parksHow L.A. can reboot its "creative economy" so artists can actually live in townHow Downtown LA's skyline evolved over the last half centuryWhy Steve Jobs Obsessed About Office Design (And, Yes, Bathroom... View full entry
The first public parklet in downtown Portland, the installation is intended to help revitalize this stretch of SW Fourth Avenue in the heart of the SoMa EcoDistrict (for “South of Market Street”), giving students, faculty, and workers from surrounding offices a place to sit and enjoy their food-cart lunches in the sunshine, rather than racing back to their desks to eat. — pdx.edu
Downtown Portland is no stranger to green public spaces, but the recently opened Fourth Avenue Parklet has that ideal recipe for a do-good-feel-good collaborative project. Twenty-six architecture students from Portland State University spent 18 months to design and construct the parklet, which... View full entry
For decades, L.A.'s skyscrapers have had a decidedly boxy style because of requirements that they have emergency helicopter landing pads on top. That code was changed last year, and some architecture buffs hope to see more creative designs in the future.
The Times long has taken the measure of the Los Angeles skyline, as seen from the observation deck of City Hall. Here's how it has evolved
— latimes.com
Related: The daring men building LA's New Wilshire Grand tower View full entry
Late in 2011, [Zappos CEO] Hsieh became even more legendary by announcing almost larkishly that he’d be leading a $350 million effort to rejuvenate a blighted stretch of Las Vegas’ downtown […]
His plan was to spend much of his own personal fortune to transform this lifeless area about a mile north of the neon blitz of the Strip into an entrepreneurial tech nirvana. [...]
Doubters have no place in the ecosystem. Pragmatists stand little chance. A love of hyperbole prevails.
— Wired
For years city planners have looked at ways to revitalize downtown, now some University of Arizona architecture students may have the answer.
For the past couple of years the grad students have been working on a project called "The New Old Pueblo". "We did a lot of research on successful strategies used in other cities," UA Grad Student Julia Roberts says.
Roberts is one of 17 students who worked with Architecture Professor Mark Frederickson to design the plan.
— kvoa.com
