URBAN DESIGN
UPDATE
Newsletter of the Institute for Urban Design March/April 2007 Vol. 23 No. 2 GOODBYE TO THE GHETTO: AFFORDABLE HOUSING NOW AVAILABLE TO NEW MARKETED MIDDLE-CLASS BUYERS
New Orleans
In the name of progress, the slum clearance programs and the urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 1960s ghettoized generations of Americans in public housing developments that were fundamentally anti-urban in design. “Tower in the Park”-type developments and super-block housing projects, often bounded by freeways and landfills literally cut off low-income communities from opportunities to climb out of poverty. The contemporary urban planning approach to “ending poverty as we know it,” is mixedincome housing, which is now in full bloom thanks to initiatives underway in cities such as New York, Norfolk, Virginia, and New Orleans. Mixed-income developments generally offer private developers government grants and/or tax credits in exchange for creating new low- or lower-middle income housing alongside new market-rate housing. In contrast to one-size-fits-all planning for more homogeneous communities (whether rich or poor), the more progressive mixed-income developments typically are characterized by much more dynamic streetscapes with a variety of housing types and differently scaled buildings.
Hope 6 for Middle-income
At the federal level, The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been promoting mixed-income affordable housing since 1993 through a grant program called HOPE 6. A new spur for creating mixed-income housing is the dramatic demographic changes some American cities have undergone in recent years. In many instances, affluent newcomers are moving into newly desirable housing markets and as a result middle-income and lower-income residents getting priced out. “One reason to have this discussion about affordable housing now, is that the demographics have changed particularly rapidly in the last five or six years,” says David Dixon, principal in the Boston-based architecture and urban planning firm, Goody Clancy. “The whole market for urban neighborhoods is much larger than it was and far wealthier. Also, people are now much more tolerant of economic diversity and racial diversity.”
Norfolk
In Norfolk, Virginia, Dixon is leading planning efforts for a new mixed-income, mixeduse community in the Saint Paul’s Quadrant, near the city’s downtown. The plan involves tearing down an ailing strip mall and the 618-unit Tidewater Gardens public housing, which was first occupied in 1955. “This public housing was done for all the worst reasons,” says Dixon. “It blocked historic black Church Street from coming into downtown.” The new mixed-income community in Saint Paul’s Quadrant will be a much denser and more urban community than that of Tidewater Gardens. It will replace the original 618 low-income units and in addition, create 600 affordable units (40-80 percent of area medium income) and 1,100 market rate units. In addition to the housing, plans call for a network of parks and the creation of retail and office space. For Dixon, the new Saint Paul’s Quadrant has the potential to redress the legacy of Tidewater Gardens and create a community where people will want to live regardless of their economic circumstances. “When you create a mixed-income community, you are creating an opportunity for people to make transitions,” he says “ Mixed-income areas become racially mixed.”
The Bronx Via Verde
Many low-income housing developments historically have suffered from disproportionately adverse environmental conditions because of the way that they were built or as a result of their having been located in close proximity to polluting industries. In New York City, where Michael Bloomberg has committed his administration to building or preserving 65,000 units of affordable housing by 2008, the City is taking steps to reverse that legacy. The proposed 202-unit Via Verde mixed-income development in the Bronx is a pilot project that seeks to set a new standard for affordable housing with sustainable design features typically available only in high-end residences. The Via Verde project is the winner of New York City’s first juried competition, known as the New Housing New York Legacy Project, for affordable and sustainable design, which drew submissions from 32 teams of architects and planners from around the world. The winning development/ design team of the Phipps Rose House Group, Jonathan Rose Companies, Dattner Architects and Grimshaw Architects is obtaining the land for the site, which is valued at $ 4 million for $1, from the city in exchange for the design and construction of housing for New Yorkers of low-, middle-, and moderate incomes. The mixed-income nature of the project is reflected in the different housing types---an 18story tower, a mid-rise building with duplex apartments, and townhouses. The proposed green design features for the Via Verde complex include non-toxic finishes, green roofs, and a geo-thermal heating and cooling system. “The Bronx has traditionally had many residences with lead paint and other unhealthy conditions,” says Richard Dattner, principal in Dattner Architects. “We think that providing clean material and lots of natural light is important . . . we want this to be a model of healthy living.”
New Orleans Replacement Housing?
The most needed occasion for creating mixed-income communities today is in New Orleans where Hurricane Katrina displaced tens of thousands of people from the public housing projects, which accounted for an estimated 10 percent of the city’s pre-hurricane population. Prior to Katrina, New Orleans was a city that was quite segregated both economically and racially. Now, in some flood damaged areas HUD, which under a special arrangement oversaw New Orleans public housing, is planning to demolish public housing projects and, in their place, build mixed-use developments. There is a wide a variety of proposals for creating the new mixed-income communities, ranging from uniform New Urbanist plans to more urban ones, with a variety of building types. A key issue in the rebuilding of New Orleans is the appropriate population density for the new mixed-income communities. HUD mandates currently call for the population density in some of the new developments to be reduced by two thirds. Frederic Schwartz, a New York City-based architect who is overseeing two district plans in an area of the city that accounts for 43 percent of the city’s post-Katrina population, argues that the HUD requirements to reduce density are anti-urban approach to planning, which will imperil the ability of displaced low-income residents to return to their neighborhoods. “HUD’s philosophy is that density breeds poverty,” says Schwartz, who rejects that premise. Instead of decreasing density, Schwartz argues that it should be increased in order to provide a critical mass for retail and social services. Schwartz’s plans call for rehabilitating some of the higher quality public housing projects, and physically and economically integrating them into new mixed-income communities. Street grids would be reestablished on the rights-of-way that run through the super-block housing projects and new infill housing would be built on nearby lots. Clearly, mixed-income communities can play a major role in helping address social ills such as racism and poverty. However, as in the case of the HUD mandates for New Orleans, there is also the danger that mixed-income housing will be built at the expense of the more vulnerable members of society. “New Orleans has an opportunity to address public housing in America to an extent that no American city has had since the inception of public housing,” says David Dixon, “The biggest challenge is finding enough land to transform low-income housing into mixed-income housing without displacing the poor people who live there.” By Alex Ulam, who writes frequently for The Architect’s Newspaper.
New York City 2030, the first full-scale, long-term planning proposal since the administration of John V.? Lindsay in tk1963? and under direction of then city planning director Donald Elliott (sp?), is being published in late March. The new policy, explained at a New York New Visions meeting on February 23 by Bloomberg (sp) policy advisor Laurie Kerr, emphasizes a series of sustainable goals toward which the city will move over the next 23 years. The new policy is predicated on the realization that New York will increase by a million people over the next generation. At the same time, New York water and transportation infrastructure will age. The well being of air quality, water and wetlands will grow ever more precarious. The proposed new policy will address these issues with: 1) More Affordable Housing; 2) Better repair of infrastructure; 3) More reliable power systems. Among specific goals the city will seek to reach are the cleanup of all city brownfield sites (estimated to cover 17 hundred acres) and the cleanup of waterways along the city's 580-mile coastline. Signe Nielsen, landscape architect, who was first to respond to Laurie Kerr presentation, emphasized the need to guard against having new construction degrade newly cleaned up sites. Randy Croxton, the second respondent, urged that state and city tax credits be used to support brownfield reclamation and support more efficient mechanical systems in existing buildings.